Driving Lessons: A Novel (7 page)

“You got all that?” Mitzi perched on her stool and reached for her trusty tumbler. Today, she was a vision in emerald—not green, but
emerald
. Purple—
no, amethyst—
earrings grazed the upturned collar of her tunic.

“I think so.” I tried to smile convincingly.

“Okay, then I’m gonna head out.” She took a last, long sip from her straw, coating it with her fuchsia lipstick.

“Very funny.”

“What?” She stood up and dusted herself off. “Oh wait, right. Let me give you yer keys and show you how to set the alarm.”

“You’re serious? You’re leaving me here with eighty-five minutes’ worth of experience?” My voice cracked.

“Sarah, you are a thirtysomethin’-year-old woman with a college degree and a decade-plus of New York livin’ under yer belt. I think you can handle a slow Sunday at a jewelry store.” She looped her handbag over her shoulder. “Quit lookin’ at me with those puppy-dog eyes. Follow me.”

“But where are you going?”

“Clyde and I have a lunch date at the Mongolian buffet up the street. There are few things in this world that I love more than a Chinese food buffet, let me tell you. If there was an award for eatin’ egg rolls, I would win it, hands down.”

She stopped in front of the alarm.

“The code is ‘grits.’ Just punch it in here”—she mimed doing so—“and run like hell.” I looked at her in alarm. “I’m just kiddin’, darlin’. So serious! But really, you should move quickly. My last associate was about as slow as a turtle. By the time he got out the door, a SWAT team was in the parking lot. Sarah! I’m kidding again! Well, sort of. Are you all right, honey?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit panicked about manning the ship all by myself. What if I screw up the register?”

“Listen. The odds of someone coming in here are about slim to none. Between you and me, business is slow these days.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I’m tryin’ to figure out a way to get more bodies in here, but so far my focus is laughable at best. I’d rather be eatin’ egg rolls, I guess. Soon, though, I’m chainin’ myself to my stool until that lightbulb goes off.”

“I could help you if you wanted,” I offered.

“Aren’t you sweet? Thanks, honey. Let’s make sure you don’t burn down the place first though, mmkay?” She glanced at the clock. “I gotta scoot. You be sweet, ya hear? Call me if you’re in trouble. And relax, for goodness’ sake! Your face is much prettier when it’s smilin’.” The door’s resounding jingle mocked me as I watched her sashay to her car.

Great. This job was supposed to be, at the very least, a social life raft for me, and now it was becoming clear that not only did the store have no patrons, but its owner wasn’t even interested enough to stick around. I wandered dejectedly back over to the register and looked at the clock. The time was 1:22. I had three hours and thirty-eight minutes to stare into space.

I put my head down on the counter and then immediately sat back up and scanned the ceiling corners. The lenses of two video cameras blinked back at me. An image of Mitzi and Clyde—who I assumed looked exactly like Wilford Brimley for some reason—watching surveillance footage later that evening as they nursed their MSG hangovers flashed through my mind and I quickly stood up. I may not have liked this job, but I certainly didn’t want to be fired from it.

My stomach growled.
So much for lunch.
I crouched down to locate the Peppermint Patties. As I unpeeled one from its silver wrapper and popped it into my mouth, I eyed a feather duster that was crammed into the back of the shelf.
Dust. I will dust.

I pocketed a few more Patties and set out on my mission to dust everything within an inch of its life. The dusting turned into Windexing display cases turned into vacuuming turned into organizing receipts alphabetically, and suddenly it was 4:52. Eight minutes until closing. I had done it. Hallelujah.

Now I only had to survive my coffee date with Iris and I would be home free. I removed my earrings, necklace, and ring, pretending to be a Hollywood starlet post Golden Globes but not quite succeeding. I held my breath as I keyed in “g-r-i-t-s” on the alarm panel and hightailed it into the warm evening air. Success.

Not one customer today. That was a problem. My inner marketer went to work as I dragged my feet over to the coffee shop. How was Mitzi advertising? And why not skew her product line a little younger? This was a college town, not Fort Lauderdale. And Bauble Head? Why? Surely there was a more palatable, sophisticated store name she could be happy with.

As I opened the door to the coffee shop, I said a quick prayer that Iris would be late enough for me to wolf down some sort of sustenance. Though I had managed to plow through almost the entire bag of Patties, I was starving. I made a beeline for the pastry case.

“Sarah?” I turned too quickly and ended up checking Iris with my shoulder.

“Oh God, sorry! My balance is off today—along with everything else. Hi!”

She was dressed in workout wear that hugged her every perfectly proportioned curve and was literally glowing with sweat. It beaded on her forehead like a crown of diamonds.

“Hi!” We hugged awkwardly. “I biked here,” she declared. “I just thought, oh, it’s such a gorgeous evening, I can’t let it go to waste.”

Great.
In addition to everything else that rubbed me the wrong way about Iris, she was an athletic bragger. I couldn’t stand athletic braggers—always casually mentioning that they ran seven miles that morning before work or boxed with a trainer for ten hours every Wednesday or walked eighteen miles to your apartment just to get some fresh air. It was the fake nonchalance that killed me.

“I’m barely standing,” I answered. “I’m impressed. And jealous. You must feel great.”

“Oh no, I feel pretty normal. Mac and I bike quite a bit.” She smiled at me condescendingly. I gave her a big, fake, dead-eyed smile in return. “Let’s order, shall we?” Iris pointed to the giant chalkboard menu behind the register. “I’m thinking beer,” she said, after a few moments of studied silence.

“They have beer?” I practically shouted with glee.
Thank you, lord. Thank you.

“Yep, and wine too. See, over on the left-hand side of the menu, toward the bottom?”

“Oh, awesome. And a cheese plate!” I practically wept tears of joy. “Are you interested in that at all?”

“Oh no, trying to stay away from dairy these days.” She grabbed at her nonexistent love handles. “But you go ahead.”

“Okay, thanks. If you change your mind, by all means.” We both placed our orders.

“Hair of the dog,” Iris said as we sat down at a table by the window. The late-afternoon light played on the golden highlights in her hair. I self-consciously fiddled with my own mousy-brown ponytail in retaliation.

“Seriously. I drank like a fish last night. Who knows what got into me?” I replied.

“I’d say about a liter of whiskey.” She laughed a little too uproariously for my taste.
That’s it, no Camembert for her even if she does change her mind.
“I’m glad that you suggested this,” she went on. “I’ve been meaning to ask you to drinks myself, but with the start of the school year and everything, I’m sort of all over the place.”

“Oh yeah, I bet. Thanks for coming.” We both nodded at each other awkwardly as the waitress slipped our drinks and my cheese plate onto the table in front of us. I tried my best to remain ladylike as I sliced off a piece of brie and popped it into my mouth. Heaven.

“So what do you think of Farmwood?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s lovely here. The pace is so refreshing, you know?” I answered, parroting Josh’s comment from earlier that morning.

“Is that the politically correct way of saying nonexistent?” She smiled at me.

“No! No, it’s not.” I took a sip of my wine. “I really do like it. I just haven’t really extended myself yet.”

“What are you working on?” She took a sip of her beer.

“Working on? Well, I was an associate marketing VP, but I’m hoping to transition into something a little more fulfilling here.” Usually, I left out the “VP” part, but hanging out with Iris made me feel like I had to prove something.

“Marketing wasn’t for you?”

“Actually, I’m not sure if it was marketing as a whole or that particular job. At any rate, I have the freedom here to hopefully figure it out. I’m actually working at that jewelry store for the moment.” I pointed nowhere, hoping that she would just nod.

“Bauble Head?” She looked at me in disbelief.

“That’s the one.”

“That’s . . . unexpected.” She took another sip of her beer.

“Well, we’re in the middle of a recession, you know.” God, I hated her. “It’s not like jobs are growing on trees.”

“I know. Sorry. Forgive me.”

“It’s okay. You’re right, it is unexpected, considering I’m about twenty years too young for Mitzi’s demographic.” I smiled wryly.

“Are you guys trying to have a baby?” she asked bluntly.

“Come again?”

“You and Josh. Sorry, was that too direct?”

“I’d say so. Geez.” Her thinking about me and Josh’s sex life made me uncomfortable.

“It’s not my business,” she said, reading my mind. “I just thought, oh, they left New York, she’s in her midthirties, they’ve been married awhile—yadda yadda yadda. Mac and I are never having kids. Too much work, plus how could we travel?”

I put my wineglass down, envious of her unapologetic delivery. She regarded me with a small smile.

“I just wanted to put that out there. Get it out of the way. I know it’s a controversial stance, believe me.”

“No, no. To each his own, Iris. I like the fact that you own it. It’s not easy to do that, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, a lot of people look at us like we’re the devil incarnate when we tell them. But you know, Mac and I were both very clear about the fact that we didn’t want children pretty early into our relationship.” Here, her voice wavered ever so slightly, causing me to wonder if there were tiny cracks in her bravado. “I take it that you and Josh do?”

“Want children?” My throat went dry. “Yes, we do. But we’re not in a huge rush or anything. I’d like to be a little more settled before I hand my body and brain over to someone else.”

“Sure, of course.” She stared at me keenly, as though she knew I wasn’t telling the entire truth. It seemed that we were both suspicious of each other.

“So you two travel a lot?” I asked, fidgeting under her gaze. She answered by going off on a familiar tangent—
Morocco . . . Brazil . . . and wow, this time of year in Paris is our favorite—
as I inhaled both my cheese plate and my wine. The only thing worse than an athletic bragger was a travel bragger. Turned out that she was both.

“So how long have you and Mac been together?” I asked her when she had finished.

“Twelve years.” She smiled broadly. “I was one of his patients initially.”

“Get out! That’s so soap opera-y.”

“I know, isn’t it? Guess there was a plus to my wonky knee after all.”

“Josh and I met at a—”

“Oh my God, I am so sorry to do this, but I really have to go. I’ve got to get these grades posted or else the dean will have my ass. Terrible planning on my part.”

“Oh no, it’s okay.” I watched her stand up and brush invisible crumbs off her flat stomach.

“We have to do this again. Do you and Josh own bikes? The four of us could head up to the mountains one Saturday and ride some trails.”

“Sure,” I lied. “Sounds good.” She gave me a double kiss good-bye—
of course—
and I sat back down as she left. A friendship match it was not, which, in a way, really sucked. She was the only woman my age I had met, or even seen for that matter, thus far. Plus, I sensed more to her stark antiprocreation declaration, which would have been fodder for a true bond if the rest of her wasn’t so off-putting.

Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough of a chance. Then again, the thought of enduring any more humble-bragging, assumed familiarity, and terrible listening skills was enough to make my head throb.

Whatever. I had made it through this day alive, which was no small accomplishment, my recent borderline agoraphobia and aversion to jewelry and Iris considered. Kudos to me.

8

H
e looks like Kate,” I declared, staring at the computer screen.

“How can you say that?” asked Josh. “What about him looks like her?”

“His lips.” I tilted my head. “And his face shape. Totally Kate.”

“Why is everyone so obsessed with which parent the baby looks like? Franklin’s essentially been inside a jug of water for nine months. He looks like a manatee with a hat on.”

“Josh!”

“What are you thinking about?” he asked. Truthfully, I was eyeing Franklin’s swaddled shoulders and wondering about the current state of Kate’s vagina.

“Not much. Just in awe, I guess. I mean, he was inside of her less than twenty-four hours ago, and now he’s not.”

“Tell me about it.” He grabbed the phone. “I’m gonna try to reach Ben again.”

As he dialed, I wandered into the kitchen, reminding myself to breathe. Franklin’s birth had sent my baby anxiety into overdrive. With every text from Ben, from
All systems go!
to
He’s here!,
I’d felt myself holding my breath in the anticipation of Josh’s revitalized vigor for a baby of our own. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head—
Talk to him, Sarah
—but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, especially not now, in the midst of his fraternal excitement.

“No answer again.” Josh came up behind me and massaged my shoulders. “Wow, Sarah, you’re tense.”

“Really? I don’t feel tense,” I lied.

“You sure?” He nuzzled my neck.

“Well, maybe a little.” I dropped my shoulders, surrendering to his touch. “That feels good. More, please.”

Beneath his hands, my neck felt like marble. As he prodded, I imagined the oxygen running through my veins as blue cartoon bubbles, like the ones in those bathroom-cleaner commercials.

“Let’s make love,” Josh whispered. I cringed. The phrase “make love” made me gag, but Josh was one of those rare people who literally meant the words. He refused to, as he said,
adapt his vernacular to suit my immaturity,
so here we were—me reacting like a fourth grader every time, without fail. His hands traveled down my arms, working them as though they were made of dough. It was mind-numbingly pleasurable.

“I don’t have to be at work for a good forty-five minutes. Come on.”

He spun me around slowly and began to kiss me. It felt good. Really good. I couldn’t remember the last time we had had sex. He lifted me up onto the counter. As he unbuttoned my pants and slid them off of me, I tried my best to focus on the undeniable sexiness of the scenario and not the fact that in a short while his sperm would be sprinting toward an open goal. I was off birth control, true, but the odds of his impregnating my thirty-six-year-old self so quickly were slim to none.
Right? Right.

“Are you okay?” asked Josh, pulling away briefly.

“Yes, yes,” I replied, pulling him closer. “Come here.”

And so, we did it, on the kitchen counter, in the middle of the afternoon. With his forehead pressed to my sweaty clavicle afterward, my head was quiet, finally—if just for a moment.

H
ello, Mona. This is the eighth message I have left for you. Under normal circumstances I would panic that you were dead, but since I saw you on Gchat this morning, I know that is not the case. Do you hate me? Seriously. This is getting ridiculous. Oh Christ, here comes another ladybug. I’m killing it now, can you hear me squooshing it? Anyway, for the love of God, call me back! Please?”

I hung up and sighed heavily, from worry about both the state of my relationship with Mona and our home’s apparent ladybug infestation. I was killing them by what felt like the hundreds, and still, there they were.

“Fuck it,” I announced, removing myself from the bedroom and entering what we called the office but was really a storage space for the boxes of books we had yet to unpack, which now, at over a month and a half of living here, was officially unacceptable. I eyed the empty bookcase and grabbed a pair of scissors from the desk drawer, slicing through the biggest box’s tape with gusto.

Out came my self-help library, Josh’s math textbooks, dictionaries of various mono- and bilingual varieties, my thesaurus from high school with my maiden name scrawled in black marker along the pages’ edges, and an old deck of tarot cards with their accompanying guide. I had spent hours with Mona in my early twenties releasing questions into the universe and assembling the cards in various formations that would reveal the answers. These questions almost always pertained to the guys we were dating, or more likely, sleeping with in the hopes of actually dating.

“Why can’t I talk to Josh about my baby issues?” I asked aloud, fanning the cards facedown in front of me. I plucked one from the left-hand side and turned it over. A frazzled woman screaming with her head in her hands looked up at me. Nine of Swords. Or in layman’s terms: fear, guilt, and doubt.

Bingo. When we had first talked about having kids, before we were married, it had been a no-brainer.
Of course we’ll have them. At least two, maybe three.
As the clock ticked on and loomed larger in the process, I had become less enthusiastic, always claiming that work was too busy, that as soon as I got through the next makeup season’s launch, I would go off my birth control.

Josh, remarkably, had never expressed impatience with me—probably because he was just as overwhelmed by the idea of raising said kids in our version of New York. But now that we were here, in Farmwood, with no excuses other than my as-yet-undeveloped need to “find myself,” it was a different story. I didn’t want to let him down, and so, despite the raging inferno of doubt within me, I had thrown out my trusty pack of pills. I just hoped, secretly, that my eggs were as shy as I was about the prospect of procreation.

I gathered the deck back together, re-bound the cards, and placed them reluctantly on the shelf. If I let myself, I could spend all afternoon asking questions I already knew the answers to.

I opened the next box and smiled, recognizing all of my photo albums. Pictures fluttered out of them like sparrows as I pulled them out and piled them on the floor. I opened one to a page of Mona and me on vacation in South Beach. Oh, how young we were! Our moon faces with their caterpillar eyebrows smiled up at me, and I touched Mona’s wild, dark hair with my finger, remembering the trip.

We were twenty-three, no, maybe twenty-five—yes, twenty-five, because we had gotten our tattoos here, at a dirty shop off the main drag. I remembered it like it was yesterday.

We’d spent a day at the beach tanning in the way only twenty-five-year-olds can tan, angling our towels to follow the curve of the sun as the morning turned into afternoon; flipping from front to back at timed intervals; sharing cigarettes, gossip magazines, and outrageously expensive margaritas brought to us by dutiful cabana boys. All day, we’d flexed our manicured feet and considered the prospect of matching (tasteful, of course) navy stars between our big and second toes—mine on my right foot and hers on her left. Finally, after the nine thousandth time we presented the pros and cons of such a venture, Mona had had it.

“Enough already with this! It’s a tattoo, not a mortgage.”

“But both of them are forever,” I had replied, watching her in disbelief as she began to gather her things.

“So what? Let’s go, we’re getting tattoos.”

“We are?”

“Yes, first we’re going to do a shot of tequila each, and then we’re getting tattoos. I can’t talk about it for another second.”

“But what if we hate them?” I had whined, wobbling after her in my margarita-and-sun-induced stupor.

“We won’t.”

“But what if we think they’re cheesy?”

“We might. But we also might not. We’re talking about tiny stars here, Sarah, not ‘Thug Life’ across our shoulder blades. Besides, it’s a story.”

“That is true.” I paused to readjust my bathing suit. “When we’re old and gray and living in Boca together, we can show them off to our grandkids.”

“Exactly. And you might be old and gray, but I plan to be old and fabulous. Like Blanche Devereaux fabulous.”

“Well duh, obviously.”

And so, we had done it. Mona had gone first, lying to the tattoo artist about our alcohol intake with ease, and I had held her hand as she stoically received her permanent South Beach souvenir.

“Does it hurt?” I had asked nervously.

“Like a bitch,” she had replied calmly. And just then, the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends” had wafted from the shop’s speakers.

“You hear that?” I had asked, my mouth agape.

“Yeah,” she had replied with a grin.

“Fate,” I had whispered. I could still hear her laughing at my drunken proclamation. I glanced at my foot now, with its small and faded navy star, and smiled.
Oh, Mona, I miss you.

Outside, a car pulled into the driveway.
Shit. Ray is here
. Time for my driving lesson, of all things. I closed the album and ran to put on my shoes.

I
thought we might try a little lane changing today,” announced Ray as we cruised the neighborhood.

“Already?”

“Sure, why not?”

“But we just started,” I whined. “Can’t we just stick to rights and lefts for a little bit?”

“You serious?”

“Yes.” I rolled up to a stop sign in front of the elementary school.

“Girl, ain’t nothin’ to be scared of. I’m right here with you. You see this brake?” He gestured to the foot pedal underneath his Nike. “I got your back.”

“Ray, I hear you, but I have a lot on my mind today. My focus is off.”

“You think that every time you get behind the wheel your mind is gon’ be clear?” He shook his head. “You trippin’. My head may as well be Seattle for all of its cloudiness. That don’t mean I can’t check my rearview mirror and change a damn lane, Sarah. You’re makin’ this harder than it is.”

“All due respect, Ray—duh. I know that I’m making driving harder than it is. That’s why I’m here.”

“You’re testy today, huh? Go ’head and go around the neighborhood again if you really think you need more of a warm-up. I know better than to argue with a woman when she has that tone to her voice. There’s a reason I’ve been married for twelve years.”

“I don’t have a tone,” I halfheartedly argued. “Well, maybe a little bit of a tone. Like I said, I’m not a hundred percent today.”

“You want to talk about it?” Ray asked.

I glanced over at him. “Ray, you’re already putting your life on the line by getting into the car with me. I don’t want to bore you to death as well.”

“Suit yourself. But I doubt I’ll find it boring. Don’t let the brawn fool you. I’m a sensitive man. And like I said, I’ve been married for twelve years, so maybe I can offer some advice. Trust me, Vanessa and I have been through some shit.”

“It’s not a marriage issue. It’s a friend issue.”

“I got plenty of friends too. Make a left here, we’re goin’ on the main road.”

“The other way? But we’ve never been that way.”

“I think we’re gonna be okay, Sarah, just make a left. I know where we’re goin’.”

“Right, okay. Left. Sorry.”

“So, what’s up with your friend?”

“My best friend. She won’t call me back.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. I’ve been here for nearly two months and haven’t heard from her, despite the fact that I’ve called her a hundred times. I’m hurt.”

“Maybe she’s workin’ through somethin’. Doesn’t feel like talkin’ much at the moment. Make a right here into this park.” A few playground pods dotted a vast expanse of green.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“We’re gonna practice parking. Regular and parallel.”

“Parallel? No way.”

“Man, you are stubborn. I’m in charge, okay, Sarah? Even if you’re terrible at it, ain’t no one around for you to run over.”

“Fine. Sorry.” I drove past the three cars parked at the front of the lot. “And it’s not like her to shut me out. We help each other work through things. We always have. What I think is that she’s over me. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“How long y’all been friends? Go ahead and make a right into that spot right there.”

I turned the wheel abruptly, and glided diagonally in. “Shit,” I grumbled. “And fourteen years, to answer your question.”

“Back it up and straighten your wheels.” I put the car in reverse and took a deep breath before attempting it again. “That’s right. Take it slow and steady. We got an hour to get this right. Take your time.” After wrestling the wheel like it was a pair of Spanx just out of the dryer, I managed to slide between the lines. “Good work, my friend.”

“Do you mind if we take a little break? Just turn the engine off for a minute?” I asked.

“Sure, no problem,” said Ray. “You wanna step out of the car for a second, get some air?”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I answered gratefully. We got out and I leaned against the hood, slowly circling my head to stretch my neck. Its tendons burst into virtual flames as I did so. Ray came around and stood beside me.

“Fourteen years, huh?” he asked. “That’s a long time. Lots of changes to go through together.”

“Exactly. And now, poof. Nada. I don’t understand. For other friends—less important friends—to forget me, that’s perfectly understandable. But this . . . this is different.”