Vanity Fare (4 page)

Middlestarch

No regrets about entering a loveless marriage here . . . you’ll adore this sourdough bread, which delivers exactly what it promises: flavor, depth, and comfort. It looks deep and rich, and that is precisely what it is. It takes a long time to chew, and an even longer time to digest. You’ll enrich your life with every bite you take.

4

THERE WERE SOME DAYS WHERE BEING A MOM TO A SON LIKE
Aidan was a joyous, wonderful delight.

This was not one of those days.

I took a step forward, for me, at least, and had slicked lipstick on prior to picking Aidan up at school. I hoped that didn’t make me too conspicuous among all the other stay-at-home moms.

What was it about dedicating your life to another person that made you give up so thoroughly on yourself? Did having a child mean you lost what made you your own person in the first place?

Of course, who was I to talk? All those unkempt women presumably had husbands at home who actually wanted to have sex with them.

Me, I had some animal crackers and a six-year-old who usually regarded me only as the conduit to get the disc into the DVD player.

“Mommy, can we have fun today after school, too?” Yesterday we’d played three mind-numbing hours of some sort of Pokémon activity. I still wasn’t sure what we’d done, but I did know Aidan had won every time.

“Uh, sure.” I pushed Aidan’s hat down a little lower on his head and checked that his mittens were still attached to his sleeves, even though he refused to wear them. “We can hang out at home. That’s fun, right?”

His face crumpled in disappointment. “I don’t want the fun to be just with you, that’s no fun,” he said in six-year-old contradictory speak.

“We can watch TV and eat popcorn.” I upped the stakes. “And I think there’s some Christmas candy left over from the package Grammy sent you.” Just, please, no Pokémon games.

His face brightened. At least bribery still worked. Even if it was two-month-old stale chocolate.

“Can we watch a movie?”

I sighed. “Yes, we can watch a movie.” Was one of Dante’s circles of hell reserved for mothers who allowed their kids to watch TV
in the daytime
? Or did it only
feel
like that?

He ran all the way home, his little legs pumping. He’d stop periodically and turn around to give me an impatient look. It took only a few minutes to get from school to our apartment, but apparently to him it seemed like an eternity.

Aidan quickly settled down to watch his daytime movie,
Toy Story,
munching on popcorn, his little feet wiggling off the end of the couch. I sat down, too, and felt the warmth of his body along my leg. I yanked the throw from the floor and pulled it over us. He leaned into me, and I smelled his delicious little-boy smell: popcorn, innocent sweat, and Old Navy cotton. It didn’t take Dr. Lowell to point out that this was the most important reason not to get overwhelmed.

And the most important reason to make some money.

I picked up the pad of paper I had left on the sofa the night before. Time to make another list.

The most pressing item was to figure out just what this new freelance job required. I knew I had a week to write copy relating to baked goods. Beyond that, my understanding was a bit fuzzy.

The next would be to figure out how to get involved with the teaching program.

The third would be to figure out how much money I thought I’d need. And round up some babysitting help for when I needed time away from the apartment.

I looked down at Aidan’s head. He was so trusting, so certain his parents knew everything.

The fourth would be to focus on what was good about my life, not on what was bad. Aidan was number one on the list. He looked up at me and smiled, snuggling even closer to me.

“Mommy, would you like a piece of chocolate?”

I smiled back and nodded. He stood up, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the bag, handing it to me to tear open. I handed it back to him and he picked out a brown M&M for me, smiling broadly when I chewed exaggeratedly and gave a blissful sigh.

“I know you like chocolate, Mommy. I do, too, but not as much as you do.”

“What
do
you like more than I do, honey?” Besides your father.

“Pokémon, pizza, movies, drawing,
Teen Titans
.” He rattled them off as if he had been preparing his answer for weeks.
Why haven’t you asked me before, Mommy?

“What do you like?”

Just what I was wondering myself.

“You.”

He frowned. “I know that already.”

“Um . . .” British men with dimples, not having to worry about the bills, faithful husbands . . . the usual. “Peanut butter, books, coffee, jewelry. Sleeping. I think that’s it. Besides you, of course.”

He flung the blanket off us and jumped off the couch with a look that made me say
oh, no
in my head. “Then I’m going to make you a special treat.”

Images of peanut butter–smeared books wearing earrings swam through my head. I got up off the couch, too, even though I was pretty darn cozy. And my favorite part of
Toy Story
was coming up, the part where the toy dinosaur complained about his short little arms.

I followed him into the kitchen. He was already dragging a chair so he could reach my coffee beans.

“Let me help you with that, honey.”

“I can do it,” he replied in his best I’m-six-and-totally-competent voice. He tried to open the jar of beans but couldn’t figure out the vacuum seal.

“Let me.” I opened it, then grabbed a bowl and placed a handful of beans into it. “That should be enough, right?” Before he could respond, I hoisted the beans back up onto their shelf, so he wouldn’t waste them. Given a choice between him and the beans, I knew I’d pick him, but I also knew I wouldn’t be too nice about it. He’d be scared by my no-caffeine Mommy face.

“Go back and sit down. It’s a surprise.” He pushed me out of the kitchen and down the hall.

I was snuggled back under the throw when he came back and handed me his special treat with a triumphant grin.

“Oh, Aidan, a peanut butter coffee bean sandwich. Thanks, honey.” He pulled a book out from behind his back—that damn
The Ambassadors
again—with another wide smile. “And I brought you a book to read, too.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“And Mommy?”

“Mm?” Actually, the sandwich wasn’t half bad, once I got over the gritty crunch of the beans.

“Can we get a pet? I mean, now that Daddy’s moved out?” I bit my tongue before I suggested we replace Daddy with a rat.

Ah, the sandwich had an ulterior motive. “A pet?”

“Yeah. Maybe a tarantula, or a snake, or an elephant.”

“An elephant wouldn’t fit.”

“Or a cat. Grammy has a cat.” Grammy’s kinda on Mommy’s hate list right now, honey.

“Mommy’s allergic. Maybe a turtle?”

“Turtles are boring.”

I thought for a minute. I sure as hell didn’t want a spider or a snake roaming around. “Maybe we can get a special kind of cat.” That weird-looking hypoallergenic one. It would be a cat, though. “We’ll have to see.”

He grinned and hugged me. For that kind of hug, I’d have gladly sneezed my head off.

And the dinosaur had just tried to scare someone with his fearsomeness.

To Infinity . . . And Beyond!

Aidan had finally fallen asleep,
after pondering—and discarding—about a hundred possible names for the as-yet-unfound cat. He’d finally decided on Beast, after his favorite
Teen Titans
character, Beast Boy, which I thought would be pretty appropriate, given how hideous the cat would probably look.

I turned on the computer and found the teaching fellows’ website. The deadline for applications was mid-March, which gave me about a month to prepare. Classes for the master’s degree began in June, and my teaching, if I were accepted into the program at all, began the following September. So I would need money to get through the spring and summer to be able to do this. Did I have it?

Even presuming I got the money from John, the answer was a resounding no. And I had just about promised to buy Aidan a pricey, ugly cat. What the hell was I going to do?

I put the list down on the table and walked to the kitchen for coffee. And then I spied the uneaten bit of a chocolate chocolate-chip muffin I’d bought for Aidan in a devil may care bit of spend thriftiness a few days before.

After all these years of hoping, would my problems actually be helped by baked goods? I stuffed the stale muffin into my mouth. It was nothing compared to the deliciousness of whatever Simon had made, but at least it gave me enough renewed vigor to return to my notebook.

Aidan was on his third movie
that day when my friend Lissa arrived, agenda in tow. Lissa was a solid friend, someone who’d always been there at the other end of the phone, even though she was a full ten years younger than I. She’d jumped in to babysit Aidan as soon as Hugh left, practically pushing me out the door so I could go get a coffee, or thumb through a magazine, or anything to make me “get back in touch with myself.” Lissa was a bit of a granola-head, but she had such a good heart, it didn’t bother me. Plus she worked in the fashion industry, so I figured she needed some sort of self-defense mechanism. And I admired her shoes.

She held a copy of the
Village Voice
and pointed toward the computer.

“Lissa, I don’t want to,” I whined. Oh, my God, I’ve become my son.

She smiled that sassy grin at me in reply, showing her clean, white teeth. I could see why men fell at her feet so often. Especially dentists. “It’ll be good for you, Molly. And who knows, you might meet someone really nice.”

We sat at my desk with the computer whirring in anticipation. Of what, I didn’t want to guess.

I’d sunk so low as to go online to find a date. Lissa had assured me it was better than living the rest of my life alone and bitter. No, wait,
I
had decided that.

Back when I figured out that this was me, this was my life, and I was going to take charge. Even if it meant revealing myself to any number of strangers on the Internet.

I’d tried to argue to Lissa that I wasn’t even divorced yet, but she told me—in no uncertain terms—that the longer I took to dip my toe in the water the longer it was going to be before I got wet. So to speak.

We’d agreed that this was just a toe adventure. Nothing had to happen. But I had to try.

“Mommmmmy!” Aidan’s screech sounded like his leg was being amputated or something. Luckily, I knew him well enough to know he just wanted me to see something on the TV.

“Yes, that is disgusting,” I said in a suitably revolted voice. Satisfied, his eyes glazed over again as he watched the dinosaur eat the rest of the scientist. I headed back to where Lissa still had that annoying smile on her face.

She gestured toward the screen. “I’ve already entered the basic information. You just have to be specific about what you want.”

Money. Time. Security.

Oh, what I want
in a man
. Oh, well, that’s easy: money, time, security.

I sat down in front of the screen and held my fingers above the keyboard for a second. “And if I don’t do this, you’ll stop babysitting?”

I’d told her about the new freelance job, and my tentative career goals. As I’d known she would be, she’d been very encouraging. And then she had issued her threats.

She poked me in the shoulder. “Stop dawdling, Molly.”

I took a deep breath, feeling the air filling my lungs. I peered at the screen. “Lissa, I do not weigh a hundred and thirty pounds. In my wildest dreams, maybe.”

She poked me again. “Everyone lies.”

I thought of Hugh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

I looked at the first blank category, then read it aloud: “Name five items you cannot do without.”

“That’s easy,” Lissa said, “coffee, coffee, coffee, books, and coffee.” She laughed as she pulled her chair closer with a loud scrape on the wooden floor. I could smell her perfume, a slightly musky scent that smelled like decadent flowers.

“Coffee, books, what else? Hm.”

“Jeans?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Let’s not go there.”

I began typing.
Coffee, books, eyebrow pencil, Stevie Wonder discs, and my son.
“Actually,” I said, pulling back from the keyboard, “that is pretty much all I’d need if I were stranded on a desert island. Well, a CD player for the discs. And maybe a mirror to apply the eyebrow pencil. Otherwise I’d end up looking like Groucho Marx.”

She peered over my shoulder. “It makes you sound down-to-earth but sophisticated.” Sometimes Lissa baffled me with her fashionista doublespeak.

“In other words, an absolute lie.”

She punched me. For a tall, skinny chick, she had a lot of strength behind that fist. I rubbed my arm and glared at her. “Look, Lissa, let’s face facts. I’m forty. I am an about-to-be-divorcée with a small child.”

She punched me again. I waved my index finger in her face.

“And I’m Irish with pale skin, which means all that punching is going to leave bruising. Thanks, Lissa, now any potential man will think I’m into S&M, when all I’m really into are M&M’s.”

She laughed. “You
are
pretty, Molly, and you know it, if you’d just stop wearing the same clothes every day. Men really go for the sexy librarians, you know.”

“And,” she continued before I could react to that, “you’re shy, but you do have a mouth on you, as you say yourself. You’re very smart—and remember how many times you told me to go for something? Now it’s your turn. Once someone gets to know you, they’ll adore you.”

“
If
I let them get to know me.”

My own words brought me up short.
Won’t let them
? Was I that scared?

I swallowed hard and thought about it. Well, damn. I had to do something about that.

Dr. Lowell’s frequent advice rang in my ears: I was a woman, a woman who was occasionally witty, sometimes pretty, always well read. Not to mention well caffeinated. I put my fingers back down on the keyboard determinedly. I could do this. I
could
place a personals ad.

“What kind of music gets you in the mood?” Lissa read out loud, then leaned back and shot me a measured look.

“Mood for what?” I asked, striving to keep an innocent look on my face. “Paying bills? Macramé? Laundry?”