The Big "O": A Romantic Comedy (19 page)

In fact, she suggested fairly often that they were a permanent team.

He tried to remember how often they told each other that they loved each other.

It was most days; he was pretty sure. He missed her, he realized.

Walking down the street in bum-fuck Santa Monica, or Venice, or wherever the hell he was now, he missed his wife terribly. I'm shit in bed, he told himself. I'm shit in bed and my wife still loves me. I'm not the first man to be shit in bed, he thought. I'll bet a ton of guys don't know how or care to please their woman.

Somehow, acknowledging that he was shit in bed and that Juliette loved him anyway made him feel better. He could get better in bed. True love was irreplaceable and definitely hard to come by. He decided he was going to go home and plan how he could make an amazing date night for Juliette.

Emily noticed that Max's jacket was casually hanging on a kitchen chair.

Why couldn't her husband pick up after himself? Sure, she got that he felt too busy to help around the house, which didn't seem fair given that they were supposed to be partners in every way, but couldn't he handle his own darn stuff?

Emily stared at the jacket and thought about her husband's recent strange behavior. Next thing she knew, she had picked up the jacket.

Don't, she desperately told herself mentally, don't do it. She found that she ignored her own advice.

The little guy slowly ate his finger foods: baked apples slices, steamed baby carrots and broccoli trees, all of which had cooled.

Emily checked to be certain that Max wasn't nearby anywhere and, when she was certain that she heard the shower running, she riffled through the pockets of his coat. Old receipts, rubber band, pen, then bingo. She found something.

She pulled out a crumpled note with "Simone" and a telephone phone number written on it. She looked at her beautiful son and tried to decide what to do.

What kind of a name was Simone?

It was the kind of name that reeked sex, that was for sure, she decided. A woman named Simone wore silk. A woman named Simone didn't have hair, she had tresses. A woman named Simone had her bikini area waxed. Immediately Emily felt rage that she hadn't had a facial, been waxed, or had anything like that done in months.

Emily stared at the note. She sniffed it, fearing it would smell of perfume. She was incredibly relieved that it smelled like nothing. It was a simple piece of paper but it had set off a series of complex and powerfully intense emotions.

She broke into a cold sweat as rage, fear, and sadness, cycled through her body.

She could hire a private investigator to do further research. She could call the number or search on the name and number on line. She felt overwhelmed with the possibilities and failed to notice that the shower had stopped running.

Little Max gurgled at her and solemnly ate his food. She gazed at her son.

Their darling little boy was just so beautiful. Emily's eyes filled with tears. What an idiot Max was to risk this precious person, their beautiful boy, and her, all for the sake of some throaty bitch.

She rode a wave of fear, panic, uncertainty about her next steps, and struggled to shut down her mean self-talk filled with recrimination and regret.

Her inner voices were relentlessly accusing her of being to blame for everything that happened, by letting herself go after having the baby, when she heard footsteps.

Quickly Emily shoved the note back in the coat pocket as Max approached and entered the room.

She turned her back and got a glass of water from a pitcher in the fridge and wiped away her tears. Pull yourself together, she told herself. It's just a name and number. She took a breath.

Max didn't say a word. He filled a plate with cooked veggies from the pots on the stove, skipped the sliced baked apple, and poured some corn chips on top of his food.

When Emily realized that he wasn't even going to speak to her she felt a burst of curative rage. Screw it. She would take some time to figure things out.

“You have to drop the baby off at playgroup, I have to go work out,” Emily stated.

She walked quickly from the room, hiding her tears. Dumbfounded, Max stared after her.

At the gym, Emily, saddened but fitter, finished an intense work out.

The blur of bodies around her, women in colorful, skimpy workout wear, which normally made her feel like crap, didn't affect her. It was interesting.

Women who came to the gym regularly fit into three categories: women desperate to regain their once decent figures, usually after birth; women who'd always struggled to be fit and thin, who were often quite sweet as they plodding stolidly through diets, exercise regimes, and their daily lives, toward the fit woman they would ultimately be, and the last group... the scariest group... the barracudas.

The barracudas were all teeth and sharp angles and were either size zeroes or very nearly so and Emily found them both tedious and frightening. Her general size, normally a six, but a four if she were in a highly energized life period, frequently ecstatic, and forgetting to eat, was fat to them.

The barracudas never seemed to eat and held onto their youth with injections, diet and exercise regimes, supplements and judicious, or not so judicious, snips and cuts.

All of the barracudas had a team of doctors: plastic surgeon for their face, plastic surgeon for their tiny little bodies, dentist for ginormous Chicle-like white teeth, and a dermatologist for their perfect skin which must never age, a specialist in laser hair removal and so forth.

But today, Emily didn't care about the weirdness that she normally felt around the different characters at the gym. Today she felt sorry for the barracudas.

She could imagine becoming a barracuda herself. Maybe that's what it took to hold onto a man, these days. You had to become this Cosmo girl mirage of a woman, insubstantial, thin enough to blow away, iridescent in your beauty, in order to be loved. The thought made her feel very, very tired and deeply sad.

Then again, she thought, as she showered, then dressed, and looked at herself in the mirror, and realized that she had finally lost the rest of the baby weight, it wouldn't be so horrible to be single again.

Emily bought a green smoothie in the gym juice bar, on her way out of the place, and then for the heck of it tried a shot of wheatgrass juice. The perky surfer girl behind the counter raved about the detoxification and youthening benefits of the stuff.

Emily drank it down in one go and found that it wasn't half bad. Walking to the car, she realized that the smoothie made her nearly instantly full, unlike consuming a food that had to be chewed and swallowed.

She caught site of her reflection in the car window and decided that she would become a health nut, divorce or no divorce, her body, mind and spirit were her new priorities, outside of her child and business.

She would do the research of course, she hadn't entirely lost her mind, but it was clear that the smoothie had it going on... and so would she.

I
SIS STARED at her numbers. She felt sick. She'd been working and reworking them for days. There were a limited number of options and it all felt really do or die.

She'd made lists of all of the credit available to her—feeling sick about her little daily splurge on coffee, because that money spent was no longer available to her—the cash she had on hand, and even lists of what she might sell on the secondary market to try and generate some cashola. She didn't have much to sell but sell her belongings she would, to create her dream.

She decided to ask her mother if she had anything she wanted to get rid of and/or sell. She would do the same with her sister. They had all manner of items that they didn't need, around their homes, and would be happy for her to haul the stuff away.

In looking at her numbers, and comparing that to the information that her sister had finally provided, she did not see how she could order small lots of any of her designs.

Uncharacteristically, Isis fell into a little funk.

She had lost a couple of pounds. Working late hours, frequent creative frenzies, increased walking during the day, no longer stuck at her sedentary day job, and periodic power walking with Emily, meant that she was lean.

She knew that she should eat something but she couldn't force herself to do so. Even the thought of tea and toast was off-putting.

Feeling hopeless, certain that she'd made a huge mistake in quitting her job, wondering if the hospital would take her back, certain they must have already filled her position, Isis fell asleep on the pull-out sofa.

While she slept she dreamed of her grandma, who had passed on. They were walking down a dusty Southern dirt road at twilight. Grandma told her that she was sending her an angel and he would help her fly. The night sky lit up with lightning bugs. Then her grandma faded away.

The dream shifted into darkness. Seconds later, she was flying above Wilshire Boulevard at night. She saw her clothing designs for sale in a boutique window.

Isis smiled in her sleep, and immediately drifted into a deep dreamless sleep.

Sitting at the little desk in the home office, Emily stared at her printed marketing plan, with milestones and deadlines, and accompanying checklists of milestones broken down into actionable items; folders of papers with information about book clubs, book readings, and other related appointments, and smiled.

She didn't have all of the hard numbers, yet, but she could see the trend. Their numbers were on the way up.

She could feel it and of course was reassured by the increasing tangible evidence that she could see, that supported her intuition. Her email was full of possibilities, too. She'd had a great response from both her social networking and relentless marketing. Once she'd finished with book groups in the Midwest, she'd begun approaching other book groups, in every US region, as well as doing a special mailing to US librarians.

Not only was she getting a positive response, meaning a promise of book orders, from massive numbers of public libraries throughout the country, she'd gotten speaking gigs at many companies, universities, small community colleges, and even professional social groups.

If a location was in driving distance, less than a four-hour drive, she'd sent them a one-sheet on the various talks that she and Max could do, for business people, entrepreneurs, students of business and finance, single heads of household, the list went on and on, and the talk was always gratis and predicated upon the attendees purchase of a certain number of books.

She noticed that she had a voice mail from the headhunter who had been calling her every so often.

Periodically, Leslie Chan persistently called her and tried to pitch her on working for Xavier Roberts and Astro Cafe. She always put the recruiter off, yet it felt incredibly good to be desirable and to, essentially, have a real job offer.

In the back of her mind, the offer was her insurance policy for when the other shoe dropped in her marriage.

Max wrote out a check, made out to cash, and handed it to Dr. Charles' secretary. He felt like a shit about it.

Prior to this, he never, ever, made large expenditures from the family budget without first discussing it with his wife. He figured Emily was going to be pissed when she discovered this recurring expenditure of his.

She was on a terribly tight household budget, so low that Max felt deeply ashamed, and here he was spending $400 a month for two hours with his therapist. Sure, the insurance was probably going to cover some of it.

Still, Emily might be pissed about how selfish he was being to spend so much money on himself when things had been terribly tight. Yet, he had to admit, the therapy was really helping him.

Today, he'd realized that he had, for his entire life, unconsciously perceived the world, all reality, and every person in it, as a place where he had to prove his intellectual and other worth. Today, he'd talked about his father.

He'd actually gotten to do some more of the Gestalt, a particular process, talking to a chair, pretending that his father was sitting in the chair, and shared his feelings. At first it had been awkward as, obviously, the chair was empty. Eventually he'd gotten into it. He'd been surprised by the anger that came up. After talking, and finally, yelling, to his father, he'd broken down and wept. It had been intense weeping, too. Not like the soft crying and teariness that he'd experienced in other sessions.

It had been amazing, really. Dr. Charles was the same as she always was: soft-spoken, asking quiet questions, giving him the space he needed to think things through, and completely nonplussed by his ranting, raving, and related emotional catharsis.

He felt so light and clean, so full of energy, afterward.

He was surprised to discover that he felt almost positive.

Dr. Charles had talked briefly about neuronal wiring. She described how, in childhood, parents could, due to their own issues, including phobias, fears, and neurotic concerns, attempt to get a child to perform to their high or inappropriate standards. They did this, she said, because they likely thought that the child would have a better life or be safer, if they did so.

She explained how perfectionists, like Max's father, who physically punished his child for poor grades, or failure to perfectly execute a household task, could inadvertently miswire their child's brain. He almost wept again, thinking of the power of the session.

“Hello, this is Emily Nesbitt Roman,” Emily said into her mobile phone. The moment she answered, without checking the caller ID, she heard Leslie Chan's voice.

“Emily, have you considered taking a look at the contract? I'd love it if you came in and met with me,” Leslie purred into the phone. Emily could imagine her, in her swanky office. She knew that Astro Cafe was both well-funded and terribly well connected, they had big money. Should I take a meeting? she wondered idly.

“I'm in the middle of something, and I'm getting another call,” Emily said. She was thrilled to see that Isis was trying to reach her, “I'll have to get back to you.” Emily said politely and disconnected and answered the other line.

“Ma chérie,” Isis said, “I have to talk to you. I'm freaking here. Can we meet for a power walk?”

“Sure,” Emily said, “Let me make sure that Max will be there to pick up the little guy.”

A quick call later and Emily learned that Max was on the way home from his “appointment” and would be able to pick up their child.

That morning, she hadn't even questioned him about his evasive statements. He'd mentioned an appointment and, when she didn't comment, dashed out.

She wasn't sure if it was an affair or if he was using a hooker, maybe even several hookers, because not only was he disappearing and lying about it but he was also withdrawing a couple hundred dollars in cash out of the bank every two weeks.

No matter what he claimed, something was definitely up.

You should confront the bastard, she told herself. The thought made her sick. She didn't feel psychologically prepared for a confrontation and the possible fall-out. She felt weak and unprepared.

She had taken a calendar and had been able to reconstruct the dates and approximate times, based upon his absences, for which he made excuses or blatantly lied, as well as the checking withdrawals. The withdrawals were either cash or checks made out to cash and it was very, very regular.

Every two weeks, on a near exact schedule, her husband was living a secret life.

Knowing their son was going to be picked up, Emily raced from the house as if a lion were chasing her.

Today was S-Day, secret life day, possibly fuck Simone, my piece-on-the-side, day, and Emily wasn't risking running into her husband.

They were no longer having sex, hugging, greeting each other, or saying good-bye when one of them departed, and she honestly preferred to avoid him... at least until he came clean. Then she would send him packing.

As sad and lonely as she was, her plan felt empowering. She had lost eleven pounds and nearly two dress sizes. All of her old clothes fit or were loose, as worn, baby-stained, and useless, as they were. She was constructing a list of classic wardrobe pieces and, very soon, had plans to let Isis take her shopping. Plus, she had more energy than ever.

She was exercising more than ever, following her diet, as well as drinking smoothies and wheatgrass juice, and eating salads, spending loads of time with her brilliant son, and making massive progress on her business.

She tried to console herself with the thought that Max's absence, and lack of participation, in her life made her more productive. When she felt her heart constrict, and felt a pang of love and longing for him, she turned on the radio, to use the music as a mind wipe, and drove as rapidly as she could to meet her girlfriend.

She entered the apartment and saw that her friend was uncharacteristically quite distraught. They headed outdoors straightaway, and Isis bared her heart and soul as they walked.

“Oh, god... I've made a terrible mistake,” Isis moaned.

Emily was secretly a little bit thrilled. Dealing with whatever Isis had going on was going to a) make her fitter, as they were power walking as if zombies were chasing them, and b) wipe her own problems completely from her thoughts.

“What? What happened?” Emily asked.

“You were right. I shouldn't have quit my job. I'm underfunded. I'm inexperienced. I don't know how to do what I want to do,” Isis said.

She was uncharacteristically down, so much so that Emily felt a wave of concern.

She looked at Isis and saw that her friend was lean and beautiful in some kind of retro shredded-layered fabric purple Lycra workout ensemble. Sure, she had maybe lost a couple of pounds but when she saw that Isis was as carefully put-together as always Emily felt less concern.

This was just a normal reality check for her close friend.

“It's normal to feel that way,” Emily said, “You're definitely going to need an investor. What about that guy? That fashion guy?”

“What guy?” Isis said, racking her brain.

“The boutique owner,” Emily said.

“Oh,” said Isis, with surprise, “that's not a solution. Yes, he's been in contact but he wants to see samples, to place an order, which I can't afford to have run up, so I haven't been back to see him.”

“What?” Emily said, as she stopped short and yanked Isis to a standstill.

“Uh, why,” Isis asked, surprised that Emily had such a strong reaction.

“Well, duh,” Emily said, “guy wants to place an order, he gives you a deposit or a check, maybe for the whole thing in advance, so you cover your costs upfront. You don't pay for it yourself out of pocket and then sell it. You're not a store front.”

Isis thought through what Emily had said.

She got chills over her entire body. She started laughing and Emily hugged her.

They power walked and chatted until they were both quite sweaty, happy, and feeling fantastic.

Toward the end of their walk, Emily told Isis about the note that she'd found with Simone's name and number on it. Isis thought that she should do research online. Her idea was that the universe provided the information to her as a wake-up call of sorts.

Emily admitted that she was sort of afraid to and that she wanted to wait for him to come clean.

“Woman, that is insanity. You check her out tonight or I'll do it for you. We can even do a drive-by, when you get her info. Whoever she is, she can't take your man unless you let her. Right?” Isis said.

“I guess so. I suppose I should do everything in my power to keep my family together,” Emily said.

“Mais, oui... and your husband,” Isis said emphatically as if it were completely obvious.

The women neared the end of their power-walk; they had worked up a real sweat. Emily decided to share her really exciting news. It wasn't that she was going to act upon it but she wanted to share something positive with her friend.

“You won't believe it but Xavier Roberts, the CEO of Cafe Astro, has a head hunter named Leslie Chan trying to recruit me. Apparently, when you and I were having a meeting there, he saw me,” Emily said.

“I do believe it,” Isis said happily, “you're really good. It's your energy and enthusiasm. Any big company would want to have you work for and with them.”

“I guess, but I'm making real progress on the new book and the marketing is starting to really flow. I haven't taken their pitch,” Emily replied.

Isis didn't mention Edwin at all, which made Emily curious.

When she questioned her beautiful friend, she said that she was just so busy that they had slipped into a routine that was sort of Isis-Loves-Edwin-Loves-Isis light.

“I've just been so busy,” Isis admitted, “that it's changed our schedule.”

“We see each other regularly at dinner every so often, text and such, and don't really talk on the phone except to make plans for dinner,” Isis said casually. Emily grinned. It was ironic. Isis totally got it.

“Turnabout's fair play,” Emily said and laughed.