Mommy Tracked (4 page)

“I thought I’d start off by introducing you to the group, and then I’ll let you do your thing,” Grace said. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sounds perfect.” Melinda smiled serenely. Unlike Grace, Melinda didn’t seem at all nervous about momentarily standing up in front of all of these women and talking. If anything, she looked loose and utterly relaxed.

Must be all of the orgasms she’s having
, Grace thought, and she made a mental note to buy a vibrator.

Grace turned to face the roomful of women and immediately became aware that all eyes were on her. She looked out at the crowd, swallowed hard, and hoped that she didn’t look as fat as she felt in her black linen tunic and pants. She’d made a mad dash to Stein Mart yesterday and bought the set without trying it on. She hadn’t even particularly liked the outfit, but she was desperate. The only thing in her closet she could get into were maternity pants with the hideous stretch-panel waist. And even though she’d bought the outfit two sizes larger than she’d worn before having Natalie, it still felt a little snug. The pants dug into her waist, and the tunic stretched uncomfortably over her breasts.

She drew in another deep breath, although her lungs felt too small and too tight to contain the air. Grace’s heart started pounding, and for a scarily long moment she wondered if she was having her first full-blown panic attack.

Thinner than me, thinner than me, thinner than me. The entire freaking room is thinner than me
, Grace thought as she stared out at the women. They looked back at her, and Grace’s anxiety continued to swell.
They’re probably all thinking about how fat I look. I can see it in their eyes, that awful, awful pitying expression people get when they feel sorry for you.

Grace gulped in some air and wished desperately she’d brought along the index cards on which she’d written her introductory comments. Louis had talked her out of using them, insisting that she’d sound more natural if she winged it.

Why the hell did I listen to him? Gah. I have to say something. I can’t just stand up here, staring blankly back at them….

“Um…hi, everyone. Thanks for coming to the meeting tonight,” Grace said haltingly. “I know we have a few new members here, so for those of you who don’t know, I’m, um, Grace Weaver, and I’m the president of the Orange Cove chapter of Mothers Coming Together. Please feel free to talk to me after the meeting if you have any, um, questions. And now I have a feeling you’re just dying to find out who the woman standing behind me is.” Grace grinned despite herself, and it had the happy effect of relaxing her. She drew in a deep, cleansing breath and continued. “So I’ll go right ahead and introduce her. Her name is Melinda Gibbons, and she’s a sexpert.”

Murmurs spread through the room, and a few women giggled.

“Melinda gives seminars all over the country on how to be a better lover.” More titters. “And tonight she’s here to tell us all about…” Grace paused to enjoy the buildup of suspense and the cheerful energy her audience was giving off. This was almost fun. “…how to give sensational blow jobs. So without further ado—Melinda Gibbons,” Grace said, waving her hand with a game-show-hostess flourish. Melinda stepped forward, and Grace sat down at the front table between Juliet and Anna. Her heart was still pounding, and she was enormously relieved to be done with her bit, but she thought it had actually gone pretty well. The group applauded politely, and Melinda smiled as she waited for everyone to quiet down.

“Hello, everyone. As Grace said in her kind introduction, my name is Melinda Gibbons, and I’m a sex educator. Many years ago, I started out my career as a sex therapist. Clients began to invite me to speak at various functions, and my seminars grew from there. I’ve spoken to groups as large as a thousand college students down to bachelorette parties of a half-dozen women, and I cover topics on everything from safe sex to lovemaking techniques to libido issues. One of the most popular topics I cover is what we’ll be discussing tonight: how to give an amazing blow job.”

Melinda had a soft Southern accent, stretching out her words with just the hint of a twang. From the faint web of lines by her eyes, Grace guessed Melinda was in her early forties. She was curvy with a tiny waist, like a 1940s movie star, and her auburn hair fell to her shoulders in thick waves. She looked and sounded like the sort of woman who would serve you old-fashioned lemonade on the porch of an antebellum Southern home.

Thinner than me
, Grace thought.
And probably better in bed too.

“The first thing I’m going to do is hand out these.” Melinda picked up a dildo from the table setting off another round of snickering among the mothers. “I have every imaginable color and size, so you can pick whatever you’re most comfortable with, or…” Melinda’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe what you’ve fantasized about.”

Melinda began passing out the dildos. Grace ended up with an enormous Barbie-pink one.

“The spitting image of Louis,” she joked, holding it up to show Anna.

“Way too much information,” Anna whispered.

Once everyone had their dildos and condoms—the laughter and conversation swelling to a fever pitch—Melinda raised her hand, signaling for the group to quiet down.

“I want to begin with a fun technique for putting on a condom,” Melinda said. “I call this the Kiss and Roll method. Watch me do it, and then I’ll give you step-by-step instructions.”

Melinda unwrapped a red latex condom and unrolled it a bit, so that it looked like a little hat. She placed a dab of lubricant from a small silver bottle inside the tip of the prophylactic, and then, pursing her lips in an exaggerated kiss, she popped the condom in her mouth, tip facing in. Her lips encircled the rim. Melinda picked up a dildo and, holding it by the shaft, leaned forward and rolled the condom onto it with her mouth in one graceful move. The women sat watching her, mesmerized.

“Wow,” Grace breathed. “That was amazing.”

“No kidding. It almost makes me wish I were a man,” Juliet replied.

Grace thought she knew how to give a serviceable blow job. But, as she learned over the next hour, it was an area where she was sorely lacking in skill. There were a multitude of techniques she hadn’t even heard of, much less tried. Like the Eight Ball, which involved using your tongue to draw the number 8 on a man’s testicles. Or the Big Dipper, a move where the man hovered over you and lowered his testicles into your mouth.

“That’s also called tea-bagging, because it’s like dunking a tea bag in a cup of hot water,” Juliet said loudly. Juliet was incapable of whispering, and Grace elbowed her to be quiet.

And then there was the technique that Melinda assured the group was the
pièce de résistance
of any woman’s oral repertoire—the Tongue.

“Trust me,” Melinda said, after demonstrating the technique on her condom-encased dildo. “Do it and he’ll weep with gratitude.”

Grace fished a dry-cleaning flyer out of her Kate Spade diaper bag and jotted down some notes. Anna raised her eyebrows at this, but Grace just grinned and shrugged.

“I don’t want to forget anything,” she whispered.

“And now we’ll end with a quiz on what you’ve learned tonight,” Melinda said. She held up a bag of silver Hershey’s Kisses. “Call out the answer, and I’ll throw a Kiss to whomever gets it right. First, what foods make a man’s semen taste sweeter?”

“Strawberries!” Jana Mallin yelled out.

“Melon,” Kari Clem said.

“Pineapple!” Grace called out.

“Very good,” Melinda said, tossing the foil-wrapped chocolates into the audience.

“How many calories are there in an average ejaculation?” Melinda asked.

“Six calories,” Justine Silkey said, with a giggle.

“That’s right,” Melinda said, tossing her a Kiss. “So being on a diet is no excuse for not swallowing.”

Laughter erupted. Over the last hour, almost everyone had lost their initial shock at the material, and the atmosphere was now more like a bachelorette party than a subdued MCT meeting.

“And last but certainly not least, what is our new motto?” Melinda asked.

“Tend to the Testicles,” the group chorused back, and Melinda beamed out at them like a proud parent.

“Excellent. You’ll be amazed by how far a little attention there goes. Your man will love it,” Melinda said. “And I think we’ll end on that note. Thank you for your time, ladies. It’s been a pleasure.”

Wild applause broke out, and Melinda smiled graciously.

After the meeting, Grace walked out to her car, accompanied by Juliet, Anna, and Chloe.

“Thanks for inviting me, Anna. This was fun,” Chloe said. She yawned widely and then smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I guess it’s past my bedtime. Which is about eight o’clock these days.”

“I remember that from when I was pregnant with Charlie. I was bone tired for nine months straight,” Anna said.

Juliet also suppressed a yawn, and Grace looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Something you want to tell us, Jules?”

“What?”

“She’s asking if you’re knocked up,” Anna said.

“Jesus, no. Bite your tongue,” Juliet said with a shudder. “I was up late last night working on that damned dead-baby case.”

“Oh, please. You never sleep, anyway,” Grace scoffed. “You just plug yourself into a socket and recharge.”

“Dead-baby case?” Chloe asked.

Grace heard the note of panic in her voice and turned to Juliet, willing her not to go into detail, but, as usual, Juliet was completely clueless.

“An otherwise perfectly healthy baby died during delivery. My firm is suing the doctor—well, suing his insurance company—for botching the C-section. And right now we’re in the hellish bowels of discovery,” Juliet explained.

Even in the dim lights shining over the dark parking lot, Grace could see that Chloe had paled.

“Juliet,” Anna said warningly.

“What?” Juliet asked.

Grace sighed. Juliet was a brilliant and talented lawyer, but sometimes it seemed like she lacked even the most basic interpersonal skills.

“Ignore her,” Grace said to Chloe. “She doesn’t know any better.”

“What? What did I say?” Juliet asked again.

Anna looked pointedly at Chloe’s very pregnant abdomen.

“Oh,” Juliet said, finally catching on. “Don’t worry. Hardly anyone dies during childbirth anymore.”

Grace and Anna exchanged an exasperated look. But Chloe seemed to rally.

“You’re a working mom?” she said, looking at Juliet with interest. “I’m doing an article for
Mothering
magazine—I’m a freelance writer—and I’d love to interview you for my story. It’s about women trying to balance work and family.”

“Why not?” Juliet said. She pulled a business card from her pocket and handed it to Chloe. “Call my secretary, and she’ll set up a lunch appointment.”

“Which Juliet will cancel at the last minute, because she never eats lunch,” Anna added. “But I think she would be a great addition for your story. Chloe’s interviewing me too.”

“How about you?” Chloe asked Grace, turning toward her with a keen interest. “Do you work?”

Grace hesitated, her lips pressed together as she swallowed back her annoyance.

Yes, I work
, she wanted to say.
I run around after the children, and prepare three meals and two healthy snacks a day, and vacuum, and do the shopping and the dishes and the laundry, and run a zillion errands, and I even, for God’s sake, produce milk from my breasts. In fact, I work so hard that at the end of the day I’m often too tired to brush my teeth before passing out in bed. I’m like a goddamned modern-day Cinderella.

But that wasn’t the sort of work Chloe meant, Grace knew. She meant office work. Paid work.
Important
work.

“No,” she finally said, managing a rueful smile. “I’m just a stay-at-home mom.”

“Just?” Anna protested. She shook her head. “Come on. I couldn’t do what you do.”

“Me neither. Grace is like the superhero of mothers,” Juliet said.

“Supermom,” Anna said with a grin.

“Yeah, that’s me. I have the cape and suit with a big M on it and everything. Although I’ve sworn off my spandex superhero suit until I lose the baby roll.” Grace laughed. She pressed the button on her remote-access key chain to unlock the doors, and her minivan flashed its lights in response. “And now I should probably get the Mom-mobile home. I left Louis in charge, and I’m afraid the girls are going to have staged a coup and taken over the house in my absence. I’ll catch you guys later.”

“Hey, hon,” Louis said, when she walked in the back door.

He had changed into sweats and was standing at the kitchen sink, loading dishes into the dishwasher. Grace felt a stab of guilt. She had meant to do the lunch dishes before she left for the MCT meeting, but then she’d gotten busy with the girls, as well as monitoring an eBay auction for a pair of sixties-era Lucite lamps—which she ended up losing in the final seconds of the auction—so she never quite got around to the dishes. So much for being Supermom.

“Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you with the dishes.” Grace put the plastic storage container full of brownies that she’d brought home from the meeting on the counter.

She walked around the island and gave him a perfunctory kiss hello.

“No biggie.” Louis smiled at her. He had a little blob of dish soap foam on his cheek, which Grace wiped off.

Louis had a lightly freckled face, thinning copper-red hair, and the square, boxy build of the wrestler he’d once been. Like Grace, he’d put on some weight since their marriage a decade earlier, but unlike her, Grace thought, he carried it well. It was one of the great injustices in life: men aging better than their wives. Louis’s laugh lines and gradual loss of hair just made him look more distinguished, more likely to be taken seriously by his colleagues.

“How are the kids?” she asked.

“Everyone’s in bed and asleep.” Louis gave her a mock salute.

“Wow. Miracles do happen.”

“Nat took a while to go down, so I told her all of the gritty details about one of my tax cases, and that seemed to do the trick.”