Hot Flash (4 page)

It’s a nice quiet little place—as long as no one knows where to find you. I flinched at the sound of determined knocking on the bathroom door, then stared at my self-portrait (drawn in lipstick) on the mirror.

I added a mustache.

The hotel where I work as a sous chef is usually safe territory. But when I heard whispers about my mother attending one of the functions we were catering, I’d grabbed a pen and a stack of Post-its for writing out my suicide note cum last will and testament. I couldn’t bear the idea of dealing with my mother while I was dealing with reaching my fiftieth flipping decade.

I’m not saying forty is old, but it’s a lifetime from twenty. I use the age of twenty, not because it’s the exact age of the Asshole Professor’s new squeeze—well, not totally. It’s also the age I was when I met Stephen’s father.

I’d begun receiving responses from my surveys, and they suggested things like tolerance and accepting your mate’s flaws. When I was twenty, that might have seemed easier than now. At flipping forty, I was too cynical and jaded. I could accept a man leaving the toilet seat up, but it’s hard to accept men with commitment phobias. They don’t stick around long enough to practice tolerating them.

Normally, I have a sunny disposition and I’m often described as perky. While it annoys me, it’s fairly accurate. But this aging thing was doing a real number on me. Why should this birthday matter more than the others? Was this really only about turning forty, or was my mood caused by a general dissatisfaction with my life?

Connie had suggested self-examination. Figuring it couldn’t hurt and seemed like a better use of Post-it notes, I wrote out a summation of my life to date, then stuck it beside my self-portrait on the bathroom mirror.

1. A failed marriage
   

2. My recent breakup
   

3. $1,000 in savings and $1,963 in checking
   

4. A wonderful son
   

5. My job as executive sous chef
   

6. Fabulous friends
   Okay, on the surface my life might not look so bad.
   

But once you know the details, you’ll agree I was knee-deep in suckiness.

Item #1. Sure, my broken marriage wasn’t my fault. What led me to choose a mate who wouldn’t stick? Did I have awful taste in men, or was there something wrong with me?

Item #2. Three weeks ago, the asshole I thought might be husband number two dumped me. Even worse, he kept my favorite iron skillet. I’d already left seven voice messages that he hadn’t returned. Mental note:
Get it back!

Item #3. Financially, I wasn’t in horrible shape, but the only designer clothing I could afford was sold at Wal-Mart or Target. How long would $2,963 last, considering rent was due (over $900 a month!), not to mention utilities and credit card bills? Raising a kid is expensive, and my child support payments didn’t come close to what I spend.

Item #4. My son, Stephen, is not simply wonderful, he’s the cherry on top of the whipped cream of my life. However, he needs college tuition and he rarely speaks to me. When he does, it’s in French.
Tres sucki, non?

Item #5. While I love my job and I adore cooking, I don’t love it quite so much when it requires creating three thousand identical Southwestern chicken breasts.

Item #6. My friends are my lifeline. They give meaning to my existence. When I’m with them, I can forget I’m a woman with responsibilities and simply enjoy being myself. And when I’m hurt or discouraged, they’re always there to pick me up.

Lately, the hurts way outnumbered the ups. Sucky. Sucky. Sucky.

Needing something to cheer me up, I went into the restroom stall, yanked on the roll of paper, and then dragged it back to the sink where I began making toilet paper origami. I was actually pretty good at it.

Origami is like cooking. If you follow the recipe, you know exactly what you’ll get. Too bad life doesn’t come with instructions. With origami and cooking, I feel a sense of control. If my life could be like that, then all I’d have to do is follow the rules and everything would turn out okay. Lately I’d been following the directions for creating an origami fish. I grinned when it almost came out like I wanted. Just one more fold and —

The pounding on the bathroom door resumed and I jumped.

“You’ve got to come out of there sometime, Jill,” said Big E, the pastry chef, as he banged on the door again.

“Has Mom left yet?”

“You know, she’s a very nice woman.”

Snort. Like he knew anything about my mother?

If you stick your finger in an electric socket, it will give you an idea of my reaction to dealing with my mom. Basically, my hair stands on end and painful vibes ping-pong through my nerve endings.

So there I was, hiding in the bathroom, hoping she’d give up and go away and knowing that was about as likely as the Federal Reserve announcing the new interest rates are ninety days same as cash.

One of the best things about working for a large hotel is that Mom hasn’t yet found the employee bathrooms.

However, I learned persistence from my mother. It’s both her greatest trait and her worst. I knew why she was there—she’d found me another man. She wouldn’t give up until I reported in.

I considered washing my hands again before leaving the restroom, but I’d already done that six times and my hands had puckered. I grabbed my Post-its off the mirror and stuck them in my pocket. Time to face the dating squad.

Big E smirked as I left the bathroom. I asked, “Where is she?”

“The kitchen.”

I girded my loins. My sucky life was about to sink to a new low. Mom would try the patience of a saint. She has good intentions, and I certainly could have done worse in the parent stakes. The problem is, she lives in her own little world and it bears no resemblance to reality. Until a few years ago that wasn’t an issue because my dad was wealthy enough that reality never crept near her.

Things, however, had changed, and once reality bit her on the butt in the form of a criminal indictment against Dad, rather than rise to the occasion, she retreated even further into her fantasy world. My father did what he could to protect her from his prison cell and I tried my best to hold up my end. But it wasn’t easy.

Figuring that since I was going to hear about whatever guy she’d found anyway, I might as well get it over with, so I took a deep breath, then peeked into the kitchen. Mom was standing in the channel, blocking the way.

I straightened my uniform and then stepped forward. “Why are you standing in the middle of the room, Mom, keeping everyone from doing their jobs? You know you’re not supposed to be back here.”

“I wanted to talk with you.”

Talk? I knew what she wanted to talk about and I dreaded hearing about the man of her dreams for me. “Talking is forbidden during working hours, Mom.”

There were snickers all around at that comment and I sent Jaime, the grill man, a dirty look.

“Well, what am I supposed to do when you don’t answer my phone calls?”

“You could leave a message so I’ll know to call you back.” Try the patience of a saint? She’d try the patience of the devil. She was always after me, trying to introduce me to some guy who she thought would be perfect for me, and they were always perfectly
wrong
for me.

The cook elbowed me, trying to get to his station. I stepped aside, nearly landing in Fang, the nickname given the sixty-quart standing mixer.

I’d just turned forty flipping years old and I didn’t have that much time left anymore—certainly not for dealing with my mother. “How did you get in here?”

“I was at the Rosemoors’ fiftieth wedding anniversary party.”

“You know the Rosemoors?”

“I do now.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “I crashed.”

I grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the kitchen and into a small storage room before I lost my job. “Are you trying to get me fired?”

She looked at me cluelessly and I felt a little guilty. Okay, a lot guilty. My nerve endings began doing the Macarena.

Just then, a deliveryman arrived at the door, pulling a dolly laden with crates. I sucked in my stomach and crammed my back end into a shelf so he could get past us. “Please don’t come here again, Mom. My boss frowns on visitors.”

“I wouldn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize your job, Jill.”

As the deliveryman left, I had to climb on one of his crates in order to breathe again. “I know you wouldn’t, just don’t come here again. Okay?”

She nodded.

The pastry chef started into the room, after supplies, but changed his mind when he saw us and retraced his steps. Smart guy.

My mother seemed oblivious to the interruptions. My friends said she reminded them of a strange combination of Debbie Reynolds and Marlo Thomas. I fought a brief annoyance that she maintained the appearance of the perfect upper-class society woman, neatly dressed, and not at all stressed-out like me.

And my stress level was climbing.

“Where’s Jill?” called someone from the kitchen.

I had to get back to work. If Mom would hurry up and tell me about this latest guy, then I could get rid of her. “What do you need?”

“Your help with the warden. I think he has it in for your father.”

Surely she didn’t want me to date the prison warden? My father had been CEO of a huge corporation before the Enron scandal. Thanks to similar bookkeeping methods, Dad calls the state pen home for the next five to seven years. I didn’t have Stephen’s college tuition because Dad hid most of their assets in overseas banks.

I had still been in the recovery room after Stephen’s birth when Dad first promised to handle his college expenses. So you can just imagine my reaction (spontaneous combustion) when Dad suggested after he was sentenced, “Maybe Stephen can wait for college until after I get out of prison?”

The last thing I needed to hear at the moment was that Dad was having trouble while in prison or that his release would be delayed. My stomach knotted. “What happened with the warden?”

“Our fiftieth wedding anniversary is next month. All I want is to have a picture of us in the paper. Is that too much to ask?”

“What does that have to do with the warden?” Or dating the warden? It was mind-boggling how my parents had stayed together for fifty years. Talking with either of them for fifty minutes was enough to make me wish I had a prescription for Xanax. And, since my divorce, I couldn’t sustain a relationship for fifty weeks. Was there some secret relationship recipe I hadn’t been let in on? I sure hoped my surveys would give me the answer.

“Oh, Jill.” Mom shook her head. “I’m just beside myself. That warden refused—he refused!—to allow my photographer’s crew in to check for lighting and the best location for the shot. Can you imagine?”

I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. “Your photographer’s crew?”

“For our photo for the paper. The warden was quite rude when I was making arrangements to have your father fitted for a tuxedo. I have half a mind to call the governor’s office. He and your father were always very good friends.”

I caught on that Mom wanted anniversary pictures but she’d lost me at the tux. “Dad needs a tuxedo …”

“For the photos.” Mom nodded. “I’m not nearly half as good at communicating as you are, Jill. I was hoping you’d talk with the warden and see if you can straighten this out for me?”

Yup, she evidently wanted to set me up with the warden at the prison where my father was serving time. Good God. “I could call him, but I doubt he’d agree to it, Mom.”

“If you were to pay him a visit? In person? And maybe you could wear your cute pink skirt.”

I got it now. She thought if I wore the pink skirt I hadn’t worn in public for at least ten years, enough of my legs would show that it would either get me a date … or distract the warden. “Shall I bring a metal file and a lock-picking kit, too?”

“Don’t be facetious. This is very important to me, Jill.” Her lips thinned in that
you’ve hurt me now
expression I was too-intimately familiar with.

“I don’t have time to go to the prison, but I’ll call the warden and see what I can do.” Was it possible that for once she hadn’t wanted to lecture me about needing a man? Maybe she thought I was over the hill? Always on the lookout for the silver lining, I decided there were some decided perks to turning forty.

“Jill, I need you!” called someone from the kitchen. From the sounds of it, a man who truly needed
me
.

Wanting to hurry things along, I turned to leave. “I absolutely have to get back to work now. I’ll walk with you to the banquet room.”

Mom touched my arm as we reached the hall leading to the room where the Rosemoors’ party was being held. “You’ve always been such a good daughter. Your problems would all be solved if only you’d find a new husband—” She interrupted herself. “Oh, that reminds me. I’ve found you a man!”

Of course she had. How silly of me to have thought she’d given up on her manhunt, even for a moment. “Who now?”

“This one’s your type. I’m sure of it. I met him at the party just now.” She signaled for me to join her at the swinging door opening from the hallway into the banquet room. “Come over here and I’ll point him out.”

I did as she asked, wondering if he was a corporate executive, the president of something, or what charity he donated large sums to. “Where is he?”

She opened the swinging door a crack, then pointed to a very tall and very attractive man standing near an older man and woman.

“Is he talking with Mr. and Mrs. Rosemoor?”

“Yes, he’s their only son and best of all, he’s single!”

I knew there had to be a catch because he actually
looked
interesting. “What’s he do for a living?”

“He’s a zookeeper.” Mom beamed at me. “He promised to wait so I could introduce you.”

“I can’t go out there, Mom. I have a job to do.”

“He seems very sweet.”

I watched him interacting with his parents for a moment and wondered if Mom was right for once. He wasn’t bad looking. Until …

His mother licked the corner of her napkin, reached over, and wiped off his mouth. My jaw dropped, but it wasn’t over! Next, she pulled out a comb and smoothed his hair.