Mike, Mike & Me (26 page)

I remembered that this morning for some reason, and felt guilty for too many synthetic cheese dinners from a box.

I watch him guzzle half the glass of lemonade, then make the same whispered “ah” sound both Mikey and Josh always make upon quenching their thirst. That brings another smile to my face.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, just…the boys are so much like you.”

“Of course they are. I’m their daddy.”

“I’m glad,” I tell him, and I mean it.

At this moment, all is right in my little world at long last. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that I married the right person, or that I did the right thing when I ran away from Mike on the beach last week.

I’ve built a life with this man. We’re family. How could I even think that somebody else could possibly measure up?

“You
look
glad,” he says, watching me. “Really glad. What’s up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just…you seem so happy all of a sudden.”

“And you seem to be spending an awful lot of time gauging my moods all of a sudden.” It sounds pricklier than I’d intended, so I smile brightly to show him that I’m just kidding around.

“I guess that’s because they’ve been swinging so wildly it’s hard not to notice.”

“I guess it’s just PMS,” I tell him, because when you’re a woman you can blame a lot of stuff on hormones without arousing suspicion.

“Yeah, that’s what Jan said.”

“What?”
My jaw drops. “You’re analyzing my mood swings with your secretary?”

“Not analyzing. Just…discussing.” He’s wearing the same expression Josh had yesterday when I caught him aiming one of his Blopen markers at a pile of clean laundry.

“I can’t believe you would talk about me behind my back,” says the woman who kissed another man.

“I’m sorry. I was just upset about it. And…worried.”

“Worried about what?”

“I don’t know…I felt like maybe you were having a midlife crisis.”

“Midlife crisis?”

“Or maybe it’s menopause.”

“Menopause?”

“Jan said you’re old enough to—”

“My age is none of Jan’s business!”

I can hear Tyler starting to cry in the next room, where I left him on a blanket surrounded by toys.

“Calm down, Beau. You just woke up the baby.”

“He wasn’t sleeping.”

“Well, then, you scared him with all this shrieking.”

“Shrieking?” I shriek.

“I’m sorry.” He puts down the lemonade, comes to stand in front of me, and reaches out to pull me into his arms.

I try to squirm away. “I have to go get the baby.”

“Come on, Babs. Don’t—”

“Please don’t call me Babs.”

“Why not?”

“Because I hate it.”

“I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid of hurting your feelings.”

“I’m not hurt. You should have told me.” He’s still holding me close. I can’t see his face, but I know it’s not angry, and that I have no business being angry, either. Not really.

How can I be angry? He cares about me. He’s worried. He’s looking for answers.

“I’m sorry,” I say. For what, exactly, I’m not certain. But it isn’t a lie.

“It’s okay.”

“And thank you.”

“For what?”

I hesitate. “For the toilet.”

He laughs. So do I.

I pull back and look up at him. “I’m serious,” I say. “It’s going to be great to have another bathroom.”

“Yeah…and after it’s done, we’ll hire somebody who will actually clean it.”

I don’t say anything to that.

I can hear Tyler still fussing in the next room.

“Beau…”

“I know.”

“I’m just reminding you. You have to fire her when she gets here today.”

“I will. Just not today.” I take a step back, as far as I can go in this tiny space without bumping into the slanted ceiling beneath the stairs or stepping into the open toolbox on the floor. I no longer want to be in the circle of his arms. “I have to go get the baby.”

“It has to be today,” he tells me. “You promised.”

“No, I didn’t. I said I’d fire her, but I never said today.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t,” I volley right back, not caring that we sound maddeningly like Mikey and Josh.

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I said I’d fire her and I will. I’ll give her a few weeks’ notice, and—”

“You think that if you give her a few weeks’ notice, she’s actually going to clean anything in those few weeks? Why would she, when she’s never bothered to clean in the past?”

“Well, I think it’s the humane thing to do. She’s a mother with children to feed in another country.”

“I’m a father with children to feed in this house. This
filthy
house.”

“Oh, please. It isn’t ‘filthy.’ It’s just a little dusty.”

“It’s filthy. And if Melina had done her job right in the first place, she wouldn’t be losing it.”

“I can’t believe you’re so coldhearted, Mike.”

“And I can’t believe you’re such a sucker for a sob story. Where are you going?”

“To get the baby,” I say, already in the hall. “And then, maybe out for a while.”

“Out, where? Out with the baby?”

“No. Out alone.”

“You can’t do that. What about the kids?”

With that, this camel’s back snaps in two.

“You’re here,” I snap. “You watch them.”

“But where are you going?”

He follows me into the living room, where I step over the oblivious Mikey and Josh sprawled in front of Cartoon Network, and pluck a crying, squirming Tyler from his blanket. His tears and his drool are streaked with orange.

“What’s all over him?” I ask his brothers, sniffing the orange goop.

“Cheese Nips,” Mikey tells me, staring at the screen.

“You gave him Cheese Nips?” I ask in horror. Cheese Nips are too big for him to eat, and I never let him eat anything unsupervised.

“No, he found them. They fell out of Josh’s pockets.”

I hurriedly sweep Tyler’s gummy wet mouth with my forefinger to make sure there are no stray Cheese Nip chunks. Safe. Thank God.

Thank God.

When I think about what could have happened…

And all because I wasn’t watching him. All because I was distracted by this meaningless…stuff.

Distracted.

Ha. There’s an understatement.

“Here,” I say to Mike abruptly, and thrust the baby into his arms. “I have to go out.”

“But out, where? For how long?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know.” I’ve grabbed my purse and my keys, and I’m already on my way out the door.

Mike is still following me, holding Tyler, whose arms are outstretched. “Look at him. He wants you, Beau.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie….” I pause to kiss the baby’s downy hair. He smells of old saliva and Cheese Nips. I swallow hard, thanking God again that he didn’t choke.

“Mama will be back soon.” I force the promise past the lump in my throat.

I drive away with no idea where I’m going.

Not at first, anyway.

Not until I find myself on the Sawmill River Parkway, heading south toward Manhattan.

thirty-two

The past

M
ike had gone home to spend a day or two with his parents before they left on their cruise to Halifax. I had no idea that they were even going on a cruise to Halifax, or that Mike was going to Long Island, until I got home from the confrontation at Charley O’s to find the note he’d left in my empty apartment.

Talk about relief.

After all I had been through in the last twenty-four hours, all I wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep until noon.

Of course I couldn’t, as I had to be up and armed with a list of ten wacky sidekicks before 9:00 a.m.

But I could, and did, sleep a good ten hours, thanks to a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t have a cold; but until somebody came up with a better over-the-counter sleep medication, that was my drug of choice. Not that I wasn’t technically exhausted enough to fall asleep on my own. But after what had just happened with Mike, I had the feeling I was in for a restless night.

I woke to find the sun streaming in the window and Valerie seated at her lighted makeup mirror opposite my bed. She was wearing acid-washed jeans, a white oversize men’s shirt belted at the waist and one of my big black fabric bows clipped in her hair.

“’Morning,” I croaked, sitting up and stretching.

“Hi.” Busy outlining her eyes in thick black liner, she didn’t turn around. “Boy, were you out of it last night when I got home. I shook you a few times just to make sure you were breathing.”

“Oh…I was just tired.”

“So what happened with Mike?” she asked, tossing aside the pencil and swiveling around to face me as I swung my bare feet over the side of the bed.

“Which Mike?” I asked.

“The Mike you were going to break up with the last time I talked to you.”

“Which Mike was that?” I was still fuzzy from the Benadryl and not even certain, anyway, when we last talked.

“Beau! You said you were going to dump Mike when he got here from the airport the other night. Remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

“You changed your mind?”

“Sort of.”

“So you dumped the new Mike?”

“Sort of.” Which wasn’t exactly the truth, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain what had happened last night. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened last night. I only knew what hadn’t happened…and that I was in big, big trouble.

As if I hadn’t been in big, big trouble before.

I got out of bed and headed for the bathroom with Valerie hot on my trail.

“Beau, at least tell me what’s going on.”

“I promise I will,” I said, “just as soon as I know what’s going on.”

I closed the door on her protest and took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror.

Just what kind of person are you?
I asked the girl in the ratty T-shirt and yesterday’s smudged mascara, tousled brown hair sticky with day-old Aqua Net.

The girl didn’t answer. She just turned her back and turned on the shower, getting ready to face another day.

thirty-three

The present

I
change my mind about Manhattan by the time I’ve crossed into the Bronx, but I don’t turn around and head north again. I just keep on going, and by the time I hit the West Side Highway, I’ve changed my mind right back again.

I mean, why shouldn’t I go to Manhattan?

It doesn’t mean that I have to see Mike.

I have plenty of friends here.

All right, two.

All right, one, with Gordy away doing summer stock.

But I promised Valerie I would come visit her in the city, remember?

I get off the highway in the West Seventies and head toward the park, reaching for my cell phone with my right hand as I steer with the left.

Yes, that’s illegal in New York State.

But I’m the kind of woman who kisses another man behind her husband’s back, remember?

At this point, it’s fairly easy for me to cast aside any qualms about dialing while driving.

I dial Valerie’s office number from memory. At least, I think I’m dialing Valerie’s office number from memory.

But it isn’t her snotty secretary who picks up, it’s somebody who barely speaks English and is working at either the United Nations or a Japanese restaurant—I can’t quite make out what she’s saying.

Not that it matters.

What matters is that I’m on the winding road that crosses Central Park now. I have no idea what Valerie’s real phone number is or where her office is located, but I know where the Pierre Hotel is located, and I happen to be heading right for it.

Of course, there are countless other fabulous potential East Side destinations. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Saks Fifth Avenue. Le Cirque.

Valerie’s office is also somewhere around here, and I can always dial 411 to find it.

But since I’m in the neighborhood, what the hell? I’m going to go to the Pierre and finish what I started last week.

No.

I’m going to finish what I started fifteen years ago, and it’s about time.

thirty-four

The past

M
ike returned from Long Island as abruptly as he left, showing up at my apartment just as I was changing out of the rumpled, rain-dampened rayon suit I’d worn to work.

“I didn’t know you were coming back tonight,” I said, letting him in the door, still adjusting my hastily donned long Coed Naked Volleyball T-shirt and black spandex stirrup pants.

“Didn’t you get my note?” he asked, kissing me on the cheek. His hair was damp from the summer storm, his short-sleeved pale blue cotton shirt speckled with water droplets.

“I got it.”

“Well, I said I’d be back in a day or two.” He dumped his duffel bag on the floor of my room.

“It’s been two. And I didn’t even know you were leaving so soon in the first place.”

“I didn’t either. But when I called my mother, she made a big stink about wanting to see me before I left town, so…” He shrugged. “I’m sorry. And I tried to call you at work and tell you, but you never called me back. Didn’t you get my messages?”

“No,” I lied, idly wondering, again, how many messages he’d left.

Not that it mattered.

Why would it matter if he left three messages and the other Mike left only two, or vice versa?

It would only matter if I were going to use that information to arbitrarily choose which Mike I should stay with and which Mike I should leave behind.

And I wasn’t. I had already made my decision based on far more relevant criteria.

Yeah. Sure I had.

I had made my decision based purely on which Mike happened to be standing in front of me. Or so it was starting to seem.

“So…do you want to go get something to eat?” he asked, checking his watch. “I’m starved.”

“But it’s only six-thirty.” I said it even though I knew what his response would be.

Oh, hell, maybe I said it
because
I knew what his response would be.