Shop and Let Die (18 page)

I also realized that, in
their own way, the people on this site were all trying to change,
too. To pair off instead of being Type A loners. Except for the
trolls, the ones who were trying to game the dating system. The
ones I was supposed to look out for with my mystery shopping
spydar.

I looked at the clock. Ten
a.m. The daily reports were due by noon. There hadn’t been time to
check last night, so I needed to report in this morning, with or
without Seth’s help.

My eyes were drawn to
another message from Hammond. “I’d like to meet. I know this
wonderful bookshop in the mall. We could browse there, and
recommend books to each other first, then take our finds to a table
in the corner and share a pot of tea as we talk.”

The idea sounded heavenly,
and definitely fell within the sites rules, as we had exchanged
email now for the prescribed two weeks. If Serena had been a real
client, it would have been fine for her to say yes. As this was a
shop, I needed to find a way to break it off with Hammond without
letting him know he’d been catfished by a mystery shopping
ringer.

I liked getting his
emails, though. Compared to the rest of the guys who were
cyber-courting my made-up persona, Hammond was the one who seemed
less into himself and more into Serena.

I decided not to break his
heart just yet. The assignment was almost over; I could do it then.
“I’m staying away from the mall until the serial killer is caught,
I’m afraid.”

His reply came in before I
had finished my daily report on the creeps and stalkery guys.
“Don’t you trust me to keep you safe?”

“
Better safe than sorry,”
I sent back, hoping to put him off with a limp dishrag of a
cliche.

“
That’s one of the reasons
I’m looking for my soulmate at last,” he replied. “I am finally in
the position to offer a woman safety, and adventure. And books.
LOL.”

I closed my eyes and
imagined a life with Hammond. All the books I could buy, and the
bookshelves to hold them. Trips to Paris, like Bianca and her
husband took. Seth and I tried to keep vacations local, to stay
within our budget. There were lots of free things to see and do in
Maine. But sometimes I wished we could visit the ruins of Rome, or
the Tower of London. That would be a change that would be easy to
make, if I had the money to pay for it.

I opened my eyes and shook
my head. That kind of thinking was dangerous. I needed to change,
but not dump everything that mattered for a whole new
life.

I decided it would be
better to leave that message alone until I could think of a
disarming answer suitable to the single and successful Serena, not
the change-worthy aspiring-supermom Molly. Was Serena looking for
safety? Maybe.

As I wrote up my report,
turning in another three guys who had managed to break one of the
six rules in their very first post, I realized I was just like
them. I wanted everything my way.

I didn’t really want to
change for the world. I wanted the world to change for
me.

Change is hard. I see that
every time I do a mystery shop. No matter how many places a
merchant plasters the procedures, employees still do it their own
way. Even knowing they could lose out on a gift certificate, or a
bonus, or even get fired, they resist changing their habits. Human
nature, I guess.

Of course, it didn’t
matter that I did not want to change. My family was counting on me.
I needed to change. I just had to figure out how.

And then, right as I
turned the dishwasher on, my phone rang. My house phone. I waited
for the answering machine to pick up, wondering if it would be
politics or sales. A calm, cultured voice began to speak, “Good
morning, Molly, Dierdre here. It was so nice to have dinner with
you and Seth. I wondered if you might like to get together for
coffee, just the two of us. Drew thinks so highly of Seth, I’d love
to get to know you better.”

I dropped the potholder
I’d been shoving back into an overstuffed kitchen drawer and bolted
toward the phone.

“
Hi. Hello?” My mind was
racing. This call could only mean that Seth was seriously being
considered for the job of Assistant Dean. And that I could ruin it
for him if I listened to the instinctive voice screaming “No! Don’t
go!” inside my head.

“
Hi Molly. I’m so glad I
caught you.” She repeated her request to meet with me, while I
battled my instincts.

Change is hard, I reminded
myself. Seth wanted this promotion. I could only think of one way
that would get me — and Seth — what we both wanted. “I’d love to
meet for coffee. Is this morning good for you?”

I met Dierdre at the hospital coffee shop. I had
rushed, but not so much that I couldn’t swipe on some lip gloss and
use mascara. When I saw her in her scrubs, I wondered if I’d
overdone it. But as I got close, I saw that her hair and makeup
still looked perfectly put together. It really wasn’t
fair.

We started out with basic
small talk about the weather and the latest news about the
hospital’s cutting edge surgery equipment, but then Dierdre cut
into the heart of our conversation much as I imagined she cut into
the heart of a patient. Quickly, and cleanly. “Did you have any
questions about what the university might expect of the wife of an
Assistant Dean?”

I nodded. “I have some
idea, of course. But it helps to hear it from someone who’s been
there and done that.”

She pulled out a white
card, the size of a business card. “These are the groups that the
university likes to keep happy. Naturally, you don’t have to
cultivate every member. The chairperson, an influential member or
two. No more than one or two casual gatherings a month at your
home. And, of course,” She flipped the card over. “Joining these
groups will help you meet the right people to help
Seth.”

I took the card. “Thanks.”
Gatherings at my home? Influential people? I stared at the names on
the front, recognizing the Chamber of Commerce, a few local banks,
and the teacher’s association, and then turned the card over to
stare at the names of the groups I should join. The only group I
had heard of was the PTA.

Dierdre patted my hand.
“Don’t let it seem daunting. I can introduce you around, help you
get started.”

“
Can you turn me into a
whole new person?” I joked. Not really joking. This was change on a
level I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around.

Dierdre didn’t laugh.
Instead she sat back and contemplated me for a moment, as if I were
a patient and she was deciding where she should make the first
incision. “Molly, do you know why Seth wants this
promotion?”

It was my turn for
contemplation. I said nothing, afraid that anything I said would
ruin things for Seth. Afraid that staying silent would ruin things
for him.

Dierdre smiled and leaned
back a little, “Goodness. That sounded like a cross examination.
I’m speaking woman to woman. Wife to wife.” She looked around the
cafeteria and spoke more quietly. “Drew has been in administration
for twenty years, which means I have been too.”

I smiled at that.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve earned my PhD, like Seth, after all the
years of listening to him brainstorm ways to get his students to
learn. Not to mention all the problem-solving for students with
difficulties.”

Dierdre smiled, as if my
comment had pleased her. I felt like a good little girl who had
made the teacher smile. “From my observation, there are three
reasons for a faculty member to want to move into
administrations.”

She help up her fingers to
tick them off. “One, to gain personal power in the system. Two, to
make the university a better place for faculty and students. Three,
to make life better for his or her family.”

I relaxed. “That’s easy.
He isn’t interested in personal power at all. He just likes to see
students and faculty succeed. And he’d really like a bigger
paycheck to make life better for the family.”

She nodded approvingly.
“Then he’s exactly the kind of person Drew would want on his
team.”

“
Seth would be great,” I
agreed. “But I’m not sure
I
would be a great Assistant Dean’s
wife.”

“
Why not?”

“
For one, I’m not the best
housekeeper. Parties at my house usually involve balloons, cakes
shaped like mermaids or superheroes, and a rousing game of pin the
wand on Harry Potter.”

She smiled. “Perfect. Just
substitute shrimp, canapés, and a nicely stocked bar. You’ll do
fine.” She reached into her purse again and took out yet another
card. “This is my maid service. They do one-time jobs. I highly
recommend them.”

“
Thanks.” There was no way
Seth would agree that we should pay for a maid.

Dierdre laughed. “Trying
to figure out how to get Seth to agree?”

I nodded, shocked at being
so transparent. “More like trying to figure out how to get Seth to
agree to help clean up for a party.”

Dierdre gave an empathetic
murmur. “I used to try to get Drew to help, too. After all, I was
in med school, doing my residency and internship. I nearly left him
when he wouldn’t carry his housekeeping weight.”

I think my shock at her
revelation showed on my face, because she shook her head and
declared, “One day I realized I had a choice. I could resent him
and ruin my marriage, or I could pay people to do the things I
didn’t want to do.”

I thought about having a
maid come in once a week to do the big stuff, like scrubbing down
the tub, vacuuming in the corners and under the furniture. “ That
reminds me of one more area where I fall a bit short. My
job.”

“
Don’t you stay home with
your children? There’s no shame in that.”

“
I have a flexible
part-time job, to help make ends meet,” I confessed. “I’m a mystery
shopper.”

She blinked and said
reflexively, “Oh, I didn’t think that was a real job.”

“
Well, it is a real job. I
do it. I don’t make a lot of money, and I’m not really supposed to
talk about it. Seth calls it my hobby, but it pays for tutoring for
our son and piano lessons for our daughter.”

She sat quietly, her
expression too bland for me to read what she was thinking. Then she
said, “The Admissions office is hiring. Have you considered
applying there?”

I was so used to this
argument with Seth that my answer came a little too quickly for me
to edit. “I want to be there when my family needs me. The
flexibility of the job can’t be beat.”

She paused again, and I
was suddenly afraid her silence meant that I’d ruined Seth’s chance
at the job. But then she smiled, almost sadly. “Ah. You want to
have it all.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t have
children so that I could farm them out for others to
raise.”

Dierdre nodded. I think
she was frowning, but the botox made it hard to tell. “There’s more
than one way to be there for your family. I had a wonderful nanny.
She saw to the day to day, but she did it according to my wishes.
Sometimes I think that’s the best way. We want so much for our
children. But we can’t be everywhere, or do everything, no matter
how we wish we could.”

“
I’m an English major.
Even if I worked at the Admissions office, I wouldn’t be able to
hire out everything I do.” Unless I ditched Seth for a guy like
Hammond, I thought, and instantly felt guilty.

Deirdre took a sip of her
tea and then said, “Our mothers lied to us, you know.”

“
Often,” I
said.

“
They said we could do it
all, find the right balance. Be everything to everyone. We can’t.
We have to choose our primary focus.”

“
They tried. Some of them
did it.”

She smiled. “With the help
of Xanax. Or, for the old fashioned, gin.” She flexed her fit arms.
“I can’t do that. I need all my faculties to do my work. To save
lives. So I chose surgery for my primary focus. All else flows from
that.”

“
An easy choice when you
know you save lives,” I said.

She glanced at an
anxious-looking mother who was holding a cup of coffee and talking
with whispered ferocity to a nurse in Mickey Mouse scrubs. “Not as
easy as you’d think. You can be a working mother, but you have to
choose what you need to do yourself, and what you can trust others
to do under your direction. Children are resilient. They need
quality time with you, not quantity time.”

“
I see what you’re
saying.” I did. Which didn’t mean I agreed with it. “I have my own
definition of working moms. They’re the one who stay home and keep
expenses down by baking from scratch and hanging their laundry on
the line and never buying new clothes or makeup. Those are the real
working moms. Their choice is always family over job and
self.”

“
The saints.” She laughed
out loud. “I have a sister who is a perfect saint.” She got a misty
look in her eye for a moment. “She’s really wonderful, but I don’t
know how she does it.”

“
Me either. I haven’t been
able to do it myself.”

Deirdre laughed again.
“Then there are the ones like me, the Sinners, who put their jobs
above family.”