Friday Mornings at Nine (5 page)

Meandering outside again, she picked up her Weed Extractor and began a full-fledged attack on those malicious thistles.

“Listen up, you prickly bastards, I’m gonna get you. Don’t think you can hide from me, scratch me or infiltrate something I love and not feel the wrathful blade of my sword,” she informed the thorny weeds in her lowest and most vengeful tone. She brandished her tool, pointed a chipped index fingernail at the nearest thistle and added a threatening, “Prepare for battle.”

Just as she lunged toward the first villainous clump of barbed leaves, she heard a masculine chuckle behind her and a voice rich and resonant saying,
“En garde.”

She swung around. Oooh. Young Neighbor Guy. Still in that sweaty T-shirt, too. “Uh, hi, Aaron.”

“Tamara,” he said with an amused nod. “I’m afraid I’m interrupting your…your, um…” He motioned toward the garden.

“Crusade against the Evil Thistle Empire,” she finished for him. She grinned and forced herself to project the kind of cool confidence a “woman of her type” (a circular description Jon once used to categorize her) was supposed to project.

“Exactly. It sounded like you were gonna kick their spiny little asses,” he said, wiping a few drops of perspiration from his brow. She was about to lob back some flippant reply when his amused expression morphed into a compassionate one. “Frustrating day?”

Before she could verbalize it, her body was saturated with a combination of emotions befitting a woman on a Big Day in her life, not a random Wednesday. A day, perhaps, of either her marriage or her divorce—but not a simple day of weeding. She knew she shouldn’t feel so
affected
by his concern. And, yet, she was quivering just beneath the surface, and she could honestly say:

Hell, yes, she was frustrated.

She missed her son.

And her husband was such a callous, insensitive jerk sometimes. Why couldn’t
he
have been the one to ask her about her day instead of this (very) cute but uninvolved neighbor?

She tried to sweep away every thought but the one of her own image—the veneer she’d polished until she all but sparkled with self-assurance. “Yep,” she answered with practiced carelessness. “Broke a nail fighting these suckers. They’re gonna pay.”

He shrugged and laughed briefly with her, but his empathetic look still lingered, and she hated that he didn’t completely buy her charade.

“Well, I saw you out here and had a favor to ask.” He paused as if waiting for permission.

“Of course,” she prompted, her imagination running like a cheetah through the possibilities. Did he want to borrow a cup of sugar? Was he hoping she’d collect his mail while he was out of town on some romantic cruise? Was he in desperate need of a tennis partner for a game tomorrow? Hey, she’d play a set or two with him. She flipped her hair off her shoulders and tried to keep from further imagining what
that
would be like. Both of them very hot, very sweaty and—

“I wondered if you might have a handheld trimmer I could use, just for the afternoon. I was about to charge mine, but I’d foolishly left it on the basement floor where my ravenous dog found it and chewed through the power cord.”

She laughed, surprised. “Really? Sure. Ours may need to be charged, too, but it might still have ten or fifteen minutes of juice left in it.” She studied him, all long-limbed and relaxed. Except for his neck where she could see the tendons tensing. She rethought her reaction. “I—I don’t mean to make light of what happened, though. Is your dog okay?”

He broke into a full grin. “Thankfully, yes. The cord was unplugged. But Sharky’s a feisty one. I’ve come to expect these little disasters.”

“You named your dog Sharky?”

“Yep. He’s a two-year-old German shepherd I got from Pet Rescue a month ago. Still not quite polite enough to meet the neighbors. We’re going to obedience classes,” he explained ruefully. “But that devil dog is all mouth. His goal in life is to chew on everything, dig up my backyard and make a nuisance of himself. He’s got the energy and the manners of a hyperactive teenager.” Aaron’s affection for the pooch radiated off him. “Don’t know what I’m going to do with him.”

“He probably just needs to get laid,” she muttered.

“Pardon?” he said, his deep blue eyes blinking at her, the amused expression returning full force.

“Nothing. Sorry.” She flushed and race-walked toward the garage so she could grab the trimmer. She needed to make sure her own mouth didn’t get her in trouble here. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but for some reason she didn’t want to come across to
this
man as “flamboyant and frivolous” (yes, another of Jon’s flattering descriptive phrases for her). She considered trying to say something serious, but she couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound insipid.

She snatched the device off the dusty metal shelf and swiveled around to walk back to him, but he was only two steps behind her. “Oh, okay,” she said, almost breathlessly. He was standing so close! “H-Here you go.” She placed it carefully in his hands.

“Thanks, Tamara.”

Ahh, she loved the way he said her name.

“I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”

“No rush.” She sent him a casual nod. “Keep it as long as you like, Aaron. I’ve got my work cut out for me here. I’m not doing any detail stuff until I can see my cherry tomatoes in clear rows and be assured they won’t be overrun by the Bristly Bad Boys.”

He nodded and strolled back toward the garden with her. “I think your cherry tomatoes look great,” he said, appraising them. He raised a single eyebrow in her direction before reaching toward one very ripe, very red Sweet Chelsea on a branch near them. “May I?”

God, he was so polite. “Be my guest.”

He plucked it, rubbed it against his jeans and held it up for her to see before popping it into his mouth and chewing. “Mmm, good.” His lips were so…so…indescribably intriguing.

Huh.

“So, they’re to your satisfaction then?” She feigned a mild interest in his reply and barely glanced at him. Inside her chest, though, her little heart picked up the pace.

He stopped in place and waited until she met his gaze. “I wouldn’t worry about perfect rows when you’ve got a product that tastes this good.” Then he broke eye contact with her and scanned the yard. “Why aren’t the guys helping you out here? Work? School?”

She explained Jon was on yet another business trip and Benji was officially away at the University of Texas.

He whistled, low and smooth. Lordy, the man was Sexiness personified.

“Big step, starting college. Kind of a big deal for both of you, huh?”

Staggered again by the suddenness of her shifting moods, she drew a shuddering breath at this and tried to brush off the pummeling of emotions that raced like the Running of the Bulls through her system. She strained to smile but couldn’t speak.

“Really,” he said, tilting his head and edging closer to her. “How are you doing?”

Now, what could she say to this? That she was a fucking mess? No one wanted to hear crap like that. All anybody ever really wanted from her was an “I’m fine” or a “Doing great” or, at most, an “It’s been a long day.”

But for some reason, as she looked deep into his serious eyes, she found herself unable to maintain her well-honed masquerade, not in the face of all this concern. “Truthfully? N-Not well.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I sort of figured that. It’s gotta be hard.”

She swallowed. “It is.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, making a paisley pattern on the grass with their meandering footsteps.

Aaron rubbed the ridge of his jaw. “I was the youngest kid in a family with three older sisters,” he told her, his voice soothing and slow. “When I left, it was tough on my mom. She loves my sisters like crazy and they still get together all the time, just the girls, but it was real difficult for her losing me. Not only because I was the last one to leave home, but because I was her
son
.” He met her gaze again and held it for a long moment.

She finally had to look away. She spotted her weed remover a few feet to her left. Snatched it up from the grass. Fiddled uselessly with it.

“My mom and I communicate really well,” Aaron continued, “but not in the same chatty way she talks with my sisters. Our conversations are less verbal. It’s more about just hanging out together.” He sighed and stopped walking. “So, my being gone created a different kind of absence for her, know what I mean?”

Tamara’s breathing grew more labored.
Dammit
. “Unfortunately, yeah.”

She studied the features of this increasingly alluring but, in essence, unfamiliar man. Tall, lean, strong—yes. But there was something more about him. She was overcome by his intuitive ability to express what she’d been trying to understand about herself and her relationship with Benji but, for some reason, hadn’t quite been able to pinpoint. Sure, Aaron was more articulate and in touch with emotions than most men—a characteristic she attributed to his profession as an online men’s health magazine writer. Or was it editor? Some literary thing, anyway…but still.

She felt her throat tightening and a tempest brewing within her. If one of them didn’t change the subject fast, she knew a crying jag would hit. One uncontrollable and torrential enough to rival a tropical rainstorm.

But, despite her efforts to hide her rising emotion, Aaron persisted in noticing it. Noticing
her
. He didn’t let her construct her usual facade. He stood next to her as a couple of fugitive tears leaked from her eyes and dropped onto the dry grass.

“I don’t know if any of what I said helps.” He waited until she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and stopped sniffling. “But it’s easy to see what a great kid Benji is, even from the few times I’ve talked with him. You must miss having him at home.”

And gently, very gently, he reached out his hand and touched her forearm. Just a couple of fingertips, but they burned his kind words into her skin and warmed her.

“Thanks for understanding,” she murmured as he pulled away and took a few steps toward the curb.

“Hey, it’s okay. Hang in there, you hear? I’ll see you soon.” He raised his palm in a quick wave and added, “Thanks, again, for letting me borrow this.” He motioned to the trimmer.

“You’re welcome.” She swiped at her eyes and smiled a little. “Just bribe Sharky with a nice leather loafer or something—I’d suggest some tasty Armani—so he stays away from cords.”

He chuckled. “I will.”

And as Aaron strode back toward his house, she stared after him. No longer thinking about his sweaty shirt or even his cut physique. Her only prevailing thought, which spooled like a never-ending mental loop through her addled brain, was,
What could’ve induced any woman to divorce
him?

He was, in Tamara’s not-so-humble opinion, a man without fault.

Thursday, September 9

“T
he dish towel caught on fire,” Jennifer’s husband, Michael, informed her as he dropped the singed green terrycloth into the sink and turned on the faucet.

She watched steam rise from the stainless-steel basin and counted the seconds until the fire alarm would likely go off. Five, four, three, two—

The blaring noise assaulted her ears. Jennifer eyed the alarm. Couldn’t be too much power left in that battery after all the use it’d been getting lately. Good thing daylight savings time was coming to an end soon. She needed an excuse to make Michael change the 9-volt.

The latest problem, of course, was the toaster oven; the dish towel was merely an innocent bystander. Something invariably went wrong daily between 6:10
A.M
., when Michael stepped out of his hot shower, and 7:20
A.M
., when he grabbed his briefcase filled with student quizzes, his
¿Habla Español?
teacher’s guide and the keys to his Toyota before heading off to work.

How did she know this? Well, because yesterday’s problem had been the hair dryer.

And the day before it had been the rechargeable shaver.

And one memorable morning last week it’d been the microwavable omelet maker.

She and Michael had had a month of appliance malfunctions with which to mark the deterioration of morning conversation from “Hi, honey, how’d you sleep?” to “Quick, grab the fire extinguisher!”

If she didn’t know better, she’d think Michael was set on destroying the house one electrical device at a time, simply to get out of asking her how she was doing, what she was thinking or why she was spending so many hours glued to her computer screen.

Thus far, his strategy had proven effective.

“I’ll turn off the alarm,” she said.

“Great, thanks,” Michael called to her as she opened up a kitchen window, then fanned the smoke alarm with last month’s issue of
At Home with Bits-n-Bytes
magazine until it stopped its high-pitched alert. “I can buy some new dish towels this weekend,” he added.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said evenly. Michael was not exactly Mr. Bed, Bath & Beyond. He’d be more likely to get distracted at the strip mall, wind up at a Starbucks and write an “Elegy to the Earth” on one of their paper napkins about how “the scorched jade of the cloth was like seared bamboo shoots; foliage burnt by human avarice and neglect….”

Which was precisely why
she
handled all the practical matters in their household.

The girls came trudging down the stairs. Shelby, “almost thirteen,” as she liked to say, sniffing and wrinkling her freckled nose as she walked. “What’s burning now?”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Michael told her reassuringly. “The edge of the towel just got caught in the toaster oven. But, hey, I made you girls some cinnamon toast. Want a slice?”

“We’re
women,
Dad,” Veronica, Resident Freshman, said with a tone that would have been ironic had she not sounded so pleased with herself.

Michael, having been admonished by his nearly fifteen-year-old daughter to refer to her as a “lady” or a “woman” and not a “girl” (ever since the advent of her period some three years ago), had been more successful than not in “avoiding the perpetuation of sexist stereotypes within their home.” However, sometimes Jennifer just wished he would go a little alpha male on her. Be a fix-it man for a change.

“Sorry, sorry,
ladies,
” he said with a good-natured laugh. He picked up a plate stacked with cinnamon toast and offered it to their children.

Shelby gamely took one and put hers on a small plate. “Thanks, Dad.” She sat down at the table and nibbled on the corners.

Veronica took one, too, kissed her father on the forehead and ate her slice over the sink, bits of sugar and cinnamon clinging to her lip gloss and reminding Jennifer of a little girl with fairy-princess makeup.

“Want some?” Michael asked Jennifer, his voice hopeful.

She nodded and took a piece, even though she wasn’t hungry. Even though, after eighteen years of marriage, he should know how rarely she ate breakfast. But Michael so wanted to please “his girls,” and she didn’t want to disappoint him.

“Well, I’ve gotta go.” He squeezed Veronica, pecked the top of Shelby’s head, kissed Jennifer on the cheek and grabbed his briefcase and a slice of toast for the road. “Hope you
women
have a great day.”

“Bye, Dad!” the girls called out in chorus.

“See you tonight, Michael,” Jennifer said a few beats later.

And though he’d already reached the door, he peered back over his shoulder at the three of them and grinned. “Love you all.”

“Love you, too,” cried the girls.

Jennifer didn’t answer.
What about ME do you love?
Always, she wondered this.

She sighed as she heard him start his car and pull out of the driveway. She understood instinctively what he loved about their daughters, but he’d never answered the question sufficiently enough for
her.
When she worked up the nerve to ask, he’d always mumble something about how “he sensed her quiet cleverness” or how “she navigated their family waters with astute tranquility.” But, aside from a nod at her intellect and her ability to remain calm in a crisis, these weren’t concrete qualities—qualities that by themselves would or should inspire “love.”

Rather, his words had the ring of a line from one of his poems. Embellished and a touch contrived. Though, to be fair, Michael proved himself to be a good husband, a good father, a good
man.
Only problem was, he dwelled in a wholly different universe from hers (and not just in his bizarre preference for Macs over PCs). He always had. But, then, that was what she’d been looking for when she got married.

Jennifer checked the digital clock above the stove. “School bus,” she announced, glad their district was small enough that both her daughters could still leave at the same time on the same bus. That the junior high and the high school were right next to each other. It made Veronica’s transition to the “big building” a bit easier this year.

Veronica, who seemed to be filling out a little more every day (or maybe her shirt and her jeans were just tighter?), was busy downing a tall glass of milk to accompany her second piece of toast. She rolled her hazel eyes and sniggered. “
Seriously,
Mom, we can tell time.” Self-possessed and just a tad condescending, she directed a mocking grin at her sister. “Bet I can beat’cha out there.”

Shelby, with the poise of a duchess and the long-suffering sigh of a younger sibling, glanced at Jennifer and smirked. “You know she only says that, Mom, because she thinks if we race I won’t notice she’s wearing my leather sandals.” She pointed a triumphant index finger at Veronica, who’d hidden her feet behind the kitchen counter. “Ha. Caught you!”

Veronica giggled. “You said I could wear them if I let you wear my black tee. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah. How quickly we forget.” Veronica brushed some crumbs into the sink. “So…race ya anyway?”

Shelby feigned a pensive look, then shoved her chair back, jumped to her feet with a squeal and pushed past her older sister to the door. They somehow snatched their backpacks and their hoodies and were on the porch with a shout of “Bye, Mom” in stereo before Jennifer could even make it to the window to watch them.

Snorting with laughter, her daughters sprinted toward their bus stop. A few leafy trees blocked her view, so she couldn’t tell who’d won the race. Didn’t matter, though. The girls—nay, the
women
—loved each other. And she adored this about them.

Jennifer paused and listened to the inebriating silence within the house, punctuated only by the hypnotic ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer and the clackity-click of the lilac branches tapping a coded message against the family room window.

She released a long, slow breath. Alone at last.

She ambled down the hall to her PC and, finally,
finally,
was able to flip it on for the day.

Beep.

The whirl of her computer coming to life made her feel like a gambling addict facing a favorite casino machine. Who knew what she’d find in her Inbox today? A single message? A strike out? Or a lucky streak of three in a row? She wouldn’t know until she typed in her password and checked her Yahoo! account.

Nine messages.

One for a Viagra-like product. Two for cheap Rolex replicas. A few for oil-change offers and restaurant coupons…Oooh, 20 percent off her total bill at the Happy Szechwan. And one—just one—from David.

She clicked on that first.

He wrote:

Damn. We have a morning meeting scheduled with the IT squad. Might run late. Can we IM at 10:14 instead?

She suppressed a smile and found herself scrolling to the bottom of the page, trying to keep from reading their correspondence in reverse. She wanted to review her e-mail history with David from the beginning, which had become an odd preoccupation for her, like a new OCD acquired and made instantaneously habitual.

His first message had been sent on August 13.

Subject: CPU Reunion!

Jenn—it’s been a while. Bet you didn’t expect to get a message from me, huh? Got your e-mail address from the alumni office, along with all 26 members of the CPU Club during our four years in college. You remember Mitch, right? He and I are planning a reunion for the weekend of November 13 and wanted to let everyone know. More details to follow, but I hope you can come.

David Saxon

CPU Club President

Like she wouldn’t remember who he was or that he’d been their president. And, of course, there was the matter of their club’s name, which university administrators always assumed meant “Central Processing Unit”—the brains of the computer or, in this case, the campus.

Anyone who knew
David,
however, knew it wouldn’t mean something that obvious. With David, hidden messages were expected. And if they weren’t mathematical in origin, they were sexual.

She’d worked up the nerve to respond three days later:

Hi, David,

It WAS a surprise to get your e-mail. A reunion sounds fun. I’ll tentatively put the date on my calendar. Are spouses and children invited, or is it a party just for club members?

Jenn

And, yes, she signed “Jenn” not “Jennifer” because with him—and
only
with him—she used that nickname. It always made her feel like a different person. “Jenn” was the focused, sharply observant, almost confident college girl—quietly energized by possibilities. “Jennifer” was the mousy, retiring, vaguely bored married woman she’d morphed into—silently dissatisfied by routine.

Within forty-eight hours, David had shot a reply back:

I heard you were married. Any kids? I’ve been with Marcia (an old friend of my sister’s, maybe you remember her?) for 11 years now, married for 9. Our boys are 2 and 6.

As for the party, it was supposed to be alumni only—members from years 1–4. But I’ll check with Mitch and see if he’s interested in changing that.

Of course he had to mention his sister. Ugh. So, Sandra had finally matched him up with Little Miss Betty Crocker after all. Well, good for them. Jennifer hoped he still liked pecan pie. She wasn’t convinced Marcia could cook anything else.

She tried to wait it out, but she didn’t hear back from him about Mitch’s opinion. Since David had asked her specific questions, she finally gave in and returned his message a week later, her fingers skimming across the keyboard like a child pretending to play a baby grand. Only, Jennifer hit every intended key:

Michael and I met not long after graduation.
(A bit of a dig since David had left her just BEFORE graduation.)
His parents are great people, and mine just adore him.
(Another dig, but David deserved it. Her parents hadn’t approved of David AT ALL.)
We got married after 8 months and have been together for 18 years.
(Double his marital length, so ha! Take that.)
We have two daughters, one almost 15 and the other who’ll turn 13 this winter.

About the reunion—a small gathering is fine. No need to change plans. I just wasn’t sure what to expect. Did you have a time in mind?
(She wrote this even though it was ridiculous. This was DAVID—of course he had a time in mind. Most likely, a very specific one.)

Four interminable days went by before his response came:

Yes. I’d planned on Saturday night. Drinks at 5:07, followed by a few games of Monkey Pong. Dinner to start at 7:02 sharp. What do you think?

She shook her head. Why, why, why did this guy still get to her? How, how, how did he know exactly what to say?

Her:
Sounds like old times.

Then the messages followed each other in a flurry of text and type—each posted within twelve hours or less of the last.

Him:
Where do you live now?

Her:
Glendale Grove. A northwest Chicago suburb. You?

Him:
Just outside of Springfield.

Interesting and odd. Because while Springfield was Illinois’s capital city and it had its share of data-related jobs, it wasn’t exactly the Technological Hotbed of the Western World. She hadn’t pictured him working for some small tech company. She’d imagined him in Northern California all these years. On business trips to Germany, Singapore, Japan. Or living in Champaign-Urbana at the very least. After all, U of I was based there and that had been their rival computer school, with more grads placed at Microsoft than any other university in the country. Even more than C-IL-U, their college. And that was saying something.

Her:
You’re not in Silicon Valley?

Him:
Nope. Look, no one signed up for the location committee, wanna volunteer? I could use a few suggestions. Maybe we could IM for a couple of minutes next week? Just about possible spots for the reunion. I’d appreciate your input.