Just Like Me, Only Better (2 page)

Not that Haley’s life was perfect. According to the tabloids, she was having a terrible time choosing a gown to wear to the Grammy Awards!!! And the last time she went to Hawaii, she left buff boyfriend Brady Ellis at home!!! And when the barista at her local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf spilled her caramel latte, she burst into tears!!! And on the way home from a nightclub recently, she ran her Escape Hybrid into a median divider!!!

Good thing she had a hit record, the highest-rated television show in the Betwixt Channel’s history, and legions of adoring fans in the desirable eight-to-twelve-year-old age bracket. And, oh yeah—her net worth was estimated at fourteen million dollars. So I figured she’d be okay.

If only I could say the same thing for myself.

 

 

It was Sunday evening, and Ben was waiting for me in Darcy DaCosta’s echoing, two-story foyer. Oh, sorry—in Darcy and
Hank’s
foyer. California is a community property state, after all, and Darcy and Hank (if the tabloids paid any attention, they’d call them “Dank”) had been married five months. Ben spent Wednesdays, Thursdays, and alternate weekends at their neo-Spanish gothic colonial mansion.

“I went swimming!” Ben crowed before I’d even walked through the tall front door (which had a caged little window that always made me think of a prison). Ben’s blond hair was damp, his Ninja Turtles backpack stuffed and zipped and bouncing on his skinny frame.

He continued. “And I opened my eyes underwater and we had pizza for dinner and then I ate ice cream and I made a puddle of water on the kitchen floor but Darcy said it was okay and Darcy said that next time I come she’s going to rent
Ironman
and we can watch it in the theater room and I can invite Carson!”

Just once when I picked up Ben, I’d like him to say, “I hate it here and I want to come home.”

“
Ironman
is rated PG-thirteen,” I said to Ben—but really to Darcy, who was standing right behind him wearing black yoga pants that looked nicer than the clothes I wore to my job as a substitute teacher.

“Oooooh! Sorry, buddy.” Darcy tapped Ben’s shoulder. “Guess we’ll have to wait a few years for that one.”

Ben gave me one of his possessed-by-the-devil looks and crossed his arms over his narrow chest. We hadn’t even left Casa Darcy yet, and I was already the bad guy.

Darcy ran a hand over her short blond hair. “Didn’t mean to make trouble.” Maybe she meant it, maybe she didn’t. It was hard to read Darcy’s expressions because her Botoxed face hadn’t moved since the last millennium.

Yes, Hank had left me for an older woman. Believe me, I feel bad for women whose husbands leave them for younger, fresher meat—well, I feel bad for women whose husbands leave them for
anyone
—but my situation was especially humiliating. I was about to turn twenty-nine, Hank was forty-two, and Darcy was
fifty-four
. If I couldn’t keep a man in my prime, what hope was there for me later down the line?

“So Ben had dinner, then,” I said.

“Pizza,” Darcy said. “With carrot sticks. And one-percent milk.”

“And he went . . . swimming?” Ben loved Darcy’s rock pool: the cave, the waterfall, the slide, the Jacuzzi. But this was January. Southern California is warm—but not that warm.

“We told him to stay in the Jacuzzi, but . . .” She held her pointy shoulders up in defeat. “You know how kids are.”

Darcy’s two previous marriages had been childless.

A door shut somewhere in the bowels of the house. Sneakers squeaked on the travertine tiles, louder and louder until Hank, wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jogged into the foyer. “Hey, little man—give your dad a hug good-bye!” He dropped to his knees next to Ben and shot me a smile. “Hey, Roni.”

I nodded hello and tried not to feel anything as Hank gave Ben a suffocating hug while Darcy looked on, misty-eyed. But I couldn’t help it. I felt something: sadness mixed with jealousy mixed with longing.

I didn’t miss Hank. Really, I didn’t. I was glad to be rid of his chronic television watching, his too-loud voice, and his beer mug collection. But I missed being a family. I missed being a part of the Sunday night pizza routine.

Plus, there was something about seeing Ben with Hank. They had the same light, spiky hair (Hank’s flecked with gray, I noticed for the first time), the same Slavic cheekbones and down-turned blue eyes. They shared a tendency to talk too much, to yell at the television, to laugh in their sleep.

Back at the minivan, I sighed with relief: another handoff completed amicably. I didn’t worry that Darcy or Hank would be anything but sweet and gushy. They were the nicest adulterers I’d ever met. It’s like they thought that if they smiled enough, maybe I’d forget that . . . Wait a minute! Didn’t Hank used to be married to someone else? Like . . . me? Oh my gosh—that’s right! And Darcy—wasn’t she the woman who ruined my life?

No, I didn’t worry about Darcy and Hank’s behavior; I worried about my own. I was afraid I’d yell or cry or do something else to indicate that maybe I wasn’t so happy with my newfound independence.

Ben was snapping himself into his car seat and I was opening the minivan’s driver-side door when Hank came dashing out of the house. He’d lost weight in the past year, his beer belly finally beaten into submission by Darcy’s personal trainer (a man, naturally; Darcy was no fool).

As Hank crossed the driveway pavers, I climbed into the driver’s seat, shut the door, turned the ignition key, and put the window down. Whatever Hank had to say, he could make it fast.

“Next weekend,” he said, smiling, at the window. Was he wearing cologne? With his gym clothes?

“It’s my turn to have him,” I said.

“Yeah, but I was wondering—could we switch? I take him next weekend and then you get him the two weekends after that? Because one of Darcy’s clients gave her front-row seats to a Ducks game, and—”

“The Ducks! The Ducks! The Ducks!” Ben yelled from behind me, kicking my seat in time to his words. Sometimes I wondered if Hank and Darcy slipped Ben a double espresso before handing him off to me.

I cleared my throat. “Saturday is, um . . .”

He raised his eyebrows, eyes wide, smile quivering. Since the divorce, Hank always looked vaguely nervous around me, like he was afraid I’d cry. Or pull out a gun.

“My birthday,” I finished.

His mouth dropped open. “Ohmigosh, of course! Saturday will be January . . .” He froze, trying to remember the date.

“Twenty-third,” I supplied.

“I know.” (Did he?) “I was just trying to figure out what today was. Never mind, then. Of course Ben should be with you.”

“What about the Ducks?” Ben wailed.

“Some other time, buddy.” Hank reached through the window to tap Ben’s knee. “Your mom’s birthday is more important.”

“I want to see the Ducks!”
He burst into tears.

Stupid Hank, stupid Darcy, stupid Ducks. And now I looked like the bad guy. Again.

“It’s fine,” I told Hank, my chest hurting. “Really. Ben and I can celebrate on Friday.” I turned around to face my damp-faced son. “We’ll go to Lomeli’s for dinner—okay, Benji? And then to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream.”

He nodded through his tears.

“You sure?” Hank asked.

“Sure,” I forced myself to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I tried to smile.

 

 

 

W
hat an asshole,” my friend Nina said a week later, lounging on my bed with a glass of white wine as I wiggled into a form-fitting brown turtleneck dress.

“Hank feels bad.”

“Don’t defend him.” She slid off the bed and tottered into the next room to refill her glass, taking small steps to keep from toppling over in her enormous silver heels.

“What do you think of this dress?” I asked from the doorway.

She squinted and shook her head. “Don’t you have anything sluttier? You look like you’re going to a PTA meeting.”

Nina, who was actually the elementary school PTA treasurer, had gone all-out for my birthday dinner, in tight white jeans, a low-cut turquoise silk top, and many pounds of rhinestone jewelry. She was taking me to dinner in Los Angeles—at the Ivy, no less. Her husband, Mike, would stay home with their two kids, Rachel and Carson. She’d invited Terri Sheffler, whose son Tyler was in the same class as Ben and Carson, to come with us. I didn’t especially like Terri, but she didn’t drink and had agreed to drive.

Back in the bedroom, I dug through the overstuffed closet that I shared with Ben. “Nope—nothing slutty. Maybe I’ll just wear jeans.”

I didn’t even want to go to L.A. In fact, I had no desire to go out at all, as much as I appreciated Nina’s efforts. All I wanted was to sit on my couch and wait for Ben to come home.

That morning, he’d bounded out of bed and into the living room. Ben was a noisy sleeper, so when he was with me I slept on the couch. Our quarters were tight—just two rooms and a kitchenette in a little guesthouse.

Ben grabbed my arm and shook me awake. I had a moment of happiness as I waited for him to say, “Happy Birthday, Mom!”

Instead, he’d asked, “What time am I going to Dad and Darcy’s?”

Nina’s voice brought me back to the present. “We should go shopping sometime,” she said. “Did I show you the cute purse I got at Roadkill last week?” Roadkill was Nina’s favorite store in town.

“I can’t afford to go shopping.”

Nina slipped off the bed and tottered over to the closet. “Where’s that black sundress you wore to our barbecue last summer? Mike said it made you look hot.”

Hank had never told me that any of my friends looked hot. I’d thought that meant I could trust him.

I dug out the black sundress, which looked like it belonged over a bathing suit. “I’ll freeze,” I said.

“You’ll just have to drink more,” Nina replied. “That’ll keep you warm.”

Two hours later, I realized that there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to get me through the evening. The fun started when Terri circled the Ivy for ten minutes, looking for parking, because she refused to pay the valet. Finally, after walking several extremely long blocks past half a dozen trendy boutiques with size 0 mannequins in the windows, we limped across the brick patio to the hostess stand.

“Inside or outside?” the pretty young woman queried.

“Whichever is better,” Nina said.

“It’s really a matter of personal preference.”

Terri craned her head this way and that, trying to peer beyond the French doors. “Will we see any celebrities?”

“It’s entirely possible.”

We wound up sitting outside, near the hostess stand, because the night was warm (though not warm enough for a sundress) and we could see celebrities coming in and out—though as far as I could tell, the only people eating here were middle-aged tourists hoping to brush elbows with the glitterati. A weathered picket fence, dripping with roses, surrounded the patio. White cloths covered the tables, while red-and-white checked cushions softened the iron chairs.

As soon as we settled into our seats, Terri—who’d scored the spot closest to the propane heater—leaned her elbows on the table.

“So did you suspect anything?” she asked me. “Did you think Hank was fooling around?”

A potted African violet sat in the middle of the table, next to a flickering candle.

“No.”

“Because if John ever fooled around—which he just wouldn’t, he’s not that kind of person—I’d definitely sense a change.”

When the waiter showed up to take our drink order, I thought she’d let it drop. Instead, after requesting a Sprite, she picked up as if there had been no interruption.

“But John and I have been married for thirteen years, plus we went out for five years before that, so it’s different. And plus, I just know he’d never look at another woman. Till death do us part and all that.”

She plucked a piece of flatbread from the basket on the table, snapped off a piece, and chewed contentedly.

At least the service was good. Our waiter glided back with our drinks and smiled expectantly while we took our first sips. Like all of the staff, he wore a flowered tie with his button-down pink shirt. His pants were white. He wore his dark hair gelled behind his ears.

“Appetizers?” he purred, checking the other two faces before settling on mine.

“No, thanks. But I think we’re ready to order dinner.” I just wanted to get this over with and go home. Besides, this place was expensive, and I didn’t want to waste Nina’s money.

“I’ll have another cosmo,” Nina said, already halfway through the pink liquid in her martini glass.

“Of course.” The waiter nodded at Nina and then returned his gaze to me. My ringless left hand lay on the table. I tucked it in my lap.

“The lobster ravioli appetizer,” Terri said, frowning at her open menu. “Are they like regular ravioli, only with lobster?”