Carpool Confidential (8 page)

I don't know. Maybe sex, for starters.

You might think that being dumped so spectacularly would make the aftermath an interesting story. It didn't. After the initial blaze of shock dispersed, it was the same dreary depression that follows all of those more mundane
we just grew apart
marital splits.

The reality of my new aloneness sunk in slowly, inch by inch. I was cold all the time. It felt like ice had seeped into my brain, leaving it stiff, the way fingers get in the cold. I had no energy to do anything above and beyond getting us through the day, so I was pretty much neglecting anything not qualifying as either urgent or necessary.

I was always tired, but could never seem to sleep except in the half hour before the alarm went off. I spent hours lying awake imagining everyone I knew, cozily tucked next to their husbands, while I lay shivering alone in the dark. Much as I'd done as a child. Except then, instead of husbands as the comfort object, it had been Mickey Mouse comforters. I'd pictured all the other children I knew asleep beneath those stiff, shiny quilts from Sears, night lights burning,
two
fond parents tucking them in, while I'd huddled in my bed, plain, no-nonsense quilt pulled up over my head to drown out, in earlier years, the shouting from the living room, and then in later years, the absolute silence.

My life, I'd firmly believed, would be completely changed for the better if only I could have one of those comforting pieces of middle-American normality to curl up under. I'd no longer be on the outside looking in. I knew it couldn't possibly be true, but it was like a talisman: if only I had one, my life would be smoothed from messy patchwork into smooth, glorious, Disney perfection.

Instead of being a blueblood-should-have-been-
deb-turned-divorced-bohemian-with-a-vengeance-dentist who drove a twenty-year-old Volvo with one door tied closed with rope so you had to climb in on the driver's side and slide over and a MAKE LOVE NOT WAR bumper sticker, my mother would be transformed into a stay-at-home mom who wore lipstick, baked cookies for the PTA bake sale, and went to the Junior League meetings that were practically her birthright. My little brother would be cute instead of grubby, snotty-nosed, and annoying. Katya would no longer mope palely around, holed up in her room reading Ayn Rand and listening to the Grateful Dead, but instead be someone with a pink fuzzy room who would say
omigod
and giggle. We'd do each other's hair and listen to Olivia Newton-John together. She'd have dozens of cute jock boyfriends, who would treat me like a kid sister.

It goes without saying that in this version, instead of going home at night to his bachelor pad in the Back Bay with his dental assistant
du jour
(and dutifully taking us to Legal Seafoods on Saturday evenings, where he tried to think of enough conversation to kill the two hours until he could drop us back home), my father was pulling a station wagon into the perfectly edged driveway at 6:00. I never did get the comforter and here I was, thirty years later, feeling, once again, very much on the outside looking in.

 

Two days after our initial conversation, Charlotte called back. When I heard her voice I couldn't decide if I was thrilled or terrified.

“So I had an idea.” Thrilled. “You're not going to like it.” Terrified. “But it's a good one.” Both. “You'll want to say no.” Terrified. “But don't, you'll regret it.”

Terrifyingly thrilled, I decided, or was that thrillingly terrified? “Are you planning to put me out of my misery?”

She laughed. “Or further into it, depending. You should be blogging.”

“What?”

“A weblog. You know where you—”

“I know what it is,” I said. “We even have broadband out here in 718 now.”

“You're kidding!”

“How do you think Jonathan and Nicole zap their manuscripts in?”

“They do litfic,” she said. “At the rate they're required to produce they can messenger them.”

“Back on topic: could you be more specific?”

“They only do a book like every three years—”

“Your idea. I should blog about what exactly?”

“Your life, what's happening. In daily installments, like a diary.” She sounded excited. “You know how I said it was like a gift? Hell, the reason he claims to have left is more entertaining than the premise of most novels. I guarantee people will be hitting it every day to see what's going on. It'll be like Dickens for the Internet generation.”

Charlotte's ideas often seemed a little off at first look, but usually ended up yielding something good, so I suppressed my first
are you fucking crazy
reaction and said instead, “I don't know. Announcing this on the Internet seems a little over the top. The boys don't even know. They think he's on a business trip.”

“Change the names and maybe a detail or two. Make Rick a lawyer or something. He'll recognize himself, but the little fuck's hardly in a position to complain, is he—Cassie, wait!” She was getting really excited. “Actually keeping it secret is perfect.”

“Charlotte.” It had been a long few days. I was tired. “I'm sorry, but I'm not getting this. First of all, in case I was too oblique the other day, I need to get paid for working, and second, I'm guessing you got that, so if I'm blogging I'm presumably doing it for the exposure that will then lead to people assigning me big paycheck articles, so how is keeping it secret going to help?”

“We're going to pay you.”

“You're kidding!”

“I don't do that when it comes to money. I have to warn you, though, it's not support-the-family money, it's more like not-really-worth-the-walk-to-the-bank-to-deposit-it money.”

“I'll take electronic transfer then.” At this point I wasn't saying no to anything. “But what about keeping it secret? Why?”

“To start, I think for you to give your best on this, you're going to need anonymity. I mean, you're not exactly a spill-your-guts person, Cass. Writing about the most intimate areas of your life isn't going to be easy.”

“Intimate? I figured I could do distant but ironic.”

“Look, everyone and their mother has a blog now. You could spend all day reading people's ramblings on everything from their screenwriting ambitions which you know from the first sentence will never amount to anything to the crap they took this morning. So you're going to have to make it stand out which, fortunately, you can do by taking a great hook—how and why he left you and how you're coping—and combining that with humor and intimacy.”

I took a breath. Was this whoring myself out? Maybe, but I could probably live with that if I had to.

“We're going to run it on the
NYMetro
site like we did with the snarky food guy. We had to keep him anonymous because otherwise he never would have worked in New York again and it ended up working in our favor. A rumor started that he was actually Daniel Boulud and his hits went crazy.”

“But no one's going to mistake me for Daniel Boulud,” I pointed out. “At least I hope not.”

“Even better, they might think you're someone they know.”

“Now I know I'm not getting this.”

“Look, non-New Yorkers think it's just a huge city. New Yorkers know the truth—it's basically a big small town at heart. And like all small towns, it thrives on gossip. If you make it clear you're part of the charmed inner circle of New York private-school bake-sale moms but be oblique about exactly who you are, everyone is going to be convinced they know you. They'll be coming back to read more and talking about it and gossiping about it. We could run a thing in the mag, where people try to figure out which school your kids are at or something. I'm sure Gawker.com will be all over it. I'm probably biased because I came up with it, but, God, it really is a fabulous idea. In the meantime, I can get you some small article assignments and we can try to work up from there. Who knows, if it catches on it could end up a cover story or even a book like that British sex blogger, in which case you'll want to reveal your identity, but until then, secrecy is to your benefit.”

“I don't know, Charlotte.”

“What's stopping you?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Conscience, disbelief, morality, fear, privacy issues, ethical questions, reluctance, lethargy.”

Charlotte laughed. “You are one potent cocktail of neuroses, Cassie.”

“So I've been told. But it's not just my story, you know?” I said, trying to get her to understand my misgivings. “There are a lot of other people involved.”

“Boo fucking hoo.” She sounded fierce. “Long before you were the perfect wife and mother you were a writer. And that's what writers do. They take what life hands them and use it. Instead of letting it be something he did to you, take it back, make it yours.”

“Can I think about this?”

“Sure, just not for too long. God knows what could happen if you wait. He could come back”—If only—“anything. So how are things?”

“Pretty awful. And you know what I realized after I spoke to my mother?”

“You're adopted?”

“I wish, but no. That I might never have sex again.”

Granted, in recent years Rick and I hadn't been in much danger of sending our Frette sheets (my tastes had definitely refined post—Mickey Mouse comforter) up in a molten blaze, having settled into a definitely married kind of routine in both frequency and variation. We were both busy, tired at night, and Rick often got home late. Plus having two kids around at all times, a dog to walk, a social life, and a phone that seemed to ring endlessly wasn't exactly conducive to seductive lolling around in a pearl thong when and wherever the mood struck, but I hadn't planned on giving it up completely just yet.

Charlotte laughed. “In that case I hope the last time was fabulous.”

Maria came in, looked at me huddled in my chair by the window, and shook her head.

I glared at Maria, implying I was waiting for her to leave. “I'm trying to remember.”

Maria folded her arms to let me know she wasn't going anywhere. I covered the receiver and suggested that she take the money and the grocery list on the kitchen counter and actually go to the grocery store. I knew she'd substitute whole milk for low fat and Velveeta for cheddar in retaliation for her morning TV schedule being interrupted, but I didn't care. I uncovered the receiver. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” Charlotte said as Maria stomped out. “Does the lack of memory imply passage of time or lack of fabulousness?”

“Hey.” I was, maybe, a little defensive—after all, I'd been married to him by choice for a lot of years. “That's not really fair. Rick was…good.” Which was true.

“Mmm. Maybe. But best for himself, I bet.”

“Charlotte,” I started to object but changed my mind. “Well for sure, he never had any complaints.”

She laughed. “Uh-huh. I'm familiar with the type. Did he check his BlackBerry in the middle?”

“Not too often.”

“Once”—she had a definite BTDT tone—“is too often.”

“Never at a crucial moment.” I had to stick up for him a little.

“Crucial for who?” she wanted to know. “You or him?”

I laughed.

“Get yourself a Rabbit,” she advised. “The battery kind, not the pet kind.”

“Now I'm even more depressed.”

“Are you kidding me?” she sounded amazed. “Think of all the boring banker dinner parties you don't have to endure any more just to get a little action later.”

“Charlotte, that's often called sharing a life,” I pointed out. “I miss it.”

“That,” she said, “is because you don't know any better. I've named mine Grey.”

“What,” I said, “are we talking about?”

“My Rabbit. I've always liked the name Grey. I think it sounds interesting. It's currently my only sexual relationship, so why not?”

“Are you saying you don't date anymore?” Charlotte was the kind of woman who never lacked for men offering to whisk her off to Rome for romantic weekends, polish her toenails, carry her grocery bags, debug her computer, buy her diamonds. So this was hard to imagine.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I date. I just don't have sex with anyone except Grey.”

“Charlotte,” I said. “Do me a favor and don't call me anymore until I'm back on my feet, OK? I don't think I can take many more conversations like this.”

“See,” she said, “that's where we're different. This conversation's depressed you, but I'm thinking this should all be in the blog. It's real, it's intimate, it's exactly where every other dumped woman your age”—hmm, maybe I could convince her to adopt a new catch phrase on this—“ends up. It's practically universal.”

Pretty much as soon as we'd hung up in order for me to ponder the universality of unlooked-for celibacy in over-35s, my mother called and said, “So, tell me what you've done to get your life back on track.”