Free Gift With Purchase (10 page)
“That being said, he could have gone about it in a better way. He could have told you himself instead of gutlessly hiding behind the courts and the lawyers, and letting them break the news to you.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
“Good riddance!”
“I guess so, but I can’t believe how quickly he wants to get rid of me after more than two decades.”
Laura was right, and I now realized how sleazy and cowardly my soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law’s true nature really was.
“Look at me,” I said, “It’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
I hugged her tight, and that’s when the doorbell rang and the door opened, our mother bursting in at the same time as the pizza guy.
Upon the sight of my dear, sweet mother, I burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Your pants!” exclaimed Laura, who was laughing too.
“What about them?” Mom asked, looking down. My mom had on a white tee-shirt and these bright orange, cropped cotton pants.
“I love you, Mom,” I said, “But you look like an inmate from the Cook County jail.”
Laura added, “Actually, the shade of orange for the Cook County prisoners is a little bit better of a shade than your pants.”
This got a big laugh out of the pizza guy.
“This color is very in right now,” Mom defended, turning to him and asking, “Don’t you think?”
“Um…”
“Depends on who’s tipping,” I said with a giggle.
The pizza guy didn’t give his opinion. My mom paid him, along with a big tip. The second he was gone, Laura blurted out, “Alan filed.”
“He’s fast, huh? Do you have a good lawyer?”
“I think so.”
“Good,” said our mother. Then she kissed Laura on the cheek, “Better to just get it done.” She put her head down sadly and walked into the kitchen with the pizza, making a huge fuss over Izzie’s sparkly headband. As we followed her, we were still giggling and cracking jokes about the pants.
Surprisingly the meal went well. There was lots of laughter and one slightly awkward moment when Izzie began asking me what ingredients her father liked on his pizza. But no one cared. In fact, I think my mother and sister thought it was good for Isabelle to ask questions like this.
“He liked sausage,” I said.
“And black olives?” Izzie asked, holding up a black olive from her slice of pizza.
“Oh yes!” exclaimed Helene, “Your dad loved black olives!”
“Just like me!” Izzie exclaimed.
I looked right into my daughter’s eyes, the ones that were so much like her father’s and I answered, “Yes, just like you.” And it took everything in my power not to cry. My poor, sweet Izzie, trying desperately to hold on to a piece of her father. Anything she could. And me, having such a wonderful time with another man. I’m not sure I ever hated myself more than I did at this moment.
“So, tell us what’s going on,” I finally asked my mother, “Where is dad and what are you hiding?”
“Later,” she said, shooting a look at Izzie, who was waiting with baited breath for an answer. After dinner, my mom offered to put her to bed while Laura and I cleaned up.
“Hey, how about a glass of wine?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she replied, “It’s late.”
I completely ignored her, opened up a bottle of Pinot and poured us each a glass.
Once the kitchen was clean and half the bottle was gone, I headed over to a nearby bookshelf, took down my computer, and brought it to the kitchen table. I’m not sure if it was the wine buzz, or if what I was doing had been pre-meditated, but I logged on to the dating website, Match dot com.
“What’s going on?” Laura asked me.
“I’m searching for men for you.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I want to see who’s out there for a gorgeous, newly single 44 year-old doctor.”
Shockingly, Laura didn’t object. She was quite enthusiastic about the idea, holding my wine glass and leaning into the laptop. “I guess it can’t hurt to browse,” she said casually.
I clicked on “I am a woman searching for a man.”
“I have a problem with the wording of this,” I said, waiting for the next screen to appear, “Is every woman who goes on this site searching for a man? I’m certainly not, and neither are you. Can’t they instead word it, ‘I am a woman curious to see single men?’ Because that’s what we are. Curious. Nothing more.”
“I agree!”
“What age bracket should I search?” I asked.
“I say 35 to 50. Anything over 50 seems old.”
“I agree,” I said, happily clicking away. The last thing I did was punch in my zip code. Then I hit search.
And then we waited. We waited in great anticipation for all the eligible faces in little boxes to appear.
“I don’t know about this,” said Laura, “It seems kind of desperate.”
“Shut up,” I joked, “Don’t think about it and don’t judge.”
Approximately six seconds later, the pictures appeared. To our dismay, they were horrendous. Each guy was worse than the next. There was YourPrince68, who would cause me to pretty much want to kill myself if he was my prince. Then there was goodguy2know1203, and although he looked like a good guy, he also looked like he was about seventy years old. Johnclassof89 had potential, but I was finding his thick mustache a bit too cheesy.
“Lookingforcowgirl,” Laura read, just before letting out a scream of terror, which I feared may wake up my innocent little daughter.
“Sounds like a twisted psycho who likes to tie girls up!” I said with a laugh.
“How about this guy,” Laura asked, pointing to Takeme44, “I’d take him.”
“You would?”
“I’d take him to get his haircut and a shave!”
“And to the gym!” I added.
We both burst out laughing. Two single women were having a great time bashing the gender Laura loathed at the present moment, the guys she had it in for, just because they were guys, and for no other reason except that they were of the same sex category as the person who had deeply hurt her.
“What’s going on in here?” asked my mother, who had just walked in, her orange pants still getting a laugh out of us.
“Mom, please promise me you’ll throw those in the garbage tonight when you get home,” Laura said.
She ignored her. “What are you two doing?”
“Take a look at these guys,” I said, turning the computer toward my mother’s chair so she could get a glimpse, “I’m trying to find dates for Laura.”
“Match dot com?” Mom asked.
“Yup,” I answered, “It’s an online dating website.”
“J-date is better,” said my mother, “That’s what my friends tell me.”
“Please,” said Laura, “I can’t look anymore. Log off.”
“Oh well, it was worth a try.” And then, just as I was about to close out of the site, I froze.
“What is it?” Laura asked.
I continued to stare at the screen.
“What is it, Em?” she asked again.
I looked up at her, my eyes glossy (not entirely from wine). “Look at this guy,” I said, pointing to a photo with the name “Den0507” under it, “I have a really weird feeling about him. He looks nice. And normal. Laura, do you find him attractive?”
“Yeah,” she said, “He’s nice looking. He looks like a big teddy bear.”
“He’s cute,” said my mother, leaning in, “He’s definitely not Jewish, but look at those pretty eyes.”
“Click on his profile page,” said Laura.
The three of us silently read his profile. Den0507 was divorced with two kids and was a mortgage broker. He lived in our town, and was forty-three years old.
“Do you think his name is Dennis?” Laura asked, “That’s kind of a bad name.”
“Denny’s a good name,” I answered back, trying to sound hopeful.
We read on. Den0507 liked to work out, go to movies, go out for nice dinners, mountain climb, kayak and…
“Oh my God!” I practically shouted, “It says here his favorite food is chips and salsa!”
“And look at this,” Laura exclaimed, pointing to the text, “His favorite movie is
The Hangover
!”
“What’s
The Hangover
?” asked my mom.
“It’s one of Emma’s favorite movies. She’s obsessed with Bradley Cooper.”
Mom smiled, “Interesting. Maybe it’s fate.”
I looked at Laura. “No, he’s for you.”
“No way,” she answered, “Salsa and
The Hangover?
He’s yours.”
“But what about Preston?”
“You mean, your little boy toy?”
I gasped as dramatically as I possibly could to make it clear to her that I was deeply offended.
“Oh, please, I’m just being honest.”
“He’s more to me than that.”
“I know, but come on. He’s not your soul mate.”
“I’m sorry, am I looking for my soul mate?”
“He’s serving a purpose in your life,” said my mother.
“Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk,” said Laura, “but honestly, you’re in a relationship that’s mostly physical, and the other man in your life is Luke, your new best friend.”
“What’s wrong with being friends with Luke?”
“You can’t be friends with Luke.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a classic When Harry Met Sally scenario,” she said.
“I loved that movie,” said my mother.
“Well, you’re wrong,” I snapped, “We’re actually going running again tomorrow morning. He hasn’t asked me out. I’m telling you, it’s platonic.”
“He’s either involved with someone or he’s gay,” she said.
“Luke Sullivan is not gay!”
At that moment, the weirdest thing happened. My mother, a normally strong, energetic, happy woman began to cry. Both Laura and I gasped, as we’d rarely seen her break down.
“Oh my God, Mom, what is it?” asked Laura.
“Is it the pants?” I asked, “We just want you to look good, I swear.”
Mom looked up at us, her face looking so sad and distressing, it was frightening.
“Please, tell us,” I urged.
She cleared her throat and said softly, “Your father’s having an affair.”
.
G
old Medal Gymnastics
is the filthiest, most disgusting place imaginable. I would have to bet that the thirty-some year old gymnastics studio hasn’t been cleaned since it opened. That being said, it just so happened to be one of Isabelle’s favorite places to go.
She had attended birthday parties there in the past, and after each one would beg me to sign her up for classes. I never did, though, because we always seemed to have too many other activities to fit in gymnastics. Plus, would you send your child to classes at a pig sty?
“Mom,” she had said to me a few weeks earlier, “My friend Katherine is going to camp at Gold Medal Gymnastics.”
I smiled at her hopeful tone and replied, “Oh, they have a camp there?”
Izzie had obviously done her homework, because she knew every detail about the interim camp offered for the weeks between the end of summer camp and the start of school. “Katherine is going Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, from nine to noon.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“Can I go, Mom?”
“Hmmm…” I said playfully, pretending to be contemplating my decision and watching her hopeful little face, “I guess that might work.” I figured even though the gym was beyond dirty and germ ridden, no one ever died from going there, and if it would make my daughter happy, why not?
So I signed her up and here I was, dropping her off at the Petri-dish for influenza and every other illness on the planet. After I signed the release forms, I asked a member of the staff if the counselors were pretty diligent about having the kids wash their hands before snack.
“Oh yes, Mrs. Bloom,” replied a little brunette girl, who was very apparently trying to model herself after Mary Lou Retten, and doing a great job, since she really did look like her. “We make sure of that,” she added with a wink.
Mary Lou seemed extremely insincere, and I was sure she rolled her eyes the second I was out of sight. So just as another precaution, I said a silent prayer to God that Izzie wouldn’t bite her nails over the next three hours.
The second I left the place, I called my parents house. After hearing the horrific news just twelve hours earlier that my seventy year old father was “banging Mrs. Feldman,” a widowed seamstress who was doing a lot more than just hemming his pants, I couldn’t focus on anything else but making sure my mother was okay.
Helene and Stan Bricker had been together for 45 years. Regardless of the bumps along the way in their path of life, the two had managed to stay together. They had survived both of their parents’ deaths, my father’s hip replacement, and their daughter’s husband’s death. They were a strong couple, and I wasn’t going to let Mrs. Feldman with her needle and thread break up a long-term, not blissful, but certainly happy union.
When there was no answer, I tried my mother’s cell. No answer. Then I tried my dad’s cell, wondering what on earth I was going to say if he actually answered, which he did.
“Hi, Em.” I knew immediately by the tone of his voice that he knew my mother had told me what was going on.
“Hi.”
Silence.
“Em? Still there?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dad, I’m here.”
“Look…I don’t know what to say.”
“How about ‘I’m a jerk’ and what I’m doing is horrible and I’m not going to do it anymore?”