Not Your Everyday Housewife (10 page)

Shea shrugged. “Kind of makes you want to puke, doesn’t it?”

“No, actually, it kind of makes
me
want to take a trip to Vickie’s,” Cyn said.

“Richard’s an asshole.” Derry wrinkled her nose. “You could be Catherine Zeta-Jones and he’d still cheat on you. Some men are just like that.”

“I know, but when will I ever learn?”

“How about Marcus? Great hair, nice ass.” Derry laughed at Shea. “Just kidding. He seems like a nice guy.”

“He would be if he were only gay.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

Shea massaged her temples and pulled the skin against her hairline. “I poured my heart out to him—everything— about Richard, my inadequacies, how I hated my job, how I wanted to be a musician.”

“So?”

“So, I thought he was gay, and it didn’t matter. But he’s not and it does.”

“Shea.” This from Cyn. “Marcus is a nice, straight guy. What’s wrong with that?”

“He knows too much. Men aren’t supposed to find out what you’re really like until after you’ve been dating a while and by then, it’s too late.”

“Maybe he’s different.”

“I’m not interested. I can’t even face him. And besides, he’s too young.”

“No, he’s not,” Derry said.

“He’s thirty-two. That’s too young.
If
I were interested, which I’m not.”

“I think he’s got a thing for you.” Derry smiled over her glass. “And I can always tell.”

“Stop.”

“He did keep asking about you when we were in there getting our hair fixed,” Cyn said.

“Good for him. It’s just his nature, which again, made me think he was gay.” Shea closed her eyes and groaned. “Can we please change the subject?”

“What are you going to do when you get back?” Cyn asked.

“Pack up Richard’s stuff if it’s not already gone, and throw it on the front lawn. Then, I’m going to change the locks, schedule a prenatal visit with Dr. Soolis and start working on the nursery.”

“I’ll help,” Cyn offered. “I can paint.”

“I’ll help, too,” Derry said. “Maybe I can coordinate matching mother and daughter scrubs.”

“I’ve written those off,” Shea said. “They’re the one plus from this trip.”

“So, are we all ready to go home?” Derry lifted her glass and saluted them.

“May as well,” Shea said. “Time to be, as the song says, ‘alone again, naturally.’”

“You ready for Randalee Road, Cyn?”

“Sure.”

“So, what’d you discover this past month? Or what did you uncover?” Derry asked.

“Hmmm, I don’t know. I relaxed, I guess. And I tried a few things, none of which I was any good at. So, I guess it’s back to Reston to clean closets, fold clothes, and scrub out toilets.”

Derry stared at her and said, “That is such bullshit. Why don’t you just tell us the truth?”

“What are you talking about?”

Cyn actually had the guts to look clueless. “We know you’ve been lying to us,” Derry said. “Who’s the guy you’ve been talking to on the internet at three in the morning?”

“I…”

“Does Sam know?” Shea asked gently.

Cyn’s bottom lip started to quiver.

“Damn, Cyn.” What could Derry say? Cyn was supposed to be the logical one. She had the kids, the husband, the Orange Blossom Maid-for-You mixer.
She
was somebody to believe in. “How could you?”

“It just happened.” Her eyes misted, spilled tears.

“When?”

“Five months ago.”

“Christ,” Derry whispered. “Does Sam suspect?”

“No.” Cyn swiped her hands across her cheeks. “He has no idea. That’s why I came here, to figure out a way to tell him.”

“You’re going to
tell
him?” Derry and Shea asked together.

“I have to.” Cyn sniffed. “I can’t stand living this lie. It felt so good at first, but I’ve always known better. I was only kidding myself.”

“Oh my God,” Shea murmured, pulling her lower lip through her teeth. “We’re all going to end up divorced.”

“Stop it, Shea.” Derry threw her a warning look. “Maybe we can help you do some damage control before Sam finds out. If that’s what you want.”

“It is.” Cyn wiped her nose with a napkin and nodded her dark head. “I just don’t know how to get out of it. I have to try to explain it to Sam.”

“If you tell him”—Shea’s voice trembled with conviction—“nothing will ever be the same. No matter how much he loves you, he’ll never forget the betrayal.”

“I know.” Fresh tears rimmed Cyn’s eyes. “I was only trying to help us. That’s how it all got started.”

A cyber affair to help a marriage?
Now Derry had heard everything.

“I knew I wasn’t doing my part, even though Sam said not to worry about it. He said I made up for it with everything I did around the house and for the girls. But I always felt guilty, especially when he was away working so hard. I should have been able to give something back.” She looked at Derry and Shea and said, “So, I started searching the net.”

God. Internet sex?
Who would’ve believed Cyn capable of it? You just never knew.

“It was only thirteen days,” Cyn whispered. “Sam was in Denver for two weeks. It was like an obsession. I’d be on the computer the second the kids left for school. All day, and then again as soon as the lights went out. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.”

“Did you try?” Shea asked quietly.

“Of course. Every minute of those thirteen days. I was like the alcoholic who tells himself the drink in his hand is his last.”

“Did you ever take it past the computer stage?” Shea asked.

“No. That’s what made it so easy. It didn’t even seem real. I just felt like I was playing, not risking my future.”

“That’s the danger of it,” Derry said. “You get sucked in and by the time you realize it’s not a fantasy, people’s lives are ruined.”
How did she keep it from us?

“I know. Sam came home from Denver a day ahead of schedule and found me online at 1:00 a.m. I made up some story about shopping for this body-enhancing swimsuit that J.C. Penneys didn’t carry in its stores. I think he believed me because he never asked about it again.” Her voice drifted as she said, “I signed off the computer that night and didn’t go on for two months. And then, gradually, I started back on, just checking out Denise Austin’s website and colleges for Kiki, but three weeks ago, I started again,” she admitted in agonized defeat. “Not the same as before, but still, I knew it was wrong.”

“Who is it?” Derry wondered what kind of man would lure a woman like Cyn to “sin”.

“It’s not just one, it’s five.”

“Five?” Shea squeaked.

“Five as in one, two, three, four,
five
?” Derry asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Cyn was attractive with a decent body, good hair, great lips…but
five
?

“How can I tell Sam?”

Derry slammed the table with the palm of her hand. “You can’t.”

“I have to.”

“Then you might as well hire an attorney because Sam’s going to slap you with divorce papers the second after you tell him.”

“Maybe not if I tell him I was only trying to help us.”

“Right. Why don’t you just tell him you were cyber screwing five guys but you were only trying to help him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“A virtual screw. Surely, you’ve heard of it.”

“What’s that have to do with me?”

Shea patted Cyn’s hand. “It’s okay, Cyn, just own up to it. We’re your friends. We’re not going to say anything. Just tell us who they were.”

“Google, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Intel.”

“What are you talking about?” This from Derry.

“Stocks.”

“Stocks?”

“Right. I’m addicted to day trading.”

“What trading?” Shea asked.

“Day trading, you know, buying and selling in a matter of minutes.”

“Day trading,” Shea repeated, clearly clueless.

“Right.”

“Not cyber sexing?” Derry asked.

“My God, what do you think I am?”

Derry swapped glances with Shea. “Isn’t that what you thought?”

Shea nodded. “We’re sorry, Cyn, but it didn’t sound good on your end. It sounded like”—she lowered her voice and whispered, “sex.”

“No! I would never do that to myself or Sam.”

“Then, what exactly
did
you do?” Shea asked.

“I bought and sold stocks without Sam’s knowledge.”

“How much did you lose?” Derry knew about tanking in the market. Before she met Alec, she’d invested in every “sure thing” friends threw her way.

“Actually, I didn’t lose. I made money.”

“Really.” Derry had
never
made money. “How much?”

“One-hundred-fifteen.”

“That’s not bad,” Shea said. “I once won eighty-five dollars at the slot machines in Atlantic City.”

“One hundred and fifteen thousand,” Cyn said, studying her hands, which were clasped tightly in front of her.

“What!” Shea’s screech made the elderly couple at the next table turn and stare.

“I know. It’s a lot of money.”

“And that’s a problem, how?” Derry shook her head. Cyn needed to get her priorities straight. Money was not a bad thing.

“Sam and I don’t have money, Derry, not like that. When he lost his job three years ago, we had to use his retirement fund to get by. He was out of work eleven months and it was tough, especially on his pride. That’s why I took that job at CVS part-time, to help pay the utilities.” She sighed and picked at a nail. “I guess when a man reaches a certain age he feels he shouldn’t have to take a job that doesn’t pay at least what the last one did.”

“Men are funny about money,” Shea said. “Richard always held it against me that most months I made more money than he did.”

“Richard’s an asshole,” Derry said.

“Who knows what goes on in their heads?” Cyn said. “Sam was desperate and when Musking Electric offered him the job, he took it. And a twenty thousand dollar pay cut. We’ve never been able to get back on even ground, let alone save. He doesn’t talk about it but part of him has never reconciled to giving up so much with this job.”

“So, this money should help, right?” Spoken from Shea, the eternal optimist.

“Yes, except I’d also have to tell him I wiped out Kiki’s college fund to get started.”

“How much?” Derry asked.

“Eleven thousand dollars.”

“Shit.”

“But you’ve earned back so much more. Surely, he’ll understand,” Shea said.

“She also deceived her spouse,” Derry added. “A practice I happen to despise.”

“I know,” Cyn moaned. “I’m so screwed. It’s why I came on this trip, to find a way to tell him that won’t ruin twenty years of marriage.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Shea said.

“Of course there is,” Derry added, relieved Cyn wasn’t in the cyber sex business. “Let me just think about it a little. We’ll come up with something.”

“How’d you do it, Cyn?” Shea eyed her like she’d turned into Charles Schwab. “I mean, that’s a heck of a lot of money.”

“I couldn’t sleep one night so I watched some seminar on T.V. about day trading. It fascinated me, so the next day I went to the library and checked out a bunch of books on it. I hid them in my closet so Sam and the kids wouldn’t see them. I would’ve felt foolish if they’d seen those books. I mean, I barely made it through pre-algebra.”

“Obviously, pre-algebra isn’t a prerequisite for making bundles of cash in the market,” Derry said, dryly. She’d love to throw the day trader tidbit in Kiki Cintar’s snotty face.

“I guess not.” Cyn let out a small laugh. “After I’d read everything I could find, I went online and researched even more. I wasn’t planning to really try it. I was only interested in reading about it, but then Sam came home upset because his boss told him there wouldn’t be any year-end bonuses.” She shrugged. “When he left for work the next day, I opened an online account and started trading.”

“How’d you know what to buy?” Shea asked.

“I read the paper every day and started checking out
Newsweek, Time, The Wall
Street Journal,
even
People
. If I saw an article about a certain company or executive that seemed noteworthy, I jotted it down. And of course, there’s intuition.”

“So, you’re saying you took eleven thousand dollars and turned it into one-hundred-fifteen
thousand
dollars?” Derry needed to hire Cyn as her investment advisor.

“Roughly, yes.”

“That’s a gazillion percent return.”

For the first time since they’d started the conversation, Cyn smiled. “Yeah.”

“And you only did it for thirteen days?” Shea folded her arms on the table and leaned forward, as if to absorb Cyn’s newly discovered expertise.

“That’s right.”

“God, just think if you’d done it for thirty days, or sixty.” Shea sighed. “You’d be a millionaire by your next birthday.”

“Actually, I’ve kept a spreadsheet on the computer, nothing I’ve invested in, but an “If I had” sheet.”

“And?” Derry and Shea asked.

“I’d have netted three-hundred-twenty-four.”

Shea let out a whoop. When the elderly couple at the next table turned their heads this time, she waved at them and said, “You see this woman sitting here? She’s the next Warren Buffet.”

“Shea, stop,” Cyn said.

“She could be right, you know,” Derry added.

“What are you talking about? I just want to get out of the mess I’ve made and be done.”

“Why?”

“Derry, are you kidding?”

“Why can’t you keep investing,
with
Sam’s knowledge? You’d make a ton of money, and you could even get your license and handle other people’s money.”

“No, I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“I’d sure as hell let you handle my money.”

“Me, too,” Shea said. “You’d do better than the advisor the hospital hired.”

“But I’m sure it’s a fluke. At some point, I’d start losing money.”

“Maybe this is what you were meant to do, Cyn. So, it’s not baking cookies for the P.T.A., or sewing a costume for cheerleading, or scouring out the tub. Maybe you were meant to make money.” She smiled. “Lots of it.”

Cyn sighed. “So help me tell Sam and hope he forgives me for deceiving him.”

“If he’s got sense, he’ll grab onto you like the golden goose,” Shea said.

“Just promise him an extra fifty thousand in stock and early retirement,” Derry said. Then she leaned over and whispered, “Now, what’s your latest hot pick?”