Friday Mornings at Nine (20 page)

“You know how you asked us last month about whether we felt
sure
in our choice of husband,” Tamara said, “and that maybe we needed to test out our marriage to know?”

“Yeah?”

“What was your day with your ex really like? I know you said the reunion would help you clarify. That you’d probably know more after that. But you can’t tell me you spent all that time touring your old college campus with David and still have no impulses one way or another. No sense of intuition about which man you feel more connected with.”

Jennifer sighed. What
was
it with her friends and their bizarrely innate sense of
knowing,
which they were always pushing on her? “Look, Tamara, I’m really not sure how to explain it….”

“Try.”

She inhaled deeply. “Okay, but you’ll think it’s weird, because it’s not as easy as an either-or situation, much as I’d like it to be. David and Michael exist in different planes. Sort of like their space-time continuums are completely separate from each other.” She glanced at Tamara, who, indeed, did appear to find her explanation an odd one. She pressed on anyway. “The world I inhabit with Michael disappears when I’m with David, or even IM’ing with him. Meeting Michael, after David and I broke up, was like journeying to another dimension. Same planet, but a million minute differences.”

“Huh.” Tamara finished her coffee and tossed the paper cup into a nearby trash bin. “But if it’s the same planet, as you say, then when and where does the transition actually happen? For instance, what about when you’re completely alone?”

“You mean, which dimension do I live in then?”

“Yes. Is the journey really
out there,
between Michael and David? Or is it within you?”

A tiny voice in Jennifer’s head was the first to answer. A voice she, for once, didn’t quash. “It’s been so long since I was really alone, I don’t remember.” She paused. “And as long as I keep the two men apart, I can’t know for sure. I—I’m pretty sure I’m not ready to know, though. Not yet.”

“Fair enough,” Tamara said. “Maybe that’ll change after the reunion.”

“Maybe.” Of course there was a rather large piece of the puzzle Jennifer omitted. A couple of pieces, if she were to be completely honest.

One was that she hadn’t even told Michael about the reunion weekend yet. She’d kept her calendar open, sure, but she hadn’t committed to the event in the eyes of the family for fear she’d unwittingly give herself away. That everyone else in the world had this instinctive sixth sense that her DNA didn’t possess. That if she mentioned David’s name out in the open at home, her husband and daughters would somehow deduce there was something going on.

Then again, Michael was so busy destroying the house, appliance by appliance, maybe he wouldn’t notice. And maybe he wouldn’t understand the specifics of the text messages David had sent her—if he were to see them, and she was careful he wouldn’t. That was the other unspoken piece. She kept her cell phone with her at all times, except when she was showering or sleeping. (And then she had it turned off and hidden in a zipped compartment of her purse.) But somehow she suspected Michael’s liberal-artsy, poetic side would
intuit
the meaning behind David’s carefully crafted messages, which had, in typical David form, begun nearly innocuously before mutating to an entity just shy of cybersex.

At first, it was about the reunion directly:

Got all RSVPs. 10 for sure. 6 maybes. Thx 4 being in the 1st group!
(And ten to sixteen people made quite an intimate group for a reunion, really.)

Then it turned cutesy:

U gotta check out this YouTube vid. Monkey Pong Live! Will e-mail link.
(A reference to the computer game their friend Mitch had programmed, which had been a perennial favorite of the club members. Only the video link David sent wasn’t of the real Monkey Pong, but of two real monkeys that were filmed kissing with very raunchy captions below the video.)

Then it became a series of texts—once he’d engaged her in conversation, had gotten her into a habit of answering his messages right away and knew which times of day she could respond quickly:

Look at this ad.
(With a link to an online lingerie store featuring mannequins dressed in underwear, wrestling in Girls Gone Wild style.)

To:
What kind RU wearing?
(She didn’t answer that one. And she immediately deleted it.)

But it was followed the next day by:

Just heard Meat Loaf.
(Which she answered cautiously with,
I always liked him
.)

Then it morphed into:

I know. Rembr. that rainy Sunday?
(Which, of course, she remembered. Late August of their junior year. Just back to school after the endless summer break. A room to themselves. Listening to “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” from the classic
Bat Out of Hell
album. And touching each other. So, she typed,
Yeah.
)

He wrote:

I rembr. yr #26 shirt
. (Which was really
his
#26 shirt.)

And then in separate texts that he didn’t wait for her to reply to:

I locked the door.

U took off my fave blues.
(His favorite pair of Levi’s jeans.)

My hands, yr legs…

Got rid of yr B & P.
(He made quick work of undressing her, yes. Her bra and panties didn’t stand a chance.)

Like an ice-cream cone.
(She blushed at that memory. He liked…going down on her. But, at this, she typed,
Stop it.
)

He defended his texts with:

Just a memory. Nothin wrong w. that.

Only there was. She wasn’t so self-delusional that she could miss what David implied with every keystroke or how Michael would react to his wife taking part in a cybersex reenactment with her old boyfriend.

She was not telling Tamara about any of this.

Through some deft manipulation on Jennifer’s part, and some very general whining about the cluelessness of husbands, the subject eventually twisted and turned to Tamara and Jon.

“We get used to different things—whether we like them or are irritated by them,” Tamara said. “Jon and I have essentially had a convenient marriage for a couple of decades now.” A reference to her shotgun, city hall wedding because she was pregnant with Benji. “He’s good at some things, but I’ll never like his temper or his snarkiness. Those qualities are a pain but, after a while, enough time goes by and it’s hard to imagine being with anyone else and getting used to a whole new set of bad habits. So, none of Jon’s carrying on really bothers me anymore.”

Jennifer raised one stealthy brow. “Really?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s not ideal. It’s not the fairy tale. But what relationship is? What
long-term
relationship?”

“But relationships aren’t general, Tamara. They’re specific. Very specific to the two people involved.”

Tamara shrugged. “I made a choice. I think once people make that choice, the specifics don’t really matter.”

Jennifer actually laughed at this. “And, yet, that’s not exactly what you said when we talked about Jon’s plan to move to Atlanta that one time. I remember you telling us that he’d already taken away your choice of life mate, and that you weren’t going to let him take away your home, too.”

Tamara tried to bat away Jennifer’s doubts. “Look. I guess ‘it doesn’t bother me’ is the wrong way to put it. But what can be done about it?”

Jennifer blinked and tilted her head annoyingly.

“I do
not
still harbor resentment over the forced marriage,” Tamara insisted.

“
Forced
marriage, is it now? Interesting choice of words.”

“Oh, Freudian slip. So what?”

Jennifer shrugged. “You tell me. If you don’t know your feelings—”
Or acknowledge them when you do,
Jennifer added to herself, not that she was an expert at that skill personally. “How could I possibly guess them?”

Tamara fought the rise in her level of defensiveness, which created an internal churning and unease that pissed the hell out of her. “I’m the last person anyone ever accuses of hiding my feelings,” she said. “I’m not the least bit reserved. I’m not remotely withholding.”

Jennifer squinted at her in disbelief. “You
seem
so open, that’s true, but I’m always surprised by how little you actually reveal.”

“Well, I have to have some secrets, don’t I?” Tamara blurted, and then stopped in the middle of the cracked pavement. As she puzzled through understanding her own admission, she couldn’t help but recognize the parallel between what Jon had said to her in Austin and other times before, which she tended to dismiss because he could be such an A-hole, and what Jennifer had just said, which, while irritating, wasn’t nearly as challenging to her self-esteem. It was, however, virtually the same message: If she didn’t know what she wanted and didn’t express it when she did, how could anyone else know?

“And just what kind of secrets do you have?” Jennifer asked, a small smile playing at the corners of her small mouth.

Tamara thought of the fantasies she’d been having lately. All of them featuring Aaron. But
everyone
had fantasies, and what she felt about him she knew wasn’t
love
. It was…weird, yes. And strangely powerful. But, even in her most serious moments of staring head-on at her attraction to him, she doubted it was more than an odd case of very exclusive and directed lust. Which had her identifying too readily with Samantha on old episodes of
Sex and the City
and taking altogether too much interest in the courtship and consequent marriage of Demi and Ashton. And it certainly had her convinced that the libido of a strong, forty-something woman could rival that of any hot younger man. But, still, those were all just mental games. None of it was real.

She
knew
real.

“The only thing I know,” Tamara said, sidestepping her friend’s question, “is that you can’t change a man. No matter what you might think before marriage.”

Jennifer halted. “No. No you can’t,” she agreed. “But you can change yourself.”

Something inside Tamara blossomed at those words. They rang so true for her and filled her with such a sense of relief. So obvious and, yet, so right. Even
knowing
Jon wouldn’t change didn’t keep her from
hoping
he might. She could finally see that clearly. Could finally let go of that girlish myth she’d clung to for all these years. Like chopping off a superfluous part of her—like the silly ponytail she wore in her youth—and tossing it out the window. It was that deft a cut.

Perhaps she hadn’t been fair to Jon. Perhaps she ought to give marriage to the
real
man a try, and not secretly pine for the idyllic shadow of him she’d created. And, above all, perhaps she needed to express to him what she wanted in their relationship. It may yet be possible to achieve it.

They had zigzagged several blocks, wound around in circles, but were now back on the same street as the Indigo Moon. She felt drained, but it was an exhaustion ribboned with exhilaration. And it came with golden threads of gratitude.

“Good point, Jennifer,” she said. “Very good point.”

The other woman smiled at her and downed the last of her latte.

“You want another one of those?” Tamara asked, pointing to the empty cup. “’Cuz I could go for a second one.”

“Sure.” They were a few yards from the entrance, and Jennifer reached into her purse to pull out her wallet.

“Oh, you know what?” Tamara said. “This one’s on me. And I’m grabbing us a couple of scones to go, too.”

“Thanks,” Jennifer said. “But I’ll only eat it if it’s shaped like a guillotine and has a real blade at one end.”

Tamara laughed. “Eight more days, and your wish just might be granted.”

Saturday, October 30

O
wing to the impending event the following evening, the trio elected not to get together on Friday the 29th. A conservation of energy would surely be required to make it through the Hallowiener Party and, quite possibly, an emergency coffee meeting might be necessary early the next week as well. All three women doubted they’d be able to postpone discussing the festivities until the following Friday.

However, amid a flurry of phone calls and costume coordination (none of the women wanted to choose the same fairy-tale outfits to wear), it was promised they would keep an eye out for each other while at the party and, if Kip or Leah Wiener threatened to make them or their husbands take part in any beheading performance, they would have each other’s backs. And necks.

Bridget, who felt a natural affinity for anybody who brought food to loved ones in wicker ware, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. She was rather pleased with her hooded red cape, and she’d filled her woven basket with home-baked cookies and a few other low-fat, heart-healthy goodies in the event that the treats provided by the hosts proved too scary or inedible.

She and her husband, Graham, the Woodsman, were later than many of the partygoers. But, surprisingly, they were the first of the three couples to arrive at the Wiener house, where plenty of costumed wolves were in attendance, including Kip’s brother, the town’s chief of police.

“Be careful where you swing that ax, Woodsman,” Wolf Wiener said, crossing his arms by the front entrance before breaking into a grin.

The men shook hands.

“Nice to see ya again, Chief.” Graham and his crew had installed eighteen new windows at the police station over the summer. Bridget was glad there were always guys he knew invited to this event, so, in that way, he could enjoy a little male camaraderie as they experienced the spectacle of the night. “Did Kip make you the bouncer again?” Graham said with a chuckle.

The other man laughed, his fake wolverine teeth bright white in the glow of the sparkling house lights. “You know it. Reckon you two are over twenty-one, though. They got some wild brew inside.”

“Any beer?”

“Yep,” the Wolf/Chief Wiener said. “There’s a keg next to the food table. Go grab yourselves a couple glasses. And, uh, don’t be too shocked by the color.”

“Red again?” Graham asked, with a hint of apprehension.

“Nope. You’ll see.”

Bridget pulled out two specialty jams from her basket, one with a black bow, the other with an orange one. “I brought strawberry and peach preserves for Leah and Kip,” she said. “Is there a good spot to put gifts?”

The Wolf/Chief nodded. “Leah’s adding the finishing touches on her Spider Sandwiches.” He pointed in the general direction of the kitchen. “She’d love for you to pop in and say hi.”

They thanked him and wandered inside.

Jennifer and Michael arrived shortly thereafter with an autumn bouquet for the Wieners. Jennifer’s two daughters had been employed in the task of babysitting Bridget’s three children, and Jennifer had taken a few extra minutes at the house to ensure that Veronica and Shelby understood the detailed instructions her friend left on which snacks Evan could have versus those for Cassandra and Keaton.

Dressed as Goldilocks and the (one) Bear, Jennifer and Michael approached the Wolf/Chief with some caution.

“Welcome, friends!” Kip’s brother’s voice boomed into the twilight.

Jennifer smiled wanly and Michael shook his hand.

“You’re gonna be here through the show, right?” Wolf Wiener said.

They nodded, but Jennifer thought,
Not if we can escape sooner
. And Michael couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for a verbal reply.

“Great.” The police chief waved them into the house and told them to help themselves to some refreshments.

Unlike Bridget’s husband, Graham, Michael did not find anything about the annual Hallowiener Party diverting—not the bizarreness or even the beer. Despite his overall outgoingness, he unequivocally hated coming to this party, but he knew, for his wife’s sake and, really, for his own, he had to attend. Jennifer understood this as well. It was a See and Be Seen event in their community, and their absence would have been noticed.

Didn’t mean they had to like it, though, which partly—though not entirely—explained their somber moods upon entering the house.

Tamara and Jon were the last of the trio to arrive, toting a bottle of Chardonnay for the hosts.

Of the three husbands, Tamara’s spouse was the one with the greatest appreciation for the peculiar goings-on, largely due to the fact that anyone who had the fortitude to withstand the dust-dry conversation of a law-firm cocktail party could easily maintain his stamina amid the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the Frog Prince, the Ugly Duckling and all of the Bremen Town Musicians.

The Wolf/Chief extended his hand and his welcome to them as well, and they—dressed as Rapunzel and the Prince—entered the large house, set aglow by windowsill jack-o’-lanterns flickering squiggles of light into the darkness.

The first thing Tamara noticed when she set foot in the dimly lit foyer was the armored knight statue acting as sentinel. She stopped in front of it and grinned. She remembered the life-sized toy from the last three years. “Hello, again, Knight.”

“Behold, visitor!” rumbled the Knight’s artificial voice. “Are you a princess, an enchantress or a wench?”

“A wench,” Jon answered for her, tugging on the sleeve of her peasant blouse. “C’mon. I saw Mayor West’s Mercedes out front.” Jon, who considered the event a three-hour networking opportunity and a chance to drum up business for the firm (his ability in collecting new clients always impressed his fellow partners), did not want to waste time talking to inanimate objects when the mayor was available. Even if the town’s highest official bore a striking resemblance that night to Rumpelstiltskin.

Tamara sighed and followed Jon through a sea of women in party gowns, made up to look like good or evil queens, an overly abundant number of men dressed as princes or kings (everybody wanted to rule the world) and at least five of the Seven Dwarfs.

They got as far as the refreshments table, where Tamara spotted Bridget inspecting the spread of goodies and Bridget’s husband chatting with another guy (Sinbad the Sailor?) a few feet away. “You go look for the mayor,” she told Jon. “I’m gonna have one of, um…those things before I mingle.” She pointed at a random food item—no idea what it was—and winked at Bridget.

“Yeah, okay,” Jon mumbled, and he was gone.

Bridget took a step closer to Tamara as soon as he’d cleared the room. “Don’t know if I’d risk it,” she whispered.

“Risk what?”

“The, uh, Jack and the Bean-Dip.” Bridget tapped her finger near the folded orange index card labeled with the name of the dish.

Tamara studied the lumpy brown glob in the bowl surrounded by green-tinged wafer crackers and laughed. “It does look…questionable,” she whispered back. “Anything here you’d recommend?”

“Well, the Princess’s Pea Soup isn’t…
bad,
and the Golden Goose Deviled Eggs are kind of, um, interesting.”

Tamara winced.

“Graham seems to like the Three Bloody Pigs in a Blanket,” Bridget suggested, motioning for her to take a look at the ketchup-covered, biscuit-wrapped wienies.

This time Tamara shuddered.

Bridget reached into her basket and surreptitiously withdrew a large oatmeal-raisin cookie. She hid it in a “Halloween Is Spooky!” napkin and handed it to her friend. “Here. Eat this.”

“Oh, thank God,” Tamara said, taking a bite just as Jennifer wandered into the room, an odd expression on her face. Tamara lifted her free hand in greeting and took another bite of Bridget’s treat. Damn, that girl could bake.

Just then, a guy wearing a large gold crown, a small pair of beige-colored briefs and
nothing else
pranced through the room, waving to everybody. Tamara almost dropped her cookie. “What the hell was that?” she said, probably too loudly, but who cared? It was a party, for chrissake. Guests were supposed to be loud, right?

“The Emperor,” Jennifer said, rounding the food table and coming to stand next to them. “Dressed in his New Clothes.”

Bridget handed her a cookie, too, which she took gratefully but didn’t eat.

“Are you feeling okay?” Bridget asked her.

Jennifer shook her head. She’d gotten a barrage of text messages from David that week and even more of them during the day. She had set her cell phone to vibrate and would have turned it off altogether, but what if one of the kids called?

“I’m a little frustrated,” she said, squeezing the hem of the stark white apron that covered her blue and white gingham skirt. “I told Michael I’d bring him a drink, but I really just want to get away from all the noise and interruptions and…everything.” Not that she could. She glanced around the party room they were in—one of probably fifteen areas in and around the Wiener house that was packed with people—and realized this was not nearly quiet enough. Her cell phone vibrated again. Damn.

She pulled it out of her skirt pocket and pressed a button to check the message:

Once upon a time there was a v. curious grl who went deep in2 the forest.

She sighed.

“Is it the kids?” Bridget asked, her voice worried.

“No.” Jennifer seriously regretted ever having told David about this party and about her dressing up as Goldilocks. She was about to put the phone back into her pocket when a new text appeared:
She was v., v. hungry and not real law abiding.

She shot a look at her friends, who were regarding her with concern. “I need to turn off this phone,” she told them. “Right now. Bridget, could you call the kids and tell them that, if anything comes up, they can reach us at your number?”

Bridget nodded. “Of course, but what’s the problem?”

Tamara answered for Jennifer in an oblique manner. “Does David really pester you that much? New texts every ten minutes?”

Jennifer exhaled. “It’s not usually this bad, but it has been today. His wife and kids are out of town for the weekend and, clearly, he has nothing better to do with his time than harass me. Some of the messages are kind of funny, but—” Her phone vibrated again. Message:
And she rly had a thing 4 hairy guys….

She turned off her phone and pocketed it. “I’m just going to pretend the battery needs charging.” She nibbled on her cookie in agitation but, even though she knew it was perfectly and lovingly baked by her friend, it tasted like sawdust in her mouth.

“Okay,” Bridget said. “I’ll let the kids know. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks,” Jennifer said between mechanical bites. She stared at the beer keg. “What color is it this year?”

“Jet black,” Tamara replied, pointing to a handful of people with cups of beer so inky it looked like they were drinking the stuff inside fountain-pen refills.

“Great,” Jennifer murmured, filling a plastic cup with the horrid-looking substance anyway and grabbing a glass of some greenish Kool-Aid-like thing that reeked with the distinctive odor of tequila. “All right. I’ve gotta get back to Michael, but I’ll see you both in a bit.”

“Hang in there,” Tamara said.

“I will.” The lead character from the lesser-known Brothers Grimm tale
Hans My Hedgehog
walked by, narrowly missing getting his spines tangled up in some low-hanging cobwebs. “You, too,” Jennifer added. “And thanks for the cookie, Bridget. Best thing here.”

She scurried away moments before the hosts themselves swept into the room, dressed as Prince Charming and Cinderella gone horribly wrong. The outfits were correct—a flowing pink ball gown for her, a crisp white tux for him—but the details set the fairy tale on its head. The Wieners had managed to turn the romantic pairing into a Goth couple, complete with black fingernail polish, black lipstick, a number of temporary tattoos and a few fake piercings (for realism).

“Oh, my God,” Tamara breathed.

Bridget, who’d seen the hosts briefly when she and Graham had arrived, was not nearly so surprised, but she still wasn’t thrilled about having to get a close-up view of their outfits a second time. Nevertheless, as Leah and Kip approached them, bearing trays of some beverage, Bridget snatched up a Headless Gingerbread Man Cookie from the refreshments table so she could appear more sociable and accepting of the festivities than she felt. Next to her, Tamara stifled a snicker.

“Hellooo, you two!” Leah enthused. “I hope you’re having a marvelous time.”

“Oh, indescribably so,” Tamara commented.

“Yeah,” Bridget said, almost believably. And then, because she hated to lie, she took an inadvertently large bite out of the head-deprived Gingerbread Man. A mistake. She started coughing—an immediate and uncontrollable reaction to a strong, unrecognizable spice. What the heck had Leah baked into this thing?

Kip thrust a small martini-shaped glass at her, a wedge of some fruit—an apple slice?—garnishing the rim. “Here, honey. Have one of these.”

Desperate, Bridget took it and gulped. The flame of vodka engulfed her throat and eviscerated her taste buds. For a moment, she coughed even harder but, suddenly, it all stopped. Her esophagus had been sufficiently shocked by the mysterious contents of the cocktail. “Uh, thanks,” she murmured.

Kip grinned and put one in Tamara’s hand as well.

“What…is it?” Tamara asked for them both.

“A Poisoned Appletini, of course,” Leah said far too cheerfully.

“It’s not really toxic,” Kip confided. He winked at them. “Unless you drink too many of ’em.”

Then the Goth couple laughed at their own joke and moved on to terrorize the next group of partygoers.

Tamara took a cautious sip of her pinkish drink, and she was pleasantly surprised. There was vodka, yes, but she also detected apple schnapps, Cointreau and a dash of apple cider. Very, very tasty.

And when Kip deposited the remainder of the glasses on the food table and urged her to “Have another one, sweetie,” she took him up on it.

Bridget, by contrast, barely drank half of her first Appletini and absolutely begged off a second. Nevertheless, she stayed by Tamara’s side for another twenty minutes, talking to her about a couple of great new carryout places in the area, until the Twelve Dancing Princesses descended upon them.