The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir (4 page)

Josh balked ten feet in from the entrance to Nordstrom. “Mom, can I go get a soda at the food court? It stinks in here.” He always chose to escape unless it was a store that sold baseball equipment or computer games.

“Can I?” He reluctantly followed me deeper into the store, awaiting my answer.

“No soda. But you can have a lemonade.” I handed him a five-dollar bill. “Bring back the right change.”

He sprinted toward the doorway into the mall and dodged between the displays like he was running the gauntlet.

I wandered along the perfume counters, fingertips trailing the glass, stopping to sniff samples.

A well-preserved sales shark with a helmet of over-sprayed hair hovered nearby. “Can I help you find something?”

“Not right now, I'm just smelling.” I coughed and waved my hand through a fog of perfume.

“Of course…” the woman trailed off, as if finishing her sentence was a waste of time.

My eyes moved across the many displays. Unique bottles always caught my eye first.

Classique
by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Nice bottle—a dress form with part of the glass decorated in the shape of a full bustier. I sprayed my wrists and rubbed them together to warm the scent on my skin. I hate those paper tabs; you can never tell how the perfume really smells.

I caught sight of my reflection in the mirrored wall. Someone else was wearing my clothes and my face. I reached up to touch my hair. It was short and weightless. Do I like my hair like this? I tilted my head a little to the side. Would Kevin like my hair like this? The tips tickled the top of my shoulder. I slowly shook my head. The bob swung gently against my neck, a heavy curtain of hair no longer waved along my back.

The sales shark circled and cleared her throat with mock delicacy. “Would you like to buy that?”

Buy it? You mean staring in the mirror catatonically for who knows how long, while clutching a bottle of perfume isn't good for business?

“Yes, please. A set with perfumed lotion,” I said.

While she rang up the purchase, Josh appeared beside me with his cup of lemonade. He squeaked out an elaborate tune with the straw by dragging it up and down through the bisected hole in the plastic lid. It sounded a little like the
Gilligan's Island
theme song.

I flashed Josh my stop-that-before-I choke-you look.

“Okay, let's go.” I tucked the bag handles into the crook of my arm and walked toward the exit. I paused beside the door and waited for Josh to open it.

He looked at the door and then at me. “Why are we standing here?” He took a deep pull on the straw that ended in a damp slurp.

“Don't you think it's about time you start holding doors open for ladies?”

“You're not a lady, you're my
Mom
,” he said.

I've decided that it's the little moments of child rearing that remind me the process is the next best thing to enduring a root canal.

“Humor me,” I said.

i write, therefore i am

Sunday, October 28

I stacked the projects in neat piles on my desk and opened my Day Runner to the month-at-a-glance view of November. Deadlines. The writing jobs were marked in green ink—for money. The bills due were red—which basically meant, somebody please shoot me on or before this date. There was more red than green. Always.

I pulled out a blank piece of paper to organize my writing related tasks.

	to do list: 1.   Write marketing brochures for computer technical support company and refrigeration systems company.       Boring. Guaranteed to knock my creative muse unconscious with bone-dry freelance work. But it bills out at $100 an hour, so that's good CPR. 2.   Meet with start-up magazine publisher to discuss layout and design.       Goofy, sweaty guy with the bad idea of creating a magazine for strip club patrons. But he pays for my editorial input—which makes him my new best friend.
	3.   Meet with photographer to select stock images for the debut issue.       Watch in disgust as photo guy uses a program on his computer to manipulate pictures of women into the “perfect” specimens—further perpetuating eating disorders in young girls and unnecessary plastic surgery in women who try to measure up to images of women who don't really exist. 4.   Write inane features and articles that appeal to mammary-obsessed males with double-digit IQs.       Why? Because I'm paid $1,000 a week for it and I'm riding the cash cow until it's butchered by reality.
	5.   Come up with a pseudonym.       So no one can trace this creative disaster back to me.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I may as well stand naked on a street corner with a sign that reads
Will Write For Food
stapled to my forehead.

Writing prostitution. Are real prostitutes too tired at the end of a workday to enjoy sex for personal pleasure? I did know that working as a topless dancer made going out dancing at nightclubs less than appealing.

I pushed aside the freelance to-do list and opened the screenwriting software to my Disney spec script in progress. I watched the cursor blink at the tail of the last sentence I'd written. I wanted to focus on my screenwriting, but it would be a long time until that would pay the bills. The freelance stuff really needed to be done first, but it felt mindless to slap adjectives together so Joe Consumer would buy whatever Company X was selling.

A frustration tantrum was building. Feeding my creative writing muse was like supporting a 900-pound, spoiled gorilla that eats everything. Conferences, seminars, how-to books by every guru in the business, writer's retreats, pitch fests, workshops, networking breakfasts, trade subscriptions, entertainment industry organization memberships. None of it was cheap. Yet, I'd give it all up, right after I gave up breathing.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to reach that quiet space of creative peace. I found Kevin's face embossed on my mind in the darkness behind my eyelids.

God, I love him so much. For his beauty, the kindness in his soul—and for his potential. I believed we could accomplish anything through our love and support of each other. He wanted to play golf on the PGA Tour. I wanted the world to embrace my stories. I knew if we worked together, we could make it happen.

I still believed that. But somewhere along the way, he stopped.

grid iron vs. nine iron

Monday, October 29

I heard the phone ring once. Josh called downstairs, “Mom, it's for yooou.”

I gave the spoon a final lick, threw away the last of the chocolate pudding cup containers, and reached across the counter to pick up the cordless phone. The sound of Josh hanging up the other end clattered in my ear.

“Hey girl!” Heather's perky voice practically bounced through the line. “Let's go out for Monday Night Football.”

I was tempted to pretend she had the wrong number, but she already heard Josh, so reciting the only sentence I knew in Vietnamese wouldn't have worked.

“We can order something greasy and watch the guys…um, I mean, the game,” she said.

“Thanks anyway, but I don't think so.” Because honestly, I'd rather stay home, lock myself in my room, and cry facedown on the floor until I'm completely feathered with carpet fuzz.

“Well, at least let me buy you a cranberry juice. It'll take your mind off what's-his-name,” she said.

Impossible.

“I'm not taking no for an answer. You need this. I'll meet you at the Aliso Viejo tavern in twenty minutes,” she said.

If I got into my car right now and drove south at eighty-five miles an hour for twenty minutes, how far away could I get from the AV tavern? Not quite to the Mexican border, probably only to the Camp Pendleton Marine Base.

“Don't even think about standing me up,” she said.

It might be good to go out. Kevin doesn't work on Mondays. Maybe he'll come down to hang out with some of his buddies, maybe they'll go to Monday Night Football at the AV tavern, and maybe he'll walk in, see me again, and realize how much he really loves me, and maybe he'll ask me to marry him right there in the middle of the bar in front of everyone. It could happen.

“Okay, I'll go.”

When I hung up, Josh leaned on the kitchen counter wearing his let's-make-a-deal face. “Since you're going somewhere, can I have Adam over for dinner?”

“I don't care, but you have to make sure his mother knows I won't be here to supervise.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “I don't need you to watch. I've made spaghetti a hundred million times.”

I pulled him into a headlock. “Make sure she knows,”

I said. “Ack…okay, I will,” he choked out the words.

When I turned into the sports bar parking lot, I scanned the aisles looking for Kevin's steel blue truck.

Maybe he's not coming.

Maybe he's just not here yet.

The tavern was filling fast, but I saw Heather waving her arms at the bar like an airline traffic flagman, her short auburn hair bounced with her movements.

“Hey,” Heather hugged me tightly and released quickly. “Look at you— your hair. Forget the hair—you're so skinny!”

“Compliments of the break-up diet,” I said.