Loose Diamonds (6 page)

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Authors: Amy Ephron

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #Non-Fiction, #Biography, #Humour, #Writing

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Seven

Musical
Chairs

I
had
arrived early for once. I was first in line in the carpool lane outside the
Country Day School waiting for the sound of the bell and my son, who was six at
the time, to be dismissed. I was looking forward to the sight of him, walking
down the pathway with his friends, his shoulders weighed down by his backpack
that somehow seemed larger than he was. If I was lucky, I would see him before
he saw me—I always liked those candid moments when he didn’t know I was
observing him.

I had a plan. I would take him for a glazed
doughnut. He liked the glazed doughnuts at the bakery around the corner. It was
a good thing to have a plan. I would talk to him about his day. When suddenly, I
felt a jolt as someone slammed into the back of my old white Mercedes. I looked
in the rearview mirror and watched as Kendra Rosenberg backed up her used green
Range Rover, put it in drive, and (like an avatar in a suburban version of
Mortal Kombat) slammed into my Mercedes again.

I knew. A bell went off in my head, sort of
simultaneously with the school bell ringing in the distance. I picked up the
cell phone and dialed Sasha, whom I had been separated from for four months.

“What’s going on with you and Kendra
Rosenberg?”

His one-word response spoke volumes. “Oy.”

And then he added, as if this was somehow my fault,
“You didn’t yell at her, did you?”

“Yell at her? I’m fucking scared of her. I’m not
getting out of the car.”

The passenger door opened and my son scrambled into
the front seat.

I hung up the cell phone without saying
good-bye.

“Mom,” he said, “do you know that Kendra Rosenberg
just slammed her car into yours?”

“I know, honey. She’s having a bad day.” And I put
the car in drive, pulled out of the carpool lane, and drove away as quickly as I
could.

It wasn’t until later that night when I told my
friend Shelley the story that I realized it was funny. “Shelley, Kendra
Rosenberg slammed her car into mine in the carpool lane.”

“On purpose?”

“Yeah, on purpose. She’s having a thing with
Sasha—she
was
having a thing with Sasha—and he told
her he didn’t want to see her anymore. And she somehow blames me for setting him
loose on the world.”

“Is your car hurt?”

“No, not really. Just the bumper. Shelley, stop
laughing. It isn’t funny.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Can’t you take Colin out of the Chandler School
and enroll him at Country Day. I know it’s by your house and everything but I
really could use a friend over here.”

“No. Do you want to take Ethan out of Country Day?
I can call Chandler tomorrow.”

“No, it’s too far to drive every day. Besides, it
wouldn’t do any good to switch to a new school because Sasha would just be
coming with us.”

Sasha, my first husband (I already thought of him
as my first husband even though I didn’t have a second one), didn’t really
understand the boundaries of a separation. It had taken me a long time to
convince him that if he was going to pick up Ethan in the morning and drive him
to school, he could park at the curb outside the house and wait, the coffee and
muffins weren’t for his breakfast, the mail wasn’t his business anymore, the
refrigerator door was closed.

It was simple, really. If I was in my pajamas, he
wasn’t allowed in the house. If the telephone rang, he wasn’t supposed to answer
it; if people were over, they weren’t there to socialize with him or hear about
his latest business venture. Except it wasn’t simple at all, because some of it
was inclination and the rest of it was habit and like all habits, difficult to
break. (I’ve always thought so much of addiction is impulse control, but that’s
another subject.) Since we’d separated, I felt as if I always had to be on
alert, have a hand out to protect the papers on my desk, the roast chicken on
the counter that was meant for dinner, the telephone (and for God’s sakes, I
lived alone, I should be able to
not
answer the
phone if I wanted, let it go to machine), except that somehow Sasha was always
in the house and I was always sprinting for the phone. Maybe I wasn’t that good
at setting boundaries either. But, weirdly, Sasha and I were still friends,
which is why instead of concealing from me as he ought to have that he and
Kendra Rosenberg had been seeing each other, he’d simply said, “Oy.”

I’d seen a therapist, years ago with my “serious
boyfriend” Jonathon when our relationship was in a shambles. The therapist was a
middle-aged woman with red hair and glasses who sat in a leather chair and
didn’t seem to notice (or mind) that her skirt hiked up when she was sitting
down, revealing the tops of her stockings and a slight bulge where the nylon hit
her upper thigh. She was a little bit intense, peering at us all the time from
behind her glasses as if we were specimens under a microscope. At a certain
point, she pulled out a piece of paper and drew two circles on it. “Imagine your
life is a pie and his life is a pie,” she said, looking at us both intently.
“And each of your pies has a small slice that’s damaged. Those two slices have
connected. And that’s all that’s connected. And the two of you don’t have a
chance.” A few weeks later, I’d met Sasha. But the pie analogy still resonated.
If Sasha and Kendra Rosenberg had consulted me before they’d become involved, I
would have told them about the pies.

Kendra Rosenberg was 5’1”, wore four-inch wedge
high heels, and let her hair run wild and curly around her face, which had the
effect of making her look like Minnie Mouse. She had two daughters, Deirdre and
Diana, who were a year apart. They were overdeveloped for their age and towered
above most of the other kids in the second and third grades. They weren’t twins
but (except for the fact that Diana was always happy and Deirdre was always
sullen), it was almost impossible to tell them apart.

Kendra Rosenberg was going through a difficult
divorce. Having said that, it was difficult to feel sorry for her, expecially
since she’d just rammed her car into mine. Twice. And then I discovered that it
was going to cost eight hundred dollars to replace the bumper on the Mercedes. I
was too frightened to confront Kendra, who was spreading the rumor that, “In her
haste to get out of the carpool lane, you know how weird she is, sometimes she
even forgets to pick him up . . .,” I had backed up and slammed
into Kendra’s Range Rover and driven away without even apologizing! The prospect
of bringing my son in as a witness wasn’t appealing and I was just going to have
to let the whole thing slide. I thought about asking Sasha to pay for it, but
since he was already behind on his child support payments, which were only four
months old, I didn’t think I had a prayer.

Things were quiet for a while until Sasha showed up
with the redhead at soccer practice. I sat two rows behind him and watched as
his hand occasionally made its way to her back in a gesture that was a little
more than friendly. I considered storming down there but then I would be
throwing a fit at soccer practice and I could hear the rumors already—“You know
how weird she is, you won’t believe what she did now! She threw a fit at soccer
practice!”

“Who’s the redhead?” I whispered to Tory Feldman,
who was sitting next to me on the bench.

“You know who she is.”

“No, I don’t, or I wouldn’t be asking.”

“That’s Stephanie Delaney, Cassie’s mom. You know
Cassie. She went to Zuma Beach Camp with Ethan last summer. Short blond hair,
bangs.”

“Oh, right. She’s sort of quiet. And where’s her
husband?”

“I don’t know. As long as I’ve known Stephanie,
there’s never been a Mr. Delaney. I think they split up when Cassie was a baby.
Stephanie’s a little overprotective. Cassie’s an only child, so Stephanie’s very
hands-on and she goes to
every
soccer practice.”

I couldn’t tell if this was a backhanded dig since
this was the first soccer practice I’d attended. But, as I thought about it, I
might not be going to a lot more of them as this was a little more “up close and
personal” than I thought it needed to be. I was the one who had asked for the
separation but still . . .

A few weeks later, I got a call from Sam Maddox. I
liked Sam Maddox. Sam was 5’10” and took hikes in the early morning in mountain
boots in remote canyons and told stories about waterfalls she’d discovered and
close encounters with mountain lions. She had a son, who was also named Sam, who
was in Ethan’s class, as well. I always thought it was sort of liberated (kind
of reverse name-ism) that Sam had named her son after herself. Sam was a
photographer who worked some of the time. She did fashion shoots and
occasionally traveled to exotic places for
National
Geographic
. And I realized I had more in common with Sam than with
some of the other mothers in Ethan’s class because of that common working thing,
which sort of kept the children in perspective.

“Hi,” said Sam. “I have to tell you something
because I don’t want it to affect our friendship.”

This is the kind of sentence that can make a person
nervous. I waited for her to go on.

“I’m”—she hesitated—“sort of going out with Sasha.”
These last four words were said very quickly.

I didn’t say anything.

“I hope that’s okay. We went for a hike,” she said,
“and, well . . . well, you probably don’t want to hear the
details. I mean, I figured you wouldn’t mind, right?”

I waited a minute, holding the phone to my ear, to
see if some version of jealousy would kick in. No, not jealousy. I could feel a
little anger bubbling under the surface. But not jealousy. “No, I guess that’s
okay. I don’t think I want to have dinner with you guys,
but . . .” I took a deep breath. “I guess it’s okay.”

A few weeks later, Sam called again. “I’ve fallen
in love . . .

“No, not really, you don’t
mean . . .”

“He’s Norwegian.”

“Norwegian?”

“He’s great. I mean he’s really great. He owns a
record company. I mean, I think it’s really serious. He sort of swept me off my
feet. I feel a little giddy. It was totally unexpected.”

“I thought you were going out with Sasha.”

“Oh, that. That was just a little fling. But Adrien
is divine. I would love for you to meet him.”

“I—I would love to meet him, Sam. I’m really happy
for you.”

That Friday night, Sasha showed up with a shiner
under his right eye.

“What happened to you?”

He didn’t answer.

I could practically see the indentations where
someone’s knuckle had connected with his right cheekbone. “Don’t tell me you ran
into a door.”

“Bobby Marks.”

“Bobby Marks?” Bobby Marks owned a gallery in West
Hollywood. “I didn’t know you were going back into the art business. I thought
you hated it.” But as I said it I realized . . . “Kelly Marks?!
They’re not even separated.”

“We denied it. The kids were playing. We were
watching TV in the living room and I had my shoes off.”

“And?”

“And he found my socks in the bedroom.”

“And he decked you in front of the kids?”

“No. He showed up at my office the next morning.
And I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to hit him back.”

I went to the refrigerator to get the icepack that
I always kept on tap in case Ethan or one of his friends had a fall. I wrapped
it in a dishcloth and handed it to Sasha.

He put the icepack on his eye and said sort of
sheepishly, “It was her idea, I swear it.”

That didn’t surprise me. Kelly Marks walked around
like she didn’t have anything else on her mind, low-cut ruffly blouses, big
hair, a lot of mascara, and high heels even when she was wearing shorts, which
was most of the time even when it wasn’t weather appropriate. But it wasn’t for
me to judge. It had nothing to do with me. I tried to say it like a mantra to
myself.
This has nothing to do with you. Another mother at
school will dislike you. So what? They never liked you that much
anyway.
I wondered if Bobby Marks would try to bond with me over the
experience but I wouldn’t give him that opportunity.

A few weeks later, Sasha had a movie green-lit,
which was good on two counts: he would pay his child support (temporarily
anyway) and it required him to spend two months in London. Ethan and the girls
were going to miss him, but I found the prospect sort of blissful. Two months
when he wouldn’t be in the kitchen or on the playground, so to speak.

There were two events at the Country Day School
that involved parents—Open House, which the children also attended and which
involved an art fair, a science fair, and pizza, and was an absolutely mandatory
parental appearance, and Parents’ Night, which only the parents were invited to
and was a group meeting in their child’s classroom. I thought about not going,
but Sasha was still in London, and Ethan had asked me four times that afternoon
if I
was
going.

I liked the Country Day School. It was provincial,
old-fashioned, private. It had a white picket fence and a lawn in front with a
white walkway and a big playground. It backed onto a public park that had a
soccer field and a basketball court (we hadn’t learned yet about the asbestos in
the soil, but that was a different story). It was a small school. There were
only 23 kids in Ethan’s class and—I did a mental count as I walked up the
walkway—17 of the 23 sets of parents in Ethan’s class were separated. It was
almost like a cancer cluster (or there was something in the water). My heart was
beating. I felt the way I imagined it felt when you’d been fired from a job and
had to go to work for two more weeks. Nobody really wanted you there. That
wasn’t true. Mrs. Rothbart liked me. Mrs. Rothbart was Ethan’s second-grade
teacher. Mrs. Rothbart had pulled me aside one day and told me that she’d really
liked my last book and had given it to her sister for Christmas. I didn’t think
she’d make that up—not the part about her sister anyway. And it was Parents’
Night. And I was Ethan’s mother. And I had a perfect right to be there.

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