Ladies' Night (5 page)

“I microwave myself a nice Lean Cuisine for dinner, usually. And for breakfast, I juice.”

“You juice? As a verb?”

“Don’t get snotty with me,” Rochelle said. She nodded at the oversized Oster blender on the back bar. “Felipe, this real nice Mexican guy, comes in here with his soccer team on Sundays, his mom runs a produce stand at the Red Barn, and he brings me all kinds of fresh produce. Spinach, kale, chayote, strawberries, pineapples, mangoes. Herbs, too. I like mint and ginger. I put it in with everything.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, actually,” Grace admitted. “You got anything like that you could fix up for me? Not kale,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “But any of that other stuff?”

“Sorry,” Rochelle said. “I used up the last of the fresh stuff this morning. I could maybe make you a sandwich. Would a BLT offend your delicate sensibilities?”

“That’d be great,” Grace said, resting her cheek against the bar and folding her arms over her head. Her shoulders heaved, and she let out a muffled sob. It was the first time Rochelle had seen her cry since she was a teenager, and it wrenched her heart just as it had back then.

Rochelle hesitated, but then reached over and smoothed her daughter’s mussed hair. “Don’t worry, sweetie. We’ll fix this. We’ll figure it out.”

Grace raised her head and looked at Rochelle, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Fix it? That’s exactly what Ben said, ‘we can fix this.’ And then he admitted it wasn’t the first time. How do we figure this out, Mom? I loved him. I thought he loved me. But it was all a lie. Everything was a lie. What do I do now?”

Rochelle handed her a paper towel. “Blow your nose. Dry your tears. Eat something. And then we’ll call your Uncle Dennis and take the bastard to the cleaners.”

“Uncle Dennis is a real estate lawyer,” Grace said, sniffling. “He doesn’t do divorces.”

“No, but he’s been divorced twice himself, so he’ll know who we should call, and who we should avoid.”

Grace took a gulp of tea. “I’m not even sure I want a divorce.”

“You’re kidding,” Rochelle said. “You caught Ben having sex in your garage with your assistant, who he’s surely been screwing at your house all these months, and you’re not sure it’s over?”

“I don’t know,” Grace wailed. “This is not the way I thought my life would go. I don’t understand any of this. I thought I would have a forever marriage, like yours and Daddy’s.”

Rochelle considered this, started to say something, then changed her mind. Now was not the time.

“Have you talked to Ben since last night?”

“No.”

“Any plans to talk to him?”

Grace shrugged. “I’ve got to go over there and pick up some more clothes pretty soon. And I’ll have to figure out what to do about the blog, and the HGTV pilot and all the rest of it.”

Rochelle busied herself putting together her daughter’s sandwich. She popped two slices of bread into the toaster, slapped some bacon on the griddle, and picked up a fat red Ruskin tomato from a bowl on the back bar. She had the knife poised to slice it when Grace spoke up.

“Could you peel that, please?”

Her mother shot her a look of annoyance. “I fixed you a million BLTs in your childhood, and now, suddenly, you have to have your tomatoes peeled? La-de-damn-da.”

Grace stood up and came around the bar. “Never mind. I’ll make it myself if it’s that big a deal.”

“It’s not a big deal. I just don’t get why it’s necessary. The peel has the most vitamins.”

“That’s not true,” Grace said flatly, taking the knife from her mother and proceeding to pare the skin from the tomato.

Rochelle stood back with her hands on her hips. “Who says it’s not true? It’s absolutely true.”

“According to who?”

“I forget,” Rochelle said stubbornly. “Maybe I heard it on one of those cooking shows.”

Grace shook her head and reached into the refrigerator for a head of lettuce. She peeled a leaf from the head and gave a martyred sigh.

“What now? You don’t like my lettuce?”

“I’m just not crazy about iceberg,” Grace said. “Romaine is so much tastier. And prettier, not to mention better for you, since we’re talking about vitamins.”

“I like iceberg,” Rochelle said, her tone frosty. “It’s what I’ve always bought. It was always good enough for you up until now.”

Grace fixed her with a look. “Are we going to get into this again? I’m sorry, Mom, if I like nice things. Sorry if it somehow offends you that I outgrew my childhood taste for Kraft macaroni and cheese and frozen Tater Tots and casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup and canned onions rings. And Asti Spumante.” She shuddered involuntarily at this last listing.

“That chicken casserole used to be your favorite,” Rochelle said. “You insisted I make it for your birthday dinner every year.”

“I was a kid,” Grace said. “I grew up and my tastes changed. Refined, if you will.”

Rochelle rolled her eyes and built the sandwich. She placed it on a plate, deftly cut it in half on the diagonal, and handed it to Grace.

“Thanks,” Grace said. She took the sandwich and moved back to her barstool, chewing slowly.

Rochelle wiped the bread crumbs from the cutting board. “This split-up could get pretty messy, pretty fast, you know. Ben is involved in every aspect of your business. You can walk away from him, but can you walk away from everything you’ve built up in the business? Not to mention the house?”

Grace shrugged to indicate she had no answers, and kept chewing.

“Counseling?” Rochelle offered. Grace shook her head violently and took another bite of her sandwich, and then a sip of her iced tea.

“All right,” her mother said, glancing meaningfully at the neon Budweiser sign that hung over the mirrored bar back. “It’s after eleven now. My lunch trade is gonna start trickling in here pretty soon.”

“I can take a hint,” Grace said, finishing off the last of her sandwich. She pushed the empty plate aside and stood. “I’m gonna go upstairs to my old room and try to get some work done. I’m doing a giveaway of this hideous Tuscan pottery on Monday, and I’ve got to write that blog post and figure out what I’m writing about tomorrow.”

She picked up her laptop case. “You’ve got Wi-Fi, right?”

Rochelle wrinkled her brow. “I guess. They hooked up some kind of Internet doohickey when I changed cable providers back in the spring.”

“Password?”

“Who knows?”

“Never mind, I’ll figure it out myself,” Grace said. She headed for the stairway that led to the family’s upstairs living area, and then stopped and poked her head around the doorway. “If Ben calls here looking for me, you haven’t seen me and don’t know where I am.”

“Gotcha,” Rochelle said. “I hope he does call. I’ll give the son of a bitch an earful.”

“Thanks,” Grace said, offering a wan smile. “It’s good to know you’ve got my back.”

“I do,” Rochelle assured her. “I’m your wingman, right?”

*   *   *

Grace pushed the bedroom door open with her hip. She’d decorated the room herself, at the age of fourteen, and not one single thing had changed in all these years.

She’d been in her Laura Ashley phase then. She’d longed for the pink and white striped wallpaper she’d seen in a
House Beautiful
layout, but with no money to spend, she’d laboriously taped and painted pink stripes over the cheap knotty pine-paneled walls that her mother had previously slathered with white paint. Grace found a crappy $9.99 faux-mahogany four-poster bed at the Salvation Army and painted it white, then stenciled a sappy design of green vines, pink daisies, and blue ribbons across the headboard.

Grace kicked at the worn and stained beige wall-to-wall carpet on the floor. She’d begged and pleaded with her father to let her rip up that carpet—the same stuff that covered every surface in their apartment, but Butch had been adamant. “Do you know how much money I spent on this stuff?”

She settled onto the faded pink chintz bedspread and opened her laptop, clicking onto the logo for Gracenotes. She reread the post she’d written the previous evening, which seemed like something from a previous life. There were already forty-seven comments posted. Had any of her readers seen the news about the flamboyant scene at her house? She decided against reading the comments. Maybe later.

Instead, she concentrated on writing Monday’s post, going ahead with the topic she’d already settled on a week ago: how and where to find great deals on discounted designer home fabrics. Soon she was typing away, copying and pasting images of favorite fabrics and room settings, copying Web site links, losing herself in the process of creation.

When she looked up from her work, she realized that two hours had passed. Her cell phone, lying on the nightstand, had not rung, and no beeps had signaled an incoming text message. She’d halfway expected Ben to call, either downcast and contrite, or furious and full of threats. The silence seemed ominous. No matter. She glared at the phone, daring it to ring. She would not call him. Not ever. Let the swine call and beg her to come crawling back.

Grace went back to her work. She checked for typos, misspellings, links that didn’t work, pictures that were improperly sized. Finally satisfied with her work, she pulled up the Gracenotes blog page, and clicked on the sign-in and password buttons.

A red highlighted italicized sentence flashed on the screen.

Invalid password. Try again?

She frowned and winced as she retyped the password.
GracenBen4ever.

Invalid password. Check for misspellings?

Not possible. She typed the word again, with the same results.

Reset password?

She checked her e-mail, waiting for the message to alert her that her new password had been sent. But when she opened the e-mail, she stared down at the message in disbelief.

New password may not be reset. Invalid user name. Please contact technical support if you believe this message has been sent in error.

She fumed and dialed the number provided, waiting on hold for ten minutes. Finally, a young man who identified himself as Hans came on the line.

“Hello,” she said briskly. “My name is Grace Stanton, and I write a blog called Gracenotes. I’ve just spent half an hour trying to get access to my dashboard so I can write a new post, but I keep getting error messages, and, finally, I got a message telling me that I can’t set a new password, because I have an invalid user name. But it’s not invalid. I’ve been writing this blog for three years under the same name. So I can’t understand what is happening.”

“Let me just check that,” Hans said. She could hear his fingertips flying over a keyboard. “Just a moment,” he said, putting her on hold.

A moment later he was back on the line. “Mrs. Stanton?”

“Ms. Stanton,” Grace said pointedly.

“Right. Um. The thing is, you don’t have access to the blog dashboard.”

“I know that,” she said sharply. “That’s why I’m calling you. Because I need access. It’s my blog.”

“Wellll,” he said. “From what I can tell, the domain owner has changed the user sign-on and password. That would explain why you’re locked out.”

“That can’t be,” Grace said, feeling her face get hot. “I’m the domain owner. The blog is Gracenotes. I’m Grace Stanton.”

There was a long meaningful silence on the other end of the line. “Actually,” Hans said, “according to our records, the domain owner is Ben Stanton. And apparently, he’s changed the access.”

“He can’t do that,” Grace cried. “Change it back. It’s my blog. I started it, I write it, I own it. And I want you to change it so I can have access to my own blog.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Stanton, but I don’t have the authority to do that,” Hans said. “Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

*   *   *

Downstairs, in the bar, Rochelle was pouring a longneck Sweetwater Pale when she heard an unearthly shriek coming from the direction of upstairs.

Frank, a mailman who’d just come off his shift, gave her a questioning look.

“My daughter,” Rochelle said apologetically. “She’s having some marital issues.”

4

Three days had passed since Grace had walked out of the house on Sand Dollar Lane.

They were three of the longest, most miserable days of her life. During the days, she tried to help out around the Sandbox, working behind the bar, waiting tables, even doing a brief stint as a short-order cook, until her mother unceremoniously fired her from that job after she caught Grace substituting ground turkey for ground chuck in the bar’s signature Sandbox burger.

“I know you mean well,” Rochelle said, ordering her out of the kitchen. “But my customers don’t care about saturated fats or sodium or antioxidants. They just want a big, greasy, salty burger on a puffy, white, highly processed white bun. With maybe a slab of gooey yellow cheese on top. And they definitely don’t want a side order of smug advice about healthy dining.”

Evenings, Grace locked herself up in her bedroom, spending hours writing blog entries she couldn’t even post. When she finished writing and editing, she slipped out to the second-story deck overlooking the Cortez marina. Growing up, she’d hated that marina. She hated the stink of the diesel fuel burned by the boats and the shrill cries of seagulls wheeling overhead as the shrimpers and commercial fishermen returned to the docks with their catch. She’d hated the greasy water lapping against the seawall, and the constant ebb and flow of fishermen and regulars who regarded the Sandbox as their home away from home.

Most of all, Grace hated the fact of where she lived. In high school, the guys she dated thought it was awesome that she lived right on the water, and above a bar! But she didn’t want to live on a marina. She wanted a regular suburban house, with a grassy green lawn, and although she loved her parents, she longed for a father who worked in an office and wore a necktie, with a mother who stayed home and played bridge and got her hair done every Thursday.

The only ties Butch Davenport owned were bolo ties, which he wore with his ever-present violently colored Hawaiian shirts. As for Rochelle, who cut her own hair, Grace was fairly sure she didn’t even know how to play bridge, although she was a demon at pinochle.