Friday Mornings at Nine (33 page)

“What are you going to do?” Bridget asked.

Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t know that either. But I do know I owe it to Michael and the girls to do something.” Then, having had the conversational focus on her and her foibles for far longer than was comfortable, Jennifer wanted to turn the tide of attention elsewhere. She suspected she knew just how to do it.

“How are things going for
you?
” she asked Tamara, very tempted to press their friend on the oversleeping issue, but suddenly not sure if she should push it. Perhaps Tamara would be more inclined to share deeply since she’d had an hour’s proof that both her friends weren’t living in idyllic marriages. But what if she wasn’t? She shot Tamara a distressed look.

Bridget stabbed at her coffee cake and glanced between the other two women—unable to hide her concern for Jennifer over her marital uncertainties or her confusion about Tamara over her unusual degree of serenity. What was going on here?

Tamara gulped a few sips of her latte and almost laughed. How often had she been accused of being overly dramatic? Of trying to upstage everyone in a discussion? Yeah. A helluva lot. So, here she was, resisting all urges to blurt out any histrionics, downplaying something
huge,
and what happened? She was getting pleading looks from Jennifer and what-the-fuck looks from Bridget. Both of them saying in nonverbal SOS, “Say something!”

Okay, fine. She’d say it. She could phrase almost anything for shock value, if she tried. But with this news, she didn’t have to try.

“So, Jon and I had a long talk a couple of nights ago. We’re getting divorced.”

“What?” Jennifer exclaimed, in about the loudest tone Tamara had ever heard her use, momentarily drowning out even the Bee Gees crooning “How Deep Is Your Love.”

At the same time, Bridget dropped her forkful of coffee cake and the fork along with it. “Oh, my God, Tamara! What happened?”

Ah, well that was kind of a long story, wasn’t it?

It happened this way,
Tamara explained:

After several days in a row with Aaron (about which she admitted to her friends that, yes, they’d slept together but, no, she wasn’t yet prepared to divulge those intimate details), Tamara knew she would have to officially end things with Jon. And soon.

Some people, she reasoned, might be able to go on living with their spouse after a deliberate act of infidelity, but Tamara wasn’t one of them. She, in fact, could only justify her unfaithfulness because she had determined that her marriage was over. She remained unwavering on this point.

Jon returned on Tuesday. He had been gone only six days, five nights but, as she had discovered, a lot could happen in that time. Tamara gave him until Wednesday to get settled back into his usual routine, then she suggested carryout for dinner from his favorite restaurant.

“The crispy duck is especially moist tonight,” he’d informed her, dipping a forkful into the plum sauce. He had a way of spreading out his stuff all over their dining room table, edging farther and farther into her space until she had to physically move to Benji’s old spot in order to have any elbow room. Normally, she found this annoying. That night, she was filled with a tremendous ache for him. For the pain she knew she would be inflicting. No matter how stale their relationship had become, they had weathered years of storms together and, in many ways, she was really grateful to Jon and proud of them both. This point of pure appreciation was, she felt, where she needed to begin.

“Seeing Benji start college, it reminded me of how young we were when we met,” she said to Jon, her voice wavering a bit. “How we’d barely turned into adults before he entered our lives. For you and me, it was an almost instant family, especially since we’d been such loners before.”

Jon speared a cucumber wedge and a couple of shredded carrots from his Asian salad. “Yep.”

“It was hard for both of us, but we did it. We stuck together. We raised him, and he’s turned into a beautiful boy…a young man.” The tears rushed to her eyes, but she blinked them away and beamed her brightest smile at her husband.

Jon, who was now munching on the end of an eggroll and staring at her a bit strangely, murmured, “Yeah, he’s great.”

“So, I’m really proud of us. And I’m so thankful for all you did, too.”

Goddammit. It was so hard to lead into the end like this. So hard to see the dream of their life together fade. But, if she were being entirely truthful with herself, she’d had too many doubts, down too deep, to have ever believed their marriage was
right
. Maybe that was why she had fought so valiantly for so long to deny the possibility of divorce. She, like Jennifer, hadn’t wanted to believe she could make a stupid mistake like that. And, while it was debatable whether she had stayed with Jon too long while Benji was still at home, now—without their son there—she
knew
it was too long. The child who had bound them together had left home, taking their family bond with him.

She snatched a breath and tried to get to the heart of it. “Jon, I think we’ve reached…an ending point.” She couldn’t help it. She started crying and, though she brushed the wetness away, the tears kept coming. “I’m so sorry. I know you don’t like emotional displays.”

He put down his eggroll and silently handed her a Beijing Bistro napkin. The look on his face was initially one of surprise, but he quickly veiled it with the lawyerlike poker face of neutrality. He cleared his throat. “What are you saying, Tamara?”

She wiped her eyes again. “I’m saying, the time has come for us to finally separate. Benji held us together for nineteen years. Without him, we never would’ve lasted that long. You know that.”

He nodded, his expression more deflated by the news than she had expected, but it wasn’t as though he moved to contradict her. She saw him swallow a few times and glance around them—at the dining room, the kitchen, the visible wall of the living room—as if he were saying goodbye to the house already. “So, are you asking me to move out? Planning to go somewhere else yourself?” He sighed. “What are the details you’ve worked through from your side so far?”

Tears were now streaming down her face. There weren’t enough Beijing Bistro napkins for them all. But Jon had switched to logical, problem-solving mode, and she was required to switch with him. “I haven’t made any formal plans yet, Jon. I wanted to discuss everything with you.”

His jaw tensed at this, his natural instinct to negotiate obviously rising to the surface, but a rare look of approval flashed behind his eyes in paradoxical negation of any hard-line tactics. She knew then he wasn’t going to pull out all the legalistic guns. That they would be able to do this without excessive antagonism or the need for high court fees. That somewhere, despite the initial shock, he had seen this coming for as many years as she had. And, just as she, felt both the sting and the balm of relief.

“Well, the first thing we’ll need to do is sell the house.” He scanned the rooms around them once again, in appraisal more than wistfulness this time. “The market’s poor, but I’ll look into it.”

“The first thing we’ll need to do,” she corrected, “is tell Benji.”

He nodded. “Of course. He’ll be home next week.”

“Jon—” She’d been thinking about this, unsure how to ask it. “He’s arriving a couple of days before you return from your next trip. W-What would you like me to do? Shall I tell him when he gets here? He might ask something…about us. Or, would you rather I waited until you got back?” How cold these words were. How dispassionate. As if they were telling their son they were merely redecorating his bedroom rather than disbanding the family unit.

Jon almost smiled. Sadly. “If you can avoid painting me as a villain, tell him when he gets home. I doubt it matters, really.” He shrugged and pushed away the plate of duck. “You’re sure this is what you want?” he asked her, and finally she detected a hint of the pain that lay beneath his protective mask. Finally, he allowed some of it to show through. The real man, not the shadow. But it was just a sliver and it came far too late.

She inhaled. Exhaled. “No, Jon. Not at all. But it’s what I need.”

And, really, that was it, she explained to her friends. She and Jon put away the leftover Chinese. They made a pot of coffee. And they each worked independently for the next several hours on organizing some of their personal things—Tamara in the bedroom and Jon in his office.

“What do you mean,
that was it?
” Bridget asked, incredulous. “You didn’t talk more? Yell at each other? Cry together or anything?”

“Nope. But sometime around eleven, we watched a late-night
Seinfeld
rerun together. He’d turned on the TV in the living room and, so, I wandered in there and stayed with him. Just for the length of the episode. It was the Soup Nazi one,” Tamara said, as if that explained her reason for not leaving the room.

Jennifer studied their friend. “No mention of Aaron?”

Tamara shook her head. “Nah. I like Aaron and everything. He’s a good guy, all things considered. But this wasn’t about him.” She lifted her shoulders and palms, then dropped them. “Besides, what he and I have going isn’t gonna last. It’s just about the sex.”

“What?” Bridget exclaimed. “Really and truly? How could that be?” She knew Tamara couldn’t possibly believe that! “Aren’t you even kind of in love with him?”

Tamara unleashed her most dazzling, win-over-strangers grin. “You’re kidding, right? I’m finally on the verge of being
free
after almost twenty years of marriage. The ‘other man’ is a dozen years younger than I am and a freakin’ train wreck in his past relationships. Who needs
that?
”

“Who, indeed,” Jennifer murmured.

But Tamara refused to take the bait in any form—subtle or overt. Aaron wasn’t someone a woman could easily describe, and revealing her feelings for him—let alone the details of her nights/days with him and the odd, unsettling vibrations he created within her when they talked—this was
not
gonna happen. First, she wasn’t a complete bloody idiot. She knew she was in a vulnerable state. She knew she had been skirting the periphery of self-delusion for months or years. And she damn well knew she needed to separate her attraction to Aaron from her desire to be liberated from her marriage to Jon.

Two different Princes. Two different problems.

Second, she couldn’t quite bring herself to turn her time with Aaron—chimerical or not—into some cheap, gossipy exercise of Kiss ’n’ Tell.

No. Just…no.

Thankfully, her friends let her have her way but, when they finished their lattes and their coffee cake, Bridget squeezed Tamara extra hard.

“Please call me if you need to talk,” Bridget said. “Even with the crazy holiday stuff coming up. You know I’m here for you, right?”

“Right.”

“Me, too,” Jennifer added, giving them both one of her unusual side-to-side hugs. “Even if we’re not meeting for a few weeks, we can always get together for an emergency coffee date.”

Tamara smiled at her friends, genuinely this time. At last not trying to convince anyone (not even herself) of anything.

They’d all agreed, with the several weeks of holidays coming up, to give the Indigo Moon Café gatherings a rest between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. They did that every year, usually out of necessity. But Tamara appreciated their caring gesture and their willingness to make an exception for her this year, if she called for it. Time with true friends was an unparalleled gift. In the holiday season. In
any
season.

“Thanks, you two,” Tamara said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

And, so, with a sense of unity they hadn’t fully felt in a while, the trio went their separate ways for a few weeks—to pick up the threads of their individual tales:

To strengthen them.

To unravel them.

Or, to weave them into new stories fit for telling….

Thanksgiving through early December

O
nce upon a time, a dental office receptionist named Bridget found herself growing weary of the lack of creativity in her life, the seeming inability of her husband and children to understand the depth of her passion for cooking and her own disenchantment with her aging, premenopausal body. She could feel the passage of years in every one of her fat cells, even when she tried to block it out.

She desperately did not want to become one of those unfulfilled suburban housewives who woke up one winter’s morning only to find herself retired, without hobbies and certain the best part of the day was over once
Wheel of Fortune
ended after dinner.

No. If she was going to be a frumpy forty-something no matter what she did, something else was gonna have to change. Big time.

As she flipped the omelet in her favorite copper skillet on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, and admired the speckled starburst of red and green bell peppers she had carefully chopped and dropped into the egg mixture, she felt a bit of residual magic flowing through her fingertips. She had loved preparing the big turkey feast for her immediate and extended family members a couple of days before, but she couldn’t save up her joy to share just on holidays. Daily life
had
to have more to offer than this…this waiting…this holding her breath…this reining in of her desires. Didn’t it?

“Breakfast, everyone,” she called. She slid the finished omelet onto a platter—half would be for her younger son Evan, who had “a dietary restriction,” the other half for whoever else wanted a taste—and she placed it on the table in between the stack of freshly made cinnamon-nut pancakes and the big bowl of fruit salad.

Four pairs of feet raced toward the table.

“Smells great, Mom,” her daughter Cassandra said, helping herself to a couple of pancakes and a spoonful of fruit.

Her sons, Keaton and Evan, scooted into their chairs and simply began eating, while her husband, Graham, came into the kitchen and put his arms around her. Lightly kissed her cheek. And then her lips. “Hi, hon. You doing okay?” he asked.

She started to nod (last night, she and her husband locked their bedroom door after the kids had gone to bed, and they entertained themselves with Bridget’s favorite adult board game: Strip Chocolate). She blushed, remembering, and glanced away momentarily. But, in that instant, her eyes caught sight of the spatula she’d been using, resting in the sink now, immersed in the soapy skillet. The fingers on her right hand began to tingle.

So, instead, she shook her head. “Graham, there’s something I’ve been wanting to—to talk about with you. Do you have a few minutes?”

His eyes widened in surprise, a hint of worry racing across his irises but, nonetheless, he whispered, “Sure.”

So, immediately after breakfast, the children having squirreled themselves away in the living room watching cartoons on Nickelodeon, Bridget and Graham stole a half hour alone to talk, side by side on their staircase.

He opened his palm for her, and she placed her hand on top of his. He wrapped his warm, strong fingers around hers, and asked, “What’s going on?”

She squeezed his fingers. “It’s been a tough fall, and we had a lot of little challenges to get through. I think, in the end, we handled them okay.” She looked at Graham for confirmation and waited, hoping for a nod.

“Yeah. Me, too,” he agreed.

“I’m working at the office now and really enjoying it, and I’m so glad you’ve come in a few times to…to meet the staff and see what’s going on there.”

Her husband’s eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. “They’re all pretty nice. Mostly.”

She smiled, knowing he was thinking of Dr. Nina. “Exactly. But, the thing is, as much as I like being there, and as much as they want me to add even more hours, there’s something else I’ve been dreaming of doing for a long, long time.” And she told him about the cooking school programs she’d been researching. How one of them wasn’t too far away—just a thirty-minute drive—but that the intro class met twice per week, at night. “I know tuition is expensive,” she said, “but if I picked up one more shift at work, that would offset the cost a little. And I know it would be kinda busy, but—”

“Of course,” he interrupted. “You don’t have to talk me into this, honey. If it’s something you really want to do, we’ll figure out a way to manage it. I
want
you to follow your dreams. And—” He paused, the emotion and, possibly, the relief that this was all there was to the problem, seemed to require him to take a few additional breaths before continuing. “I know I don’t always tell you how much you mean to me, but you’re the center of our world, Bridget. We all revolve around
you
. And we’re in this marriage and this family together. You’ve supported me. You’ve supported all of us. We’re here to support you back.”

She hugged him. This was quite a speech for her silent, straightforward man. He wasn’t just showing his affection to get her attention away from another guy. He was showing it because he knew she needed to see his heart. And he had a big, wonderful one, full of love for her.

Graham said, “I’d planned to take you to one of those fancy-schmancy French restaurants you’d always wanted to try for our anniversary in a few weeks. But maybe you’d rather get something else with the money. Books for this first class? Some new cooking gadget? Just tell me what you need, okay?”

And this, Bridget realized, was precisely what she had been failing to do. She had poured out her excitement to a person besides her husband to the point of being, if not physically unfaithful, then emotionally so. And that had been wrong. That was where she had crossed the line.

The love and gratitude she felt for Graham at that moment couldn’t be measured. And, as they talked about a few long-range plans, Bridget felt a surge of compassion for both Tamara and Jennifer, especially the former, for all they were going through in their own marriages. In Tamara’s case, she couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult it must’ve been to conceal so much hurt and dissatisfaction. No wonder her friend had been so critical. So edgy.

But, as much sympathy as she felt for her friends and their challenges, she refused to feel guilty for once about her own contentment. Even though she had merely been frustrated with her family life, not wretched, it still had not been an easy road for her and Graham. But they had both stuck with it. They had both worked at it. And maybe that was just good luck or divine intervention—she didn’t know. But she felt as though a prayer had been answered.

She beamed a smile at her husband. “I’m so happy!”

He pulled her close to him. “If you are, then I am, too.”

At Smiley Dental the following Tuesday, Bridget shared the good news with three of her coworkers.

“You’re starting culinary school in January?” Candy said. “That’s awesome!”

Pamela agreed and added, “Hey, we’ll be happy to taste-test your homework assignments. Will the final exams be something like a
Hell’s Kitchen
finale?

They all laughed.

“I have no idea,” Bridget admitted. “But you guys will be the first to know.”

Dr. Luke glanced between them all, a pensive look on his face. “I’m happy for you, Bridget. You’re gonna be top of your class.” His words were sincere, utterly warm, just as always. And she realized how grateful she was to him, too, for being there for her. For being a good friend when she had needed one. For helping her to ferret out her deepest, truest dream. And, in part, for giving her the courage to fight for it.

“Thank you,” she said to all of them, but especially to Dr. Luke.

A moment later, when Dr. Nina strode by, shooting glares at all four of them, Dr. Luke winked at her and said in a loud voice, “I hope this doesn’t mean you’ll need to cut your hours here just because you’re gonna be a famous chef soon. Remember us poor dentists, hygienists and receptionists. Protect us from our malnutrition.”

Candy and Pamela giggled at this and Bridget, who knew Pamela’s pregnancy was public knowledge now, said, “Well, actually, if the offer’s still open, I can add one extra shift when Pamela reduces hers.”

Cheers went up all around. Dr. Jim peeked around the corner and clapped. A couple of patients in the waiting area (who had, at one time, sampled Bridget’s Sugar-Free Mango-Orange Finger Cookies) whistled. And all the others said some variation of “Yay!” Except for Dr. Nina, who stood by the filing cabinets, reactionless.

“This calls for a celebration,” Dr. Luke declared. “How about we order a pizza or something?”

Bridget grinned at him. “Sounds great, but save a little room for dessert. I made you all something special.”

“Oooh, let’s have that first,” Dr. Luke suggested, and the others agreed.

So, Bridget unveiled her latest creation: Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Lava Cake. “This, I’m afraid, is
not
sugar free.”

“Who cares?” Candy said, already reaching for the knife to start slicing pieces.

Dr. Luke’s eyes actually watered after he took the first bite. “This is heavenly. You’ve outdone yourself again, Bridget.” Then, in a lower voice, he murmured, “You bring such good things to our lives. We’re so glad to have you here.”

She recognized the genuineness of his words and, again, realized how grateful she was to him, too. Without his kindness and attentiveness as a stimulus, she might not have gotten back on track with Graham. Silently but fervently, she thanked God for her friend Luke. He’d helped her regain her passion for life. And passion could change a woman. Make the mundane a delight. She was proof of that.

Dr. Luke turned his gaze away from Bridget and toward Dr. Nina. She was filing paperwork and had refused Candy’s offer of a slice of cake. After a few further minutes of office revelry, he picked up the untouched piece and strode over to the female dentist.

“Try it, Nina,” he told her. “Just one bite, okay?”

Dr. Nina pursed her lips, sighed but, nevertheless, speared a forkful of gooey cake. “If it means that much to you,” she mumbled to Dr. Luke, cautiously putting the fork in her mouth.

As Bridget watched from a distance, she could see Dr. Luke had been trying to be a friend to Dr. Nina, too. He was good at that. As for Dr. Nina, well…she had a ways to go before her passions would make her overflowing with happiness, but Bridget wished her well.

Dr. Nina’s reaction to the cake wasn’t rapturous, but the woman didn’t spit it out either. She shrugged, put the fork down and announced, “It’s actually not bad.”

Dr. Luke laughed and went to talk to Dr. Jim about something before both of them left the room to check on patients. Bridget glanced one last time at Dr. Nina, only to see her eyeing the cake curiously and, then, reaching out to nab one more bite before leaving the room herself. Bridget considered this a moment of culinary triumph.

With her heart filled with joy, she laughed with colleagues and patients alike, saving up bits of conversation to share with Graham and the kids later, over dinner. Knowing she had their affection waiting for her at home.

Sometimes love could be as simple as just that. A twist of the wrist. A flip of the spatula. A chance to start over and do it better the next time around—as long as both parties were ever-vigilant.

Unfortunately, sometimes it was not nearly that simple….