Something New (9 page)

“Not tell your wife,” I reply.

“You got that right.”

“Is she a vegan?”

“No. She’s American.” He breaks into a smile. I smile back, praying that I don’t have any turkey meat loaf stuck between my front teeth.

When we reach the checkout, he selects one lane and I select the opposing one, which causes us to occasionally brush our backsides against each other while the cashiers total our items. I’m going to blame my hormones again, but just the mere rustle of my capris against his Levi’s is giving me the female equivalent of a woody. I know,
know
, for a fact that this man has no ulterior motives or salacious ideas in his
head regarding Ellen Ivers. And I know that nothing will ever happen between the two of us. But I suddenly feel like I did when I was sixteen. Carefree, optimistic, my life full of possibilities, the world my oyster.

“Did you bring your own bag?” the cashier asks, dragging me back from my thoughts. Instantly, the warm fuzzies evaporate, quickly replaced by guilt and shame. I
do
have bags, green-friendly hemp jobs with the recycling logo stamped on the side. When I bought them, I was extremely proud of myself for being so environmentally friendly, such a champion for planet Earth. And yet, not once have I remembered to bring them to the store. I know exactly where they are: on the bottom shelf of my pantry next to the family-sized box of Cheez-Its.

I glance behind me and watch with horror as Ben withdraws a square of nylon fabric from his jeans pocket and proceeds to unfold it into a ginormous grocery sack. The blond cashier flashes him an appreciative, aren’t-you-the-coolest-guy-in-the-world smile and begins to load his items into the bag.

I turn back to the cashier and give a curt shake of my head. “I forgot it.”

The girl just shrugs and gives me a patient smile that seems to say,
That’s okay. We get a lot of your kind
, and forcefully snaps open a paper sack.

Ben and I finish at the same time and push toward the sliding doors. As we head out into the sunlight, I glance over at his cart.

“Nice bag,” I comment wryly.

“My wife’s an environmental lawyer,” he says. “What can I say?”

As we traverse the parking lot, I realize that my Flex is parked right next to his Volvo station wagon, and I let the
coincidence roll right off my back. I glance at the bumper stickers adorning the rear end of the Volvo:
Obama/Biden ’08
,
I Brake for Marsupials
,
Three-Mile-High Club/Sky’s the Limit
.

I narrow my eyes at him as he pops the hatch open. He catches the look.

“What?”

I should keep my mouth shut. I know I should. Delving too deeply into the personal life of a married man probably is not something a married woman should be doing, especially a married woman who wants to reinvent herself for the better. I am not Catholic. I cannot go to confession and be absolved of my lustful, covetous thoughts. But I absolutely have no filter when it comes to blurting out questions I just need to have answered.

“Three-mile-high club?” I ask. “I didn’t know they had bumper stickers for that one.”

He shakes his head and laughs. “No, no, no. You’re thinking of the
mile
-high club. It’s not that.” He gives a rueful smile. “Linda keeps telling me to scrape that one off, says I’m giving the wrong impression…which, obviously, I am. That’s from the skydiving place.” He says it casually, as if he got it at Jiffy Lube. “I won’t scrape it off. I’m too damn proud of it.”

“You jumped out of a plane?” I ask, incredulous. I know people do it all the time. People with death wishes or people with nothing and no one to live for. People who are deranged.

“Twice,” he says. “It was awesome. I posted the video on Facebook. You should friend me…Or I’ll friend you. You can check it out.”

“I don’t do Facebook.” I feel like I am confessing a heinous sin, but Ben takes it in stride.

“Well, it was awesome. I mean, I look like I’m about to
throw up in the video, but…wow, your heart’s pounding, your mind, totally blank. It was the greatest. I highly recommend it.”

“But…but…why?” I can’t wrap my mind around the “awesome” thing. I mean, how can hurtling toward earth at ninety miles an hour, wondering if your chute will open, knowing that if it doesn’t, you’re about to become a human pancake, be fun? “Why would you want to do that?” I ask again.

He shrugs. “I guess, I don’t know, I’ve always felt it’s good to try new things, especially if they scare the shit out of you.” He loads his one super-sack into the back of the Volvo. “If you stop trying new things, you might as well just stop.”

I stare at him for a long moment, thinking about his words. They are reverberating madly inside my brain. My synapses are firing at the recognition of important information, cathartic information, perhaps. Ben has no idea the impact his sentence is having on me.
If you stop trying new things, you might as well just stop.

He finger-waves as he climbs behind the wheel of his car. I continue to stare at him as he slowly pulls the Volvo out of the parking slot. Before he drives away, the passenger window rolls down and I see him lean over. I bend at the waist to face him.

“This was fun,” he says. “I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed grocery shopping as much.”

I am completely at a loss for words, so I just smile. And stare at him until the Volvo is completely out of sight.

I am still pondering Ben’s words as I move through my kitchen, assembling and preparing all of the ingredients for the cheese balls. For some reason, my thoughts keep drifting
back to the
Ladies Living-Well Journal
and the blog competition. Am I actually afraid of entering the competition, afraid of failing miserably and looking like a jerk? If that’s the case, then, according to Ben Campbell, I should just do it. It’s not like I’ve never made a complete ass out of myself before. And the fact is, the blog competition is anonymous. Nobody would have to know how badly I failed.

If you stop trying new things, you might as well just stop.

Wait, when did I give Ben Campbell such power? The first time he gazed at me with those liquid brown eyes, that’s when. I am not blind to the fact that I have developed a slight crush on my cousin’s neighbor. It feels only slightly different than the crush I have on Hugh Jackman, and I would say that the
main
difference is the fact that I have actually breathed the same air as Ben Campbell. Yet both crushes would be categorized together in the same subfolder of
This could happen when pigs fly or when Republicans vote Jesse Jackson into the White House
. But the thought of Hugh makes me warm and tickly all over, and I find that thinking about Ben is having a similar effect.

I am almost forty-three. I think about the last time I tried something new that frightened me, and fitting into a new size of underwear doesn’t count. As I grate the English Cheddar, I remember that six months ago, I tried a mojito at the Lancaster wedding. I am not afraid of alcohol,
obviously
, but I do fear the aftereffects of rum, so I am going to count that one. In fact, now that I think of it, I was so pleased to overcome my fear of a rum hangover, I drank three more. Or four. Five? Well, I lost track at four, but the important thing is that I tried something new.

Wow. Six months. Have I really tried nothing new in the last half year? I
will not
include laundry detergent or face cream because that would be downright pathetic, especially
since I already counted the mojito. When was the last time I tried something new that actually inspired fear in me? I shake my head at the mound of grated Cheddar before me.

On my honeymoon I went jet-skiing for the first time; having had a childhood friend who died while riding one, I was deathly afraid of them. I remember now the terror I felt as I swung my leg over the seat, gripped the handlebars, and idled away from the dock. I recall how the terror quickly morphed into exhilaration as I got a feel for the machine and accelerated to full speed, the wind whipping through my hair, the spray of water splashing my face as I bounced over a wake, my heart pumping wildly in my chest. It was almost better than the honeymoon sex, if you want to know the truth. That was thirteen years ago, I realize now with something akin to horror. And before that? Parasailing in Florida with my ex. I was, what? Twenty-five? Eighteen years ago.

Jesus, I really need to get out and do something. As I grab the paprika from the spice rack and a mixing bowl from the cupboard, it hits me that this whole reinvention thing I have embarked upon is completely enmeshed with “trying something new.” Exercising on the treadmill and avoiding Pop-Tarts are only a superficial Band-Aid. What I really need is to branch out, open myself up to the unexpected, take risks, embrace my fears. Clearly, these forty-two-year-old bones are not meant for some of the things I am afraid to do, like skydiving or surfing or anything else that puts excess amounts of pressure on any of my aged joints. But blogging?

I turn away from the mixing bowl and regard my computer. The monitor seems to be calling to me. I have the urge to drop what I’m doing and go over and plunk my fingers down on the keyboard. But alas, I must make the cheese balls. And there’s also that little thing about my not knowing what to write about.

Before I gave up writing in favor of full-time subservience—I mean motherhood—I never lacked for subject matter. But I always gave myself a set amount of time to allow my brain to have a party. This was my preparation. I would do mindless tasks while my subconscious worked out the details of what would eventually end up on paper.

As I gaze at my tattered, almost illegible recipe, which I no longer need, I decide that I will let my subconscious take over while I make the cheese balls. I will allow the cooking to be a meditative experience that will unlock all kinds of fresh and wonderful ideas. Okay, I’m hoping for just
one
idea, but I’m trying to be positive. And I promise myself that when I am done with the cheese balls, I will sit down at the computer and enter the stupid fucking blog competition.

Damn that Ben Campbell, anyway.

Stay positive
, I tell myself.
You can do it, Ellen. You’re a writer. So, you’ve been on hiatus for a while. A long while. It’s like riding a bike, right? Just go with this.

I empty out the contents of all the containers into the mixing bowl, feeling the quiet energy of my ruminations as my mind begins to swirl with a vast array of inspired thoughts, tapping into the mysterious reserves of my untapped gray matter…and then the phone rings.

“It’s all settled,” Jill states adamantly, then proceeds to explain how she has made it possible for me to attend book club by pawning my children off on her husband.

“Greg hates my kids,” I retort. “There’s no way he is willing to watch them for the entire evening.”

“He doesn’t hate them,” she says sternly. “He just thinks they’re a challenge.”

“Mentally challenged,” I say. “He called them that the last time we all got together.”

“He was drunk!” she cries. “You can’t listen to him when
he’s drunk! Trust me. Anyway, he offered to take them along with the
D
s. Bowling. Burgers. Boomers. They’ll love it!”

Greg offering to take my kids for the night is akin to the Dalai Lama unleashing a hailstorm of bullets from an AK-47. I know Jill put him up to it, and I wonder just what she offered him in return. A night of sex with his buxom receptionist is my guess.

“He’ll lose them, Jill. On purpose. I know that man. He’d lose his own kids if he thought he could get away with it.”

“That’s not fair. Greg’s a great dad.”

“Yes, Jill, he is,” I say, acquiescing. Getting into an argument with Jill over Greg’s questionable parenting skills is not worth the stress it will cause her, especially when she’s already on the verge of a breakdown.

“Look, it won’t just be Greg. Ralph Herman and Kevin Savant are going with their kids, too. Maybe Jonah can meet them at Boomers after his dinner.”

I stare down at the stainless-steel bowl that is filled with Neufchatel, Romano, grated English Cheddar, eggs, and a plethora of spices. This is going to be a great batch of cheese balls; I can just feel it. The mother of all cheese balls. They will go perfectly with the organic red wine Jill always serves. A perfect compliment to the spanakopita and pastry puffs that always grace her buffet. Just the right precursor to the warm molten truffle bites that she buys from Bristol Farms but claims to have made herself.

It looks like I am going to book club tonight, even if it means having my children abducted from right under Greg’s nose.

“Okay. They can go with Greg.”

Jill’s cacophonous sigh echoes over the phone line. “Thank you,” she says sincerely. “I just can’t do this without you.”

“Yes you can,” I argue. “But I’ll be there.” I let a few
seconds pass, then ask, “So, what’s Greg getting out of the deal?”

She laughs without mirth. “I promised him oral.”

Wow. Jill must really want me there tonight. She likes oral about as much as she likes natural childbirth. Have I mentioned that she screamed for an epidural as soon as her water broke during labor with her first child?

I hang up, wash my hands, then plunge them into the cheese goop. I breathe in through my nose, blow out through my mouth, hoping to recapture the meditative state I was in before Jill called. A wisp of an idea threads its way through my brain. I don’t force it, just continue to mash the cheesy concoction with my fingers. I can almost grasp it…can almost touch it…

The phone rings,
again
. I curse, then glance at the Caller ID and see that it’s Jonah. Perfect timing, as usual. I let the call go to voice mail, wash my hands thoroughly,
again
, being careful to scrape the cheese from under my nails, then call him back.

“Hey,” he says. “You busy?”

“I’m making cheese balls for book club.”

“I love your cheese balls.”

“They’re not for you,” I tell him, and he chuckles into the phone. “What’s so funny?” I ask.

“You’re talking to me in full sentences. I guess you’re not that mad any more?”