Live a Little (17 page)

“Excuse me,” I say, careful not to knock over my chair as I head for the bathroom. As I leave, it seems that Ross Trimble smiles at me slyly, confidingly, the secretive sort of smile that burns like summer sunshine, as if this whole shindig is a ruse so we can be together. Then again, it could be a trick of light.

Or I could just be drunk.

When I get back to the table, fortunately without mishap, the bill has been paid—by Ross—and everyone is getting ready to leave. Suddenly, that urge toward home—you know, the one that makes every second between you and your rattiest gray sweatpants seem like a travesty—shoots through me, and I thank my husband’s boss almost abruptly and head out to the parking lot.

The asphalt tilts, and I recall the countless times I have counseled—begged—Taylor and Micah to call me if they need a ride home from a party. The situation in which I currently find myself, unfortunately, was not covered in
The Minds of Boys, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, The Out-of-Sync Child, Revised Edition,
or any of the other parenting tomes I’ve scoured over the years in a futile attempt to achieve parental competence. I suppose I could call Phil, but then I’d have to talk to Phil, which, lately, has not produced the desired outcome, in this case surviving the ride home.

I decide to drive myself home. I’ll go slowly, no more than ten miles an hour. It will be okay. (At this point my rationalizations are becoming so robust they could drive me home themselves.)

I turn the key.

Dead battery.

I wonder if Ross Trimble arranged this—perhaps his earlier potty break wasn’t really nature calling but a quick undercarriage journey into my van’s innards—and just as quickly, I dismiss the thought. The idea of such treachery—both the cynical sordidness of it and the paranoia/self-aggrandizement that must be present to produce the absurd suggestion— immediately cause the sea bass and sake tiramisu in my stomach to tussle. Ross Trimble has not crawled under my car and detached the battery cables in order to trap me into a ride home on which he’ll issue a smooth pass because, well, he is Ross Trimble and I am—updated Social Security records to the contrary— Rachel Schultz.

“Car trouble?” With perfect paranoia-validating timing, Ross’s face appears at my window. In spite of the rich food and the lateness of the hour, he looks as clean and sleek as he did three hours ago—his smooth tanned skin has a reptilian quality that suggests the absence of sweat glands entirely.

“Um, yeah,” I say, mirroring his impassive tone. “Battery, I think.”

He glances at his watch. “Let me give you a lift. You don’t want to be out here waiting for Triple A, this time of night.”

I lock the minivan and wander toward his car as if drugged, trying to decide if my incipient ravishment is a foregone conclusion, a delightful assignation, or a Big Mistake. Am I already lying on some figurative casting couch, Phil’s career—and possibly my own—riding on my acquiescence, or is this some sort of weird test of my virtue as both a woman and a Serious Artist? The idea that Ross Trimble, he of the defense budget– sized trust fund and Hilary Swank–bootied wife, would want to sleep with me due to mad lust enters my mind briefly and flies out again, soundly rejected. There is clearly more—or less—going on here than meets the eye.

Before I know it, I am enveloped in Ross Trimble’s bullet-colored BMW, a low-slung sports car that seems to float above the potholed streets like something from
Star Wars.
I fight the urge to stare at his hand caressing the succulent leather-swaddled gearshift, for fear Ross will interpret my interest as permission to migrate the hand to my thigh. Having inhabited the automatic-transmission minivan world for so many years, I try to remember if it is really necessary to fondle the stick shift that way.

“Good Lord, that woman was tiresome,” Ross says, smoothly navigating the tree-lined residential streets between the restaurant and my house.

“I’m sure she enjoyed her soup.” Near to implosion, the waiter had offered to bring Stinson Beach Lady a bowl of plain chicken broth.

Ross laughs, glances at me. “The Miró came. It’s been framed and hung. You want to see it?”

“Oh . . .”
But is it well hung?
“Okay,” I finally say.

Ross veers off toward his Hillsborough estate. It actually has gates. And a guard booth. Tonight there is nobody there—to take my photo and sell it to the
National Enquirer
?—just an alarm touch pad that scans in Ross’s palm print as if we are entering Los Alamos National Laboratory.

As soon as we enter the mammoth house, Ross goes to the bar to prepare drinks. Apparently, I am such a good judge of fine art, I can even do it shitfaced. I excuse myself and stagger into the bathroom, a gallery of marble and soundless, weighty fixtures. With great relief, I release a hot stream of wine/pee into the commode. Since the children, bladder control has been something like a recalcitrant handyman, reasonably talented but never exactly there when you need him.

I snap open my cell and ring Sue. I get Sarafina. “What are you doing up?”

“Mom and Arlo said I could watch C-SPAN.” She giggles. City kids are so precocious.

“Is your mom there?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you get her?” I press out a little more pee, anxious to hide the sound of the call.

“Quel? Hey,” Sue says.

“I am about to have an affair with Ross Trimble,” I hiss, feeling nauseated.

“Where are you?”

“The toilet.”

“Whose toilet?” Sue says it very slowly, as if to a non-pottytrained three-year-old.

“Ross’s.”

She ruminates on this. “Do you have a condom? He’s pretty old. He might not, you know, be up on that sort of thing.”

“Sue, for God’s sake, help me out here.”

“What am I supposed to do, hold your hand?”

“No, you’re supposed to talk me out of it.”

“Okay, don’t do it.”

“I think it’s a test,” I say. “What if he fires Phil?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen. I think if you reject him, he’ll have his driver take you home instead of driving you himself. He’ll be very gracious about it and act completely normal to you in the future, so you’ll always wonder if you imagined it. If you do sleep with him, he’ll probably want to continue it for a while, unless you start acting clingy or something, or fall in love, or gain weight. Then he’ll tell you how great it’s been, how important you are to him, and how he has to end it because he loves his wife.”

Sue is so smart about these things, it scares me.

“I see,” I say evenly.

I hang up and creep back to the living room. Ross hands me a drink. His beige eyes gleam with what I think must be ardor, WASP-style. He is very slim. I might crush him to death in the impending tussle. I will have to kick off my heels before he tries to kiss me, or he might hit my chin.

Just as I’m about to begin (discreetly) removing my (illchosen) thong from the depths of my rear end, the door opens to the sound of a woman’s laughter.

Tate Trimble prances in, her stretchy butt-cupping deep blue gown an exact replica—I kid you not!—of Hilary Swank’s 2004 Oscars ensemble. In spite of the fact that none of the woman’s fleshly parts dares jiggle, I can tell she does not have on undergarments of any kind underneath the dress. What she does have on is Connor Welch—am I psychic or what?—who is draped around the woman like a big furry blond coat.

“Hiya, Ross.” Connor regains his Silicon Valley executive aplomb, which is somehow enhanced by the dorky frat-boy greeting.

“Hi, hon.” Tate Trimble kisses her husband on the cheek. There is lipstick, red and smeared, staining her cheek, which nobody acknowledges.

Ross turns back to the bar. “Would you like a drink? Raquel and I were just having one.”

This is getting too weird for the likes of straitlaced old me.

“I’m going to catch a cab,” I hear myself say, and
as per usual,
nobody stops me.

“You’re such a bitch!” Taylor screams at me.

The windows to the front yard are open. The Bonafacios, observant Catholics, operate, as far as I can tell, a curse-free home. Maybe they will move, find some neighbors who don’t drop F-bombs on them and will remember to water their hydrangeas.

I am too stunned to reply. Four months ago, this response would not have shocked me. Today, in the general sea of deference and adulation in which I swim, it is an unexpected, even horrible, oddity. A mutation, if you will.

A comment sparks in my memory: a woman at the hospital with the unlikely designation of “patient navigator.” She’d seen Dr. Ruiz-Milligan’s pamphlets in my hands—“The Case Against Underwire”; “Fighting Chemo Brain, One To-Do List at a Time”; “Knit for the Cause!”—and cornered me outside the elevator. When I told her how stellar my family’s BC performance had been thus far, she laughed sharply.

“Just wait till you’re done with chemo. Everybody starts out taking you to appointments, taking you shopping for bras and wigs, holding your hand. You’ve got casseroles coming out of your ears, right? Uh-huh. Then they start thinking,
When’s she going to get over it? Couldn’t we have just one day without this
thing
hanging over us? Why does she always have to talk about it?
” The woman handed me yet another pamphlet: “30 Ways to Cope When Your Friends Disappear,” or something like that. I smiled sickly—and convincingly—and ran for the exit.

Still.

Taylor has broken the rules, forgotten how sick I am, how I cling to life like a poisoned frog gasping on a lily pad. I have done too good a job at making things seem normal, it seems. My daughter is about to see how not normal things really are.

“You’re grounded.” I’m pleased with my tone, which falls somewhere between
Nanny 911
and godfather consigliere. Discipline is normally not my strong suit. Now that I am sick, my dicta have so much more
heft.

“I’m not grounded. You don’t ground us!” Taylor shrieks.

“You’re grounded,” I say again, this time with index finger extended.

“Bullshit.”

“Stop cursing!”

“Fuck you.” Her voice is low, menacing. Uncertainty approaching fear gels in my gut. Is my daughter’s hostility a symptom of her newfound love for the wretched Biter or— bear with the psycho-mumbo-jumbo, here—is she afraid I’m going to die, so she’s trying to alienate me to minimize the incipient sense of loss?

“Tay,” I say, trying futilely to grasp my daughter’s hand and make amends. “I know you didn’t mean that, but it would be nice to hear you say it.”

Her eyes—so clear, so greeny-gold—which I used to regard as innocent but now resemble Zsa Zsa’s hard-earned emeralds, brim with tears. “You don’t understand
anything.
Biter’s right, you just want me to be a
loser.
”

“Explain it to me.” I ignore the Biter remark, certain that the next time I see the stringy criminal, I’ll strangle him dead with his iPod cord. Right now I’m going to take the high road. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in these situations? Listen? And take the high road? After the Valium kicks in, of course.

“As if.” Taylor is sullen.

“Well, unless you can convince me why it makes sense for you to spend the night away with a boy we have met exactly once and who didn’t even find time in his busy schedule to have dinner with us, you’re not going.”

“I’m going over to Grandma’s. You’re crazy!”

My long-legged daughter zigzags toward the door, coltish and wild as an unbroken filly. In a heartbreaking act of self-control, she restrains herself from stealing my car keys and stalks off down the street, presumably to see her best friend, Lindsay. Lindsay, an overripe sixteen, recently got her driver’s license and can transport my wronged daughter to a sympathy outpost in the manner to which she is accustomed.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that this is one mistake among thousands of moments I got right, but the rationalization doesn’t make me feel any better. At this precise second in time, I am conscious of nothing more than the desire to make my daughter—beloved, cherished, precious girl—like me again. I know you’re not supposed to think about that. You’re supposed to focus on things like inherent self-esteem and ego boundaries and setting limits, all the fizzy catchphrases the parenting books throw around so blithely, but in the end, don’t we all just want the little shits to love us?

I stagger to the sink and pour a glass of water. It is milky-looking (number 384 on my list of domestic insults). I choke it down anyway. Hypercritical. Is that what I am? The one thing I have tried not to be with my children. The thing that leaves the sourest taste from my own childhood. Also: mistrustful. Another bad one. When they were little, before the grim specter of sex with bad people bared its reaper smirk, trust was easy to forecast.
Our relationship,
I’d think—oh, so naively—
will be based on trust. I’ll trust them to make the right decisions and to come to me when they need guidance.

Because they know I’ll never judge them. I won’t need to.

Because they will make the right
. . .

Yeah, right.

I sag into a kitchen chair. A thought curdles:
I have become my mother.

A vision. Of Laurie and me arguing with Ma. The memory is old—so old it has the stale, musty air of a story discovered in an unpopular waiting-room magazine, a tale that is as likely to have sprouted from somebody else’s life as your own.