Lauren Takes Leave

by Gerstenblatt, Julie

  I pull back from Kat. “I think I should just check on her one more time; it looked really bad…”

  “Duck!” Kat yells.

  I do, and narrowly miss getting hit by one of Leslie’s lace-up boots. “Thanks for coming, bitchaaas!”

  “Alrighty, then,” I say. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you that for the past three minutes! We need to leave town!” Kat says, clicking her high-heeled way across the marble foyer. I limp behind her.

  “Ooh!” I say. Propped on a chair by the front door is a pile of small, pink Chinese takeout cartons. Sexy-to-Go is inscribed on hangtags in black ink. I grab two.

  Like Kat, I can never resist party favors.

  “Here, take this,” I say, stuffing one of the favors in Kat’s bag. “Did you see what happened?” We’re hiding out under some evergreens, hidden from view of Leslie’s house by a few huge bushes.

  Kat’s busy on her phone, tapping at keys, but she won’t tell me what she’s doing. She looks up long enough to answer.

  “Um, which part? The completely embarrassing pole-dancing part? Or the tear-a-gash-in-the-hostess’s-face part?”

  “The…” I stop. “Wait a second. I’ve got talent! Moves!”

  “And that’s why you see so many men with bloody faces coming out of stripper bars. Because of the ‘talented’ pole dancers with their ‘moves.’”

  She returns to tapping her fingers on the small, glowing screen.

  “You mean…Leslie was right?” I pause to consider this. What if, in general, I stink at things that I think I excel at? It’s disturbing to contemplate that I might actually be delusional, and that I walk through this world posing confidently as others laugh. “I’m like the Elaine of pole dancing?” I ask.

  “Worse. You’re like the Elaine-meets-Tonya-Harding’s-boyfriend of pole dancing.” She shrugs, like it’s a fact and all she’s doing is sharing old news.

  Figures. In trying to let loose, I come undone.

  True, I may have temporarily misplaced my sexy, but pole dancing at Leslie’s is not how I’m going to find it.

  That is clear to me now.

  “It wasn’t nice of me. To hurt her and then leave like that. Even if she wasn’t being…gracious. Who does that?” I ask the trees, the sky, the grass, since Kat’s lost to her phone. “Who am I?”

  Then, I remember the pressure in my bladder and go in search of a private spot behind a spruce. I squat as per Kat’s instructions, trying really hard not to pee on my new shoes.

  “Charming,” Kat says, upon my return. “Plus, they totally saw you.” She points to some teenagers leaning out a second-story window at the house next door and laughing.

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, Kat still clicking away while I think of something to take my mind off my less-than-graceful exit and current humiliation.

  “You were in a hurry to get out of there,” I realize.

  “Hmm.”

  “That’s very descriptive.”

  “Yup.”

  I pull back and wait, but, in typical Kat fashion, she isn’t forthcoming. “Done,” she says, looking satisfied. “We’re going.”

  “We’ve left,” I point out.

  “Not quite. We’ve left there,” she says, pointing toward Leslie’s house, “and tomorrow, we’re going here.” She holds the phone out to me, showing an image of white sand and turquoise water.

  “I don’t get it,” I say to the screen. “It looks awesome, though, whatever it is.”

  “It’s Miami.” Her eyes look bright, in that same unnatural, vampire way. “I just booked two seats on the seven a.m.”

  “Two seats. To Miami. Tomorrow,” I say.

  Kat nods and finds a cuticle to bite.

  “For us,” I clarify.

  She nods again, really digging into that nail with her teeth.

  It’s an amazingly stupid idea. I mean, it’s easy for Kat to just pick up and leave, but how am I going to pull off something like that? I have children, for God’s sake! A husband! A job.

  “Nice try,” I say, handing the phone back to her.

  Well, a job that thinks I’m on jury duty. And a babysitter lined up for tomorrow night. And a husband who cancelled on me and is working late.

  So, really, no one needs me. No one cares.

  Maybe no one will even notice I’m gone.

  “Give me that phone back.” Kat looks surprised but passes it to me. I stare at the picture and imagine it’s got smell-o-vision, as sea-salt air and balmy nights fill my nostrils. Coconut and pineapple mixed with rum. Suntan lotion spiked with aloe vera, silky to the touch.

  And no children begging for me to build a sand castle.

  “Something happened back there, at Leslie’s,” Kat says.

  I know this; I caused it. “Duh,” I say.

  She shakes her curls at me. “No, with me, idiot. Me and…Shay.”

  I stare at Kat to see if she’s joking. She’s not.

  I think of all that sexual tension in the house, all those women, all that alcohol and lingerie.

  And Shay, beautiful Shay, licking my hand.

  I want to say something funny, like, You mean, like…a Katy Perry sort of thing? “I kissed a girl and I liked it / The taste of her cherry Chapstick?” But I’m trying to be mature and cool here. This is about to be my first discussion about girl-on-girl action, and I want to do it right. I settle on “Could you define this thing that happened back at the house with you and Shay?”

  “We kind of made out,” Kat admits, making a face and confirming my fears. “Things got…interesting. I think she might have touched my…”

  “I don’t want to know!” I shout, covering my ears like there’s a spoiler alert for a new blockbuster coming over the radio. I try to drown out her words with a “Lalalalalalalala!”

  “I know!” Kat agrees. “I am fucking freaking out!”

  “Shay is our girl-crush, dude! That means that you admire her, you don’t…fondle her or whatever!”

  “I know! It’s like girl-crush gone wild!” she yells.

  “Pervert!” I yell back.

  “I am!” Kat agrees. “I don’t know what came over me. I mean, one minute I’m asking her where she gets her hair color done, and the next minute we’re rolling around like female wrestlers…” Kat trails off, thank God.

  “Holy crapamoly,” I say. The grass is wet from the sprinklers, and my feet and butt are starting to get numb with cold. I have to ask the next question now or I know I never will. “Did you, you know, like it?”

  “Sort of.” Kat takes out a cigarette and lights it. I hold out my hand and she passes it to me.

  One drag goes right to my head. I cough out the nicotine and wait for more information.

  “There were too many parts up top and not enough junk down below.” I nod my head to pretend that I’m perfectly able to hear all about this without being weirded out. Kat continues. “I was, like, into it and watching myself at the same time, wondering stupid shit, like, What’s the name of that perfume she’s wearing? I wonder if it would smell that nice on me? But then again, her kisses were soft and her mouth was sort of exciting. And I’d had too much to drink, obviously, so everything was kind of askew, confusing, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Kat pauses, takes a drag, studies me. “You’re looking at me strange.”

  “No, no I’m not.” Okay maybe I am. Maybe I’m worried just a tad that my old friend Kat, who I thought I knew so well, who has broken up with her scumbag husband, is actually a coming-out-of-the-closet lesbian and now she’s trying to take me away with her to Miami to seduce me on the beach.

  “Lauren, I’m not gay,” she says, meeting my eyes. “I’m just, I don’t know, messed up right now. Plus,” she laughs, “you’re not my type.”

  I’m simultaneously insulted and relieved. “I know I’m not as hot as your first kiss,” I say. “But what’s that saying? Once you’ve tried Shay, you’re always
gay?”

  “Start with Shay, it’s the only way?” Kat adds.

  I laugh, but tell her the truth. “I’m a little bit afraid of you right now.”

  “Get over it and come with me to South Beach. Separate beds. We’ll just shower together.”

  “Ha,” I say. “I need a minute. Just be quiet for one minute.”

  She leans toward me. “You were the one who suggested that we drink more to make the party more fun, if I may remind you.”

  “That’s not being quiet.” I close my eyes. I need to sober up and think clearly here. I need to make a rational decision.

  Noise from the street causes me to open my eyes. Kat has her head sticking through an opening in the bushes and is talking to a small group of partygoers heading to their cars.

  “You didn’t hear?” one of the women asks us.

  “Hear what?” Kat asks back.

  “Shay Greene. Her husband called her just now to say the votes are finally counted. Someone was contesting the decision, but now it’s all sorted out and…Shay won!”

  “Won what?” I ask, fearing that I already know the answer. My stomach sinks in apprehension.

  “Shay’s the new president of the school board,” the woman announces.

  “Of course she is!” Kat says. Then she mutters to herself, “Jesus Fucking H. Christ.”

  “Thanks for the news!” I call, waving the group away although they can’t see me doing it.

  “Hey, Lauren, is that you hiding in the bushes with Kat?” I hear my friend Susie ask.

  “Yes, it sure is!”

  She bends down and catches my eye through the pine needles. “You know, Leslie’s on the phone with her dad. He’s a partner at West, Hunter, and Harrison. I think she’s planning to sue you. The whole incident was caught on the nanny cam; Leslie had them installed everywhere after that last babysitter, remember?”

  Kat gives me a look. “Nanny cam?” she mouths. She looks like I feel: spooked.

  Susie continues. “Just thought I’d give you the heads-up. Ciao, ladies!”

  My pole dancing was caught on videotape.

  I’m getting sued.

  Everyone in town is going to be talking about me.

  “Nanny cam?” Kat repeats, this time in an I-see-dead-people stage whisper.

  “Do you think Leslie has cameras in the bathrooms?” I wonder, worried about my lovefest with the toilet.

  “Lauren, focus.” Kat lifts my chin and holds my gaze steady with hers. “Shay and I weren’t in a bathroom.”

  Oh shit. I wasn’t thinking about them.

  Kat just kissed the new school board president. Kat just kissed the new married, female school board president, and, in a bedroom somewhere in Leslie’s house, there’s a teddy bear or a decorative ceramic object that saw it all.

  I think back to Tuesday and that nice French man in the park with Googly the poodle, talking about his lovely little weekend getaways to Florida.

  I turn to Kat, my heart beating fast. “Miami, did you say?”

  She grabs my hands in hers, clearly freaking big time, her eyes glowing sort of crazy-like. “Two days, Lauren. That’s it. Till we can figure out how to handle this. Just to, you know, get out of Dodge.”

  “We need to get out of Dodge,” I say. What was an option a moment ago is now an imperative. There are just too many people to hide from in Hadley. I think of trying to have a few days of local fun while steering clear of Martha, Leslie, Shay. Doug. Kat’s husband, Peter. It’s just not possible.

  Running away is our only way.

  “But, we have to be back by Saturday night for Jodi’s fundraising dance at the temple,” I rationalize.

  “I know. I thought of that. We’re booked to come back on Saturday morning. We’ll have plenty of time to do both.”

  My heart is in my throat, a sure sign that I’ve taken leave of my senses. Either I’ve had too much to drink or am making a scintillating, albeit potentially dangerous, decision.

  Or both.

  Kat and I lock eyes, making some sort of unwritten pact. It’s now or never. We deserve this, I imagine her saying. It will be a blast, I say back. Like skipping school when we were teenagers. No one has to know, we agree. There’s no nanny cam in Miami.

  “I’m in,” I say. Then, realizing what I’ve just committed to, I say it again, with excitement. “I’m in!”

  “You’re welcome!” Kat exclaims. I look at her skeptically. She shrugs. “I’m just saying. You’re going to thank me for this later. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you or kill you,” I say. “We’ll know by Saturday.”

  Kat and I have sobered up a bit but are not what you’d actually call sober. We get a taxi, which pulls up at the same moment as an ambulance with its lights flashing.

  “Oh brother,” Kat sighs. “You are so fucked.” About that, I would have to agree. We watch from the bushes as Leslie is rolled down her driveway on a gurney, her black ponytail dragging behind her on the pavement. When she’s hoisted in the back—with handholding Pam by her side and everyone else from the party rubbernecking—we make a run for it and dash from the tree line out into the street, and into the back of the taxi.

  “Where to?” the cabbie asks.

  “Just get us around this ambulance and off this street!” Kat directs.

  As we pull away, Shay waves to our cab and mouths, with her fist to her ear, “Call me.”

  After the driver drops Kat off at her condo, I have an epiphany. I check the time, see that it’s just past 11:00, and dial Jodi at home while the cab makes its way to my house.

  Her sultry voice fills my ear, and I can tell I’ve either interrupted her sleep or her lovemaking. “Hi-yyy! Are you okay?” She yawns.

  “I’m fine! I’m great!”

  “You sound high. Are you stoned?”

  “Jo, I don’t smoke pot. You do.”

  “Oh, right.” She pauses and laughs. “I’m high.”

  So now I know what I’ve interrupted. “Are you with Lee right now?” I ask. “Because I need to confide in you; I need to talk to you in private.”

  “Well, I’m with Lee, technically, but he’s passed out on the couch next to me, so I think we’re cool for the deep, dark secrets,” she whispers. “Spill.”

  “I’m…going away,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I’m…taking a very small, much-needed, well-deserved vacation tomorrow, and I’m not telling Doug about it, and in case something horrible should happen to me—or God forbid to anyone I love—while I’m gone, I need to tell someone where I am going. I need to tell you where I’ll be.”

  “Whoa,” she says. “That’s intense.”

  “Sort of is, I guess.”

  “You, like, totally trust me.”

  “I do, Jo.”

  “Aw, you’re such an awesome friend.” I can imagine her zoning out in her own little peace-love-marijuana world while I try to tell her the specifics of my vacation plans.

  Jodi may not have been the best person to entrust with this after all.

  “I’ll just e-mail you with the info,” I decide. “Like what plane we’re on and the name of the hotel in Miami…”

  “Wait! We’re? Miami? Who is this ‘we’ and why are ‘we’ going to Miami?” Nothing like a secret to snap Jodi back to reality. Before I can even reply, she’s guessing. “I know…it’s that guy. From high school. MC Loser or whatever he calls himself. You’re jetting off to have an affair with him in Florida!”

  “Nice that you think so little of me, but no.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “S’okay.” I smile, because it’s not like I haven’t fantasized about it. “Kat and I are going to enjoy an impromptu mini–spring break.”

  “Oh. Really.”

  From her tone, I realize just how big I’ve screwed this up. “Jodi…it’s not like that. Don’t get mad. We didn’t exclude you on purpose or anything…we just decided tonight! We were a little bit drunk! At this crazy chick’s sex-toy party…”

 
“Oh, really.”

  “Ugh,” I groan. “You don’t know her! You weren’t invited!”

  “I guess I’m just a third wheel to you guys, now that I don’t teach with you two anymore. I knew one day you’d just discard me. I just didn’t know it would come so soon.”

  “Jodi, you haven’t taught with us for eight years.” Ah, the drama that is Jodi Moncrieff. I backpedal and sidestep and do all sorts of fancy verbal dancing, but it seems to be of no use.

  Finally, I just appeal to her mothering instinct, Jodi’s kryptonite. “Jodi, how could you go to Miami? And leave your three precious girls like that? You can’t stand to be away from them for even one day, you know that. Plus, Lee wouldn’t let you. He’s kind of controlling, right? Likes to know where you are all the time, likes you home, cooking meals and stuff…”

  “Fuck Lee!” Jodi shouts, waking her dozing husband. I can hear her muffled conversation with him. “Not you, babe. It was something on cable. Go back to sleep. Lauren, are you there? I’m taking the phone upstairs.”

  The cabbie pulls into my driveway and I ask him to let the car idle while I wrap up this call.

  “You know, I’ve got a grandmother in Miami,” Jodi says, back on the line.

  “That’s a nice non sequitur.”

  “Yes, whatever that means,” she says. She slows down her words and pronounces each distinctly. “I’ve. Got. A. Grandmother. In. Miami.”

  “That’s. Nice,” I try, playing her game.

  “She’s very old. So old that she might die. Any day now.”

  “That’s too bad,” I add, aiming for a sympathetic tone.

  “I think I should visit her. One last time. Because she’s practically on her deathbed, you know.”

  My heart starts beating fast.

  Of course!

  Jodi is the best liar I know.

  “Lauren, are you there? I better wake Lee and tell him that I just got this awful call from my grandmother. She’s very sick. She wants to see me one last time. I have to go to Miami…”

  “Tomorrow!” we shout, united in blissful deceit.

  Midlogue