Mommy Tracked (17 page)

nine

Grace

T
he turnout for
the March meeting of Mothers Coming Together was the best ever. Grace stood in the back of Tapas and looked out over the crowd of women, which included at least a half dozen faces she hadn’t seen before. Membership had picked up briskly after the blow-job seminar. Apparently, all it took to drum up interest in MCT was one woman with a bag full of dildos. And tonight was going to be even better. Or, at least, it would be if she could shake her headache. Grace pressed her fingers against her temples and willed the dull ache away.

“Excuse me, are you Grace Weaver?”

Grace looked up blearily at a woman standing in front of her.

Thinner than me
.
Thinner
and
younger.

In fact, the woman was quite young, with light-blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail, glossy pink lips, and funky black plastic glasses. She was wearing a white lab coat over a slip dress and was pulling a metal suitcase on wheels behind her.

“Yes, I’m Grace. Are you Ivy?”

The woman nodded and chewed on a wad of gum. She looked like she was about fifteen years old. Grace stared at her doubtfully.

“Do you have a lot of, um, experience with this sort of thing?”

“Waxing parties? Uh-huh. I’ve done, like, tons.”

“Oh, good. I should warn you: This is a surprise,” Grace said, leaning forward and whispering so that she wouldn’t be heard. “It may take the group a little time to get used to the idea of getting a bikini wax in front of everyone.”

“Oh, yeah. It always does. It helps when people have a chance to down a few drinks before I start waxing them.”

“Where are you going to set up?” Grace asked, with a sudden not-so-pleasant vision of having to stand up in front of an audience of half-naked women with wax dripping off their genitals. Or, even worse, having everyone see
her
without her skirt on.

No way. No one is going to see my thighs
, she thought, with no small amount of panic. She was starting to realize that she hadn’t thought this idea through.

Ivy glanced around the restaurant’s banquet room. “Hmmm. Well, I usually set up in a separate room, for privacy and stuff, but you don’t have one here. So I guess I’ll just hang a sheet in the back corner of the room. Once I’m set up, you guys can just, like, take turns coming back. I’m booked for two hours, so I’ll wax as many of you as I can during that time,” she said, tossing her ponytail back.

“Great. Let me know if you need anything,” Grace said.

Ivy wheeled her suitcase off to the back corner of the room and busied herself setting up the white privacy drape she’d brought with her—a portable version of the ones hospitals use—and getting out her waxing paraphernalia. The moms, noticing that something was up, abandoned the platters of tapas and hurried to their chairs, wineglasses in hand. Everyone was seated and looking up at Grace expectantly by the time she reached the front of the room and set her notes down on the lectern. She wasn’t as nervous about speaking in front of everyone this time, although a jolt of adrenaline did shoot through her when she felt everyone’s brightly interested eyes focusing on her.

“Hi, everyone, thank you all for coming. At tonight’s meeting, we need to brainstorm ideas for our new fund-raising project. We’re going to hopefully raise enough money for the Starfish House—which, as you all know, is a shelter for abused women and children—to redecorate the common rooms. Right now the living areas are depressing, to put it mildly. So we want to help them create a more pleasant, soothing environment to live in. And while you’re all thinking up fund-raising ideas, I have a little surprise for you. In the past, we’ve gotten some feedback that many of you would like to see your membership dues go toward doing something fun. So at tonight’s meeting…we’re having a waxing party!” Grace paused while the women reacted to this news. There were exclamations of surprise and a tittering of nervous laughter. Grace waited a few beats and then continued, raising her voice to be heard above the excited buzz. “I’d like to introduce you to Ivy.”

Grace gestured toward the back corner of the room, where Ivy had finished setting up and was now standing with her hands clasped behind her back. When everyone turned to stare at her, Ivy waggled her fingers in a wave and smiled.

“Ivy’s an aesthetician. She’ll be waxing anyone who’s up for it back there behind the white curtain while we hold our meeting. So if any of you are interested in getting waxed, Ivy’s your go-to girl,” Grace continued.

“What kind of waxing do you do?” Jessica Swanson called out.

“You know. Pretty much everything. Standard bikini, Brazilian—I can even do shapes, if you want,” Ivy said. “Like hearts and letters and stuff.”

“You mean shapes in your…pubic hair?” Rachel Baum ventured.

“Uh-huh. Whatever you want. Well, almost anything. I used to do monograms, but it takes too long to get all of the initials to overlap,” she said.

“So how do you want to handle it, Ivy? Should we do a sign-up sheet or have those who are interested line up?” Grace asked brightly.

“Whatever.” Ivy shrugged. Clearly, she was not going to take it upon herself to impose an order to the project. “But whoever’s going first, come on back. The wax should be, like, hot enough by now.”

Ivy disappeared behind her white privacy curtain, and there was another wave of nervous laughter. For a minute it looked like no one was going to take Ivy up on her offer. But then Nadia Cohen stood up.

“I’m not going to pass up a free wax job,” Nadia said with spunk. “I’ll go first.”

Some of the mothers cheered for her as she marched to the back of the room. A few others stood and followed her back, forming a short line.

Who knew there were so many women interested in getting their pubic hair shaped into four-leaf clovers?
Grace thought. She smiled. Maybe this would go over even better than the sexpert. And she’d be remembered as Grace Weaver, the hippest president in the history of MCT. Maybe she’d even be invited to speak at the national meeting on how to liven up meetings and increase membership.

“Okay, so let’s get started with our brainstorming ideas for the fund-raiser. We’ll have only three months to plan and execute the fund-raiser, so we can’t get too elaborate. But I think we can come up with something a bit more creative than a bake sale or jumble. One of my ideas was—” Grace began.

She was interrupted by a sudden loud ripping sound from the back of the room. Everyone turned in their seats, necks craning as they looked back at the curtained corner.

“Ouch!” Nadia yipped.

Grace cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Um…to have a charity luncheon. Maybe one of the local department stores would even host it for us and put on a fashion show. I know that Saks sometimes does events like that.”

“That’s a great idea,” Anna said supportively, and Grace smiled at her. “We could have door prizes.”

“It sounds expensive,” Kari Clem said.

There was another loud rip. This time, Nadia let loose with an expletive.

“Um…” Grace was momentarily distracted.
What’s happening back there?
“Ah…well, we’d sell tickets. If we sold enough, we should be able to cover the costs plus clear a nice profit.”

Ivy’s curtain suddenly snapped open, and Nadia shuffled out, walking with her legs spread unnaturally far apart. She looked like a crab scuttling down the beach.

“That woman is a sadist,” Nadia said, not bothering to lower her voice.

“Next,” Ivy barked.

Kelsey Jennings, who was at the front of the line, flinched visibly and then went reluctantly behind the curtain.

“Take your pants off,” Ivy said loudly, her voice carrying clear across the room. “How much do you, like, want to have taken off?”

Kelsey murmured her reply.

“Yeah, that’s what we call the landing strip. Basically everything comes off but, you know, a thin line right here at the top.”

Everyone in the room winced, and three of the women who were standing in line returned to their seats.

“Um, so back to the luncheon. I’ll need volunteers, of course, especially if there are any marketing or advertising whizzes out there,” Grace said gamely, trying to focus on the business at hand. But no one was paying any attention to her, especially when there was another set of loud ripping sounds, accompanied by Kelsey’s sharp exclamations of pain.

“Ow!” she squeaked.
Rip
. “Oh, dear God…Eep!”

“What is she doing to Kelsey?” Liza Green asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m not about to find out,” Sarah Dunn replied with a grimace.

“I’ve never had a waxing hurt that much,” Nadia announced. “I think she took off a few layers of skin along with the hair. Seriously. I may have to go to the ER after this.”

Grace rolled her eyes. Nadia Cohen had always been a drama queen. But even so, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

“So, uh…back to the fund-raiser?” Grace suggested hopefully.

“It was a total nightmare,” Grace said the next day. Louis was driving her minivan, and Grace sat in the passenger seat, her bare feet propped up on the dashboard.

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Louis said.

“It was that bad. It was humiliating. Britt Howard—do you know her? She’s sort of mousy with really short man hair?—got a second-degree burn on her thighs. God, I hope she doesn’t sue.”

“Is she a lesbian?”

“Who? Britt? No. Actually, I’m not sure. She’s never mentioned it. Why?”

“The man hair.”

“Mom, what’s a lesbian?” Molly asked. Molly and Hannah were strapped into their car seats in the backseat of the minivan, listening to a Hilary Duff CD on headphones, but they always seemed to develop bionic hearing at the least opportune times.

“Um…a lesbian is a woman who likes other women,” Grace said. Louis snorted, and Grace shot him a look. “You want to explain it to her?” she hissed at him.

“No, you’re doing just fine,” he said, his mouth twitching with amusement.

“You mean, like I like Sasha?” Molly persisted. Sasha was Molly’s best friend.

“No, not quite. It’s more like…like how Mommy likes Daddy. How married people like each other,” Grace explained.

Molly went silent, and Grace hoped that she’d lost interest in the discussion.

“So, you mean, I could marry Sasha?” Molly asked.

“Well…,” Grace began, not sure exactly how she was going to explain the politics of same-sex marriages to a five-year-old.

“I want to marry Izzy and Emma,” Hannah piped in. She worshipped the Cole twins, who were a whole year older than her and already knew how to swim without water wings.

“Good job clearing that up, honey,” Louis said, snickering.

“But then who would get to be the bride and wear the fancy white dress?” Molly said, frowning. She had a way of putting her finger on an issue.

“We all would,” Hannah said dreamily. “Me, and Emma, and Izzy. We’d all wear princess dresses, like Cinderella wears.”

“You can’t,” Molly said, with the certainty of one who’s halfway through kindergarten. “There can only be one bride in a wedding.”

“There can too be more than one! Mommy just said!” Hannah said.

“There can
not
.”

“Can too!”

“Can not!”

“I probably could have handled that better,” Grace said.

“Live and learn,” Louis said.

Grace looked out the window. They were driving through the front gates of the subdivision. A big sign that read

WHISPERING OAKS

hung over a decorative fountain.
Just what the hell is a whispering oak anyway?
Grace wondered. Louis stopped and gave their name to the guard, who—after taking an unnecessarily long time to check that, yes, they were on the approved list of visitors—raised the security bar and allowed them to enter.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Grace asked softly, so that only Louis could hear.

“Because they’re your parents, and if we don’t show up with their grandkids every few months they start threatening to visit us,” Louis reminded her, as he drove into the subdivision and turned onto her father and Alice’s street.

“Not my parents,” Grace reminded him. “My father and stepmother.”

Alice and Victor Fowler lived just outside Orlando, in a gated golf-course community. They’d moved there three years earlier, after Victor retired from his medical practice in Orange Cove. The reason for the move: Mark, Alice’s son. He lived in Orlando with his bitchy wife and their two sociopathic children.

“Now we’ll be able to see the grandchildren every day!” Alice had told Grace, after announcing they were moving.

Grace had bit back the obvious observation—that the move would actually take Victor away from
his
biological grandchildren—but what was the point? Alice always got her way.

The grounds at Whispering Oaks were impeccably kept by a crew of vigilant landscapers. Hibiscus trees stood in precise rows, each covered with enormous red flowers. Ornamental grasses were planted in neat clusters, surrounded by bunches of purple queen. The grass was lush and even. Retirees dressed in pastel golfing clothes were zipping around in golf carts, stopping to chat or wave their hats at one another.

“It’s like a whole other world here,” Grace mused. “Everything’s so…perfect. So neat. So unspoiled.”

“Unspoiled?” Louis looked amused. “Every last inch of this place has been landscaped into submission.”

“You know what I mean. People here don’t have to worry about anything,” Grace said wistfully.

Louis snorted. “Except for cirrhosis and heart disease.”

As soon as Louis pulled into the driveway, Hannah and Molly started to shriek with excitement.

“Nana! Papa!” they yelled out. Molly unhooked the straps of her booster seat and hopped up before the car came to a complete stop.

“Molly,” Grace said in warning voice. “What have I told you about getting out of your seat before we park?”