Single in Suburbia
Contents
This book is for Kevin and Drew, whose love of baseball is a beautiful thing. I love to watch you play. It’s also for the coaches who give so much of themselves and all the other moms with whom I’ve shared bleachers, blankets, and peanuts.
There’s nothing quite like a baseball field on a perfect spring day.
Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks to critiquers Jennifer St. Giles and Sandra Chastain, and especially to Karen White, who did not run screaming into the night the second time she was asked to read this manuscript.
Thanks also to attorneys Amy Kaye and Barry Wax for their insights into the law as well as the people who practice it. And a large merci beaucoup to Louise Legault, baseball mom and bleacher friend, for checking my French. Any mistakes in this regard are mine, not hers.
I also want to thank my husband John for his ongoing support and encouragement. Twenty down, thirty to go.
chapter
1
I
n the car lot of life, Amanda Sheridan decided, she was a Volvo station wagon with about eighty thousand miles on it.
People said a woman should look at how a man treated his mother when deciding whether to marry him, but Amanda now knew, from painful personal experience, that a man’s car-buying habits were a much better indicator.
In her family men bought good quality cars and drove them until they stopped running; they racked up the miles and bragged about their odometer readings. And in most cases, their marriages lasted just as long.
In Rob’s family, which Amanda had been a part of for almost twenty years, the men traded up. Every year they chose a new car and passed the year-old vehicle down to their wives. Occasionally a car might last a little longer if there was a teenager in the family; but as a rule, if you were a Sheridan, when your car’s ashtray got dirty it was time to trade that sucker in.
Which went a long way toward explaining why Rob was test-driving a BMW Z4 convertible named Tiffany while Amanda, whose bench seats were sagging, appeared headed for the used car lot.
Amanda scooped Wyatt’s baseball socks out of the clean-clothes basket and tossed them on his bed then stashed a fresh stack of towels in the kids’ linen closet. Pithy car metaphors notwithstanding, Amanda had no idea how she was supposed to get Rob, who appeared to be in the throes of a monumental midlife crisis at the age of forty-two, to come to his senses, and even less idea of how she’d go on alone if she failed.
It was now almost two and a half months since that morning in mid-December when her husband admitted to lubricating another woman’s carburetor; two long months since he’d moved out on New Year’s day to park his, er, car, in a strange garage.
Amanda had spent the first month in denial and the second in a semi-comatose state from which she roused only long enough to take care of Meghan and Wyatt. She’d steadfastly kept her chin up in public, had even managed to adopt a “men will be boys” attitude that belied the gaping hole she felt in her heart and the knife wound in her back.
Still, despite the evidence to the contrary, she simply could not believe that Rob had stopped loving her when she wasn’t finished loving him; could not believe that he’d looked her in the eye and told her that his feelings for her had died. Died! As if they were living breathing things that she’d somehow managed to kill.
Her chest tightened.
Rob had moved out to “look for” himself but as far as she could tell, all he’d found was a fancy town house in a singles complex and the zippy little Tiffany.
In the kitchen she brewed a pot of coffee and pulled out a thermos to take to the ball field. She’d let too much time slide by without resolution and had been spectacularly unsuccessful at forcing Rob to discuss the situation. But she’d been wrong to let Rob call all the shots; wrong to continue living in limbo at the mercy of Rob Sheridan’s libido.
If there was one thing she knew about her husband—and given his current behavior it might be the ONLY thing she knew about him—it was that he would be at Wyatt’s season opener tonight. Which meant it was time to straighten her backbone and stop being such a wimp; time to give Rob an ultimatum: her or us; alone or together.
She’d just have to find a way to make him realize what he was giving up and she’d do her best not to include the word “asshole” while she was doing it. But by the end of the evening, one way or another, she intended to regain control over her life.
“Are you ready, Wyatt?” She took a last look in the hall mirror and tried to squelch the butterflies tumbling in her stomach. She refused to dwell on the small wrinkles that radiated out from her eyes, the deepening grooves that now stretched across her forehead and bracketed her mouth. When you were facing forty, you no longer hoped for perfection.
Better to focus on the unexpected weight loss that made her jeans fit the way they were meant to and the new cashmere sweater that she’d bought for the occasion.
“Just have to get my bag and cleats.” Wyatt clattered down the stairs behind her and went into the garage. At twelve, he was tall and lanky, already matching her five feet eight and on his way toward his father’s six feet two.
Outside, the sun was setting and the temperature had started to drop. In Atlanta, the end of February was tricky; some days felt like spring, other days bit like midwinter. She poured the entire pot of coffee into the thermos and took an extra moment to add cream and sweetener, though the way those butterflies were cavorting, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to drink a drop.
“Last chance, Meghan!” she called up the back stairs.
Her daughter’s door opened and a cacophony of what was supposed to be music billowed out around her. Meghan leaned over the balustrade, her dark hair falling forward to obscure her face. At fifteen, sarcasm was her friend. “Normally I’d love to go freeze my butt off for two hours just for the thrill of watching Wy play. But I’ve got a project due tomorrow.” She offered a flip smile and a shrug. The beat of the music pulsed behind her.
“Your dad will be there.”
Meghan went still. The flip smile fled and was replaced by a look of hurt so stark that Amanda had to look away. “Do you think I should come so he can pretend like he cares about me for a minute or two?”
“You can drive.” She held up the car keys offering the ultimate temptation. “And your father loves you no matter what.” It was just her he didn’t love anymore.
Amanda made herself meet her daughter’s pain-filled eyes. She watched Meghan’s gaze sweep over her, taking in the new sweater and carefully made-up face.
“I’m not coming, Mom. And I hate to tell you this, but you’re wasting your time. He’s moved on and I, for one, am not planning to run after him.”
Shrugging into her leather jacket, Amanda picked up the thermos and blanket. “No, no running,” she promised as she said good-bye to Meghan and headed for the door.
And no begging, she added silently to herself.
Rob was the one who needed to beg their forgiveness and ask to come home.
And if he didn’t?
Then she’d find the backbone to tell
him
to get lost. Right after she shoved his dipstick where the sun didn’t shine.
The ball field parking lot was almost full by the time Amanda and Wyatt arrived. It was seven
PM
and the smell of hot dogs and burgers cooking on the grill outside the concession stand reached them as they got out of the van. There was no sign of Rob’s car, but from one of the far fields came the crack of the bat and a huge cheer. Amanda smiled remembering the first time Wyatt had knocked one over the fence. Even all these years later, she could still remember the thrill of amazement at her son’s ability, the high fives from the other mothers perched beside her in the stands. Wyatt had been playing at this park since the age of five, and had been madly in love with the game from the first time he stepped up to the tee and made contact with a ball.
Amanda gathered up the blanket she’d brought and cradled the thermos in it while Wyatt put on his cleats and lifted the equipment bag from the back of the van.
“I’ll see you down there, sweetie.” Amanda watched him walk down the concrete stands toward the dugout, keeping him in her sights until he disappeared from view.
She was tempted to leave and not come back until warm-ups were over and the game had begun, when attention would be on the field, but she was here and she suspected running would feel even worse. She leaned against the side of the van trying to build her courage, but all she could think of was all the hours they’d spent together in this place. They’d always come here as a family and had been part of the crowd whose kids played not only fall and spring but well into summer. They’d spent countless hours in these stands and others just like them, munching peanuts, cheering their children on, and inevitably picking over the latest gossip.
Gossip
. She’d watched other baseball families come apart, seen the children walking around wounded, shuttled back and forth.
At games, the parents, and ultimately, their new significant others, would stake out opposite ends of the stands and try to act as if nothing had changed while everyone else tiptoed around them trying not to declare too obvious an allegiance to either side.
She’d observed all this. Selfishly, she’d hated how it complicated the pure joy of baseball, but she had never for a moment imagined it happening to them. She’d never imagined any of the things that they were living through.
Amanda snorted at her own naiveté. Straightening her shoulders, she walked directly toward the knot of women already seated in the stands.
“Hello, Susie,” she said. “Helen.” Amanda knew when the entire row of women stopped talking exactly who they were talking about. Helen Roxboro, whose son Blaine had gone to school with Wyatt since preschool, gave her a small wave. Karen Anderson, with whom Amanda shared team mom duties, gave her a tentative smile. There were some other nods and murmurings, but mostly the other mothers watched her face, their own eyes wide, as if they could hardly wait for the entertainment to begin.
Through sheer force of will, Amanda kept a smile affixed to her lips. As normally as possible, she placed her blanket on the far end of a row and went about settling in as if she weren’t suddenly the most fascinating thing in these women’s world.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of sympathy on the face of the statuesque blonde who was now dating the boys’ coach. At any other time Amanda might have found the idea of such a sweet man dating such an apparently sophisticated woman intriguing, but today all she could think was at least Dan Donovan had waited until he was divorced before he started going out with other women.
Scanning the crowd for a glimpse of Rob, she caught Brooke Mackenzie, Hap Mackenzie’s dewy-skinned trophy wife, assessing her with interest. Amanda’s heart lurched as she realized that this was probably what that Tiffany business looked like—all pampered and polished. Amanda’s eyes teared up, and she dropped her gaze, unwilling to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her falter. As Tom Hanks said in
A League of Their Own
, and as she’d often reminded Wyatt, there was no crying in baseball.