Carpool Confidential (21 page)

I left Harmonye to sleep, dropped the kids at school, and then, after a quick head swivel to make sure there was no one I knew around—the priest from the Episcopal church we'd stopped going to, one of the kid's teachers—I tore into the Rite Aid on Montague Street, where I skulked to the back and grabbed four pregnancy tests (some for me, some for Harmonye). I didn't want to make the same mistake as yesterday and not have anything on hand to verify questionable results.

Maybe they'd offer me a bulk discount. I circled back and grabbed one more—for Randy, sort of a good-luck charm. I hunched over to hide them from whoever might be passing by and slouched up to the prescription counter at the back, dumped them on the counter, and, with my hands my in my pockets, sort of opened my arms to create a coat-shield between my back and the rest of the world.

I was just congratulating myself that I wasn't half bad at the covert purchase these days when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a twentyish-looking guy, wearing iPod headphones and carrying a travel toothbush holder. My heart rate decelerated, although I was wondering if I was destined to a lifetime of random drugstore encounters. He pointed to the ten-dollar bill that had clearly fallen out of my pocket while I'd been flapping my coat like bat wings.

“Thank you so much.” I bent to retrieve it.

“Cassie! I see we had the same idea.”

I stood slowly to see Sue behind the young guy, beaming and waving a tube of Colgate Total.

“I always pay at the back it's so much faster don't you—” I saw her line of vision move to the counter a split second before her voice trailed off. I had the flashing thought that now I'd have to make sure not to mention pregnancy fears in the blog because it would up the likelihood of someone identifying me.

Sue was grinning. “Have you and Rick had a fond reunion in between trips?”

“It's—they're not for me. They're, um, for a friend.” I, of course, realized how ridiculous that sounded. “Friend
s
, I mean.”

Her eyebrow went up. “How unusual. Anyone I know?”

“I don't think so.” I handed my credit card to the cashier.

“Are you guys spending Christmas on Nantucket again this year?” Sue asked.

“We haven't—”

“Your card's declined,” the cashier said.

My pulse leaped. “What?” I couldn't decide if I wished the floor would open up and swallow me or if I felt like it was about to.

“Declined. Turned down. Not accepted.” She probably wasn't used to having AmEx Black cards turned down for seventy-dollar charges.

Actually, it was a little surprising that with their much-vaunted customer service benefits (in exchange for my annual $2,500 fee) they'd turn down such a small charge even if the bill was a little overdue. “There must be a mistake,” I said. “Could you try again?”

She shrugged and swiped again.

I turned and smiled at Sue. “Those machines,” I said gaily.

“Oh, tell me about it. If more than a week goes by where I'm not on the phone arguing with one of the banks about something ridiculous, I'm surprised.”

“Declined again,” the cashier said loudly.

I felt a rush of relief as I remembered that the AmEx statements went to Rick's office (his business spending was the only way we were in the Black bracket) and so might have gone unpaid for a long time. “Here.” I pulled a Platinum MasterCard out of my wallet and handed it to her.

She looked sulky at having to do it again.

“I'm sorry,” I said to the guy and his toothbrush case.

“No problem.” I could tell he felt sorry for me.

“Declined.”

Shit. How could that be? The blood burned into my face, pounding against the backs of my eyes. Why, oh why, did Sue Moriarty have to witness this?

The clerk handed me back my card and leaned on the register. “Do you have cash, lady? It's obvious none of your cards are going to work.”

I glared at her, stuffed the card back in my wallet, and reached in for cash, only to find the lone ten-dollar bill I'd scooped off the floor. “Er—”

“I'll have to call a manager to void this.” She glared at me.

“I have an idea,” Sue said from behind me. “How about if you ring my toothpaste in with her stuff and I pay for it all?”

“Oh, Sue, I can't let—”

“Don't be ridiculous, Cassie. Of course you can. Besides”— she smiled—“I know where you live.”

In a flash her card was swiped and all was signed for and we were walking out together with our bags. Sue waved away my apologies. “Forget it. These things happen. Just pay me the next time you see me.”

I sincerely hoped I'd be able to.

“I mean it's not like you're in a position like Nancy Bosworth, coasting along pretending she can afford this life, when really she can't.” Sue shook her head. “I've heard through the grapevine that Dave's not keeping up with his support payments and she's behind with her tuition. She should just accept that she needs to move somewhere that the kids can go to public school.”

“I don't know,” I ventured. “It's not her fault Dave's not making his payments, and it seems kind of harsh to force a move and a new school on the kids so soon after everything they've been through with the divorce and the half-sibling.”

“Don't you think people get what they ask for to some degree? She did after all make the choice to marry a man irresponsible enough to have had a child with another woman while married to her.”

“I'm guessing she didn't think so at the time.”

Sue shrugged. “There are always signs. When you met Rick—”

It's not that often I'm grateful for my cell phone, but I had to admit it was the perfect moment for Charlotte to interrupt. “Hi. Are you alone?”

“No.” I smiled blandly at Sue, who didn't seem to be taking the interruption as a cue to leave. My heart was thudding. On the heels of the humiliating credit card disaster, all I needed to hear was that Charlotte hated it.

“I'll talk then, just listen.” I nodded, like she could see. “I liked it a lot. It was breezy and funny and not too navel gazing, also, no heinous grammatical errors. I'm going to shorten it a little, but could you add a paragraph or two about who you are?”

“I thought that's what I wasn't supposed to do.”

“Think oblique. Write oblique.”

I glanced at Sue. She seemed absorbed in reading something on her phone. “I have sort of a full day, it might not be before tonight.”

“Prioritize it. Hey, you know what you need?”

“The list is pretty much endless.”

“A BlackBerry!”

I hung up. Sue looked up from her phone and smiled. “What I meant was, you had enough sense to pick a man you knew would never—”

To be fair, she couldn't have a clue how deeply her words cut. “Thanks a ton for the bailout, Sue,” I said as I turned on Pierre-pont Street, ignoring her surprised expression. She had been midsentence, after all. “You're a lifesaver.” Also an unempathetic judgmental bitch. Had I been like that?

As soon as she was out of earshot, I dialed Rick's office to ask Paulette if I could get reimbursed on any of those expenses. I assumed she'd been reassigned to someone else when Rick had left, so I called the main switchboard and asked to be put through to her. She didn't pick up, so I left a message.

I so desperately needed to pee when I walked into the apartment (possibly on account of the Starbucks bucket-sized latte I.I. had made me by mistake when I'd ordered a tall) that it was a no-brainer whether to do the pregnancy test or figure out the credit situation. I grabbed an EPT and was headed toward the bathroom when Maria came bearing down on me, white-faced.

“Hi.” I smiled at her. I don't know why. I certainly didn't feel like it.

She smacked something down on the hall table and put her hands on her hips.

I really was starting to need reading glasses—oops.
Cyndi does Cinci
, etc. She began a convoluted story about Samantha (the feng shui consultant) showing up because she'd had an inspiration about the clarity of the study (interesting, since the study had been a zone of decided unclearness to me last night) relating to clutter in the southeastern corner and come in to re-think it. While there, she had recruited Maria to help her move the desk. They had started emptying out the drawers, and voilà.

Maria looked at me, the pregnancy tests, the DVD, Cad. She drew breath.

I held mine.
Yes, yes, please, make her quit
.

“This household is…disgusting, the things that go on. I won't clean in there any more.”

“Maria,” I said, “you never did. And you're fired.”

When we were done negotiating her severance (which included the kitchen television and me assuming responsibility for her cable bills until the year 3090), I figured I'd have to get a jump on listing Rick's stuff on eBay. Some things, however, are worth every penny. After I'd packed Maria and the TV and the severance check (which should have weighed about fifty pounds) into a taxi, I came back up to the apartment and noticed that
Cyndi Does Cinci
and
Lesbo Gangbang
were both gone. Hmmm.

The pregnancy test was negative. So were the results on the credit cards. Each and every single one had been canceled and, as they were either joint cards or in his name, there wasn't a damn thing I could do to get them reinstated. Fuck.

I called Janice Streitmeier, reiterated the urgency of the situation and my willingness to take less than market for Nantucket. She was thrilled—even with a reduction, she'd make a huge commission. I hoped desperately that I wasn't going to need Rick's signature on anything.

Then I debated, gynecologist before or after waxing? Which was pointless because, as it turned out when I called and cried on the phone to the gynecologist's office, they couldn't fit me in until after. I banged out more blog.

www.carpoolconfidential.blogspot.com

A friend suggested I start this out by explaining straight up that I'm a dumped for Barry Manilow, broke, single, menopausal mother of two. But those things are so…labelly. What do they really tell you?

Maybe it's more accurate to say, I could be pretty much anyone. Your friend. Your neighbor. The cochair of the Christmas Crafts Fair. Your child's playdate's mother. Someone you used to work with.

Certainly a couple of months ago it was pretty simple. I was you, or your wife, or the woman next to you at the PTA meeting or yoga class or in line at Whole Foods. I had two children whose kindergarten tuition at a New York private school cost more than my freshman year of college, a loving and devoted lawyer husband, four thousand square feet of prime New York real estate, and a seriously overcoddled dog. I also had a Volvo SUV, a housekeeper, two personal trainers (one Pilates and one cardio), an interior decorator, and sometimes a feng shui consultant.

I still have the children, the SUV, the tuitions, the dog, and the real estate. In fact, I'm forever tied to the real estate, which, it just so happens, I can no longer afford now that I'm minus the loving and devoted lawyer husband (and most of our money, which seems to have, oops, accidentally slipped into his pocket on his way out).

I will also say, it never occurred to me that I'd end up single. For over a decade I've been, or at least believed myself to have been, as firmly coupled as it's possible to be. The thing is I sort of turned out to be wrong about that. Really wrong. Wrong about my marriage, wrong about my husband, wrong about pretty much everything. And now I'm starting all over again.

You'd never know it, though. I'm keeping up appearances so well, you'd never guess my change in circumstances unless I chose to tell you, which I won't. Except here of course. Here it's single-parenting, sex, dating, finances, restarting a nonexistent career, waxing. You name it, I'm letting it all out.