You Dropped a Blonde on Me (5 page)
“I told him I’d have Connor call him back from the pay phone down at the 7-Eleven, seeing as you can’t afford a cell phone for him. I also told him he’d better hope we could take the drunk homeless guy who sleeps on the side of the building, because we’ll have to steal his change to make the call.”
Sneer on cue. Unbuttoning her jacket, Maxine laughed. “Don’t taunt Finley, Mom. It’ll only result in me maybe losing my kidneys in the next round of this reincarnation of World War Two.”
“Finley Cambridge can bite my old, wrinkled ass. He’s a deadbeat, and don’t think, unlike you, I’m afraid to say so. If my memory serves me, that’s what I called him just before I threw the phone at the wall.” She tilted her sharp jaw upward. Her hair, fresh from cushioned pink curlers, shook when she gave Maxine a defiant flash of her eyes.
Maxine slid closer to the wall, fiddling with the rip in the fading flowered wallpaper of her mother’s kitchen. “Ma, there has to come a time when Connor sees his father again. Fin cheating on me doesn’t mean he cheated on Connor.” Sooooo PC. Sooooo much bullshit. Fin may not have fornicated around on Connor, but he’d definitely cheated him.
Connor should be planning his graduation next year, attending the college he’d dreamed about since he was little, hanging out with his friends. Instead, he was living in a retirement village, driving twenty minutes each way to school five days a week so he could graduate with the same classmates he’d had since kindergarten, and walking little old ladies’ dogs night after night to afford the gas money to do it.
Her mother grunted, smoothing a hand down the front of her Day-Glo green, nylon sweat suit. “Really? I disagree, Missy. When Fin decided to take his crotch elsewhere, he also took his money, and his son’s home, and left you with nothing. I say that’s cheating his kid out of all the things he deserves just so he can stick it to you. Is Finley going to raise him?” Mona scowled. “Not likely. All the things that boy had before Finley went off and did the humpty-hump with that tramp, and now he has nothing? That’s cheating by proxy, girlie.”
Technically, that wasn’t totally true. “Fin did give Connor the option to come back and live with him and Lacey.” Maxine cringed. It tore a hole in her heart just thinking of not having Connor with her. Almost as bad, when she said her husband’s new fiancée’s name, even eight months later, it still gouged another hole in her heart—albeit a much smaller one than possibly losing Connor. They weren’t even divorced yet and Fin already had a fiancée.
Lacey, Lacey, Lacey. The pain of Fin’s infidelity didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had at the start of this, but what did hurt was the idea that now Lacey was sleeping in Maxine’s California King, eating her freshly flown-in lobster, and didn’t have a single care in the world, while Maxine and Connor lived near impoverishment.
And all because she was a total fuckwit.
Yet none of the outrageous luxuries or lack thereof mattered much anymore. They were all like a hazy dream. What mattered was survival. Something she had no clue how to go about, but strived for every waking moment anyway.
“Yeahhhh—big of him to offer his
son
a place to live. Connor’s a smart boy. Too smart for his own good sometimes. He knows what Fin’s doing to you by hiding all of his money, and swindling you out of his millions. Like that jackass would miss a couple million, never mind a couple hundred bucks. He had some kinda gall, leaving you a buck ninety-nine in your joint accounts and canceling all those credit cards just before you found out about that Jezebel. He knew damned well what he was doing, and he didn’t leave you any ammunition to fight back. Finley didn’t get where he is by not knowing how to protect himself.”
son
a place to live. Connor’s a smart boy. Too smart for his own good sometimes. He knows what Fin’s doing to you by hiding all of his money, and swindling you out of his millions. Like that jackass would miss a couple million, never mind a couple hundred bucks. He had some kinda gall, leaving you a buck ninety-nine in your joint accounts and canceling all those credit cards just before you found out about that Jezebel. He knew damned well what he was doing, and he didn’t leave you any ammunition to fight back. Finley didn’t get where he is by not knowing how to protect himself.”
Maxine’s nod was a tired one. That much was true. The very second Finley got wind of the fact that she’d found out about Lacey, he’d cleaned out their joint accounts and canceled their credit cards, leaving her with just one with an eight-thousand-dollar limit to pay a lawyer who did nothing but collect a twenty-five-hundred-dollar retainer, ignore her pleading phone calls, and stall.
Fin knew once she’d wrapped her head around his infidelity, she’d freak. But he’d made sure her freak was nothing more than a whimper, and it was all perfectly legal. That he’d planned this so diabolically behind her back made it that much harder to swallow.
“Connor knows you can’t afford a
real
lawyer, and that’s why you’re where you are—because that creepy shyster who has a basement office doesn’t know his arse from his Mr. Peabody. If you would just let me dip into the till, we could get you a
real
lawyer—”
real
lawyer, and that’s why you’re where you are—because that creepy shyster who has a basement office doesn’t know his arse from his Mr. Peabody. If you would just let me dip into the till, we could get you a
real
lawyer—”
Maxine’s hand was instantly in the air, palm forward. “
No
, Mom. No more money. I have the lawyer I have because my credit card could only afford so much before it broke. I don’t even care about the money anymore. I just want out. Do you have any idea how much it’d cost to hire someone capable of handling Fin’s lawyers? A whole lot more than even you have. And if I didn’t get anything out of his tight ass so I could pay you back—then we’d really be screwed. So forget it. And before you get crazy, I have a confession to make. I discovered something today on the ride back from my interview. I’m where I am because I didn’t do anything to stop myself from getting here. I can’t totally blame Fin for this mess. I think it’s time for me to take some responsibility for this shitwreck.”
No
, Mom. No more money. I have the lawyer I have because my credit card could only afford so much before it broke. I don’t even care about the money anymore. I just want out. Do you have any idea how much it’d cost to hire someone capable of handling Fin’s lawyers? A whole lot more than even you have. And if I didn’t get anything out of his tight ass so I could pay you back—then we’d really be screwed. So forget it. And before you get crazy, I have a confession to make. I discovered something today on the ride back from my interview. I’m where I am because I didn’t do anything to stop myself from getting here. I can’t totally blame Fin for this mess. I think it’s time for me to take some responsibility for this shitwreck.”
That was the ugly truth of it. Not only had she trusted her lesser half blindly, but she’d listened to Fin’s SAHM bullshit about staying home with Connor and raising him the way a mother should, being party planner and all-round entertainer of the millennium. She should have insisted he let her go to school when the longing had hit her. But Fin had liked her at his disposal—until he’d disposed of her. Not that she’d pushed to go back to school. Pushing Fin was akin to walks along eggshell-lined streets. You had to take those strolls very carefully.
Seeing Campbell Barker today had reminded her that somewhere between graduation and this very second, she hadn’t just lost twenty years of marriage, money, and some stupid-ass weekly trips to the day spa, she’d lost her cubes. Her opinion. Her desires.
Max
, as Campbell had called her, couldn’t have been talked out of anything she wanted way back when. In fact, that was how she’d ended up married to Finley to begin with.
Max
, as Campbell had called her, couldn’t have been talked out of anything she wanted way back when. In fact, that was how she’d ended up married to Finley to begin with.
Her mother’s smile was bitter. “Yep, that’s partially true, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get some kind of severance for time served with that control freak. You raised a good boy, virtually on your own, while Fin swung from every female’s chandelier in the tri-state. Connor knows how you’ve suffered. And I’m not talking about suffering because you can’t slip on a fancy-schmancy designer dress or sit in the back of a chauffeur-driven car. I’m talking about the essentials here, kiddo. Food, shelter, a Goddamn cell phone. I’m seventy, and even I have a cell phone. Connor’s making a stand, and I’m proud of him. He’s sticking by his mama. Makes for a fine man.”
“Yeah,” Connor agreed, pushing his way through the door and dropping his binder on the chipped Formica table. “I’m a fine man.”
Mona whacked him playfully with her crocheting book. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, buster. You’re no man yet,” she teased, smiling when Connor leaned in to give her a quick pinch on her wrinkled cheek.
“So how’s Geezer Village, er, I mean, Leisure Village treating you today, Grams?” Connor chuckled.
Mona’s smile was warm, her pride in Connor evident. She didn’t let just anyone call the retirement village she lived in “geezer.” “Just fine, buddy. Got somebody back there right now, fixing my leaky pipes. And he ain’t no geezer.”
Max decided to broach the subject of Fin with kid gloves. “Your dad called, honey.”
Connor shrugged his broad, ever-widening shoulders deep in the door of her mother’s aging avocado refrigerator. “So? He can dial a phone.”
Despite what Fin had done to her personally, Maxine made the effort to do the right thing where their son was concerned. Do what all the school psychologists and
Divorce for Dummies
books preached were healthy for children of marital woe. Keep the slander about the kind of bottom-feeding fuck Finley was to herself. But if Connor had inherited anything from the Henderson lineage, it was stubborn pride. “Don’t be that way, Connor. He’s still your dad, and he loves you.”
Divorce for Dummies
books preached were healthy for children of marital woe. Keep the slander about the kind of bottom-feeding fuck Finley was to herself. But if Connor had inherited anything from the Henderson lineage, it was stubborn pride. “Don’t be that way, Connor. He’s still your dad, and he loves you.”
Popping a grape into his mouth, Connor snorted. “Not as much as he loves his money. If he really loved me, he’d stop trying to force me to choose him over you by taking all my stuff away from me. He thinks if he pushes hard enough, I’ll go crying back to him because I miss having a big-screen TV and surround sound in my bedroom. I bet he’ll want my car back soon, too. I’d sell it for the money and use it for us if he didn’t hold the title to it. At the last visitation hearing, the judge said I was old enough to make my own decisions, and I decided I don’t want to see Dad.”
Such jaded words from such a young kid. Maxine’s heart clenched. Her mother was right. Fin was using his money and all of Connor’s “things” to woo him back home. That Connor hadn’t caved in eight months was a testament to how hard he’d dug his heels in.
But if she knew how to do anything at all, she knew how to play nice. Christ knew she’d done that for a very long time. “Maybe you could just try, Connor. For your poor, tired, jobless mother. Your dad off my back about visitation would be huge. I get what you’re trying to prove, and it’s noble. I’m about as honored as if I’d been crowned Miss USA, but you have college to think of. Somehow, I get the feeling the pay at the Cluck-Cluck Palace isn’t going to make your collegiate dreams come true.”
Her biggest fear at this point was that Fin would find some way to weasel out of paying for Connor’s education if their son didn’t bend to his will. The bastard had found every loophole known to man so far to keep her from getting anything he deemed his. He’d also managed to duck paying her much in child support, and the near future wasn’t going to require shades, from what her lawyer told her today. Fin had bloody, chum-loving sharks for attorneys. Whatever he was doling out to them per hour was paying off.
Connor tipped his chestnut brown head in Maxine’s direction, a question in his thickly fringed eyes. “So you did get the job at the Cluck-Cluck Palace, Mom?”
Oh, the degradation of having to tell your sixteen-year-old you were a Cluck-Cluck Palace reject. “No. It was just a figure of speech. Or basically what any salary I end up making will boil down to. I just meant that our horizons ain’t so pretty. I can’t afford to buy a six-pack of Pepsi—and college costs more than four ninety-eight.”
Connor leaned his back against the fridge, his dark eyes, so much like Fin’s, gazing into hers. “So what you’re saying is I should let him blackmail me so his
son
can have a college degree?”
son
can have a college degree?”
Yep. That was what she was saying. Harsh. “I think I’m just saying that re-establishing your relationship with your father wouldn’t be a bad idea with graduation a year away. It’s a big time in your life, and he should share it with you.”
“Yeah. Him and Laceeeeyy.”
Maxine gripped the edge of the table before she spoke. This was where decency and holding your tongue were like getting a Brazilian wax. “I’m sure he’ll bring Lacey. She is going to be his wife. Don’t judge Lacey. You don’t even know her, and you could fix that if you’d just see your dad.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed at her, his body language screaming “end convo.” They’d been down this road and it always ended at the same dead end. “I have to do my homework, and then I have to walk Mrs. O’Brien’s dog.” He grabbed his binder with a final dark glance in her general vicinity and headed to the guest bedroom where he slept.
Maxine groaned, slipping off her heels to let them clunk beneath the table. “He’s gonna kill me, Ma. I don’t know what to do to get through to him.”
“Let him be. Sometimes you have to let the little shits make their own choices and hope it all works out.”
“Like you did with me when you told me marrying Fin was the stupidest thing you’d heard of since Paul Newman asked Joanne Woodward to marry him?”
Mona raised a silvery eyebrow. “Just like that.”
“Do you want to hear me say I should’ve listened to you? That instead of marrying Fin I should have gone to college so that I’d have something of my own to fall back on in my time of need?” Because that was true, too. She’d let Fin handle everything, never thinking he’d leave her with absolutely nothing and tie everything else up for an eternity.
Even when her marriage had faltered, when Fin had been the unfaithful piece of shit he was on two prior occasions, had she crawled out from under her cashmere blankets and maybe considered her marriage wasn’t going according to plan? Nay. Instead, she’d glossed over his wandering dick. She’d made promises to herself to be more attentive to his every need. To stay in shape, she’d worked the elliptical like a whore at a singles’ convention seven days a week. She’d gotten bigger hooters. She’d justified Fin’s cheating by blaming herself and her imperfections, for having the audacity to grow older.
“Nope. I want to hear you say you’re not going to let that deadbeat whip your keister. Stop letting him intimidate you. He owes you, honey. Can’t change what’s done, Maxie. There’s no going back. But you can change what’s happening to you right now.”
Right. Like she could ever change what she’d done.
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