Odd Mom Out (40 page)

I gasp a little at his touch and grab the ends of his hair, tug on them, before covering his mouth with mine.

I feel like a savage, but as he strips the clothes from me, he seems just as fierce and hungry.

Making love is wild. When he enters me, I’m not even properly on the bed, but somehow it’s right. Everything about being together is right, as long as we are together.

It’s the being apart that’s getting hard.

Luke leaves at midnight, and I stand beneath the hot, steamy spray of the shower.

I won’t see him again for at least ten days. He’s heading in the morning for Europe, and this is what he does. He’s on the road more than he’s home.

I touch my breast, still feeling the imprint of his hand on my skin. Ten days until he touches me again. Ten days until I see his blue eyes again.

After turning off the shower, I grab my towel and press the terry cloth to my face. Even if I wanted to see Luke more, I couldn’t.

And that thought somehow fills me with despair.

Luke calls me Tuesday noon from Hamburg. It’s evening there, and he’s just wrapped up a day of meetings. “How are you?” he asks.

“Good,” I answer, taking the phone and heading from the studio outside so I can have some privacy. “How about you?”

“Long day, but productive.”

“Good.”

His voice drops. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

I wrap one arm across my chest. “I feel the same way.”

“Ten days is too long.”

“I agree.”

“Come see me.”

I laugh. “Can’t. I have a business to run. Come home.”

“Can’t. Have a business to run.”

I laugh again. So does he. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says.

“You don’t have to.”

Luke makes an exasperated sound. “I know I don’t have to. I
want
to.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

“You too.”

The rest of the afternoon passes, and before long it’s six o’clock Tuesday night and we’re all still buried in the studio, even Susan, and she’s got three kids at home waiting for her.

“Susan, get out of here,” I tell her, rubbing a knot at the base of my neck. I’m currently on hold with Gord from Jet City—he’s going to round up his partner to continue our unhappy conference call.

Jet City Coffee feels as if we’re dropping the ball. We’re not as creative or responsive as we used to be. They’re not getting phone calls returned. They don’t like the numbers on their last ad campaign. And frankly, they’re beginning to think it’s time they moved to another agency, one with fresh ideas and new blood.

Susan does eventually leave, but Allie, Chris, Robert, and I remain to finish the conference call.

By the time the call ends, it’s seven and Eva’s curled up in a bean bag chair that she’s brought from the house, reading a book.

“That was a long call,” she says.

“Tell me about it.” I look over her head at my exhausted team. They all are grim and gray. There’s no way anyone’s in the right mind frame to discuss the call tonight. “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I tell them.

Nodding and muttering good-byes, they grab their coats and go.

Eva watches everyone leave and then looks at me. I smile tiredly down at her and then stoop to give her a kiss. “You must be starving,” I say.

She shrugs. “I made myself a peanut-butter sandwich.”

“Good for you.”

She reaches up, touches my hair and then my face. Her dark hair curls in little wisps around her face. “Mom, I know you’re tired and you’ve just had a really bad conference call, and I don’t want to bother you . . .”

Eva reminds me of Natalie Portman right now with her big dark eyes and pixie cut. “What, baby?”

“Tomorrow’s Halloween, and Phoebe’s party,” she blurts out. “And we never got me a costume.”

Oh,
shit.

We head out immediately to Redmond to look at mermaid costumes, princess costumes, cowgirl and Native American costumes. We look at scary, gory, bloody, pretty, charming, classic, silly.

As we shop at the cavernous Halloween Outlet, I catch a glimpse of my image in one of the tall, skinny mirrors and hardly recognize myself. I still feel so young, yet right now I look disturbingly middle age, with shadows under my eyes and creases at the corners and pinched lips that look as if they could use some collagen.

Suddenly, I remember the older ladies I saw at Tully’s and how each looked so stretched and pulled and tucked. I remember how I vowed I’d never do that, never chop me up and pull me back together again, but I don’t want to look old, either. Don’t want to look . . . beaten.

And maybe that’s how those older ladies ended up getting all that work done. Maybe one day they looked into the mirror and they didn’t recognize the face they saw anymore. Maybe one day the face in the mirror wasn’t familiar.

Last year, Shey told me a story about aging and our faces. She said she and her mom were talking, and Shey said on the inside she still felt thirty, and her mom laughed and said that was good, because she only felt like forty.

Perhaps that’s the difficulty with aging gracefully. Our hearts don’t age, yet the rest of us does.

Which sends us to the doctors in search of miracles, drugs, and cures. Nips and tucks and little fixes. A bit of Botox here, a touch of filler there. Yet no matter how little or much we do, we can’t ever stop time, so in the end we must make peace with the little girl inside us, the one that doesn’t want to grow up, or age, or ever die.

“There,” Eva says, plopping a witch’s hat on my head. “Now you look like that lady. Morticia. The mom from
The Addams Family.
”

If I recall, Morticia didn’t exactly look young. In fact, I thought she was downright old. But I don’t say any of that to Eva. I just pat her head and murmur, “Isn’t that fantastic?” even as I wonder what time Luke will call tomorrow from Hamburg. Will it be day or night?

The next day, I’m so buried with work that I totally forget I’m supposed to be helping with Eva’s class Halloween party until she calls me at one-forty.

“Where are you?” she whispers tearfully into the phone. “Everyone’s here but you, and you’re in charge of the drinks.”

“What?”

“The
drinks.
Mrs. Young said you volunteered to bring the drinks today, and we have our cupcakes and popcorn and treats, but there’s nothing to drink and everyone’s sitting around with an empty cup and Mrs. Young is mad.”

Frankly, I’m more worried about Eva’s feelings than Taylor Young’s, and right now, I can’t believe I’ve let her down. Again. Things are just so stressful right now. It’s like I can’t get a break and can’t catch my breath.

“Give me two minutes,” I say. “I’ll be right there. Okay? Two minutes. I promise, baby.”

As I hang up, everyone looks at me. “You going somewhere again?” Chris asks flatly.

“Eva’s class party. I’m in charge of the drinks.”

“What about the Ewes and Lambs call?” he asks pointedly, placing his hands on top of his head. “What do I tell them now?”

“That I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Marta. This is a business.”

“Yeah, Chris, I know it’s a business because this is how I pay for my house and my car and my groceries.” I yank on my coat, nod at the others, my jaw flexed. “I’ll be back soon.”

I grab whatever sodas we have in the refrigerator in the garage—a case of 7Up, a case of Coke, a case of A&W root beer—load them in the truck, and head up to school in a pouring rain.

I stack the sodas and carry them, three cases high, through the school to Eva’s classroom in the fourth-grade wing.

Eva’s delighted to see me, but Taylor Young pulls me aside and tightly asks me what I plan on doing with the “soda pop.”

I rip open one of the cartons and look at her. “The soda pop is for the kids’ party.” I smile with lots of teeth to show I’m not in the mood for her fun and games right now.

“Do you really think the kids need more sugar now?”

I turn and face her, one hand still resting on the soda boxes. “Do you think they needed all the cupcakes and treats, Taylor?”

She folds her arms, her chin lifting righteously. “They always have treats for Halloween.”

“Fabulous! And now they’re having another.” I turn my back on her and see a boy getting a drink from the water faucet near me. “Would you mind helping me pass these out?” I ask him, dropping the case of root beer into his arms.

As he heads off, Eva comes running, and I give her the 7Up cans. Another girl shyly asks if she can help, and I hand over the Cokes.

There. Mission completed. I find Eva, tell her I’ve got to get home, to have fun and I’ll see her later. Grabbing my keys, I’m out of there.

Who said working moms can’t do it all?

I’m away from the studio for the Halloween class party for maybe twenty, thirty minutes total, but when I get back to the studio, Chris is gone, and Allie, Susan, and Robert look at me gray faced.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, dropping my coat on my chair and turning to face the others.

Allie shakes her head. Robert shuffles the papers around on his desk before clearing his throat. “Chris quit,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

It’s that gob-smacked feeling again. Crazy, disorienting, off-kilter. I sit down heavily, my hands falling to my knees. “Quit?”

“He said he couldn’t work here like this.” Allie’s voice is small.

“Is it that bad?” I ask, leaning back in my chair, my gaze moving from one face to the other.

“No,” Susan says loudly, briskly, from her desk across the room. She lives surrounded by copiers, faxes, printers, and filing cabinets. “It’s not bad at all. This is just life, and Chris isn’t living in reality.”

I’d smile if I weren’t so stunned, and sad. Chris is a huge part of this company. A big part of what I do.

Sitting at my desk, I pick up the phone. I hear the beep that says I have a voice mail on my personal line and check messages. Luke called. He said it’s late there in Germany and he’s going to bed, but he wishes me a Happy Halloween and will try again tomorrow.

Chapter Twenty-Two

With Chris gone, I start having to travel to New York for the Trident meetings. They’d said travel would be minimal, maybe a few days every month, but it’s not even December yet and I’ve already been to New York twice, for a total of a week.

The first trip to New York, Susan had Eva stay with her for the Friday and Saturday I was gone. The second time, November 12 through 14, my dad and Allie juggled Eva between them. Eva wasn’t thrilled with living out of her backpack, but I promised her that I was trying to hire someone new to fill Chris’s position, and as soon as I had someone new, I wouldn’t have to travel anymore.

But filling Chris’s shoes is harder than I anticipated. One, he was really good. Two, apparently my team is working as slave labor. No one with a good résumé is interested in what I’d pay.

The third weekend in November is dark and gray and rainy. I’m home this weekend but working, and when Eva asks if Jill can come to our house for a sleepover, I readily agree. I’ve got so much to do that if Eva’s occupied, I can work without feeling as guilty.

Now Jill stands on our doorstep with her sleeping bag clutched beneath one arm and her pillow under the other. “Am I too early?” she chirps. Jill’s a small, round-faced girl with apple cheeks, dense dark eyelashes, and light brown eyebrows that arch delicately over startling blue eyes.

“Nope,” I answer with a smile.

Jill smiles back before bounding into the house.

The rain is pelting down as I walk outside to the car, where Lori’s trying to calm her youngest so she can make it to the door to greet me.

“Hi,” I say, leaning down to wave at the preschooler in the backseat. The boy stares at me and then bursts into tears all over again.

“He wants to join the sleepover,” Lori says apologetically.

I bend down again and look at three-and-a-half-year-old Mike. He’s cute. He looks just like his big sister. “Mike, it’s just girls. It’s not going to be that much fun.”

But Mike only cries harder.

“You’re getting wet,” Lori says, sliding regretfully behind the wheel. “And I better go. I’ve got to be at the restaurant by five. We don’t have a cashier tonight, so I’m working.”

“What about Mikey?”

“He’s going to his aunt’s house.”

“Do you want me to watch him?”

Lori looks over her shoulder, monitors the ear-splitting tantrum for a moment, then turns back to me. “No. And you don’t want to watch him, either.” With a cheerful wave, she’s off.

Luke comes over later after he arrives back in Seattle following a week-long trip to Dallas, Raleigh-Durham, and Boston, that trip coming only three days after the ten-day trip to Germany. We’ve been apart far more than we’ve been together, but every time Luke walks through the door I’m absolutely thrilled to see him.

The girls and I went out earlier for Chinese, and Luke now stands in my kitchen eating the leftovers straight from the white cartons.