The Kitchen Shrink (15 page)

I hit the bathroom, whew, nothing out of place on my face. I thought I might as well go, since I was there. I took care of business, stood up and smoothed out my dress. I turned to flush and out of habit, kicked up my right foot to push down on the handle. Oops. My foot slipped on the handle and my shoe, Daria’s shoe, slipped off my foot, pointy toe first. Into the toilet. The unflushed toilet. Oh my God. I grabbed the shoe, trying to rescue it from the swirling mess of sodden toilet paper. The shoe, the golden, glistening beaded work of art, was now a soaking wet brown clod-hopper with bits of wet tissue captured in the bead work. Shit, shit, shit. I tried to hop out of the stall over to the sink and grabbed some paper towels to try to do damage control. As I rubbed, shreds of paper towel seemed to get caught among the bits of toilet paper and beads.

Oh no, how long had I been in there? What was Teddy thinking? He probably thought I was pooping. Oh, geeze. Why does stuff like this always happen to me? I figured I would just put it back on, and maybe no one would notice. I slipped the cold wet shoe on my poor unsuspecting bare foot and shuddered. I walked over to look in the full-length mirror on the back of the door, like nothing was wrong. But something was very wrong. The shoes looked not only like they were two different colors but like they were two entirely different shoes. Wow. Now how long had I been in there? I had to get out of there.

I ran back to the sink and grabbed my other shoe and ran it under the water for about a minute. Seems it liked dunking better. “Come on, come on.” Just then two women walked in, of course, and abruptly stopped talking as they watched my frantic soaking of the shoe. I smiled in the mirror at them, pretending everything was OK. I grabbed another paper towel and patted it as best I could before slipping it back on. One final look in the mirror, at my drab, gross, wet shoes and I tore out of there.

“There you are,” Teddy said, quirking his eyebrow that probably meant to say ‘are you alright?’ but I was probably a little defensive and read ‘where the hell were you?’ “Shall we?” He held out his arm as the hostess, who had probably been standing there for ten minutes—‘We so tired of waiting for the lady to get out of the can’—led us to our table.

I heard my heels tap on the polished wood floor as we followed her, along with slurping, squishing, sucking sounds as the arch of my foot separated from the sodden insole of my shoe. Maybe no one would notice.

“What’s that noise?” Teddy asked.

“Hm. Oh, look, we’ll catch the sunset. How lovely.” I never say the word ‘lovely’. Who uses that? Probably the same people who say ‘nevertheless’ and ‘albeit.’ I needed to take it down a notch. I just wanted Teddy to like me so much. I wanted this to work. So, I got a wobbly start. I flexed my toes and put on my picture-posing smile.

“I just love this restaurant and this is so pretty; look at the body surfers out there,” I babbled on and on, talking in a high-pitched loud voice trying to deflect attention from my pissy shoes. Teddy held out my chair as I sank gratefully if not gracefully down onto the cushioned seat.

We oohed over the sunset, ahhed over the menu and almost broke into applause at the appearance of the wine. As Teddy ordered, Sam leaned in and pretended to adjust my mic and asked me if I was OK. “Yes, fine,” I lied through my teeth.

My feet were disgusting. They were cold and shriveled and I bet they smelled. I dropped my fork accidentally on purpose to surreptitiously get a whiff. I could smell them. It was officially past midnight for this Cinderella and it wasn’t even 7:30. What would Daria do if she were in this situation? Oh, no. Daria was going kill me. These were her favorite shoes in the world. Ever. I would have to replace them for her. I took a sip of wine. OK, a swig. Get a grip. Teddy deserved better than this. I had to show him a good time.

I studied him across the table. He had brown hair, liberal use of hair gel. Pretty straight teeth, nice enough smile. Maybe all of his aftershave will drown out the smell of my feet. How sweet; he was probably nervous, too, and wanted to make a good impression.

I smiled, nodded and entertained myself with ways to entertain him. Perhaps a stray thought snuck in between my Cameron Diaz laughs, Victoria Beckham pouts and Jennifer Aniston hair tosses, that maybe ‘we so’ just didn’t click. It didn’t matter; it just made me try all the harder to be charming, captivating. I remember thinking, I can do this!

“How’s your ahi?” I asked him.

He waved his fork. “You know, one day, hopefully in our lifetime, we’ll just be able to take pills instead of having to eat. It’s such a waste of time. Do you realize how much time it takes to just chew our food?” He then pointed his fork at me. “I’m telling you, the whole world will be revolutionized when we can get all the nutrition we need in pills. Think about it. We could end world starvation.”

“Well,” I had to agree with that part, “that sounds good. But,” I bit into a grilled artichoke heart that I rescued from a puddle of garlic butter, “this tastes so good.” I swallowed and took a sip of wine. “Wouldn’t you miss tasting things? What about ice cream? What about chocolate? I don’t think pills could ever replace our diets. I know we have a lot of unhealthy things crammed into our food pyramid, but how could we not eat food?”

I was pretty incredulous. I caught a flicker of Sam in the corner of my eye and remembered eating lunch with him and the crew yesterday. Big, crusty Italian hero subs, filled with delicious salty, cured meats loaded with extra nitrates, saturated in an oily secret dressing that clung for dear life to the lettuce and tomatoes. Yum. Sometimes a sandwich was life’s mayonnaise to the day’s woes. Sam had eaten his in two seconds and even finished off the rest of mine. I liked a man with an appetite.

 I looked across the table at Teddy and wondered what all he had going on that he couldn’t find the time to enjoy eating. Wait until I told Daria. Thinking like that would put her Good Mood Food show right out of business. I let him ramble on, since I had all but pulled the cap off of the big black Sharpie in my mind, ready to draw the damning X over him. I hated how judgmental I could be. I needed to chill. This was a perfectly lovely man. Simply lovely. I did use the Sharpie to cross out that sneaky word ‘albeit’ that was hovering over there in the corner.

I wobbled my glass at the passing waiter. “We so thirsty.” I laughed. Too bad Teddy didn’t get my joke. The man never stopped talking. He even told me all about his last date. As in how her lip gloss made him gag when they were kissing. Ew. I thought it would be rude to check my cell phone for the time, but I was scared to ask him for fear he’d tell me how his Rolex was made.

After dinner we went for walk on the beach. While that may sound like a romantic thing to do in novels, reality had a different version. It was cold, windy and dark. I hated the ocean at night. You just knew there was a dead body out there somewhere, waiting to wash ashore. Sand stuck to my damp feet, and my hair was never going to be tangle-free again. Once Sam had his lights set up and turned his camera back on us, Teddy looked at Sam and must have gotten the ‘go ahead’ nod.

I wasn’t ready to cry for “help” but the word kelp did come to mind as Teddy’s slippery hand pried my fingers apart. I realize I have been out of the dating pool for a long time, but is it me, or is that a pretty presumptuous way to hold hands on a first date? Whatever happened to a gentle clasp, palm-to-palm, howdy-do? No need to get the fingers involved so soon; why set them up for a premature game of Frere Jacques only to have them run away, run away.

To make matters worse, even though I didn’t like this guy, I still wanted him to like me. Nevertheless, I think he was liking his 15 minutes of fame way more than my sparkling personality.

“We’re so lucky to drink beer.” He shouted something that sounded like that. Live here? Lick deer?

Thanks to the roar of the waves and some scary-sounding bird and the wind whipping my hair into my lip gloss, I couldn’t hear him. “What?” I hollered, trying to shake my hand free from his to push my hair out of my face.

“This is really great,” he yelled at me, letting go of my hand in order to grab me in what he must have thought looked like a romantic clench. Sam was rolling his camera a few feet behind me and Teddy maneuvered us into a sideways profile shot, where I imagined it would look like our two heads would form a heart shape. What the camera couldn’t see and what I couldn’t feel at first was good ol’ Teddy massaging my padded bra.

“We’re really good together,” he shouted, just as the waves receded and the wind stopped howling, making him sound like a lifeguard warning about rip currents.

“And, Cut.” I pushed him off me, and plowed through the sand, churning my way back to the parking lot.

I wanted to ride with Sam but he wouldn’t let me, knowing Elgin would want the drama from the ride home. Joke’s on you Elgin. I didn’t say a word the whole way.

It was only about nine-o’clock by the time Teddy peeled up to the curb in front of my house. No opening of my door this time, which was just as well because I had my seatbelt off and hand on the door handle before he slammed on the brake.

“Thanks…blah blah…” I heard him say. As he peeled off, I kicked off my shoes and went inside. Both kids were downstairs, watching TV.

“Hi, Mom,” Nicole said.

“How’d it go?” Ryan asked.

“What do you care?” I snapped. “You never tell me anything. I had to find out from your father that you even have a girlfriend.” I saw Nicole throw a look at Ryan. I knew I was being irrational and taking it out on the wrong people, but there you have it. That’s what you do with your family. With that I stomped upstairs and slammed my door harder than my teenagers ever could.

The next morning, I woke up and was getting dressed when Nicole came in carrying a cup of coffee and plate of chocolate chunk cookies.

“Breakfast of Champions,” she said, holding out her peace offering of one of my favorite eye openers in the world.

“Thanks, honey,” I said, taking the mug and sitting on my bed. She sat next to me, placing the cookies between us. “Sorry about last night,” I apologized.

“Didn’t go very well, huh?” She asked.

My son, who I could yell at until I was blue in the face and he could still manage to ignore me, did manage to hear that details were about to be revealed. He magically appeared in my doorway. “Hey.” He came in with a CD. “Here. I burned this for you.”

Aw. “Thanks, you guys.” Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I warned myself. I took a sip of my coffee. At least my kids liked me. Sometimes. “So, do you want to wait for the TV show or do you want to hear what happened?” Ryan grabbed a cookie and leaned against my door jamb as I gave them the highlights. They felt so sorry for me they tried to hide their smiles.

“And get this,” I said. “He looked like Doug’s green-headed friend, Skeeter.” My kids laughed. They had always watched the Doug cartoon when they were little and loved it.

“Skeeter would have been nicer, Mom,” Nicole said.

“I know,” I agreed. “One day I’ll be able to laugh about it, but not right now,” I told them. “It’s just been so hard. I wish I had never agreed to this show, it seems like they capture us in all of our worst moments. Then there’s this whole dating thing. I’m not ready to date, but I don’t want to end up alone, but I worry about you guys, but you’ll be gone soon, so I am trying to move on…”

“Mom.” Ryan interrupted me.

I smiled. I couldn’t get over that my sweet boy actually made me a CD. Most likely about pimps, ho’s, gangsta’s and other new vocabulary words I truly didn’t know the meaning of. I have no idea why it is cool, but I am pretty sure I am not fly like a G6.

“What, honey?” I asked, doting on him.

“So when your shoe fell in,” he paused to laugh, along with Nicole, “was it number one or number two?”

I threw my pillow at him.

So my sensitive kids still didn’t realize that their fish, Orange Juice, was floating in that big ocean in the, well, in the ocean. I was always amazed at their super heroic powers of self-absorption. However, the Instigator and his sidekick, the Irritator, did try to make me feel better. It was reassuring to see that deep, deep down in their psyche, hidden beneath their Facebook wall, iPod music receptors, cell phone attachments and hair grooming ability, they did own one sensitive brain cell that cared enough to try to cheer me up.

Or maybe that was just because they were trying to butter me up. Nicole told me she was spending the night at her friend Molly’s house.

“Oh, no, you’re not,” I told her. “It’s a school night.”

She cried and carried on before storming into her room. I heard her scream ‘bitch!’ and I went loco.

Oh no she di-n’t, I thought. I couldn’t believe it. Without knocking, I flung open her door. “Are you kidding me?” I asked her.

“Get out,” she cried, as she was crying. “I didn’t call you that. I just said it,” she tried to backtrack.

“You may not speak to me like that. Ever.” I told her. That really hurt. I quietly shut her door. Sometimes I was so worried about her. She had been acting so moody. One minute she would be silly and goofing around, and the next, succumb to total ear-splitting, earth-shattering drama. Ryan even wanted to know how long a girl’s period was supposed to last. But this seemed to be more than hormones run amok. Although I know how powerful hormones can be. Oh, brother. Teenagers. I hoped they didn’t hear any of that downstairs. I headed down to my kitchen.

“Hey, bitch,” Elgin simpered his greeting to me, his hands on his hips.

“You heard that?”

“NBC Burbank heard that. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. And I’m not a bitch,” I told him.

“You can be,” he said.

“You’re right.” I had to agree. “But this time, I wasn’t.”

He quirked one eyebrow at me.

“Don’t give me your eyebrow,” which was more manicured than mine, I told him. “How dare she say that to me, even if I was? I just don’t know what’s going on with her lately. All this drama.”