The Best of Enemies (7 page)

“No, it’s his day off, but he was called away for an emergency.”

Cookie, his office manager, wasn’t specific about what kind of emergency it was, but apparently it was urgent enough that he rushed out of the house like his pants were afire.
I’d never complain, but it’s funny how he can’t quite spring into action to help me, but when work calls?
Step aside, everyone!

Speaking of his job, but can we take a moment here to discuss Cookie?

First, what kind of adult calls herself
Cookie
?

Mind you, I’m not jealous.
Far from it!
I mean, she’s a
grandma.
A forty-something grandma, but still.
I cannot even imagine how embarrassing that must be.
Plus, she tries to be extra chummy with me, as though we’re equals, or coconspirators on some great secret.
Unacceptable.

I’m miffed by her lack of deference and I don’t love how dependent Dr.
K has become on her in the past few years.
He made a lot of his upgrade decisions based on her recommendations.
I miss the early days of helping out at the practice myself.
Cookie laughed herself asthmatic when she found my old “Miles of Smiles” promotional flyer, but that “ridiculous ploy” brought in tons of new patients.

At Betsy’s last fund-raiser, she asked if I felt threatened by Cookie, which,
impossible.
She’s so not in my league.
For crying out loud, she rides a motorcycle in the summer, parading around in leather vests without a hint of irony when everyone else is wearing sundresses!
And don’t start me on the makeup and feathered hair.
Feathered!
Hey, Cookie, Pat Benatar called and she’d like her eyeliner back.

I do prefer Cookie to the constant stream of nubile young models/actresses he employs as part-time hygienists.
(They generally last until they book their first local cell phone commercial.) Dr.
K says the male patients love having hot, young girls in the vicinity of their mouths.
(Gross.) He tells me they inspire the men to book their six-month cleaning appointments on the spot.
As for his female patients?
His cosmetic dentistry practice is up twelve percent with the North Shore mom demographic ever since he hired that glamazon Brandi who goes commando under her scrubs.

I couldn’t care less about Cookie, but Brandi is . . .
not my favorite.

Last year, Brandi showed up to the practice’s Christmas party in a skintight, one-shouldered sheath so low cut that I should have issued a plus-one invitation to her left aureole, as many times as it made an appearance that night.
Eventually I stuck a
GIVE PLAQUE T
HE HEAVE-HO
pirate sticker over the offending nubbin, which she found hilarious.
Apparently she didn’t mind as the sticker gave everyone an excuse to gaze at her breasts with impunity.

Thank God Betsy convinced me to borrow one of her Alexander McQueen LBDs that night instead of wearing the twee advent calendar sweater Kassie loves so much.
I mean,
maybe
my figure wouldn’t sell a cell phone, but between Spanx, a mostly plant-based diet, and a daily combination of Pilates, light reps with kettlebells, and chasing after three children, I can still fit into my old college button-fly jeans.
I have no reason to worry.

Although . . .
by “fit” I mean “get them almost up my thighs,” even though I’m basically the same weight as I was in the nineties, despite the impossible-to-eradicate belly pooch and widened hips.
What pregnancy does to the pelvic girdle should be criminal.
Kord was in the ninety-ninth percentile for height and weight!
He was the size of a watermelon coming out, and not those cute round ones the grocery stores sell now—I’m talking the oblong, submarine-shaped dealies that Baby carried in
Dirty Dancing
.

I’m so lost in thought that I don’t even realize that Ashley’s been yammering on.

“. . .
so, Barry thinks I should talk to him about veneers or maybe Invisalign to close up the space between my front teeth.”

I quickly retrieve the lost thread of our conversation because
this
is not going to happen.
“Shame on Barry for trying to change you!”
I exclaim.
“Your teeth are perfect, honey.
Very natural.
You don’t want to look like a TV anchor, amirite?
Bright, generic smiles are
so
last year.
The little gap between your front teeth gives you character!
You’re like a young Lauren Hutton!”

“Who?”

Of course she doesn’t know who Lauren Hutton is.

“I mean the model Lara Stone, sweetie.”

This seems to satisfy her and she drops the subject.

We need the revenue and I’m sure Dr.
K could find a myriad of expensive, dining-room-table-affording solutions for Ashley, but the problem is there’s only one person who’s allowed to have the perfect smile in the Lakeside PTO.

And that position?
Is filled.

“Where are the kids?”
Ashley asks.
“Seems awfully quiet in here.”
The house never seems empty or still when they’re present.
Furniture doesn’t make this place a home—my family does.
My sweet babies are always racing all over the place, challenging one another to a million different kinds of games, and eating their own weight in chocolate-chip (zucchini) bread!

Of course, the older they get, the less they seem to need their ol’ mama.
Practically broke my heart a couple of nights ago when Kassie insisted on reading her
Little House on the Prairie
book herself before she went to sleep.
There she was, in her massive canopied bed, all alone in a cavernous room, illuminated by the small pool of light from her nightstand, her fine hair spilling around her tiny shoulders, nestled in a bank of fluffy pillows.
She looked so small and fragile, I just wanted to scoop her up and hold her forever.

What a bittersweet moment—although I want my children to become autonomous, independent individuals, that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt when it happens.
How did they grow up so fast?
Kord has to shave
every day
and Konnor won’t let me hug him in public anymore.
Some days I just want to scream,
“Where’d my babies go??”

I tell Ashley, “Kord’s at swim camp until Friday, same with Konnor, except it’s soccer, and little Kassie’s still too young for sleepaway camp, so her Nana Baba is taking her to the Children’s Museum and then she’s spending the night.”

I don’t mention that Nana Baba’s already called twice—once to complain that Kassie’s darling little fringed moccasins didn’t offer enough arch support, and then to crow about how much Kassie loved her first Chicago-style hot dog.

Which is so great because I was
hoping
to add hog-lips-and-bunghole to Kassie’s diet.

Still, Kassie worships her Nana Baba, so I don’t engage.

The upside of the Littles needing me less is that I can finally redirect some attention to my husband.
Sometimes I worry I spend so much of my time trying to be the picture-perfect parent and homemaker that I forget to actually be a wife.

Truth?

I can’t even remember the last time Dr.
K and I ducked into the mudroom for some hanky-panky.
The kids always assumed we were folding laundry, which is how that became our code word for sex.

Of course, our mudroom would make any red-blooded American woman weak in the knees, because it’s a work of art.

So not kidding.
I’m talking Fifty Shades of Mommy-porn.

The walls are white-painted bead board on the bottom.
The top part is decoupaged with oversize, vintage nautical maps in the dreamiest patinas of pale turquoise you can imagine.
(Best Craigslist find EVAH.) One whole section around the garage door boasts built-in cubbies for each kid, including seats where they can take off their shoes, meaning I never have to see backpacks or sneakers strewn all over the kitchen.
There’s a massive reclaimed farm sink in the middle of a huge island, designed for folding (or other lay-flat activities), topped with a fat slab of white marble that shimmers in the sun.
I especially love the wall of shelves where I display my extensive jadeite glass collection.
The floor’s the same blue slate of the entry hall and I have a couple of jute rugs strategically placed, which perfectly coordinate with the wicker laundry baskets.
In addition, there’s another whole wall hosting my built-in home office.

As for the washer and dryer?

Moss green.
Custom painted.
No lie.

Pretty sure I broke the Internet the day I posted shots of the completed project.
Betsy said I was probably going to receive death threats from Martha Stewart.
(They met at a charity event, BTW.
Betsy’s not a fan.)

When I die, I want my ashes scattered in this room.

As for our current marital laundry sitch, um . . .
not quite so picture-perfect.
My whites haven’t been bleached for a while.
I’m in desperate need of a spin cycle.
The lint trap is
full
.
I’ve been worried that if we don’t run a load real soon, Dr.
K might send his shirts to Brandi for pressing.

That’s why I had a whole date-day planned for us.
As soon as Kassie was out the door with her grandmother, I’d hoped to show Dr.
K how much more
flexible
I am now that I’ve upped my Pilates workout.
Then I’d make him a luxurious breakfast of cream-topped Belgian waffles containing no pureed pumpkin whatsoever!
(I post adult recipes, too.
They aren’t nearly as pin-able.)

Later, we’d have wine with lunch, followed by a second vigorous wash cycle, and then we’d spend the night chilling in lawn chairs at the outdoor amphitheater a couple of towns to the north, listening to Third Eye Blind perform, our second favorite college band behind Weezer.
Jackass Jordan used to claim that Weezer couldn’t be anyone’s favorite band, because that was tantamount to saying “plain” was the best flavor of yogurt.
Wrong!
Some of us happen to ADORE all of Fage’s fruit-free, sugar-free, lower-fat offerings.

Anyway, LaundryDay2015 was clearly not to be for Dr.
K and me, so I figured I may as well start working on the No Screens for Ice Cream program the PTO’s implementing this fall.
That’s why Ashley’s here.

I usher Ashley into the breakfast nook, which opens into our professional-grade kitchen and great room.
The sixty-inch industrial Wolf Vulcan range with double ovens and built-in griddle/broiler really has allowed me to take SecretSquash.com to the next level.
In retrospect, I can’t believe I fought Dr.
K on the extravagance!
In terms of social gathering spots, we also have a media room in the basement, plus a living room and a library on this floor, and four bedrooms and a mother-in-law suite upstairs.

Hopefully someday we’ll actually have enough couches and chairs to
fill
all these rooms.

“Why can’t we just live here for now and save up for a remodel?”
I asked Ken as we walked through our Cape Cod for the first time after closing.
I still called him Ken back then.
I’m not entirely sure when I started referring to him as Dr.
K, although I suspect it was when Cookie started calling him that.
“Why take on so much debt when we’re still paying off your student loans?”

“It’s all about image, babe,” he explained.
“If we don’t
look
successful, then we can’t
be
successful.
You don’t want everyone in town to be all,
‘Who lives in that tear-down?’
‘The dentist.’
‘Then he must not be very good.’
Fake it till you make it.
In the dentistry game, image is everything.”

Is it?
I wondered, although I never said that out loud.
Instead, I reasoned, “This house is so cute, even if it is dated.”
The darling fifties kitchen was right out of my idol Meg Ryan’s apartment in
Sleepless in Seattle
.
“We’re already in the Lakeside school district.
Who cares if there’s only three bedrooms?
We can make the little blue room the nursery for Kassie, while Kord and Konnor can share.”