Something New (25 page)

“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s the right decision.”

“Yes, it is,” she says. “But the right decision isn’t always the
best
decision.”

“What does that mean?”

Her face is thoughtful. “It’s like you wrote in your blog. Life is short. And sometimes the
wrong
decisions can make the ride a lot more fun.”

When I emerge from Jill’s house twenty minutes later, I move purposely to my Flex, not even allowing myself to glance at the house next door. Just as I reach the driver’s side, I hear a child’s laughter and I can’t help but look over. In the driveway of the Campbell home, Liam is pitching softballs to his little brother, Evan. Evan wears an adult-sized glove that is almost as big as he is, yet he manages to maneuver well enough to catch Liam’s lobbed balls.

I watch the two for a moment, scrutinizing their features for signs of their father. Liam definitely favors Ben, and Evan his mom. I fleetingly wonder what Ben was like as a child, then quickly banish the thought from my mind.

“I’m gonna play for the Dodgers!” Evan yells at full kid volume.

“You are not,” Liam chides. “You gotta be able to
hit
, you know.”

“I can hit!” Evan shrieks.

“Can
not
,” Liam fires back.

“I can hit
you
!” And true to his word, the boy makes a mad dash for Liam and tackles him to the ground, then starts swinging.

“Liam! Evan!” The sound of Linda’s voice propels me into my car, and I just catch a glimpse of long blond hair as I stamp on the accelerator and head down the street.

Jonah, bless him, has made breakfast for the kids, and because of a slight culinary disability, breakfast means toaster waffles, a dish he only recently mastered. (I told him there were some microwave sausages in the freezer that I keep for emergencies, but he opted out, joking that he was considering becoming a vegan.) When I return from Jill’s at nine thirty, the kids are fed and clothed, and Matthew is already wearing his soccer uniform. All three of them are safely ensconced in the living room for their Saturday morning allotment of Wii. I wave to them, then head for the kitchen, where I kiss Jonah and hand him a thank-you cup of 7-Eleven coffee. (I know he prefers Starbucks, but I am planning to avoid all Starbucks stores for the next, oh, twenty or thirty years.) He is grateful for caffeine in any form and returns my kiss enthusiastically.

“Thanks for taking the morning shift,” I say sincerely.

He raises his eyebrows a couple of times and grins at me. “I should be thanking
you
. For last night?” He glances around to make sure none of the kids are within earshot. “You were a wild woman!” He sets his coffee on the counter, slips his arms around my waist, and peers down at me. “You were hot,” he purrs.

“And you are to be commended for
rising
to the occasion even though you were dead to the world.”

He winks down at me. “Anything for you, baby.”

Suddenly, as I rest my head against Jonah’s shoulder and feel him run his hands slowly up and down my back, I am filled with a sense of contentment. This is the Jonah and Ellen of old: flirty and sexy and
connected
. Whether this reappearance stems from my vow to abstain from Ben Campbell,
or the fact that last night Jonah and I fucked like we were eighteen years old, I don’t know. But I’ll take it no matter the reason.

However, since life is, well,
life
, contentment lasts only so long. In
this
case it lasts about fifteen seconds.

“I have to go to the warehouse this morning,” he says, giving my ass a double pat. As I pull away, Jonah drops his arms to his sides.

“You’re not going to soccer?” I ask.

“Can’t, Elle. One of my drivers screwed up a delivery and I have to go make it right. It’s Fluor Corp., babe.”

“Jonah, we talked about this…” And we had, at length. When Jonah first started with the company, he’d been working 24/7 in order to secure his position. He’d given up precious family time on the weekends to please his superiors and to show his customers how invaluable he was. In the beginning, he’d maintained that as soon as he was on stable ground, he would reclaim his weekends as his own. But after two years, he was still in absentia at the Ivers home on most Saturdays and quite a few Sundays, too. The kids were older then, and noticed how Daddy never made it to softball or soccer or tennis and could never volunteer for Scout camping trips. And I was starting to feel like a single mom. So I finally put my foot down.

I had tried for a civil discussion, but a heated argument ensued that prompted me to pull the kids out of school and take them for a spontaneous trip to my mother’s house in Northern California. After three days, Jonah, having been haunted by the echoes of an empty house, called and apologized, asking me to come home and telling me that he’d realized just how much he was missing out on. He went on to promise me that he would make sure that weekends were sacred family time and he’d simply get his lowly assistant to
handle Saturday and Sunday emergencies, because, by God, that’s what they were paying him for.

“Why can’t you get Shane to handle it?” I ask now. Shane of the high-top sneakers, bow tie, and Poindexter glasses fame who’d been to dinner once and was so flabbergasted by the frenetic energy of my three kids that he has never returned despite numerous invitations.

“Shane can’t handle it. It’s a corporate account,” he reminds me for the thousandth time. “You know, the kind of account that allows you
not
to work?”

“I don’t work?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, no, that’s right. You go out to the coal mines every day, and I sit around and eat bonbons.”

“Ellen. That is not what I meant. I know how hard you work running this household and raising our kids. It’s the toughest job in the world.”

All the right words are coming out of his mouth and in the proper order, but they sound more like a speech he’s reading from a teleprompter. I cross my arms over my chest in response.

“But I work hard, too,” he is saying. “I bust my butt to keep us in this five-bedroom house and I—”

“You want to move?” I snipe at him.

“Elle, you’re missing the point!
My
job is what supports this family and we can’t afford to jeopardize it.”

“You’re telling me that if you don’t go to the warehouse this morning you’re going to get fired?”

“It’s a precarious time right now. You know what the economy is like…well, maybe you don’t.”

I snicker. “Because I don’t listen to NPR?”

“Because you’re not interested in anything going on in the world outside your home.”

I feel my face go slack with disbelief. Jonah doesn’t notice, just keeps charging ahead. “Times are tough and if my accounts aren’t serviced properly, they’ll give their business to our competitors.”

“Fine.” I try to infuse that one syllable with as much ire as I can.

“Look, it’s
one
Saturday,” Jonah says, placating, but I am still stunned by his earlier comment. Since when am I not interested in the outside world?
You should have seen me last night, Jonah, then you would have seen for yourself just
how
interested I am in things outside my home.
But, seriously, his biting words have cut me to the quick. This is the second time in the last week that he has purposefully been nasty to me. Since when did I become such an object of disdain to my husband?

My mother’s words ring in my ears. “Familiarity breeds contempt, dear,” she always says. Which is why, since she and my father divorced after twenty years of marriage, she has never allowed a relationship to extend past six months. (She is currently involved with her dentist, a nice man in his late fifties who happens to think the sun rises and sets with my mother’s smile—which is quite wonderful. He has no idea that in about three and a half weeks, his world will be completely destroyed.) But Mom has no compunction about her choices. She wants to make sure that she is never on the receiving end of the loathsome epithets that people who are supposed to be in love tend to sling at each other. And now, I can finally see her point.

“I’ll try to make it quick so we can have family time this afternoon,” he adds.

“Whatever.”

“Maybe I can take us out to dinner tonight.”

“Okay.”

I turn away from him and head for the sink where the dirty breakfast dishes stare up at me from their sudsy soak. Instead of loading them into the dishwasher, I begin to wash them by hand, hoping that the mundane task will calm me.

“You’re pissed, I get it,” he says from across the kitchen. I don’t answer, not even with a one-word sentence. Because I am more than pissed. I am hurt.

“Look,” he begins. I am expecting an apology, but he doesn’t offer one. “I think you’re being unreasonable, Ellen. I’m taking all of next week off to take the kids to Arizona.” I snort derisively and Jonah responds with his own brand of antagonism. “Just because
you
don’t want to come doesn’t mean it isn’t ‘family time.’”

I keep my back to him, cannot bear the thought of looking at him. I slide the soapy sponge over a plate, then hold it under the faucet and watch the water rinse it clean. I set it in the dish drain and pick up another. I resist the impulse to turn around and fling the syrup-stained ceramic plate at my husband. He doesn’t deserve such a dramatic display of emotion. He doesn’t deserve a goddamn thing from me.

As I finish the last of the dishes, I consider tomorrow’s blog post. This charming interlude with my supposed “life mate” has inspired a couple of choices for titles:
I Hate Jonah
or
Husbands Suck Ass
. Catchy, huh?

Regardless of the many untoward circumstances and seemingly earth-shattering occurrences that often plague us, like recognizing that deep down, your husband thinks you’re an insipid freeloader, life marches on. Including soccer games. I have struggled to cast off the negative effects of my fight with Jonah for the benefit of my kids. I manage to keep from exploding all over Matthew for misplacing his cleats for the
fortieth time, stay calm when Jessie breaks my favorite bracelet after insisting on putting it on my wrist, and merely shrug when Connor tells me he’d rather go to Jason’s house to watch videos than go to the game.

It’s as though I am on autopilot. Jonah’s words are taking center stage in my head, and everything I am doing is by rote. Get kids in car, drop Connor at Jason’s, park at soccer field, unload kids and folding chairs, walk Matthew to his team. By the time Jessie and I have set up our seats next to the bleachers, I have the beginnings of a headache. Absently, I wonder if eleven in the morning is too early to start drinking and why didn’t I load my thermos with vodka?

And then I see Ben. He is standing against the low fence between the spectators and the field, listening to Nina Montrose, who is talking candidly about God knows what, her fake tits nearly bursting from her low-cut sweater as she gesticulates like a thespian. A surge of jealousy sweeps through me, surprising me with its ferocity. Nina and her husband, George, are separated and are apparently in the process of splitting up their assets. (Rumor has it that George is demanding to get her tits in the settlement since he paid top dollar for them.) For the past few months, Nina has been flirting shamelessly with any person in a ten-mile radius who happens to own a penis. (Yes, according to Jill, even women with vibrators in their bedside drawers will do.) And now she is casting her plastic, coquettish spell on my Ben.

My thoughts screech to a halt.
He is not
my
Ben
, I tell myself.
He is
Linda’s
Ben.
Linda, who I discover as I furtively glance around, is nowhere to be seen. I direct my attention to the field where the Polar Bears and their opponents, the Fire Ants, are doing warm-up exercises. Jessie sits beside me, completely engrossed in a Junie B. Jones book that she found on Matthew’s bookshelf (although he denies that a Junie B.
Jones book has ever been in his possession). I keep my gaze fixed on the field, willing myself not to glance over at Ben and Nina. However, like the T-rex whose eyes are drawn to movement, I cannot help but look over when, out of the corner of my eye, I catch Nina making a wide-sweeping gesture with her left hand that concludes with said hand landing on Ben’s shoulder. She leans into him as he says something, and then she erupts into a fit of laughter, throwing her head back so violently I fear she might snap a vertebra.

My insides do another jealous dance as my fingers white-knuckle the armrests of my chair. I am feeling profoundly—and yes, irrationally—angry with Ben for allowing Nina Montrose to touch him. (And also having criminal thoughts about detaching Nina Montrose’s hand from her bony arm with a machete—despite the fact that I don’t own one.)

Ellen!
my thoughts shriek.
Stop this nonsense.
I proceed to remind myself, yet again, that I am an almost-forty-three-year-old woman, not a high school freshman, and that even though I currently dislike my husband with the white-hot intensity of a thousand burning suns, I must stick to the decision I made last night. To steer clear of Ben Campbell. Who he flirts with is none of my business. Hell, he can screw half the soccer moms right there on the bleachers, and it will be none of my concern.

Just as I am about to yank my attention back to the field, Ben turns away from Nina and his eyes find mine. A smile of secret pleasure spreads across his face. Nina is chatting away, unaware of her prey’s divided attention. Ben surreptitiously gives me an eye roll, then mouths the word
Help
.

Despite all of my good intentions, I feel my resolve start to slip. I bite my lower lip to keep from returning his smile and quickly turn my attention to the field.

As the players get into position for the starting kick, I steal a quick look at Ben. Nina is touching his arm again. I tell myself that this is not my problem and shift in my chair so that the two of them are out of my line of vision. A moment later, the whistle sounds and the Polar Bears face off against the Fire Ants, the field becoming a sea of thrashing ten-year-olds. And a moment after that, I feel the pocket of my jacket vibrate.