Mommy Tracked (18 page)

“You said it’s a crime, and if the police see me, they’ll put me in jail,” Molly said in a small voice.

“That’s right,” Grace said approvingly.

“Nice,” Louis said, giving his wife a sidewise grin. “Did you get that one out of the parenting manual?”

“I tried telling her that they’d put me in jail, but she didn’t take that threat very seriously. In fact, I think she liked the idea. You know how Molly’s always fantasizing about being an orphan, like Sara in
A Little Princess
,” Grace explained.

Alice and Victor Fowler walked out the front door, smiling and waving. The sight of their grandparents caused the girls to start shrieking again. Grace smiled wanly at her father and stepmother and raised one hand in greeting.

“Hi, Louis,” Alice cried out, throwing her arms around her son-in-law as soon as he was out of the car. Grace couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Alice would probably prefer it if Louis and the girls came to visit without her.

“Remember me?” she said, climbing out.

“Gracie,” her dad said, folding her into his arms.

Victor Fowler was a tall, thin man, with a full head of hair, now gray, and a trimmed mustache. He was meticulously neat, with knife pleats ironed into his shorts. Grace inhaled deeply, smelling his bay-rum aftershave, a scent that had always made her feel safe and protected.

“Hi, Daddy,” Grace said. “Hi, Alice.”

Alice kissed Grace’s cheek and then stood back to look at her stepdaughter. “You’ve lost a little weight, Grace,” Alice said approvingly. “Your stomach is finally going down.”

“Um, yeah, a little,” Grace said, stiffening at the observation. But before she could say something healthy, like,
I’d rather we didn’t discuss my weight
, Louis was letting the inmates out of the van. Chaos ensued as grandparents and children were united, and the moment passed.

I’m not going to let her get away with another crack like that
, Grace promised herself, as she turned to pluck Natalie out of her infant car seat. At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a tickle of pleasure that her stepmother had noticed her weight loss. Grace rested a hand on her stomach, which was indeed finally starting to go down—thanks to the Miracle Diet Tea—and felt a wave of pride.

“How does she do it?” Grace whispered to Louis later that night, when they were lying in the double bed in the cramped guest room. The room doubled as a home gym, and Grace was constantly stubbing her toe on Alice’s treadmill. “How does she always manage to make me feel like I’m this big?”

Grace held her thumb and index finger an inch apart.

“Mmm,” Louis said, nuzzling her shoulder. “Want to feel how big I am?”

“Oh, please.” Grace batted him away. “We are so
not
going to have sex here.”

“We used to have sex in your parents’ house all the time when we first started dating,” Louis reminded her.

“Not my parents. My father and my stepmother. And, besides, look where it got us,” Grace said, with a nod toward the travel crib where Natalie had finally—mercifully—fallen asleep, after exhausting herself with an hour-long screaming fit. Hannah and Molly were sleeping in the den on the uncomfortable pullout couch, which they seemed to think was a treat.

“Yeah, but now I’m shooting blanks,” Louis reminded her.

“Thank
God
,” Grace said fervently. “But still. No. I’m too annoyed at Alice to have sex right now.”

Louis sighed and rolled back over. “And that pretty much takes care of that,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m good, but it would take a stronger man than me to stay in the mood while you’re talking about Alice,” Louis said.

Grace snorted with laughter.

“Shhh,” Louis warned her. “You’ll wake the baby.”

“I just don’t know why Alice has to be so awful to me. And if I have to hear one more story about how successful and wonderful Mark is, I’m going to hurl. Right there at the dinner table.”

“That would be subtle,” Louis said.

Louis grew up in a bizarrely normal family, where everyone actually liked one another and wanted to get together; they didn’t just show up at holiday dinners because they’d been guilt-tripped into attending. He was the second of three sons, all still close even now that they were grown and married, and his parents—Sissy, a middle-school French teacher, and Malcolm, a retired dentist—were still happily married. So while he’d known Grace’s family long enough to be familiar with its myriad problems, he’d never really experienced such dysfunction firsthand.

It was, Grace suspected, the reason Louis was so irritatingly vice-free. He didn’t drink too much, or do drugs, or gamble, and he wasn’t addicted to Internet porn. All good qualities in a spouse—but sometimes it just made her feel even more imperfect.

“Don’t you think it’s weird how close Alice and Mark are?” Grace asked. “Did you know he discusses his sex life with her?”

“He does? You never told me that.”

Grace turned on her side to face him, bunching the pillow up for support. She curled her legs under the cool weight of the cotton sheets.

“Yeah. She said he was worried he had prostate cancer, because he couldn’t—you know, get it up,” Grace said. She wrinkled her nose.

“Mmm, yes, I do know,” Louis said. His eyes glittered, the way they always did when he was feeling horny. He reached over and put an exploratory hand on Grace’s bum.

“Louis,” Grace said, exasperated, removing his hand. “Absolutely not.”

Louis sighed. “So does he have cancer?”

“Of course not. He’s fine, he’s just a hypochondriac. But Alice was all up in the air about it. Seriously, what man talks about his erections with his mother? It’s freakishly weird.”

“I’d actually prefer not to talk about Mark’s erections,” Louis said. “I thought Alice was on her best behavior tonight.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Well, of course
you
would think that. ‘Louis, would you like another slice of cake? I baked it just for you. I know carrot cake is your favorite,’” she said, mimicking her stepmother’s voice perfectly. “‘Gracie, you probably don’t want to eat that. The frosting has two sticks of butter in it.’ Which was just gratuitously controlling, since I’d already told her I didn’t want a piece of her stupid cake.”

“Maybe she just likes me better,” Louis conceded. He grinned wickedly. “But can you blame her?”

Grace picked up her pillow and whacked Louis in the side of the head with it.

“Ouch!” he said.

“Shhh! Don’t wake the baby!” Grace said, and then she bopped him in the head with the pillow again.

The next morning, Louis and Victor had plans to take Hannah and Molly to Disney World. Grace didn’t want to drag Natalie around the amusement park, so she elected to stay home. Alice also abstained from the trip.

“As far as I know, hell hasn’t yet frozen over,” Alice said. “And that’s what it would take for me to go to Disney World.”

“It’s supposed to be the happiest place on earth,” Grace said, as she blew on her Miracle Diet Tea to cool it. It tasted disgusting, like a mixture of brewed grass and dirt, but the results were worth it.

“Please,” Alice said, waving a dismissive hand. “Bloomingdale’s is a far happier place. Besides, I need your help. I’ve decided to redo the living room, and I wanted to get your opinion on the fabric samples I picked up.”

“Really? That sounds like fun,” Grace said, pleased. Alice had never asked her for decorating help. “Let me just help Louis pack up the girls, and then I’ll take a look.”

It took nearly an hour to get Hannah, Molly, Louis, and Victor fed, dressed, and equipped for a day at Disney World. The girls were already so excited, neither one of them could sit still before rushing off to make sure that all of the essentials—autograph books, mouse ears, Fairytopia Barbies—had made it into the knapsack, along with granola bars, juice boxes, bottles of water, hats, and an extralarge tube of sunscreen.

“I’m already exhausted, and we haven’t even left yet,” Louis said wearily, as he tried to contain a squirming Hannah long enough to tie her sneakers.

“Welcome to my life,” Grace said. She knelt down to help Louis with Hannah’s shoes, and as she did, she whispered excitedly, “Did you hear her? Alice actually wants my advice on decorating! I can’t believe it. She’s never asked me for help before. I wish I’d have known; I would have brought that notebook I keep all of my clippings in.”

“Just be careful,” Louis said evenly.

“What do you mean?”

“Just don’t get too excited, okay? You know Alice. She always has a way of yanking the carpet out from under you.”

“I know. It’s not a big deal,” Grace said unconvincingly. “I just thought it sounded like fun.”

As screwed up as their relationship was, Alice was the only mother figure Grace had known. Grace’s real mother, Jocelyn, died in a car accident when Grace was three. Her father had married Alice five years later, and at the time Grace was happy about it, thinking she’d lucked into a new family. Besides, she and her new stepbrother, Mark—a surly, acne-pocked fourteen-year-old—were the wedding attendants, and Grace had worn a heavenly cream puff of a white satin dress with a crinoline petticoat and matching white Mary Janes. She’d walked down the aisle just before Alice, strewing rose petals along the white satin carpet while the congregation oohed and ahhed over her.

But then Alice and Mark moved in. Up until then, Grace’s entire concept of blended families was based on reruns of
The Brady Bunch
. She quickly learned that, at least in her family, life did not imitate art. On
The Brady Bunch
, Mrs. Brady didn’t openly prefer Marcia to Greg. Mrs. Brady didn’t ask Peter to help her bake cookies for the PTA bake sale and then chide him for eating one, insisting that no one would ever like him if he was fat. Mrs. Brady didn’t promise to take Bobby shopping for a prom tuxedo, then claim to have a migraine and drop him off at the mall with a credit card and strict instructions not to spend more than seventy-five dollars. And when Jan hit puberty, Greg never teased her about how large her breasts were getting or “accidentally” walked into the bathroom while she was taking a shower, nor had he ever stolen panties out of Cindy’s dresser drawer and masturbated into them. At least, not that they showed on the air. And Mr. Brady didn’t spend all of his time at the hospital where he was an orthopedic surgeon, ignoring the dysfunction raging out of control at home.

Grace’s memories of her real mother were all shadows. The lemony-floral scent of Jean Naté, auburn hair gleaming in the sun, a deep, rich belly laugh. Just wisps of smoke, flashes of light that made Grace’s eyes flood with tears, while a wave of longing crested inside her. Longing that would turn to sadness, even anger, when she realized that she didn’t even know if these were actual memories of her mom or if she was only remembering the mother she’d later daydreamed about having, until the fiction had blurred with reality.

But despite Louis’s warning, despite her lengthy experience with her stepmother, despite the two years she’d spent in therapy after her high-school guidance counselor caught her throwing up her lunch in the girls’ bathroom, Grace’s enthusiasm for the decorating project wasn’t dampened. On the contrary, as soon as the minivan had pulled out of the driveway, she plunked Natalie into the BabyBjörn carrier, strapped her to her chest, and turned her full attention to her stepmother’s living room.

First and foremost, the room needs color
, Grace thought.

The Travertine tile floors were taupe, and the walls were the same industrial white paint that the builders had slapped on. The furniture wasn’t much more daring: shades of cream and ivory, from the striped fabric on the Queen Anne couch to the ecru wing chairs. The carpet alone infused some color into the room, but it was so muted—sage greens and soft roses and gentle golds—that it didn’t provide much zip.

The room was elegant and appropriate and completely lacking in personality, which, Grace thought, practically rubbing her hands together with relish, made it the perfect setting for a makeover. The only question now was, where to start? Some designers began with the carpet, others with a wallpaper or fabric scrap. But Grace liked to think of the room in a more integrated way, to understand how all the elements would work together before committing to any one piece. She needed a cohesive vision.

“Oh, here you are. I wanted to show you the fabric samples I picked up,” Alice said, breezing into the room. Her stepmother looked flawless, as usual—her short dark hair was neatly brushed, her white sweater was spotless, her navy linen slacks ironed perfectly to a knife-edged pleat. And she was so thin that her sharp clavicle bones stood out prominently. Grace felt her stepmother’s eyes flick over her, the judgment unspoken but clear.

Grace glanced down at herself. She was wearing baggy gray sweatpants and, under Natalie and the BabyBjörn, a milk-smeared gray Florida Seminoles T-shirt. She lifted a self-conscious hand to her hair. There was a glob of jelly in it, probably deposited there by one of the girls when she was wiping them down after breakfast.