#TripleX (27 page)

Well no more.

Not ever again.

I was proud of myself. I was proud of who I was becoming. And Goddamn it, I was beginning to like the person I saw in the mirror. She made me happy. She made me proud. And this no-good, Granola-ground Grateful Dead-head was not going to fuck that up.

Not now.

Not ever.

“I’m sorry Rosie, this was a mistake,” I said, standing. I texted Christine and told her to come get me immediately. I grabbed my purse and started for the door. “Thank you for lunch.”

“My intent was not to offend or cause pain,” Rosie stammered, following me to the door. “And sadly, it appears I’ve done just that.”

“Oh Rosie, small-minded, crazy people with their heads in hemp can’t hurt or offend me,” I stated, walking out onto her porch. “I’m stronger than that—better than that.”

As I walked down the road away from Rosie, I was glad I didn’t blow up at her, punch her in the face, or burn down her stupid little house. (I thought about doing all of those things.) Instead, I walked away. I’m not going to surround myself in negativity and self-deprecation any longer.

After I relayed the story to Christine, she seethed and ranted for ten straight minutes. Then, she pulled into a fast food restaurant, and purchased four cheeseburgers. “What’re those for?” I asked, not wanting the scent of the greasy burger to waft through the car. I couldn’t handle the temptation.

“You’ll see,” Christine said, heading back toward Rosie’s house. Pulling into the driveway, Christine parked the car and beckoned for Ebony and Ivory to come over to the car. “Hey girls, how old are you, exactly?”

“Eight,” answered Ebony.

“Nine,” replied Ivory.

“And in all that time, have you ever enjoyed the taste of a delicious, juicy cheeseburger?” she asked, waving the burgers in front of them. They shook their heads. “Well girls, it’s your lucky day.” She tossed them each a burger, and said, “Go easy, maybe don’t eat the whole thing—enjoy.”

As we backed out of the driveway, the girls bit down on their burgers as Rosie came running out of the house, begging them to spit the animal remains out of their mouths. Neither girl did. Instead, they ran from their mom, shoving the burger into their mouths and squealing with delight.

“Here,” Christine said, tossing me a burger and unwrapping her own.

“We’re actually eating fast food burgers?” I asked, relishing the feel of the soft, warm bun in my hand.

“I don’t know about you Ang, but I think we can each have a burger without falling completely off the wagon now and eating a whole 10-pack of burgers,” she explained. “I want to keep losing weight, but Sergeant Sexy was right. It’s not about the image I see in the mirror. It’s about the one I see in my head. And lately, I like that image. I’m not going to destroy it.”

“Damn straight,” I said, tapping my burger with hers, like clinking wine glasses. “Let’s still lose more weight and keep getting healthier… but let’s stop killing ourselves to do it.”

The following morning, the constant ringing of my phone woke me from a great night’s sleep. Seeing that it was Matt, I took the phone into the bathroom and called him back immediately.

“Angelisa,” he answered after one ring. “I just got off the phone with Jerry.”

“Jerry who?” I yawned.

“Jerry Wilkes, you know the guy who comes and does work around our house,” Matt explained. “I wanted to get an estimate on putting a bathroom in the basement—ya know, for the boys when they get older.”

“Okaaayy,” I said, trying to flush the toilet without him hearing.

The fact that I was trying to be so discreet was odd, considering this was the same man who shaved in the morning before work while I went to the bathroom. Now, I was on the phone trying to hide the fact that I had to pee first thing in the morning.

“Ang, the boys left the utility sink on in the basement when they left—almost three months ago,” he yelled.

“Oh shit,” I said, sighing. “Our water bill is going to be astronomical.”

“Our water bill is the least of our worries. Evan’s hat was in the sink, caught in the drain—making it a stopper for the water to go down. Our whole basement is flooded—and has been flooding for almost three months.”

“No, no, no, no,” I cried, sitting in the bathtub. “Are you kidding? We just paid off that basement. No!”

“I know. Twenty grand down the drain,” he said, “and for what? So you can go gallivanting around the country like some college girl.”

“What? What did you just say?” I asked; the frustration quickly replaced by rage.

“I mean; if this is anyone’s fault, it’s yours. You’re the one who had to go play teenager for the summer,” Matt yelled, his voice screeching like I’d never heard it before.

“Playing teenager? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on Ang, you don’t think I follow you on Twitter and Facebook?” he said, accusingly. “Hell, even Kevin saw the antics at that frat party. How do you think that makes him feel, knowing his mother, his
married
mother is playing has-been sorority girl? Those kids are closer to his age than they are yours. Did you ever think about that?”

“I’m not playing sorority—”

“Then what are you doing? Other than making a total ass of yourself—and all of us?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “What kind of self-respecting wife and mother takes pictures of herself wrapped around a pole and posts it to her author page? It’s bad enough you
write
that shit, now I gotta look at it on social media sites too?”

“Really? You want to go there? You want to have this battle? What about you? What about you Matthew?” I snarl, angrily. “You’re never home—even when you’re home, you’re not home. It’s no wonder I write about it—I sure as Hell don’t get romance in my everyday life.”

“Are you kidding me, Ang? I’m the most romantic and present husband you know,” he argued.

“Oh really? Every damn weekend in the summer you find some golf tournament or some event that you just
have
to go to. Then, you add the boys into the mix, and we spend every damn minute of our lives at someone’s sporting event. I went from being a wife to being a mother—and only a mother!”

“Oh, and that’s just so bad, right? It’s so bad being a mom that you have to go screwing around the country with some keg-standing woman I don’t even know,” he yelled. “Meanwhile, I’m taking care of your sons while you’re out doing God knows what—with God knows who?”

“Matthew Stone, don’t you fucking talk to me like that. I don’t want to hear what
you
have to do. You don’t do shit. You just sit back, and let me take care of the house, the kids, fucking everything,” I roared, standing up in the tub. “Well guess what? Fuck you. So our basement flooded. Big Goddamn deal. I don’t care. I could not care less. How about this? For once in your life, you figure it out. You fix it. You handle it.”

“Jesus Ang, what the Hell?” Matt questioned.

“What do you mean ‘what the Hell’? This is the kind of crap I’m sick of. I’m sick of being your sounding board, your scapegoat,” I screamed, the sounds echoing off the tile. “Ya know what? Our basement wouldn’t be flooded and ruined if you hadn’t walked out—if you hadn’t left. What kind of man leaves his wife and kids to go work out of state? Before you start blaming me for shit that has nothing to do with me, why don’t you take a long hard look in the mirror first? It takes two people to destroy a marriage, Matt.”

“Ang, I’m sorry,” he said quietly. I heard him sigh. I knew he was rubbing his forehead as it pulled tight. I knew his every move, his every gesture. “I never should’ve said—”

“Ya know what? No! Don’t even. We haven’t been together—in the same place for almost five months. And look at us—we’re still fighting and screaming. I’m not going to do this anymore. I can’t. I won’t,” I said, tears falling down my face. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m done, Matt. Done.”

“Ang, no! Wait! I’m sorry. I love—”

I pressed “End.”

It was the end.

Twitter: Xanax, Ambien, and a red room of what? What happens in New Mexico, stays in New Mexico. #LetMeSeeYourStrapOn #FightClub #WrongTurn

“A Xanax
and
an Ambien!” I announced into the cell phone. “And she’s been out cold for the last seven hours.”

“Is she still breathing?” Jake asked in a worried tone.

“Yes! Listen!” I pulled the phone away from my face and jammed it in front of Angelisa’s. A loud explosive snore ripped up through her airways and filled the small interior of the car. After a few more rounds of the high decibel nasal repetition, I placed the phone back against my ear. “Do you hear that racket? Seven hours. Seven,” I whined into the phone. “Plus… she keeps creepily mumbling about toilet plungers.”

“What? Toilet… plungers?”

“Don’t even ask. You don’t want to know,” I sighed.

“But why did she take a Xanax and Ambien so early in the morning? Doesn’t that make you sleep?” he asked.

“Ya think? I don’t even know the whole story. Only that she and Matt got into a fight and she keeps mumbling about being done,” I explained.

“So where are you?” The GPS was taking me through a small dusty town that held a landscape of cracked dry dirt and crumbling rock. A few lone tumbleweeds rolled and danced in slow spiraling loops. I pressed the window open and breathed in the dry hot air. It smelled of baked earth, worn leather, and sage.

“I have no clue, somewhere in Utah. We found out about this open mic lounge that’s on the way to Vegas, and we wanted to try it out and stay there for a few nights.”

“Open mic? Like singing?”

“Ah. No. I can’t sing at all. No, this place is called Tantalizing Tongues Lounge and you get to present erotic poetry. Our next thing to conquer. Just putting our words out there in front of an audience and improvising. Can you imagine? This is going to be so much—”

“Eight-hundred feet ahead, you have reached your destination,” the sexy voice of Jake’s GPS cut in.

Huh?

There was no way. It was impossible. We weren’t supposed to get there for another few hours. I couldn’t have driven that fast. “Hey, Jake? I gotta go, your electronic skank is telling me we’re here.”

“Call me later.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” I laughed, while straining my neck to look out the window.
Where the Hell were we? It looked like a ghost town
.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t get into too much trouble,” he said.

“Trouble? Me? Ha!” I teased, pulling the Jag over into a spot in front of a row of stores.

We said our goodbyes as I sat and gawked out the window at the storefronts: three pawn shops, a few thrift shops, a second-hand bookstore, a handful of bars and a rundown motel nestled on the corner. The entire town was colored some sort of brown hue. Mud and dirt baked everything into a colorless beige, beaten down and muted by the dry air and heat.

I pushed open the door of the Jag and stood on numbed tingling feet. Squinting my eyes, I gazed up at a weathered sign that creaked and squealed as it swayed with the wind. The faded gold letters read: “Tantalizing Tongues Lounge.”

Well, that was the place I typed into Jake’s Super Sonic Global Position System. I shrugged my shoulders and did my best to wake Ang up. My best seemed to be pouring a bottle of water over her head, so that was the highlight of my day so far.

It took her ten minutes to come to full awareness.

A dry lifeless wind seeped through my clothes making me feel tired and heavy. It felt as if I stepped into a vat of thick dense soup. And everything was tainted with the scent of beef jerky.

Ang and I dragged our feet to the small motel on the corner and dropped our bags in the lobby as soon as the icy air-conditioned interior hit us. After a few minutes of moaning our appreciation for all things air-conditioned, we lugged ourselves to the desk and asked for their cleanest room. That request was met with a smirk.

I slid my ID and Scott’s credit card across the countertop while Angelisa threw herself heavily onto a chair in the waiting area. “Si, Mamas. You from far a… way. You drive all the way here?”

“Yep,” I said narrowing my eyes at the clerk. “You sure these rooms are clean?”