Shop and Let Die (4 page)

“
Tell your brother I said
to do his, too.” They did it without much complaint—the deal was
they collected the laundry and then had an hour to watch TV while I
decided what was for dinner.

I know the image of the
stay-at-home mom is of someone who plans meals in advance, does the
laundry herself (including collecting, folding, and putting
away…maybe even ironing if she didn’t buy permanent press). But
that’s not me.

I hate to cook. If I lived
by myself I’d eat pb&j or salads. Maybe, if I stayed on low
carb regimens forever, I’d just eat handfuls of nuts and cut up
veggies with a side of hummus. Store bought hummus.

I glanced at my pile of
cookbooks. I’ve bought cookbooks with pictures, cookbooks with
complete meal plans, cookbooks with no-fail recipes. I’ve
registered at meal planning sites on the web that even compile a
grocery list. But no one made a complete meal plan that will
satisfy my small family of four. Not even me. Especially not
me.

Stew? No. Ryan doesn’t
like his food to touch. Stir fry? Anna doesn’t like her vegetables
cooked. Except corn on the cob. Which Ryan can’t eat because of the
braces he got three months ago.

I took some frozen chicken
out and started thawing it in the microwave. Lemon. Rosemary. Salad
and bread. Good enough. I was ahead of schedule. If I smoked, like
Donna at the SuperiorMart, I could have grabbed time for at least
half a cigarette. But I didn’t smoke, and I never had.

The kids were wrestling
over the remote control as the TV switched insanely between
SpongeBob and Digimon. It occurred to me that Judge Judy should be
on, so I exercised parental authority as I picked up the now full
laundry basket. “When I come up, if you haven’t decided who is
watching what, you’re going to start homework and I’m going to
watch Judge Judy.” I could watch TV and do my reports. Supermoms
are good at multi-tasking.

“
That’s not fair, we did
the laundry. Now we get to watch TV. That’s the deal.” Ryan was
indignant.

“
The deal is you get to
watch peacefully. Peace. Quiet. Got it?” My imitation of the cranky
redheaded judge impressed them into silence.

In the basement I went
into spy mode again, checking for mysterious chocolate milk or
ketchup stains, gingerly sticking my fingers into pockets for
chewed gum, candy, crayons, pens, and paper, which do not fare well
in the dryer. I kept a container of hand wipes on the dryer, just
to get the feel of chewed gum and melted chocolate off my hands
quickly. You’d never catch James Bond doing this.

In Anna’s jeans pocket, I
found a piece of paper folded up to a small neat square. I unfolded
it to find a flyer with “Have You Seen My Mom?” and a picture of
the woman with a friendly smile. I’d seen at the supermarket. I
noticed the date this time. She’d been missing for a
week.

I looked at her face one
more time. She didn’t really look like the type who could run off
with the pool boy and leave her children behind. I ripped the
picture into a thousand tiny pieces and threw it into the trash
can. I put an old softener sheet and a clump of dryer lint on top
so Anna wouldn’t notice. I worry about how much that child worries
about the bad things in the world.

I found fifty cents in the
bottom of the washer basket. Mine. All mine. Not quite enough for a
cup of coffee at the gas station, but almost. I deserved it for
getting through today without mishaps.

A quick dash to get the
chicken in the oven and homework sorted out, and I would have a
good hour of peace to log in the reports for the shops I’d
done—well within the 24 hour time limit. I’d keep super shopper and
supermom status for the day.

CHAPTER FOUR

Job Fair or Unfair

I had just retrieved my half-charged cell phone,
got dinner in the oven and the kitchen cleaned up when Seth came
in, early, dropping his backpack by the door and shrugging out of
his jacket, all while asking his usual question, “What’s for
dinner?”

“
Chicken.”

“
Sounds great. I’m
starved.” He grabbed a hard cider out of the refrigerator. “Did you
get my message?”

“
I haven’t had time to
check messages yet. Took the girls to the museum, remember?” The
timer counted down 20 more minutes. “If you set the table, I could
run up to my office and get some work done,” I said. I could get
the report done before the oven timer dinged if Seth set the
table.

“
In the middle of a heated
Words with Friends match?” For some reason, he always assumed I was
playing around on the computer.

“
Bzzzt.” I said, making a
a sound to indicate just how wrong he was. Words with Friends was a
phone game, I didn’t play it on the computer. “I have to turn these
shop reports in. I’m working.”

Two jobs at once, to be
exact, but why split hairs when your husband is happy to assume you
are on perpetual mom-vacay because you don’t do the 9-5 office
thing?

“
Check your messages, will
you. We’re invited to dinner with the dean and his
wife.”

“
Okay.” Dinner with the
dean? That sounded like a dress-up day. “Let me just get this one
report done. It’s short.”

He bent down to peek in
the oven and check out the chicken. “Did you go to the job
fair?”

“
Does driving by it
count?”

“
I’m serious. It’s time
you got a real job.” He fished a cucumber slice out of the salad
and bit into it. “You know there’s a serial killer out there
targeting women who shop.”

“
Have you been talking to
Anna?”

“
You can’t deny if you had
a nice, regular office job, you’d be safe from the serial
killer.”

“
I might be safe from the
shopper serial killer, but what about the office serial killer?
Aren’t I smarter to remain a moving target?”

My tone was light, even
though I briefly considered what it would be like to have a “real”
job. The kids weren’t little any longer, didn’t come down with
monthly ear/nose/throat crud. I could manage it, if I gave up the
PTA, Girl Scouts, chaperoning school trips, and classroom helper
duties.

I just didn’t want to give
those up. And I’m not sure I understood why I was so stubborn about
it any better than Seth did. All I was sure of was that flexibility
meant being able to put my kids first. No divided
loyalties.

“
Can’t you drop by
tomorrow?”

Right as he asked, a
message popped up on my phone. “URGENT. Easy Job Fair Shop. $15.” I
hesitated. Should I? I’d ignored that shop before, when it had been
$10, and not labeled urgent. It’s a pain to find parking on campus,
and the report had seemed complicated.

Was it cheating to combine
mystery shopping with a visit to the job fair to make my husband
happy? “Maybe.” But my finger hovered over the Apply for Shop
button.

He fished a baby carrot
out of the salad and waved it at me. “Molly, it’s time. Anna is in
school full-time. If you had a normal job, maybe we could afford an
extra day per week of tutoring for Ryan.”

That was a low blow. He
knows how much I worry about Ryan’s dyslexia. I never realized how
much of life’s success depends upon being able to read until I had
a son who couldn’t. “How about this. I’ll check out the job fair,
if you go dig through his backpack tonight for the homework he’s
trying to hide.”

“
Deal.” He popped the
carrot in his mouth. “You have to stop making everything so
complicated. Lots of women raise children and work full
time.”

“
True. I guess it can’t
hurt to check it out.” I thought of Lawyer Mom and her live-in mom.
I accepted the job with one click. It wasn’t cheating. All’s fair
in love and work.

I gave up on the idea of
escaping to my office before dinner. The oven timer was counting
down and Seth was not setting the table. His ‘it’s not complicated’
attitude irked me, so I aimed for his vulnerable spots. “How much
vacation time do you think I can get my first year with a new job?”
I asked as I pulled out four plates and handed them to him. “Will
you be able to take care of the kids in the summer, or will we need
a babysitter?”

Seth took the plates, but
stood holding them. Vacation time is a sore point with us. He,
ostensibly, has the summer “off”, though he usually dives into his
research at that point. Sometimes paid, sometimes not. He moved
slowly toward the table. “There are academic year jobs at the
university. Then you’d have the summers off. Or we could get a
babysitter.”

He put the last plate
down. “Maybe you should go back to grad school and get your
Master’s. They pay grad students, and you still get the summer
off.”

I handed him the napkins
and put out the forks and knives. “Don’t you always say they pay
them peanuts to work long hours teaching intro courses full of
students who haven’t quite gotten used to deadlines and the
intricacies of reading syllabi.”

He folded a napkin
carefully and centered a fork on it. “Molly, there’s a chance I
might be considered for the associate dean position.”

Suddenly dinner with the
dean took on a whole new meaning. Definitely a dress-up affair. My
stomach did a flip. “Do you want it?” I watched him carefully,
knowing the true answer would be in what he did, not what he
said.

“
It could be interesting,”
he said, pulling an invisible piece of lint off the dark green
napkin. “If they thought I’d be right for the job. And there’d be
more money in my paycheck.”

Oh yes, he wanted that
job. He wanted it so much that he didn’t dare look at me in case
I’d see just how much he wanted it. And then the lightbulb went
off. At the university, all the administrators had wives with real
jobs. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants. Not one mystery
shopper in the bunch.

Without acknowledging that
I had seen the naked ambition he was trying to hide, I said, “Who
knows? Maybe the perfect job will be waiting for me at the job
fair.”

“
I know it will.” Seth
looked so happy I didn’t burst his bubble by telling him the job
fair visit would involve a shop. What he didn’t know couldn’t give
him a reason to lecture me one more time about how little mystery
shopping paid. Or make him worry that my weird little domestic
spying job would cost him a coveted chance to be associate
dean.

I
didn’t get back to my reports until the kids were in bed and the
dishwasher was running. Seth peeked into my office and asked, “How
much longer will you be?”

“
I won’t be
long.”

“
No?” He sounded doubtful,
rightfully so.

There was no way that I
could complete three job reports in less than an hour, and it would
probably take more like two. But I repeated, “Just brush your teeth
and turn on the TV, I’ll be there in no time.”

This was what I call a
placatory lie. I had to tell them judiciously, however, because
Seth obviously pays attention. He also falls asleep easily and
sleeps like the dead, so if I came to bed in ten minutes, or two
hours, he wouldn’t notice.

Predictably, he turned
away with a parting grump, “Don’t start reading your email or
you’ll be up all night. No one at the job fair will want to hire an
exhausted woman with bags under her eyes.”

“
Just my reports.” Another
placatory lie. You’d think I emailed Latin hotties named Enrique
and Javier the way he resented me having a vigorous email life. The
man is more jealous of my computer than any self-respecting man
should be. Good thing I am socially inept and am missing any and
all flirting genes.

I do have whatever the
Chatty Cathy doll came equipped with, however, once I’m online. I
pulled up my first report screen, at the same time I logged into my
email and started zapping junk mail until I’d cleared out all the
offers for larger breasts and longer penises (equal opportunity
spam I guess).

I typed in my report and
then, while waiting for the screen to accept my answers and roll to
the next, I logged into the Secret Shopper Sisterhood message board
and quickly scanned the topic headers looking for the next great
job to apply for—or the latest interesting gossip such as the topic
started by ZaGirl called THEY CAUGHT ME!!!

Being spotted is a mystery
shopper’s worst nightmare—once you were outed at a chain, the
managers passed your picture and/or description around and the
shopping company refused to schedule you at any of the chain’s
stores anymore. Depending on the chain, a shopper could lose access
to 5 to 10 shops, which added up. ZaGirl had done one too many
shops at this place and gotten comfortable, I guess.

Her message reeked of
pathos—especially since she’d used the discouraged all-cap cyber
shout.

SO WHAT DO I DO AT THE
PRODUCE COUNTER? I ASK THE MANAGER ABOUT SPINACH AND THEN DROP MY
RECORDER AND NOTES ON THE FLOOR BY HIS FEET!!! TOO BAD HE WASN’T
THE INDIFFERENT KIND. NO, JUST MY LUCK I GOT GENTLEMAN JIM. HE
PICKED UP THE PAPERWORK, HANDED IT BACK TO ME AND SAID, “I HOPE YOU
SCORE US FAVORABLY.” UGHH.