Happy Hour (14 page)

“Hey, you two. Come get your lunch.”

Amber wrapped her arms around Jeremy and said, “I like you. You’re fun.”

He twirled her around and the water sprayed out from the ends of her
feet. “You’re okay, too, Monster. I think we’ll keep you around.” He boosted
her onto the steps and Kat wrapped a towel around her.

“Thank you,” Kat said.

“No, thanks, Mom,” he replied.

They hung their feet over the side of the pool and ate their lunch.
They’d have to talk about what had happened. She wouldn’t allow Jeremy to
wallow in feelings he probably didn’t completely understand. But for now, the
three of them would dangle their feet in the water and revel in the fact that,
although it was one strange family, they were indeed a family.

Alyssa

Alyssa didn’t know why she couldn’t tell her friends last week about the
letter. She’d even thought of telling Danielle about it over dinner after art
class, but she couldn’t. Why couldn’t she be open like the other three? Who was
she kidding? She knew exactly why. Alyssa knew she couldn’t tell them because
it would mean taking her three pals back to the very beginning and then they
would wonder why she hadn’t told them before. The past was so painful, and one
of the things she really loved about Jamie, Danielle, and Kat was that they
knew when to back off. They weren’t friends who tried to pry you open as if you
were a closed mollusk with some precious jewel inside. And Alyssa was simply
not prepared to be that honest with them or even with herself.

She dabbed her paintbrush into a rose color and blended it with a deep
red hue. Sade played over the sound system in her studio. Coffee brewed,
filling the studio with its earthy aroma. The space nestled behind the gallery
was too small to hold her classes in, but worked fine for her own time at the
easel and canvas. The painting she currently worked on was taking on a darker
tone than the ones she’d already painted of the boy with no name.

It was almost seven. She’d gotten there early because she hadn’t been
able to sleep. She’d tossed and turned and thought over the letter to which she
hadn’t responded.

In a few hours she’d put away her brushes and open the gallery for
tourists and the few locals who came by every so often to see if she was
carrying anything new. This place was her sanctuary, and a place where honesty
dwelled. That was the worst part about having such good friends and not telling
them her secrets; the feeling that she was being dishonest with them. They’d
shown her their troubled sides, their woes, and she hadn’t shown them hers.
Look at Jamie and the problems with her brother-in-law, losing Nate, and now
having to take care of her mother-in-law, too. Then there was Danielle and what
was going on with her and her daughter. A pregnancy. A baby. Tough stuff. And
Kat. Although she played it up like not much bugged her, like her ex and her
husband’s ex, and all the stuff they dealt with daily with the kids and the
restaurant, Alyssa saw through Kat’s tough exterior. All of it ate at her.
Maybe Kat kept some things quiet like she did?

Alyssa set her brush aside and grabbed the wine glass that she was using
as a prop. She placed her hand across the top of the glass and studied the
lines in her hands and the light, the peach of her palm that bled into a soft
caramel color. She picked her brush back up. She’d already painted the glass on
the table in the painting and now she began to paint a hand—her hand covering
the top of it. Before long, hours rushing by, she realized that it was almost
ten o’clock and time to put her artwork away to open the gallery. She sat back
for a moment and admired her work. It showed her hand covering a glass of red
wine, as another hand reached out for the glass. It was a child’s hand. The
boy’s hand. She wasn’t finished with the painting, but she’d started to paint
in the little boy’s face reflected in the glass. She’d named the painting
“Protector.”

She took off her smock and washed her hands, then poured herself a third
cup of coffee. Time to open. Alyssa walked to the front glass doors and
unlocked them. She turned her sign around to show that she was open. The
mailman showed up a few minutes later with a certified letter for her to sign.
She thanked him and took the letter back into the gallery. The second one now.

How had he found her? Alyssa closed her eyes, memories flooding her, one
after the other. The letter in her shaking hands, she read it. How would she
handle this? Alyssa had no answers. What she did know was that everything she’d
tried to protect, everyone she’d tried to protect, all the lies she’d told or
the words she didn’t say—none of it mattered now. The truth was about to rain
down on her and everyone around her. 

Christian came up behind Kat and wrapped his arms around her, nibbling on
her neck and then her ear. She squirmed. “Careful. I’m dicing tomatoes.” She
held up the knife.

“I like it when you’re feisty.” He took the knife from her hand, set it
down on the counter and kissed her hard. Then he twirled her around and said, “Let
me help.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. What are we making for the girls?”

“Pasta with pancetta, goat cheese, and spinach in a light cream sauce.”

“One of my favorites. Simple but bursting with flavor.” He smiled.

When he did, when he really smiled that way like he was truly happy, Kat
couldn’t help feel that everything was right in the world. His smile took her
back to the moment they met, the wine, the dinner, and of course, the
lovemaking. These days though, the lovemaking didn’t happen often. It was rare
that all three kids would be out of the house and time would present
itself—time and no resentments. That morning there had been no kids around. And
after a mimosa brunch with more champagne than orange juice, a little
flirtation, the realization that all the kids were gone—one thing led to
another and before long they spent some time kissing, fondling, loving, and
definitely not resenting. And, in the aftermath, the resentments tended to stay
at bay as well. Even later in the kitchen, while prepping—no resentments. The
orgasms alone meant that they would have at least twenty-four hours of peace
between them.

And then…

“Emily called me yesterday.”

Whenever Christian mentioned his ex’s name, the hairs on the back of
Kat’s neck stood on end as a warning signal. Warning! Warning! Duck and cover!
“Uh-huh.” This was Kat’s typical response when Christian mentioned Emily.

“She and Baron are getting married.” He continued dicing tomatoes.

“That’s great. Maybe she’ll mellow out on us a little.”

“They’re moving to the city.”

“San Fran?”

He nodded.

“That’s only an hour away. No big deal, right? We’ll still have Amber on
the weekends and most holidays.”

He stopped dicing. “Emily wanted to know if Amber could come and live
with us.”

“What? Full-time?”

“Would that be a problem?”

Kat shook her head in disbelief. “Wait a minute. Your ex-wife wants to
give her child up for most of the time? What kind of mother does that?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“How convenient. What, so just because you get pregnant with a new man’s
kid, you give the old one up to the ex-husband and his wife?”

“We have two kids here already. I don’t see the problem.”

“My kids aren’t the point. The point is that Emily uses us. She uses
Amber too. Despite having badmouthed me to Amber for the last three years, she
just dumps her on us whenever she feels like it. The other day was the first
time that, finally, I felt that Amber and I had a connection. I mean, the poor
kid thinks I am the wicked witch of everywhere, not just the east. And now
Emily
expects me to come in and do the hard work that she doesn’t want to do? Even
though she thinks I am so horrible, she wants me to do the job and you don’t
have the guts to at least tell her that. Call her to the table, Christian. She
has used us time and again, and made certain that we never have any time alone
together.”

“As if your ex and your sons don’t do a good job of that themselves.”

Kat didn’t have a comeback. This was their problem. Neither one knew how
to edit, how to not say every little thing they felt. If they weren’t saying
exactly what they thought and felt, then they were working hard to tuck it in a
neat corner and pray they could keep it there. Invariably they could not. Thus,
resentment.

Kat went to the refrigerator and took out the spinach. “I can finish this.”

Christian set down the knife and looked at her. “You’re going to play it
this way then.”

“I’m not playing anything.
You.
We
are being played.”

He walked out of the kitchen and yelled back, “I’m going to the
restaurant.”

“You do that,” she mumbled, trying to keep herself from crying. She
nicked her thumb good with the knife while chopping the spinach and that’s all
it took to bring on the waterworks. “Damn!” she whispered loudly, knowing that
Christian was still in the house and that she didn’t want him to see her cry.
Never let them see you cry, right? Why did they play this stupid game with one
another? Their anger wasn’t about each other. Not really.

She heard the garage door close and the sound of the engine as he backed
out. She sighed heavily and went over to her iPod and put on some Pearl Jam.
For some reason, Pearl Jam always made her feel better, and she didn’t have
time to sulk. The girls would be over shortly. She needed to put on some makeup
and appear together, even though inside she felt like she was completely
falling apart.

***

 “I think I’m a manic or bi-polar or something like that,” Kat said.
Danielle, Alyssa and Jamie looked at her, wearing various expressions of either
amusement or disbelief.  “No, really, I think so. I can be depressed all week
about this and that, and then I plug in my iPod and dance around the house
while I’m cleaning it or fixing a meal, listening to ‘Better Man’…Even after
I’ve had a major fight with Christian, all of a sudden I feel good, even
great.”

“’Better Man’?” Danielle asked.

“By Pearl Jam,” Jamie answered.

“Oh,” both Danielle and Alyssa mouthed.

“Yeah, so ‘Better Man,’ dancing like a lunatic, like a chick in college
on Ecstasy. Then the next song right after that is ‘Don’t Give Up’ by Peter
Gabriel. You’d think I would have set my iPod so that all my ‘up’ tunes would
play and not be mixed in with my downer tunes. When Peter Gabriel starts
belting out words like ‘Don’t give up, you still have us,’ I start bawling like
a baby, so I have to turn it back to ‘Better Man’ to feel better.”

“Can I ask you something?” Alyssa said.

“Yes.”

“What is it about ‘Better Man’ that makes you feel better?”

“Maybe you’re menopausal,” Danielle said.

“I’m only forty. Don’t you think that’s kind of young?”

“You could be peri-menopausal,” Jamie said.

Kat frowned and looked at Alyssa. “I don’t know why the song makes me
feel better. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s Eddie Vedder’s voice, maybe the
lyrics. I really don’t know.”

Danielle reached across the picnic table for Kat’s hand. They were
sitting in Kat’s backyard, facing the swimming pool, the waterfall splashing
into the pool, the odor of chlorine filling the air. “What’s going on, Kat?
This isn’t about a song and I don’t think any of us believe you’re manic.”

That’s when the waterworks really started and they didn’t stop for
several minutes. By the time they did, her three friends had scooted in closer.
Danielle still held her hand. Jamie had an arm around her and she leaned her
head on Alyssa.

Kat choked back a sob and sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m being
ridiculous. Maybe it is just menopause.”

“Kat? What’s going on?” Danielle asked.

She sighed heavily and then let it all spill. “It’s everything. It’s me.
It’s Christian. The boys. Their dad. Emily and Amber. Sometimes it’s all so
exhausting. You know Jeremy is seeing a counselor now. I took him last week
after the Sperm Donor came by with his latest girlfriend and Jeremy didn’t want
to go with him. He lied saying that he had a birthday party to go to, and I
covered for him. Then we talked and he told me that he is so afraid of turning
out like his dad—of using women and being a liar. He said that at times he’s
even thought about killing himself because the last person in the world he
wants to wind up like is his father.”

“Oh no!” Danielle said. “No, honey, you know he doesn’t mean that. I mean
about the killing himself. He’s a teenager. They go through this stuff.”

Kat shook her head. “No. No. I don’t think he would ever do that, but
obviously he needs to talk to someone. For him to tell me this and tell me he
feels that depressed, is huge. I had to help him. The counselor did say he was
depressed and wants to put him on antidepressants. I don’t know, though. I
don’t know how I feel about them.” She wiped her face with the back of her
hand.

“They worked for me,” Alyssa said.

They all turned to her.

She nodded. “I’ve taken them in the past. They do really help. Don’t
discount them yet. Some people do need them and probably in Jeremy’s case, it’s
temporary. As he finds his way into adulthood and discovers that he is nothing
like his dad, but his own person, then it’s likely he can come off of them. How
does he feel about taking them?”

“He says he’ll do whatever I want,” Kat replied. “We’re pretty close. For
a few years there it was tough, but now, as he’s heading into his senior year
there’s been a change and we’ve grown close again. He trusts me, I think. He
doesn’t have that with anyone else.”

“What about Christian? What kind of role does he play? Can the boys talk
to him about things?” Jamie asked.