Shop and Let Die (16 page)

“
Parking is quite an
adventure tonight, isn’t it?” He stood for me. “I’m Drew, and this
is Dierdre.” His wife smiled politely at me.

“
The Playhouse is doing
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” I told him, as if he might not have
noticed the advertising on both sides of the road and the brightly
lit marquee across the street. “Seth and I want to see it, but we
haven’t had the time.” This was not true, and I’m not exactly sure
why I said it.

The assessing gray eyes
that focused on me seemed to require that I be the artsy type.
Which I am. But not the play type. That would cost
money.

Seth did not see the point
in paying fifty dollars or more to sit and watch a less than
professional troupe put on a play. Especially since Ryan was not
one to sit quietly through two hours of people walking around on a
stage talking, and Anna would only have her hands clapped to her
ears the whole time because the orchestra would be “too
loud.”

“
Please, have a seat.” He
pulled out my chair and gestured with an elegantly old world wave
of his hand.

“
Thank you.” I said,
although I would have preferred to ask him to back away. There is
nothing I hate worse than trying to gracefully get into a chair
when someone is holding it for me. The delicate balancing act of
not plopping my full weight down too soon—or too late—was not one
of the skills I possessed.

Seth strode in as I picked
up my napkin and smoothed it across my lap, desperate for a topic
of conversation that would not make me sound like a babbling idiot.
In the good old days, a faculty member’s wife could wreck his
career if she was an unpolished motor mouth.

Fortunately, times had
changed and I didn’t think I would ruin Seth’s chances for an
appointment unless I did something truly horrendous like drink the
wine straight from the bottle and burp out the theme from “Animal
House.” Good thing “Animal House” wasn’t a favorite movie of mine,
though Seth inexplicably found it so funny that he had the extra
scenes DVD.

“
I see you’ve met my
wife.” Seth, predictably, had become all hearty smiles and
handshakes. Every sign of the impatient driver and the angry
husband had disappeared. He likes to think of himself as a
happy-go-lucky guy. And he can be—if everything is going his way.
If not. Well…look out for Seth of the thousand bitter
complaints…all of which result from someone else’s error, of
course. Seth does not make mistakes.

The Dean had stood up to
shake Seth’s hand and introduce his wife, Dierdre. He settled
himself in his seat again as he said, “I have, although she still
hasn’t told me her name.”

I tried not to blush. It’s
embarrassing at my age to blush every time someone points out
exactly how socially inept I am. I remember Donna Sommers, the
manager at the Superior Mart, again. When she’d blushed, her
freckles had darkened. I wondered if mine did?

I’m sure the gentleman
dean would have happily fallen on his sword if he knew how
humiliated I was at his comment. Do gentlemen fall on their swords?
Was that the Romans or the Japanese? Certainly not the Europeans.
They preferred a nice neat pistol shot to the temple. Something I’d
have liked to do to relieve the pressure of the blood that was
coursing up to my head and squeezing my brain into an incoherent
mess.

“
Molly.” I didn’t look at
Seth. He would be mad. Not that anyone else would notice. It was
the kind of mad vibe that only a husband and wife can send to each
other—specially programmed for the spouse and masked from the radar
of general folks.

Although sometimes I’ve
picked up on these signals between other couples—but only when I’m
acutely sensitive to them. Such as right then, when I picked up on
a signal from the dean’s wife—whose name I had forgotten—to her
husband.

He said, “Molly says you
two haven’t yet had the time to see ‘Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern’.” He reached into his breast pocket, “Dierdre and I
have extra tickets, if you’d like them.” He held out the tickets to
Seth. Dierdre nodded at me, although her hand went to his and I
picked up on a little signal of approval pass from her to him. I
remembered when Seth and I could do that. I don’t know when we lost
the ability, but it had been on the blink for a while.

Seth blinked, but didn’t
hesitate to back up my lie. He took the tickets and said, “That
would be wonderful. We’ve been meaning to arrange for an evening of
theater.”

He pocketed the tickets. I
wondered if he should offer to pay for them, but he didn’t. I don’t
know the social etiquette of such situations, so I said
nothing.

He settled into his seat
and picked up the menu. “I’m sorry we kept you waiting. Molly had
some difficulty lining up a babysitter. If parking hadn’t been so
tight, though, we would have been just in time.”

I hate being the
scapegoat. But it appears to be my place on the team whenever we’re
late (which I have to admit is rare—we’re both fairly obsessed with
not making others wait for us…and impatient when delayed by those
with laissez-faire attitudes).

“
Of course. I should have
suggested 8:00 as a better time, considering you have young
children. Mine, fortunately, are grown and can take care of
themselves.”

“
I can’t even picture
those days right now.” I pictured, instead, the tow headed twins in
their stroller at the museum. Gratitude flashed through me that
mine were, if not grown, at least not toddlers any
longer.

“
Just wait. It’s heaven
not to have to organize for an army whenever you leave the house.”
Dierdre said, and I suddenly liked her very much. “Mitch was such a
little terror with his chemistry experiments that we had a limited
selection of babysitters with the courage to watch him.”

The dean wore a proud papa
smile. “Of course, now that he’s doing research at MIT, those genes
are much more appreciated.”

Deirdre shuddered
delicately, “At least he has a well equipped lab now, with a hood
and a fire extinguisher. My kitchen was simply not the place for
those explosive concoctions of his. You can’t imagine how many pots
and pans he melted or destroyed.”

I couldn’t tell if she was
exaggerating, but I had a feeling if she was, it wasn’t by much.
The competitive streak kicked in and I kicked back. So what if she
let her son wreck her kitchen with chemistry experiments and now
he’s a successful research chemist? That didn’t mean that Ryan
couldn’t be a veterinarian just because I didn’t let him get a
dog.

Seth laughed. “I’m sure
his wife is glad he’s got a lab to play in, too.”

“
Oh, he’s not married,
yet. Drew teases him that he’s trying to cook up the perfect woman
in his lab.”

I had swigged down my
glass of wine, forgetting that I hadn’t had anything to eat all day
because I’d been busy. So it seemed perfectly reasonable to say, “I
can’t imagine what any man would cook up as the perfect woman.
Probably someone with four breasts, six hands, and an innate
inability to nag or find fault.”

Oops. Apparently that was
one of my patented awkward comments, judging by the sudden silence
that had fallen at the table.

“
Molly’s a bit
unconventional in her beliefs,” Seth apologized. Doing the only
thing worse than me sticking my foot in my mouth—him trying to
smooth over my my gaffe. I buttered a hot roll and ate it without
looking up. The buzzing in my head eased a bit. Bread soaks up
wine. Good. I buttered another roll, throwing away all low-carb
eating plans.

Deirdre came to the rescue
again. “I can understand. The world might be a much different place
run by women.”

I hadn’t had enough bread,
because that made me laugh. “There’d be more flexible schedules,
for one. But could you imagine the nagging? ‘John, I appreciate
your attempts to write those equations on the board, but you simply
must learn to wipe the chalk dust from your sleeves if you ever
wish to advance.”

We all laughed, even Seth,
at the same time he kicked me under the table. I hadn’t thought I’d
said anything too horrible, after all Deirdre and Drew had both
laughed. But then I realized how closely I’d skated to the issue at
hand—the one, which was not to be mentioned. Seth’s potential
appointment.

Dierdre showed her years
of experience by offering me the basket of rolls. She looked at me
with such empathy, I was totally unprepared when she asked the
question I had successfully dodged from Museum Mom. “Speaking of
work, what do you do, Molly?”

I looked around for a
convenient toddler to start throwing a tantrum and rescue me. But
the Pearl Onion wasn’t that kind of restaurant. Maybe the waiter
would throw a tantrum if I asked for ketchup. But I didn’t want any
ketchup. I just wanted to go home.

“
I’m a stay-at-home mom.”
I tucked Domestic Goddess away as a poor choice, given the way the
evening was going. I knew better than to say mystery
shopper.

Dierdre’s polite smile
slipped infinitesimally, but quickly turned into a hearty, “How
wonderful. So few women can manage that nowadays. But it’s so
wonderful for the children.”

The dean was more
effusive. “Yes, Dierdre stayed home with our sons until the younger
boy went to kindergarten.”

There was an awkward
silence where everyone acknowledged that the boring subject of
staying at home with the children had been exhausted but no one
knew where to go from there. My next question seemed inevitable,
despite the fact I really didn’t want to know. “And what do you do
now?”

Dierdre fluttered her
hands, as if she didn’t want me to think too much of her answer.
“I’m a heart surgeon.”

“
It must be wonderful to
have people’s lives in your hands and know you can make such a
difference with the job you do.” At least she wasn’t a brain
surgeon.

“
You have your children’s
lives in your hands,” she said quickly. Which was her way of
pointing out that her job was lightyears better than mine—even
though the men didn’t catch on. Why is it that women have to one up
each other by bringing themselves down one notch? It’s truly
depressing to know that even heart surgeons do it.

And I blame my answer on
the second glass of wine. “Oh, throw them a few chicken wings and a
bottle of soda and they’d be fine watching TV without
me.”

This time when Seth kicked
me under the table, I kicked him back.

He winced and said
heartily, “Molly is on the job hunt, as it happens. With the kids
in school full-time, she’s looking for something meaningful to do
with her day.”

“
Oh. What would you like
to do?” Deirdre asked, as if Seth had thrown her a much needed
conversational lifeline.

Fortunately, a new bottle
of wine came just then and I managed to make like a mystery
shopper—this time one who remains mysteriously silent and invisibly
observant as Seth explained what I used to do and conveniently left
out my current “hobby.” Better than my first impulse—to break down
and plead with the dean to give Seth the appointment so I never had
to go out in public and answer “the question” again.

The Pearl Onion’s crème
caramel was excellent, even if I, personally, sucked.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Time to Transform

I was in a funk the next day, with a lingering
sense of total suckitude I could not shake. Even the power bra was
not powerful enough to pull me out of this funk.

Things only got worse as
the day progressed, when I broke my iron clad rule, and took the
girls with me to the mall for a quick shop. Besides the fact that
Anna was on high alert for any sign of the serial killer, the shop
instructions explicitly stated to shop alone.

I installed them at a
table across from the store with two of those big soft pretzels,
two milkshakes and strict instructions. “Stay put.”

“
What if we see the serial
killer?” Anna asked, looking around her like a budding master
spy.

“
You come running to me
right away,” I said, hoping no suspicious person came into the food
court in the next fifteen minutes.

“
What if I don’t see
you?”

I looked around, noticing
for the first time that there were three security guards, in
uniform, posted at the various entrances to the food court. “Then
run to one of the security guards.”

Anna nodded. “Okay. I
guess none of them is the serial killer.”

“
Absolutely not. The mall
does background checks.” At least, I hoped they did.

It was a small store, only
two employees and big windows so that the girls were always
visible—unless I had to bend down to see whether the bottom shelves
were well stocked. Which I did, under the pretense of tying my
shoes (I wore sneakers to this kind of shop for just this
reason).

You’d be amazed at what
you’d find in those bottom shelves. Discarded chewing gum, candy
wrappers, half finished soda bottles—sometimes with caps screwed
on, sometimes without. I’d once found a men’s magazine—centerfold
up.