The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) (11 page)

He sat there, his long fingers resting on the edge of the armchair, just waiting, like one would wait for a cappuccino. Easy for him to be so calm and collected, while inside I was screaming.

I jumped to my feet. “I’m sorry; I can’t do this right now. Thank you for your concern,” I managed as I brushed past him and out of his office, tears in my eyes, and clutching Warren’s unread confession in my fist.

I wandered aimlessly through the school grounds, watching a game of baseball and then finally plopped myself down onto a bench, smoothing the wrinkled sheets of paper over my thigh. Not that I was dying to hear more about my withering marriage or my fat ass, but it was a
Now or Never
epiphany moment.

My Dad is a prick,
I read, and then moaned. I agreed with him fully, of course, but never,
ever
had I wanted my children to wake up from their innocent childhood and see the truth.

He never plays baseball with me, goes to the games on his own and always sits in front of the TV watching the pros play. He never smiles, and says what do we know about his life and dreams. I have a dream, too. That one day I hit him over the head with a baseball bat. And it feels good, like I hit a home run. And then we’re all free.

Oh, my
God
—my poor kid
had
inherited my killer thoughts after all.

He keeps it behind his bed and at night hits my mother with it. (What?) I know because I can hear her crying sometimes. Even if I give her a hard time, I love my mother. She’s cool, even when she tries to play baseball with me. Last week she swung so hard she fell on the grass and saw stars, but she laughed and asked me to teach her.

I sat there and, as quietly as I could, bawled my eyes out into my scarf. Our deepest, most intimate secrets were now disclosed, splayed wide open for a stranger to see. Worse than that, a stranger whose job was to judge us. But the baseball bat part was all wrong. Ira had never ever touched any of us. Images of social services carting my kids away shot through my mind, brandishing my brain cells with words like
incompetent
and
inept mother
and I was so ashamed. Was I that much of a loser?

“Erica,” came the deep voice of scholarly authority.

I stiffened and swiped at my eyes. How long had he been standing there?

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

“No, not really,” I answered stonily, refusing to look at him.

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

I shrugged. “It’s your school.”

He sat down next to me, looking ahead of him, but funnily I felt he was very tuned into my situation. All this time I’d been wondering about him as my dream man, a fresh start, or maybe just a quick scene, and here he was, with a front-seat, humongous panoramic view of me, my life and my exterior vastness and interior littleness. There was no way I could ever hide from him and pretend I was someone else now.

At least he had the decency to be quiet. I had to hand him that. I enjoyed the silence for a while. He seemed okay with it, too.

“The baseball bat part—it isn’t true,” I finally whispered.

He turned to me. I knew he didn’t believe me.

“Really, it isn’t.”

Stormy aquamarine eyes bored into mine. “The last bell’s about to ring, Erica. Why don’t you come into my office and freshen yourself up,” he suggested gently and then grinned. “I have this amazing bathroom with really expensive tiles. The previous principal must have splurged the school’s yearly budget on it.”

“No, that’s okay, thanks. I think I’ll go use the little girls’ room.” The last thing I needed was to be seen exiting the principal’s toilet. Then my reputation of lousy mother would be complete. Didn’t he know any
better
?

“Yes, on second thoughts, that’s a better idea,” he said, as if reading my mind and offering me his hand to lift me to my feet. I pretended I didn’t see it and brushed past him.

The little girls’ room was not such a good idea after all. The mirror was too low and I had to squat to see myself. And I almost fell over again at the sight of me. Yesterday’s mascara (now how the hell had I missed
that?
) streamed in black lines down my cheeks. Dried whatever-it-was—hopefully not snot—caked my nostrils, and my hair, once in a tight, professional bun, was now a mess. Plus I stank too much to be true. I removed my coat and air-dried my armpits. Then I slicked my hair back behind my ears into a semblance of a ponytail and rubbed the various kinds of guck off my face. There. Not pristine, but much better. I left the building without saying goodbye and waited in the car to gather my wits.

“Hi,” I chirped as the kids tumbled in, schoolbags landing on the back seat.

“What happened to
you?
” Warren asked as Madeleine started pulling her drawings out of her satchel to show me. There were rainbows and colorful flowers everywhere. The drawings of a happy, serene little girl.

How long would this childhood happiness last if I didn’t get my ass into gear pronto? As I turned on the ignition, I realized I need a year-long plan with all the things that needed changing.

Late that night, I went through my precious stack of
Ville e Casali
, a glossy Italian home magazine that had an enormous real estate listing of luxury homes and farmhouses throughout Italy. I flipped to the Tuscany section and feasted my eyes on all the possibilities, my mouth watering every single time despite the fact that I knew each listing verbatim.

Beautiful, two-story stone buildings, solid like a fortress, surrounded by vineyards and green fields and patios and pools where I could see the kids frolicking and being happy. Inside, magnificent terracotta tiles and chestnut wood beams on the ceilings supporting terracotta vaults. Large spaces, big, sunny rooms and the cicadas singing outside in the sun. Lazy lunches under the wisteria-laden pergola, sipping a glass of my own wine with Paul (in absence of a proper male lead) as my gaze spread over the land I owned. Day in, day out, just my loved ones and me.

I sighed, flipped the magazine shut, hauled the stack back onto the nightstand and pulled out my notepad to stare at the year-long plan I’d written only a few months ago. It was like someone else had scrawled those hopeful words. How things had changed in such a short space of time:

HOME,
I’d written.
Okay with grocery shopping and meals. Plan B—Zia Maria’s food. Need to hire a sitter. And a cleaner. I can’t do it all by myself.

JOB. Fulfilling. Well-paid. But need to cut back on the hours.

KIDS. Warren needs extra attention. Maddy’s a dream.

Now I added
, Problem—how to be there for them all the time?

And then I smiled and wrote
: Solution: Move to Tuscany and start your own business once and for all.

And then my eyes darted to the box at the bottom titled
Love Life
with Ira’s name in it. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I crossed his name out, back and forth, until I couldn’t see it anymore. And then I wrote
Julian: in a parallel world.

Chapter 11:

Turbo Mama

I
f it weren’t for my job, I’d never see any other place outside Boston City Center. It had widened my horizons, but slimmed (I do hate that word) my chances of being a good mother and wife —according to Ira.

“Erica, you just can’t keep going off on business all the time,” Ira had said to me during one of my calls home in-between meetings.

“And you,” I snapped back, “can’t keep talking to me like I’m your dumb wife. You lost that right when I opened my eyes and saw you for what you really are.”

He groaned. “You have to be here every day. Your mother is driving me crazy again!”

I huffed. God, I hated him. But he was right. Marcy was not by any stretch of the imagination anyone’s ideal babysitter. “There’s no one that can do this job here but me.”

I heard him snort. What Ira refused to understand was that fieldwork had given me the bonuses that we needed in order to stay afloat. We were living way beyond our means, and at the end of every month I calculated we’d just made it, and breathed a sigh of relief. Until the next month. But next month I’d be free of his car payments and, yes, even the rental of his office space. He was on his own from now on, and my purse strings breathed a sigh of relief.

For being an economics expert, Ira had no idea of our financial situation. I was sure he’d screwed up his company because of his lack of organizational skills. He concentrated too much energy on maintaining his IT equipment rather than his clients and services. What Ira needed was to accept advice. If not from me then at least from someone else, who would make him wake up and smell the coffee.

“I’ve got someone else on the line; I have to go,” he said hastily, and hung up, but I knew it wasn’t true. I shut my cell phone, feeling like shit. There was no better word for it. A few more weeks and I’d be free of him.

I looked in the mirror and saw a young old girl, with bags under her once pretty eyes, a messy head of hair and a face bathed in anxiety and exhaustion.

I was going away on business already twice a month, and had greatly improved the quality of our hotels, much to my boss’s joy, so even more trips would have to be made. But I was missing out on the most important hours of my children’s lives. They were growing up—and I was growing old—away from them.

That night, like every other night I was away on business, I lay in a luxurious hotel room, this time in Seattle, hours before my real bedtime. Sleep eluding me as usual, I stared at the ceiling and listened to the typical hotel sounds—the heating system quietly humming recycled air though the vents, the wheels of the suitcase cart softly squeaking through the plush, thick carpeting of the corridors, toilets flushing (no amount of luxury can eliminate that) and the occasional grinding of keys in bathroom-door locks. I missed my children terribly.

As I lay there, waiting to fall asleep, Julian, or my projection of him, quietly stepped into the room.

What are you doing here? I asked, sitting up suddenly, but he puts his finger against my lips and shushes me gently. I’m your erotic dream, he whispers.

Oh, I answer. That made so much more sense.

He sits on the edge of my bed and as I open my mouth to speak, he catches my lips in a toe-curling kiss, his mouth hot, soft but firm on mine, coaxing (as if he’d need to) a response from me. Now, I hadn’t kissed him and never would unless I could get him drunk and abduct him, but if I ever did manage to, that is the kind of kiss that would shake me from my foundations to my roof beams.

You’re so beautiful, Erica, he whispers, sliding under the covers, which at that point become redundant seeing how hot it is in there all of a sudden. Can I make love to you?

You need to ask, foxy headmaster?

Then I’m going to have to keep you here all night on detention.

Fine by me. Kiss me again, Headmaster Foxham, and keep doing what you’re doing down there...

And then a loud screech brought me to my senses, pushing him right off me.
What?
Where had he gone? I slapped at the alarm clock uselessly and moaned in grievance, leaning over the side of the bed, scanning the carpeting, wishing he’d been real, willing him back to me, and willing myself to continue with the dream. But, as a dearly departed one, he was lost to me forever. Or at least until my next erotic dream.

* * *

The next day when I got back home, I decided on a multi-point plan towards my own well-being. I wanted to work less and enjoy my children more.

“Can’t Jackie go to Denver?” I asked my boss. “She’s willing to go and I really need to stay home a bit more, Mr. Farthington. Like we’d agreed.”

He seemed to consider it. “Jackie’s great, but she lacks your flair. I need you out in the field, Erica.”

“You promised it would only be a couple of times per semester. I practically live in my Samsonite.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. No.”

And that was his final word. But not mine.

* * *

Maddy was a jubilant little girl. Perhaps a little too jubilant. And she loved the hotel elevators. Just what I had counted on. Our guests were amused by this charming little thing that hopped on and off for hours on end, striking ballet poses when the doors opened on her. She was a bit too vain for my taste, just like my mother. I hoped it would wear off soon. But today it served my purpose.

The news of the charming miniature ballerina reached Harold Farthington by the end of the first day and he called me immediately. “I run hotels, not daycare centers, Erica.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Farthington, but if you keep sending me on business trips away from my family, I have no choice but
to bring my family
here.
”

There was a long silence.

“Three trips per month,” he said finally.

“No. One,” I bargained.

“Two. That’s my final offer,” he bargained back.

“Only if I choose which ones to attend. And that’s
my
final offer, Mr. Farthington.”

This time the silence was longer. I found I was holding my breath, and I realized I cared about keeping this job more than I thought. It was, after all, our family meal ticket. At least until I could get us to Italy.

“Agreed,” came his final verdict, and I grinned into the phone.

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.” It had taken me eight hours to crack the bastard.

Chapter 12:

Ball and Chain

W
eeks later and I was still running around like a madwoman every day of my life. One good thing about divorcing Ira—he’d never taken part in my busy schedule, so now I was a single parent no one would miss him. He was like a pro-forma father, existent in theory but not in practice.

By the time I got the kids to actually plunk their rear ends onto their chairs for dinner, I was exhausted. I could have easily ordered a pizza or KFC and called it a night, but it was important for me to do something for them. So together we baked different kinds of pizzas and a chocolate cake.

That evening when I put the munchkins to bed, their eyes were drooping but at least their mouths weren’t. On her bedside table, Maddy had left me a drawing. Like me, she was very arty. She loved colors, and when she had a packet of Smarties, instead of shooting them down her throat missile-style like I did, she played with them, passing them from one hand to the other, watching the flow of blues, pinks and reds, mystified. She absolutely loved colors. In dismay, I’d often watched her use hand-paints on the living-room walls with vigorous, almost ferocious creativity. And then Paul would come up with some obscure cleaning product that worked miracles, saving the day.

Like me, she was dying to express herself and be free of restrictive boundaries like the lines in her coloring books. Like the thick black lines surrounding my own life.

Maddy was more like me in every way. For this, I have to thank my grandmother’s genes and her solid presence in my life. She taught me everything I know. Thanks to her, I actually had a shot at homemaking. But sometimes, when I dropped the kids off for parties or sleepovers, I craved to be like those suburban cookie-cutter—and slim—moms in pearls and pastel twin-set tops smiling and waving at me from their pristine doorsteps.

If I had more time, my house could be pristine too. I was managing to cook meals and give my children quality time and help with their homework and be the mother Marcy never was. Who cared if my windows still needed doing? Sometimes it was easier to watch the world through an opaque glass anyway.

The other moms, who were all stay-at-homes, knew I had a high-power job, and I’m sure they had something to say about that amongst themselves. I didn’t belong to their circle, and would never be one of those straight-bobbed, tennis-bracelet moms. The elitist group of perfect women would always elude me, no matter how hard I tried.

But exactly how perfect were they? Did any of them have pseudo-homicidal thoughts about their husbands, like me? Did they have satisfying sex lives? Or did they simply survive by taking a lover? I didn’t have time for a man unless he wore an apron, an earring, and his name was Mr. Clean. And of course my erotic Julian dreams, which didn’t count because they didn’t impact on my waking hours.

Sometimes, when I tucked Maddy in, she’d look at me as if I was her fairy godmother and not simply her mom. I guess she saw me so rarely lately that she was beginning to wonder if I was just another fairytale creature that existed only at night, for a brief moment, before she closed her eyes, watching me in awe before her long baby lashes fluttered and she was asleep.

Now I was completely on my own, I needed to get a real nine-to-five job, or better, a seven-to-three job where I could at least pick up my kids after school.

“Why don’t you just quit your job?” my Aunt Maria suggested simply as she prepared
Le Tre Donne’s special for the day
, the vegetable
minestrone
. No frozen veggie bags for her restaurant, no sir. Every day, she and her sisters got up at four a.m. to make bread, cakes, muffins and serve breakfast, then they’d start preparing lunch. I often came here on my break to grab a quick bite.

I could feel my eyes pop out of my head as I drank the coffee Aunt Maria had brewed me. “Quit my job? What do you think I’ve been going on about all these years? What if
Zia
Monica heard you?”

Zia
Monica was the youngest of Marcy’s sisters and the most progressive. She is a Xerox copy of my
Nonna
Silvia in body and in soul. She believes in progress, particularly for women, and technology. For a woman to quit her job and be a homemaker was unheard of. Of course all three sisters were spinsters. The most beautiful spinsters I’d ever seen.

Zia
Maria pointed her potato peeler at me and grinned. “You could always come and work here. Give your mother a heart attack.”

I snorted my coffee through my nose. “Give me that,” I ordered, taking the potato from her.

“No—start on the onions for me, would you mind?” she asked.

Mind? I was an expert onion peeler. Plus I didn’t have any make-up on so nothing to worry about.

“I’ve wrapped up a chocolate cake for you to take home,”
Zia
Maria said. “Think about the job offer.”

And so I thought about it. Could I do it? The hours were just as crazy; half of Massachusetts showed up at lunchtime sometimes. I’d see the kids even less. No. I had to find another way.

“No more, Warren, or you’ll become a blimp,” Ira said as we devoured
Zia
Maria’s cake after dinner that evening.

What Ira hadn’t said was, ‘like your Mom,’ but I knew that was what he meant. The context was clear as crystal. Just a few more weeks to go and I’d be free.

We were at the point where he’d sit at the dinner table and read his paper without communicating for hours while I did the dishes and cleaned up after everyone except for him. I was done with him.
Finito.

Even on weekends, for which I practically made a pact with the devil to be home, we would ignore each other. He’d sit at that same table with yet another paper while I played with the kids or did some chores. Let me tell you, it was a relief to go back to work on Monday.

But once there, I’d start worrying about the children. How badly would they take our divorce? Why was it that I could run that ship of titanic dimensions and hadn’t managed to keep a little dinghy with four passengers afloat? One thing was for sure—there was one passenger whose head I’d gladly hold under water until he stopped kicking. But enough of my fantasies…

* * *

Luckily, at home I had Paul who was living with us more often than not. He took care of the kids until I got home, and then we had dinner and exchanged gossip.

We were sitting on the sofa drinking a lovely Sicilian
Corvo Novello
, kids in bed, glad to have some ‘us’ time with my second ideal (minus the sex) husband. Every time I needed a hand, it was Paul’s, and not Ira’s, who reached out for me.

“So, how’s your hunky headmaster?” he asked. You can imagine how he’d flipped when I told him Spiderman and Headmaster were one. He’d professed that it was fate and what the hell more did I need to understand that?

“I haven’t seen him for a while but I’m assuming he’s as delectable as ever,” I answered.

He shook his finger at me. “You shouldn’t be wasting your time like this. Things don’t happen without a reason, and even you said he was the man of your dreams.”

“Dreams—exactly. This is reality, Paul, and men like that aren’t interested in women like me.”

“Meaning?”

I thought about it. Dieting wasn’t impossible and I was getting into the swing of things as the pounds were starting to melt off me, one at a time. It was ghastly work resisting my favorite foods, but every time I stepped onto the bathroom scales, it was pure, unadulterated (if you’ll pardon the pun) bliss. But I’d never be a supermodel.

I huffed. “Meaning I’m still big.”

“Oh, big, shmig,” he said with a wave of his perfectly manicured hand. “What’s wrong with having some fun? Look at you, almost thirty-five, two kids you’re raising on your own, a job that totally absorbs you and your soon-to-be ex-husband can’t be bothered to,” he hooked his fingers into quotation marks in my face, “make the effort.”

Ouch. Put like that, it sounded like pure hell. I gave him the hairy eyeball and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “What’s your point?”

He looked at me, unperturbed. “That you’re looking better and better every day, and that you should have a fling.”

Of course he was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit it yet. “I don’t want a fling.”

“That’s because you don’t remember what it feels like to fall in love, Erica. To feel your insides go all jittery and your heart flutter. Oh, the ecstasy!”

“You’ve been reading too many romances,” I quipped.

“I miss Carl,” Paul confessed with a sigh. “With all his uptightness and dedication to those stupid scripts and no time for me… I still miss having him around.”

I smiled, thinking how similar we were, even if he didn’t realize it. “You’ll find someone, Paul. Everybody loves somebody, like the song.”

“No, honey, the song I remember says ‘Everybody
needs
somebody.’ And you need this headmaster—spider guy to give you a good—”

“Quit saying
spider
. I hate that word, and I hate thinking about that episode.” Which was bull. I thought about him all the time, reveling in the feeling of his strong arms around me, protecting me, his lips against my ear, soothing me. And now Headmaster Foxham had gone and spoiled even my fantasies by being a respectable man and not a sex toy for my—

I sat up and listened, my ears pricking while mother instinct (even I had it by now) told me the house was too quiet. I listened some more, waiting. Nothing. But a trip down the corridor was enough to kill me.

All over the walls, at Maddy-level, were big bright wax lines of every color imaginable. She had been trying every single one of her new sixty-four-pack Crayolas. As I stepped toward her, she turned and gave me one of her sweetest smiles. I wanted to choke her on the spot, but instead I scooped her up and put her back to bed, while Paul came to the rescue with a sponge, chasing all the drawings around with the bottle of Fantastic he’d bought and put under the sink where I’d be sure to see it, eventually.

“It’s okay, see?” he said. “All gone.”

“Marry me?” I said. “Now?”

He slapped my shoulder with a giggle. I didn’t care if he was gay, didn’t care if we wouldn’t be having sex. He’d be a major improvement on my present marital situation as we were way more intimate than my husband and I had ever been. All I really needed was someone on my
side
.

“We’re already married, remember?” Paul soothed, running a hand up and down my arm. The first human—and adult—contact I’d had since Spider Hunk’s hands around my arms weeks ago. I wondered where he was, and what he was doing, and what his girlfriend or wife was like. Was he nice to her, or had the daily grind beat them both into the ground too? I couldn’t imagine someone so kind telling his wife he didn’t like the way she looked or anything. I was sure that if he had kids he’d be a great father. Kind and dedicated.

“But I’ll forgive you if you sleep with another man. Invite Julian out for a coffee. Go out and have fun.”

Fun? I looked up at Paul. He was right. I was going to lower my standards and raise the amount of enjoyment in my life. Screw the walls, the windows, Ira and his scowls. From now on I’d start thinking about me as well. And the little things in life that
I’d
always wanted to achieve. Like… growing real live flowers and not just my cactus-like succulents, for instance. And start painting again. And maybe, just maybe, have a fling…