The Botox Diaries (10 page)

I’m ready for this. I’ve got the Cliffs Notes. I’d planned the speech I would give Jacques about how happy I am and how wonderful my life is. For days I’ve known I shouldn’t dare sit across from this man and say anything else.

“I’ve been lonely,” I hear myself say. Oh my god. Wrong speech. Where did that come from? “I mean, that’s not what I mean,” I say quickly.

“It’s all right. I understand,” he says, taking my hand.

He doesn’t understand, because neither do I, but here we are in Balthazar holding hands across the table and brushing knees underneath it. We order. We nibble on our overpriced seared scallops. We gaze into each other’s eyes—yup, soulfully. We talk about old times, remembering only the moments when we were blissfully happy. He brings up the dreamy cruise around the Aegean where we danced on the ship’s deck every night under a full moon. I’ve always meant to ask Jacques how he managed to make a full moon last a whole week. But now doesn’t seem like the right time. Not when we’re smiling so sweetly at each other and mumbling about how wonderful life was way back when.

Sitting here, I realize that crash diet be damned, in Jacques’ eyes I’ll always be a fresh-faced girl of twenty-four. And it feels pretty darn good to be basking in that reflection. Who needs the dermatologist
when I have Jacques? No amount of lasering could possibly peel off the years more effectively than seeing yourself through an old lover’s eyes.

“So,” he says, squeezing my fingertips lightly and taking a last sip of cappuccino, “shall we leave? I’ll take you home.”

I’m really not ready to leave, but we’re going to have to say good-bye sometime.

“I guess I’ll get a cab to the train station,” I say, wishing desperately that I still lived in the city and could make the evening last a little longer with a romantic walk home through the cobblestoned SoHo streets. “I don’t have the apartment anymore.”

“Don’t worry. I know you’ve moved,” Jacques says. “I planned to drive you home.”

Nobody has a car in the city, and even if they did, there are
DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE
signs plastered all over the street in front of Balthazar. (Where else but New York can you get a ticket for even
thinking
about parking?) But as always, Jacques has made his own rules and we step outside into a waiting black Mercedes.

I don’t bother giving Jacques directions to Pine Hills because the way the evening’s gone, I figure the flight plan’s already programmed into the car. The CD player’s been programmed, too, starting slowly with U2’s “Beautiful Day,” moving on to Lenny Kravitz singing “Can’t Get You Off My Mind,” and heating up to early Barry White, a little clichéd, but it works. I hold my breath, but I know my Jacques is always discreet. Whatever he’s planning, Nirvana’s “Rape Me” isn’t going to be one of the tracks. As he cruises up the West Side Highway, I nestle into the cushiony leather seat and start to drift. Jacques reaches over to stroke my arm. Ah, how lovely. A man who can steer and stroke at the same time.

When we pull into the driveway, he runs around to my side of the car to open the door, walks me onto the porch, and wordlessly follows me inside. I fumble with a light switch and blink a couple of times in the suddenly bright foyer, realizing that back on my own turf, my mood has quickly shifted. That reminiscing romantic who surfaced at Balthazar has been deep-sixed.

“My daughter’s at a sleepover tonight, so I’m sorry you won’t get
to meet her,” I say, back to sounding like a suburban mom. “But can I show you around the house?”

“Bien sûr.”

We begin to walk around and I feel like an idiot. If I’d wanted to give house tours, I would have joined the Pine Hills Garden Club.

Uneventfully we do the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen, which I brilliantly identify as being the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. What am I supposed to do? Point out the Sub-Zero? Jacques cooperatively looks around my kitchen as reverently as if he’s just stepped into the cathedral at Notre Dame.

“C’est magnifique,”
he says.

Okay, I think we’ve milked this floor for all it’s worth.

We traipse single file up the stairs to pay homage to Jen’s bedroom—also known unofficially as The Shrine to Justin Timberlake—and my IKEA-decorated study. We’re really moving now. We pass by my bedroom quickly, with only a nod to its purpose, and somehow land in the guest bathroom.

Jacques peers inside, honing in on the claw-footed soaking tub.

“Old house, old tub,” I say cheerfully. “I never replaced it because I think it’s kind of quaint.”

“Does it work?” he asks.

“Sure.”

Jacques strides across the wood-planked floor, kneels next to the tub and turns on the water. He plays with the old faucets until the water is the temperature that he wants. “A stopper?” he asks.

A stopper? Yes, we do need a stopper, but not for the tub. I thought once we’d passed the bedroom we’d made it to the safety zone. How could I have forgotten that Jacques’ smoothest moves start with bath oil?

I’m still trying to decide what to do when I spy the cork stopper sitting on top of the wicker hamper and pick it up. I weigh it in my fingers until Jacques comes over, takes it from me, and puts it into the open tub drain.

Jacques, we can’t do this, I say, only I guess I don’t say it out loud, because his hands are around my shoulders and his lips are brushing
lightly against my cheek. When I don’t pull away he gently kisses my neck, then nuzzles against my ear, whispering soft nothings in French. I can’t make out the words, but I can feel the heat. Tantalizingly, he kisses my eyelids and holds me tighter. My body sways closer to his until our lips find each other and we melt into that timeless space that erases the moment along with the years.

I’m not thinking anymore. He’s unbuttoning my blouse and I’m letting him. He runs an appreciative finger across my chest and I can hardly breathe. Maybe some of those six pounds I’ve gained in the last years have landed on my breasts because when he unhooks my bra and steps back, I see a hint of surprise glinting in his eyes.

“You’re more beautiful than ever,” he says.

“Older,” I say.

“But more beautiful,” he repeats.

I resist pointing out that the breasts aren’t quite as perky as they once were and the little freckles on my chest are ungenerously referred to as “age spots” by the good dermatologist.

Instead, I let him unzip my black satin skirt and I pull it off in one smooth move, taking the body shaper with it.

“No fair,” I say, because he’s still fully dressed and I’m now standing in nothing but my black lace bikinis.

But he’s not in a rush. Jacques is never in a rush. He kisses my breasts lightly, then just a little harder, and his hips press against mine. I start to undress him and he leads me toward the tub. I dip a tentative toe into the water and let out a small yelp.

“It’s freezing!” I say, laughing. Jacques laughs, too, and Sir Walter Raleigh–like, spreads a towel over the wood floor, changing the plans from water to land.

“That floor’s still going to be too hard,” I say, wishing I’d bought the plush Fieldcrests instead of my Target bargains.

Jacques moves closer to me and cups my face gently in his hands. “Where shall we go,
mon amour
?” he asks.

I think about it for only a moment, looking at his almost-nude body, which is muscular and smooth, and to my great surprise, I hear myself whisper, “Well I have a very, very soft bed.”

* * *

Hours later I half wake to realize that Jacques and I have fallen asleep with our bodies wrapped around each other in the cozy entanglement of arms and legs that was our way for all those years. I can feel his warmth and the weight of his thigh pressing against mine. He rouses and gently caresses my shoulders, then cups his hand around my breast. My eyes flutter open and I find Jacques gazing at me with a tender smile. “It’s still the same,
mon amour
,” he whispers. “I still love you.”

I snuggle closer and bury my head in his chest. “You’re wonderful, Jacques. As wonderful as ever.” I glance at the bedside clock and it’s only four a.m., but I realize that it’s almost time for him to go. He’s booked on the seven a.m. Air France flight. I’m ready and I’m not.

He gets up reluctantly and as he dresses, I groggily go to the closet and reach past my normal terry cloth robe to find the silk one from Victoria’s Secret that’s been sitting there unused for umpteen centuries. Jacques stops in his tracks and comes back toward me.

“You’re mine,” he says, wrapping me in his arms and pressing me against the wall. He kisses me deeply, ready to make love one more time, but Air France waits for no man.

“You … it’s time to … you’ll miss your flight …,” I stutter between kisses.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t want to let you go.”

But he encircles his arm around my waist and we walk slowly down the stairs. At the front door we have a final, lingering kiss. And then he takes both my hands in his.

“It’s like we were never apart,
mon petit chouchou
,” he says. “So it’s settled. When I come back in three weeks we’ll be together forever. This time we won’t make the same mistakes.”

I want to believe him and I kiss him back wordlessly. Forever sounds pretty darn good.

I FALL BACK
into a dreamy sleep almost immediately after Jacques is gone. Nothing wakes me for several blissful hours until Jen comes bounding into my bedroom, lugging her purple Gap backpack, her black overnight bag, her red cushiony sleeping mat and a pink pillow emblazoned PRINCESS. She looks like she’s just back from trekking in the Himalayas, not overnighting with Lily.

“How was your evening, Mom?” she asks as I sit up abruptly, trying to pretend that she hasn’t just awakened me from a sound sleep. I laugh to myself as I get a good look at my big daughter. The earphones from her American Girl Walkman are dangling around her neck and she’s carrying a stack of
CosmoGIRL!
magazines. At age eleven all she knows is she’s a Girl. Whether it’s one who plays with dolls or reads about boys is a toss-up right now.

“My evening was fine,” I say. I try to stifle a yawn. “I guess I’m still a little tired.”

“Did you have sex?” Jen asks, casually throwing all of her gear onto my bed.

I gulp. What’s that about? Is she guessing here or did she sneak back last night and look in the window? No, more likely telling Jen I was going out with my ex-husband was a mistake. I gotta remember
that all those books say single moms shouldn’t confide too much in their kids.

So I do the obvious. I lie. “Of course I didn’t have sex, sweetheart. You don’t have sex if you’re not married, remember?” I have to stop letting her watch reruns of
Friends
. Why believe me when all the singles on TV are having so much fun? “Jacques is just an old pal now,” I say.

Jen buys it. “That’s good,” she says animatedly. “Because Lily and I found a better husband for you.”

A better husband? I want to tell her that Jacques wasn’t so bad when you come right down to it. But that would be back in that category of “Too Much Information.” So I clear my throat and say chirpily, “I didn’t know I was looking for a husband. But who’d you have in mind?”

She reaches for the stack of magazines and fumbles around until she finds the mother lode—a copy of the real
Cosmopolitan
, that hasn’t been “Girl-ed.”

“Right here, Mom,” she says, waving the magazine at me. “ ‘The Twenty-Five Most Eligible Bachelors.’ I picked one for you. His name is Boulder, like the rock.”

“He certainly sounds solid.” I laugh. But Jen is distracted, because she’s busy flipping through the pages of the magazine.

“All the models in here have big boobs,” she says. Jen looks down at her own flat T-shirt and rubs her hand against the fabric, as if willing her breasts to grow.

I could lecture about calling them breasts, not boobs, and promise her that she’ll get some soon enough. But she won’t believe me right now.

“So tell me about Boulder,” I say instead. Rocks and boobs. What a magazine.

“He’s thirty-three.” She looks at me and frowns slightly. “He’s the oldest one, so I hope he’s not too old. But he’s got big muscles and he’s a professional surfer. Isn’t that cool? I don’t think we should move to California for him, but Lily says we have the Atlantic Ocean right here so it shouldn’t matter. I’m writing him a letter.”

“I’ll help with the spelling,” I say gamely. I’d hate for there to be
any grammar mistakes when pledging my love to the oldest-known bachelor in America, who still happens to be way too young for me.

“Good, because I’m going to tell him all about us.”

Us. Of course. Jen’s not just trying to nab a husband for me. It’s a package deal. She’s looking for a dad.

I reach over and take a look at the picture of this Boulder guy—bare-chested, holding a surfboard and offering up such a dazzling grin that I check to make sure I haven’t accidentally flipped to the ad for BriteSmile. Doesn’t strike me that I’m looking at my destiny, but I can imagine what Jen sees in him—the perfect guy to carry her on his shoulders for a wave-jumping romp into the ocean.

Jen’s looking at me expectantly.

“He looks like he’d make a pretty fun dad,” I say tentatively, because the old guilt is seeping back. Most of the time just being the two of us seems perfectly fine. But as much as I love her to pieces, I’m still only one parent. Okay, on my good days, maybe one and a half. Still, I can’t help worrying about how much she misses having the standard-issue matched set.

Jen, however, is hankering to make the date and ignores my cue to bare her innermost thoughts on Life with (Single) Mom.

“So I’m writing him a letter to enter the contest,” she says, explaining the rules for winning yourself a Boulder. “He’s going to read them all—”

Or maybe someone will have to read them to him, I think.

“—and then he’ll pick the girl he wants to marry.
Cosmo
will send you on a date first. And oh, Mom? Just so you know. The date might be on TV, too. Is that okay?”