Single in Suburbia (22 page)

His voice was thick with unshed tears. Anger and hurt and love formed a lump in her throat, leaving her speechless.

“He said he’d come to games whenever he could, but that he was going to be working a lot more and not to automatically expect him.”

Amanda closed her eyes and drew a steadying breath. She wanted to march over to Rob’s and wrap her hands around his neck for getting them all into this mess.

The tears Wyatt had been holding back squeezed out of his eyes and splashed down his cheeks. “I don’t even care. My pitching’s so bad I don’t
want
him to watch me.” Wyatt swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Baseball sucks just like everything else. I don’t even know why I’m playing.”

Meghan froze, the spoon midway to her mouth. Amanda shot her a look, silently begging her not to make a flip remark, but this time, she needn’t have worried. Tears welled in her daughter’s eyes, too, just as they did in her own. The magnitude of Wyatt’s misery hung over them like a shroud. Any minute there was going to be a Sheridan family cry fest.

“Oh, honey.” If only she could take him in her arms as she had when he was small and kiss away his hurts. “This is about so much more than baseball.”

Looking into her children’s faces, she searched for the words that would make it all better, but there were none. So she settled for the truth. “All three of us have had to face the end of our life as we knew it. Everything’s so different and unfamiliar. It would have been a miracle if your pitching hadn’t been affected. It affects everything. But we’ll get through this. And you
will
get your game back, I know it.

“In the meantime, there will be no quitting. Not right now.” She smiled and blinked back her own tears, wishing that she could turn back the clock to before Rob’s defection. Reaching across the table, she used the pad of her thumb to wipe a last tear from his cheek and gave Meghan’s shoulder a light squeeze. “How many times have I told you there’s no crying in baseball?”

Wyatt’s hands lay on the table. His fingernails were full of red clay from the ball field. His face and clothes were streaked with it too. It was like the red earth of Tara had been for Scarlett O’Hara, that from which he drew strength. She’d never let him give it up. If she had to, she’d clean a million toilets to pay for pitching lessons before she’d allow him to quit the game he loved.

Amanda reached over and removed his cap then tapped him lightly on the head with it. “Go take a shower and put on some clean clothes. And don’t forget to use the Spray’n Wash on that uniform.”

She and Meghan watched him do as he was told; watched him walk slowly up the back stairs, his tall lankiness giving hints of the man he would become.

“Leave those pants in the laundry room, Wy,” she called up behind him. “Whoever decided on white for baseball uniforms ought to be taken out and shot.”

chapter
19

A
fter four days of cleaning two houses a day, every muscle in Amanda’s body ached. And Solange wasn’t feeling too great either.

She’d made it home each night just in time to ferry Meghan and Wyatt to and from practices, fix dinner, and fall into bed.

It was now Thursday night, which meant only one more day of kamikaze cleaning before the weekend, at which point she intended to plant herself on the couch and imitate a potato.

With a groan she sank deeper into the bathtub and flicked the hot water lever on with her big toe. With everything aching, it was a major challenge to keep her head above the bathwater. Ditto for the rising tide of her life.

The infusion of warm water added to her drowsiness. As her body began—at last—to relax, she closed her eyes and let her mind and body float.

The shrill ring of the telephone she’d left beside the tub barely roused her. “Um-hmmm?” she answered.

“Amanda?” The sound of her mother’s voice yanked her out of her reverie.

“Hi.” She scrambled to sit up in the tub and gather her wits about her. “Where are you?”

“We’re in New Mexico, darling. I’m just in love with the pueblo architecture. Your father wants to move on to Texas to visit Uncle Don, but I’m lobbying to stay in Santa Fe a few more days.”

Amanda had promised herself she’d tell her mother everything the next time they spoke, but given the exhaustion that was now her constant companion, she simply didn’t have the strength to explain the state of her marriage or her current career path.

Her command of geography might be a bit sketchy, but surely she could save her bad news until her parents made it to this side of the Mississippi. “Where did you say you were?”

“New Mexico. We’re going to El Paso next.”

“That’s good.” Amanda’s head lolled back on the inflatable pillow and she yawned.

“Are you all right, Amanda? How are Meg and Wy?”

“We’re fine, Mom,” Amanda said. She yawned again; she just couldn’t seem to stop herself. “The kids are in their rooms doing their homework, and I’m in the tub, but I’ll tell them you called.”

“Amanda, you don’t sound like yourself. We could leave in the morning and drive straight through.”

“No!” Amanda straightened so quickly she sent a wave of water sloshing onto the bathroom floor. “I mean, no, there’s no need for that.” She reached for the towel and dabbed her face with it. “Take your time and enjoy yourself. We’ll see you when you get here.”

“All right, sweetheart. If you’re sure.”

“Absolutely.” She’d never been surer of anything in her life. “But you
will
give me some warning when you get close, won’t you? You know, maybe a day or so?”

“Warning?”

“Um, you know, so I can have the house ready and all. And the kids’ schedules cleared.” And a complete confession ready to deliver.

“All right. Give Meghan and Wyatt a hug from us. We’ll see you soon.”

Amanda found a dry spot for the phone and flipped the lever for a last infusion of hot water. Sinking back so that maximum body parts were covered, she cleared her mind and felt her eyes flutter shut. In the quiet of the bathroom, she spiraled down into the warmth and floated for a time.

Until the phone rang again.

“Um-hmmm?” she mumbled into the receiver when her seeking hand finally located the phone.

“Amanda?” She recognized Brooke’s voice on the other end, but couldn’t summon the energy to pry her eyes open. Thinking was pretty much out of the question. She heard someone snoring lightly and realized with some surprise that it was her.

“Amanda? Did I wake you up?”

Amanda yawned and pried open her eyes. “I guess so.”

“Isn’t it kind of early to go to sleep?”

“Yes.”

The bathwater had cooled, but she no longer had the strength to lift her toe to turn on the hot water. “And I don’t think the bathtub’s the best place to do it.”

She needed to get up, dry off, and put herself to bed, but that was an awfully long “to do” list for someone as tired as she was.

“The workload’s too much for you,” Brooke said. “I knew we shouldn’t have let you do two houses a day alone.”

“No, I’m fine.” Amanda worked herself into a sitting position. Reaching forward, she managed to flick open the drain. “I just have two more houses tomorrow and then I’m going to crash for a couple of days.”

“Oh, Amanda. I feel so…”

“No, it’s OK.” Amanda yawned again and stretched. “Don’t worry about it.” She had to get out of this tub and into bed. “I have to go to sleep now.”

Placing the phone back on the floor, she watched the water slither down the drain. Then she looked at her shriveled body. It was thinner than she remembered and more muscled. She flexed her arm as she reached for the towel and felt her bicep bulge. Stepping out of the tub, she noticed new definition in her calves.

Eureka!
she thought. Maybe she’d come up with an alternative to expensive health clubs and personal trainers. Maybe she should be recruiting other housewives who’d forgotten the physical benefits of manual labor. Maybe she should found a chain of gyms where people could come to perform household tasks.

Or maybe she should just go to bed.

A few minutes later she’d pulled on her pajamas and said good night to the kids. In no time at all she’d drifted off to sleep where visions of vacuuming baseball moms danced in her head.

Brooke dreamt about her mother. In her dream Brooke was a child again, waiting for Cassie to come home with some sort of treat from one of the houses she cleaned; a pair of patent leather shoes two sizes too big, a book already tattered and torn. The smallest extra, transferred from that other world to hers, had been cause for excitement.

Because dreams could not be edited, Brooke also saw the defeat in her mother’s eyes, the hunch of her slender shoulders, the utter weariness in her walk as she crossed the weed-strewn front lawn and trudged up the rickety steps of their mobile home.

In the middle of the dream the faces got switched. And the dead eyes and clawlike hands she couldn’t look away from became Amanda’s.

Before dawn, she stopped pretending she was ever going back to sleep and padded into the kitchen. There she brewed a pot of coffee and carried it out to the back patio to watch the sun come up. The weariness in Amanda’s voice last night had been tangible, and Brooke knew that no matter how far behind she’d been trying to leave her past, she simply couldn’t spend another day pampering herself while Amanda worked herself into a state of exhaustion.

Determined now, she moved into her closet and riffled through her things until she came up with a simple white tracksuit and her most broken-in pair of sneakers. In the bathroom, she pulled her hair up off her face and pulled out her cosmetics.

Leaving Hap a note that she’d see him at dinner, she climbed into her car and drove toward Candace’s hoping she wasn’t too late.

“Well,
mon amie,
are you ready to go?” Amanda considered Solange’s reflection in Candace’s guest bathroom mirror. “I know you are tired, but today you must be zee whirlwind, zee cleaning cyclone. Tonight you can collapse.”

The doorbell rang and Amanda froze. It was eight thirty
AM
and Candace was already gone. She wasn’t sure whether she should answer the door or not.

The bell rang again.

Deciding that she would simply answer as Solange, Amanda walked to the foyer and peered out the sidelight. Brooke stood on the front stoop, an anxious look on her face. Opening the door, Amanda reached for the other woman’s arm and pulled her inside. “What are you doing here?”

Brooke was wearing sneakers and a white tracksuit that clung to her long limbs like a second skin. She’d pulled her auburn hair up into a ponytail and applied bright red lipstick. She’d also apparently used black liner around her eyes and added a large black dot near the corner of her mouth—possibly with Magic Marker.

“I, uh, came to help.”

“You look like a heavily made-up dental hygienist.”

“Well, I’m supposed to be a maid. I thought maybe I could be Solange’s cousin or something. I’ve always liked the name Simone.
Bonjour,
” she said in a passable French accent.
“Comment vas-tu?”

“OK, then, you look like Brigitte Bardot.”

Brooke’s face fell.

“But I know what it took for you to come here.” Amanda stepped forward and gave Brooke a hug. “And I’ve never been so happy to see anybody in my life.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Amanda stepped back and studied her friend. She knew Brooke had slain some serious demons to get here, but she was about as unrecognizable as Michael Jackson in sunglasses. Susie Simmons would take one look at her and the charade would be over. Grabbing Brooke’s hand, Amanda led her into the guest bath where she kept her stage makeup and supplies. “We need to deepen your disguise. Let’s see what we can come up with.”

Ten minutes later, she let Brooke look in the mirror.

“Oh my God.” Brooke’s fingers touched the slightly beaked latex nose and the layer of pancake makeup that camouflaged its edges. The beauty mark had been enhanced into a mole. “Simone needs to see a dermatologist. This mole needs its own apartment.”

Brooke’s hands moved up to the shaggy auburn wig with its heavily gelled spikes. “And a hairdresser.”

“There’s not much I can do about your body,” Amanda said.

“For which I am eternally grateful.”

“But everybody will probably be so busy trying not to look at that mole that they might not notice,” Amanda conceded.

“Yeah.” Brooke’s voice was dry. “I think the hairs coming out of it are a particularly nice touch.”

Amanda smiled. “I’m kind of gifted that way. Just think what I could do for Tiffany.”

She ushered Brooke to the garage and into the vacuummobile. “I think you better leave the talking to me,” Amanda said, “there’s less chance of tripping up that way. But frankly, the way you look now, I don’t think your husband would even recognize you.”

Brooke batted her eyelashes at Amanda. Her only recognizable facial features were her wide-set gray eyes. “Well, thank the Lord for that.”

Susie Simmons let them into the house and was unable to take her gaze off of Brooke’s hairy mole.

“Madame,”
Solange said. “Thees is my cousin, Simone. She has come to help me.”

Susie ripped her gaze away from Simone’s face and escorted them into the kitchen. “Fine,” she said. “As long as we agree the total amount stays the same. I didn’t contract for two cleaners, just one cleaning.”

Brooke made a face at Susie’s back.

“Quoi?”
Amanda feigned confusion.

“Money.
Argent.
” Susie added the word in French. “It doesn’t change.”

“Oh.” Amanda smiled broadly as she mimed the dawning of comprehension. “
Oui
. Of course zee money weel stay zee same. It is only that I have now so many clients and I need zee help.”

That was as much explanation as she was prepared to waste on Susie, who offered neither coffee nor interest in either of them once the money issue was settled.