Odd Mom Out (10 page)

“But we’ve never had these problems before. My daughter once liked me.”

“She loves you, Marta.”

“She was screaming at me today, screaming at the top of her lungs.”

“She’s growing up.”

“She’s nine.”

“That’s what I mean. We’re entering the preteen years, and you have a girl. It’s only going to get harder.”

“You’re not making me feel any better.”

“I don’t think you will. Not until she turns twenty-five.”

“You’re just feeling smug because you have three boys.”

“I’m feeling smug because they’re with their dad.” Shey stretches her arms above her head and sighs deeply, appreciatively. “God, it’s a beautiful night. You’re here and I don’t have to work. This is my idea of heaven.”

“You’re not missing your guys?”

Shey shoots me a look as if to say I’m crazy. “I love it when they all go. Get those stinky boy germs out of the house and indulge in all the girlie things I want to do. Bubble baths. Pedicures. Chick flicks on DirecTV.”

I lean back on the grass, consider Eva, who has sunk to her knees to begin scooping sand and pebbles into a little mound.

With her long black hair swirling with the wind and her long smooth child arms trailing along the sand, my own heart catches, overcome by love, love, love.

Stop the clock, I think, freeze everything right now. I want to remember this—this second, this moment—forever. I want to remember how lucky I was, how lucky I am.

And I want Eva safe, I don’t want her to struggle, and I don’t want to worry about her so much.

Shey shoots me a speculative side glance. “That’s a pretty heavy sigh.”

Had I even sighed? I didn’t realize. “Was it this hard when we were in school?” I ask, making a little face.

“Probably. You just didn’t happen to notice because you were the one making all the girls’ lives miserable.”

“I wasn’t.”

Shey rolls her eyes. “Did you or did you not live with your middle finger raised, your own little American flag flipping everyone off?”

I laugh softly. She’s right. I did. I couldn’t help it. I could skate, ski, and snowboard better than most guys, and no girl could come close to doing what I could do. I took ridiculous chances, lived dangerously, pushing the ex in extreme. And if any girl dared to make a snide remark, I was pretty damn comfortable giving her a smack-down.

Shey drains her water and puts the plastic cap back on the empty bottle. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m starving. How about we go find some dinner?”

Eva falls asleep in the car on the way home from the restaurant. We ended up having nearly an hour wait for our table, and service was slow, which meant we didn’t even eat until close to ten-thirty.

Back at the lake cabin, Shey parks the car and I try to wake my zonked-out girl. She doesn’t even stir. I end up scooping her up and carry her into the bedroom she’s sharing with me.

Shey pulls back the cover while I lay Eva on the exposed bottom sheet. After covering her, I lightly kiss the top of her head and smooth the cover once more over her shoulder.

“You better keep her grounded,” Shey whispers as we tiptoe out. “Because she’s going to be a knockout later.”

“You say that because you’re her godmother.”

“I say that because I own a modeling agency and have worked with Tyra Banks for four seasons on
America’s Next Top Model.
”

We wander into the cabin’s kitchen, where Shey uncorks a wine bottle and fills our glasses. “And she’s got you for a mom,” she adds. “You’re not exactly hard on the eyes, if you know what I mean.”

“Looks might get you a good table at a Manhattan hot spot, but they don’t guarantee happiness.”

“Touché.” Wine in hand, Shey goes into the small rustic living room, drops onto the couch, and stretches out her long legs, then runs a hand through her thick, shoulder-length, strawberry blond hair. “I could get work for you two, you know. I get lots of calls for mother-daughter teams on the West Coast—”

“No.”

“You used to model.”

“For one blink of an eye, and I hated it.”

“You were amazing.”

“I still hated it.”

“Let Eva model and she’ll be very popular.”

“Now I hate you.” I make a hideous face at her. “That’s such a sellout, and I will not sell out.”

“That’s right. Take the hard, high road. That’s so much more satisfying,” Shey mocks me, her eyebrows arched, eyes lit with mischief.

I lift my wineglass, salute her. “Life’s about the journey, not the destination.”

“That’s because you haven’t picked a very fun destination.”

“Feck off.”

She just laughs her throaty laugh.

I love Shey. I love her humor, her spirit, her feistiness. And I love most of all that she refuses to let me take myself too seriously. Every time I get up on my soapbox, she just cheerfully knocks me off.

Damn Gaelic fairy.

Drinks like a fish, eats like a linebacker, and is as tall and delicate as a prima ballerina.

I’d have to hate her if she weren’t so wonderful.

Wineglass in hand, I join her in the living room. “You took the only good place to sit, you know.”

She pats the saggy cushion next to her. “Come sit next to me, baby.”

“Don’t try anything.”

“You wish.”

I laugh and sink into the saggy cushions. It feels good to just sit and relax.

I sip my wine and tilt my head back, and the wine’s warm and feels so good in my mouth, throat, going down. It’s a big robust red and perfect for a night like this. “You’ve always had excellent taste in wine.”

“John educated me,” she says, referring to her husband of thirteen years. Shey and John met on a shoot and they’ve been together ever since. “He said I can’t skate through life on my good looks alone.”

“Thank God for that. Otherwise you’d be useless. Over five feet eleven and bonier than hell.”

Shey’s laugh is low and husky. It’s one of my favorite sounds in the world, and I open my mouth to tell her how damn glad I am to see her, how much I needed this time together, but that lump is back, the one that makes me doubt myself.

It’s been tough moving back to Seattle.

Leaving New York, leaving her, leaving everything that was good and comfortable, has really thrown a curveball into my confidence.

I’ve begun to feel more like Loser Mom instead of Super Mom.

I’d planned on being a single parent, but there are times—days—when I’m just so bewildered by all that isn’t what I thought, knew, dreamed, expected.

I knew I’d love Eva, and I’d hoped Eva would love me, but I didn’t realize that Eva would have problems I wouldn’t be able to help her with.

“I saw him,” Shey says quietly, laughter gone. “For a minute I wasn’t sure it was him, but it was.” She turns to look at me. “He’s still with her. They were together. The kids were there, too.”

I would like to pretend that I don’t know who or what she’s talking about, but Shey and I don’t have that kind of friendship. Our relationship is quick, sharp, honest, real. “How does he look?” I ask, my insides tangling, emotions suddenly chaotic.

“Good.” Shey presses her lips, tries to smile, but her expression is tender, protective. “You did the right thing, Ta. You did.”

I nod once, bite the inside of my lip, and will the stinging sensation out of my eyes. This is so many years ago, so long ago, it’s not even news of this century.

Shey reaches out, touches one long, dark strand of my hair, and then tugs it gently. “You’d be over him if you had someone else in your life.”

“I am over him.”

“You need someone else—”

“No. I’m not—” I stop myself, shake my head, my jaw beginning to ache. “No. Not like that. Never again.”

“Marta, it’s been ten years.”

“I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.”

“Ten years and no sex, no men?”

“I have great toys, sweetheart, and they give tremendous satisfaction for a very small investment.”

“They’re plastic dildos.”

“Yeah, and the only tenderness they need is a battery change now and then.”

“You’re saying a battery-operated toy is better than a man?”

“Yeah.” I ignore Shey’s guffaw of laughter. “Vibrators don’t have wives.”

For a moment Shey says nothing, and she sits, long legs out, ankles crossed, her green eyes narrowed, expression catlike. “You told him to go back to her.”

I shake my head slowly. It feels as if she’s yanking out my fingernails one by one. “Let’s not talk about it.”

But Shey isn’t ready to drop it. “He asked about you.”

I swing around toward her, my hand shaking so much that I wildly slosh wine onto the ugly college plaid couch. “You
talked
to him?”

Her gaze is calm. “If it’s any comfort, I’m pretty sure Scott still has feelings for you.”

Just hearing his name jolts me all over again, and unsteadily I put the wineglass on the coffee table. I get to my feet under the pretense of getting a damp towel to mop the sofa, but in reality I’ve got to move, got to put distance between Shey and me.

She’s killing me.

And no, it’s not a comfort knowing he might have feelings for me. It’s no comfort at all.

I didn’t just love Scott, I craved him, the way you’d crave a drug like cocaine.

I knew from the beginning, too, that wanting anyone that much couldn’t be good, feelings that intense had to be bad.

I was twenty-five when I first met him, and we were together a year, and I fell hard right away. When I wasn’t with him, I missed him. When I’d be on long business trips, I’d begin to miss him so much that I felt ill, as though I were lacking warmth, light, oxygen.

But when we were together, it was heaven. When we were together, it was perfect. He seemed close to perfect, and that was good enough for me despite my crazy, passion-infused addiction for him, his smile, his voice, his skin.

But then I discovered he had a wife, who he was merely separated from, not yet divorced, when we first met, and two young kids, the youngest only eighteen months. Scott had told me he’d been married, and we’d discussed his divorce, but I’d never really gotten the whole picture until his wife showed up at my office and spread pictures of their babies on my desk.

I didn’t even look at the pictures of the kids. I just stared at her. Karen was small, slim, with a blond pageboy bob and the saddest blue eyes that watered constantly. As she talked, tears kept falling and she kept wiping them away as she told me anecdotes about baby Jordan and big boy Jason, who was all of three and a half.

Three and a half. Is that when little boys become men?

I ended it with Scott less than a week later. I actually asked him to leave after we’d had the best sex ever, and maybe the sex was so good because I knew it was the last time we’d be together.

But just because I ended it didn’t make it easy. Like an addict, I had to get him out of my system. I went through complete withdrawal. It was hell.

Those first few weeks were so bad, so unbelievably difficult, that I didn’t think I’d survive to get to the other side. The loss was so real, so intense, it felt as though I’d amputated part of myself.

I never called Scott, although I wanted to. I couldn’t let him know I missed him or wanted him, couldn’t give him an opportunity to run from Karen, the kids, and his responsibilities.

About two months after our relationship ended, I was finally able to eat and keep food from sticking in my throat. Finally able to sleep without waking up in tears. Finally able to work without feeling as though my legs were about to give way.

And when I recovered sufficiently to function, and even halfway smile again, I vowed to never, ever love anyone like that again.

And I haven’t. I won’t.

Just because I wear combat boots and black eyeliner and have a small, well-inked tattoo high on my right shoulder doesn’t mean I know how to cope with my feelings.

In the minuscule kitchen, I grab some paper towels and dampen them at the sink before attempting to clean the red wine, but the plaid is so dark, and the couch is so old, I can find only a couple of burgundy dots. But I scrub the hell out of them anyway, creating grayish brownish fuzz on the paper towel.

Shey just watches me go at the couch, and eventually I give up on scrubbing. Squeezing the damp towel into a ball in my fist, I exhale. “I’m glad they’re still together. It would have sucked to send him back to her to discover that they parted ways a few years later.”

“You never hoped he’d come back to you?”

“
No.
”

Shey’s voice softens. “You’d only be human if you did.”

My heart hardens. Everything is so tight in my chest, I can barely breathe.

I knew what it was like as a child to long for your father’s time, your father’s attention. I couldn’t come between Scott and his kids. I’ve got enough guilt as it is.

“I had Eva,” I say, going to the kitchen to throw away the paper towel. But it takes me a moment to locate the garbage can, which has been hidden in a skinny pantry between the oven and the wall. “I made Eva. And he had children who needed him.”