She squeezes us more tightly to her, and I can’t help but laugh while Ariel lets out a small groan.
“We really need to get you out of your dad’s basement.”
Ducking out from under Isabelle’s arm, Ariel crosses her arms in front of her and looks at me.
“So, what’s it gonna be? Are you gonna go home and bake something, or are you gonna shake your ass and give PJ the middle finger while doing it?”
With a deep breath, I walk back to my pole and wrap my hand around it, giving Tiffany a nod.
“Let’s do this. Play something good. Maybe some Nickelback or Hanson,” I tell her with a confident smile.
Ariel marches over to me and smacks me in the arm. I let out a yelp and glare at her.
“What was that for?! I didn’t say anything snobby!” I complain as I rub the sore spot on my arm that is probably going to bruise by the time Ariel is done with me.
“New rule. Every time you say something stupid as fuck, I’m punching you. Tiffany, put on some Kid Rock. Cindy clearly has shitty taste in music.”
Chapter 9: Hanson Sucks!
With my eyes closed, I shut out everything but the music playing from the speaker of my phone on my nightstand. I forget about my problems, I forget about my fears, and I forget about how silly this is. I let go and just feel the music.
And I smile to myself knowing Ariel was wrong. There’s nothing bad about Hanson, and their music has the perfect beat to dance to.
My hips sway seductively, and I add a little bend in my knees as I run my hands down the front of my body and over my hips, just like Tiffany did earlier in the afternoon. I picture all of the things she taught us and try to emulate what she did as best I can, not even caring that I probably don’t look anywhere near as sensual as she did.
I feel alive. I feel like I can do anything. I have all of the power in the palm of my hand, and I can make whatever decision I want about my future without anyone telling me what to do.
I’m not just a housewife. I’m an intelligent woman who can provide for her family and will do whatever it takes to make sure we’re okay, and PJ Charming can go . . . do something really awful to himself.
My hands slide back up my body until I’m holding them above my head as I continue letting the music take over and dictate how I should move, knowing that nothing can stop me now.
“Mom? What are you doing?”
The most unladylike scream soars past my lips as I drop my arms and whirl around to find Anastasia standing in my bedroom doorway, staring at me and looking like she might throw up at any moment.
The feeling is mutual.
I quickly race over to my bed and grab my phone, pausing the music, laughing nervously as I toss the phone down and smooth back a few stray pieces of hair that escaped my low bun.
“Oh, that was nothing. That was just . . . for a talent show thing the PTA was thinking about putting on,” I explain with a wave of my hand. “Don’t you have a science test to study for? You should probably get busy with that. Would you like me to make you some flash cards? I’ll go get some highlighters and notecards. How about a snack? I can cut up some fruit slices.”
I try to reign in the chirpiness in my voice but it’s no use. Everything I just said to her grew increasingly higher in pitch until I was one more word away from shattering the glass in my bedroom.
“I already studied, and I already had a snack. Are you really thinking about stripping for a PTA talent show? I mean, all the teenage boys in my school would totally vote for you, but you might want pick better music,” Anastasia informs me.
“Stripping? What are you talking about?” I laugh nervously again before narrowing my eyes at her. “How do you even know about stripping?”
“Mom, I’m thirteen. I know about a lot of things.”
She moves into my room and flops down on the edge of my bed, and I suddenly remember the things Ariel said to me the other night. About how even though I’ve tried to shelter my daughter from what’s going on, she most likely knows. And I feel like the worst mother in the world for not talking to her about it. With a heavy sigh, I wipe my sweaty palms down the front of my skirt and sit down next to her.
I take a few minutes to stare at her profile, silently thanking Ariel when I see she’s no longer wearing all that dark makeup around her eyes. She’s still wearing a black sweater, black skinny jeans, and black Converse on her feet, but it’s a start.
“When you say you know about a lot of things . . .”
I trail off, wondering what the best way would be to start a conversation like this. Do I ease into it or just rip it off like a Band-Aid?
“You mean, do I know about how dad was screwing my old babysitter, took all of our money, and also stole money from Grandma and Grandpa and has most likely fled the country?” she asks.
So, Band-Aid it is then.
“Are you sure you don’t want a snack?” I ask, trying to make light of the situation when all I want to do is curl up in the middle of the bed and cry.
Anastasia shakes her head no, looks down at her hands, and starts picking at her nail polish.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
She shrugs.
“It’s fine. I get it. I’m just a kid. I couldn’t possibly understand, right?”
I shake my head, reaching over and gently grabbing her chin and turning it to face me.
“That’s not it at all. I promise. From the day you were born and they first put you in my arms, I swore that I would never, ever let anything happen to you. That I would do whatever it takes to keep you safe and make sure you were happy. That I would sacrifice everything so you’d never have to worry. I just didn’t want you to worry. I thought if I kept everything to myself, that all of our problems would just disappear, and you’d never even know we had problems,” I explain.
“I knew he wasn’t coming home after that first week,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “Were we not good enough for him?”
I quickly wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her against me, kissing the top of her head.
“Oh, baby, no. This has nothing to do with us not being good enough and everything to do with him and his own issues,” I tell her softly as I start to rock us from side to side. “It’s not our fault he wasn’t happy. It’s not our fault he left. I was a good wife. No. I was a great wife. I gave him a good life and a beautiful, smart, amazing daughter, and for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough. That’s on him, not us.”
Every revelation like this I make lately feels like another weight is being lifted off my shoulders. I’ve been drowning in guilt, wondering what I’d done wrong, since the day I walked through my front door and found divorce papers sitting on the table in the foyer. I finally get it. I didn’t do anything wrong. I did everything right. Maybe I am too uptight, but it’s what he wanted from me. I didn’t need everything to be perfect. I just wanted to be happy. It’s been a really long time since I’ve felt anything even remotely close to happiness. And I’m realizing now that all I did was trade a two-bedroom trailer for a four-thousand-square-foot home and a bunch of sparkly things. I was still miserable, and I still hated everything about my life, aside from my daughter.
Until today. When I let go of my inhabitations and danced on a stripper pole.
“Dad’s a lying sack of shit,” Anastasia mutters with a sniffle, pulling her head off my shoulder and wiping away her tears.
“Okay, I know we’re being open and honest, but still . . . language,” I remind her.
“You might feel better if you say it,” she tells me, bumping her shoulder against mine.
“You sound like Ariel,” I sigh.
“I like her. She’s a tough bit—” I give her a look before she’s able to finish. “—um, person. But she’s cool. I like it that you’re friends with her. You need more cool friends like that, instead of the stuck-up snobs on this street.”
“I’m a stuck-up snob on this street,” I remind her, even though I’m
trying really hard not to be.
Anastasia shakes her head, pushing herself up from the bed.
“No you’re not. I mean, you were. A little bit. But there’s hope for you yet, Mom. Stick with me, and I’ll have you eating the souls of your enemies in no time.”
She laughs as I reach back, grab a pillow and chuck it at her. She swats it away as she walks backward to the door.
“Are we okay?” I ask her when she pauses in the doorway.
“Yeah. We’re okay.”
“Do I still have to call you Asia?”
“Nah. That was so last week,” she replies with a smile.
“I promise I won’t keep anything from you going forward. And you know you can talk to me about anything, right? I mean that. Anything at all. Things are going to be a little . . . out of sorts for a while, but I’m going to fix everything. I have a plan, and I don’t want you to worry.”
She nods, giving me a small smile before disappearing around the corner. Leaning back on my hands, I start to slide them out against the bed to lie down when she suddenly pops her head back in the doorway.
“Oh, and if you are thinking about becoming a stripper, you should totally go for it. You’ve got a killer bod under all those prissy suits you wear. Those men would make it rain if you were on stage!”
“ANASTASIA!” I shout with a shocked laugh, grabbing another pillow and whipping it at the doorway.
“Just pick better music. Hanson sucks!” she adds with a smile, quickly ducking back into the hallway, the sound of her laughter bouncing off the walls as she walks to her bedroom.
I chuckle to myself and shake my head as I lie down on my back and stare up at the ceiling. Grabbing my phone from next to me, I hit play on the song I paused when Anastasia came in the room.
“We’re going to be okay,” I whisper to myself, smiling and bobbing my head when I hear the upbeat, happy sounds of a couple of amazing young musicians singing “MMMBop.” “I’m going to be a stripper, and my thirteen-year-old daughter approves. It’s fine. Everything is fine, and this is completely normal.”
Chapter 10: Stripper Glitter Boobs
I stare at the dirty dinner dishes in the sink with absolutely no energy or desire to rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher, but my exhausted body still moves closer to the sink, and I turn on the faucet. Even though our dinners went from filet mignon with lobster tail and fresh asparagus to ramen noodles and grilled cheese, and there aren’t all that many dishes, I’ve been programmed to clean up everything immediately after dinner. Put everything in its place, wipe down the counters until they shine, push the chairs back in under the table so they’re evenly spaced apart, and leave the kitchen sparkling clean. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get my mother-in-law’s annoying voice out of my head, telling me a wife should always make sure she keeps a good house for her husband.
Brian liked to sit at the island after I’d finished cleaning up and talk about his day. He didn’t like staring at clutter on the counter or dirty dishes in the sink while he told me how much he’d accomplished, how much money he’d made, or how brilliant he was that day. He didn’t like the picture frames facing the wrong way or the salt and pepper shakers left out on the table instead of put away in the spice cabinet while he droned on and on about his day, never once asking me about mine.
The anger and shame I feel over letting myself become this person for someone who didn’t care about anyone but himself makes my hands shake, and all sorts of irrational thoughts start running through my head. Quickly reaching for my phone sitting on the counter next to the sink, I go to my contacts and hit dial, clutching the phone tightly in my shaky hand as I bring it up to my ear.
Ariel answers on the first ring. “Everything hurts and I’m dying. You’re interrupting a very relaxing bubble bath, so this better be good,” she says.
I can hear the splash of water and shake my head at her lack of formalities, even though she can’t see me. “A normal person says hello when they answer the phone.”
“I think we’ve already established I’m not a normal person. Did you call me just to lecture me on telephone etiquette?”
I sigh, staring down at the dirty dishes in the sink.
“No. I called because I have a stack of dishes in my sink that my hands are itching to wash so they aren’t here in the morning when I wake up. But I don’t know if I want to wash them because it’s the right thing to do or because it’s what I’ve done for the last thirteen years just to make Brian happy,” I ramble, feeling like a fool as soon as the words leave my mouth.
“Are you having a breakdown? Do I need to call nine-one-one?” Ariel asks.
“I’m not having a breakdown. Maybe it’s a breakthrough. Or maybe I’m just losing my mind. It’s dirty dishes. And not even a lot of dirty dishes. There are two plates, one pot, one pan, and two spoons. Why is this so hard?”
It’s Ariel’s turn to sigh, and I hear more water splashing.
“I’m coming over.”
“I don’t need you to come over. I’m fine,” I tell her, glancing over at the salt shaker next to the sink and wondering what it would feel like to unscrew the cap and just dump the contents out all over the counter.
“I told you this would happen. I told you that you needed to get this out of your system. Get angry. Cry. Lose your shit all over the place. You didn’t, and now look what happened: You can’t even leave a few dirty dishes in the sink without thinking you’re losing your mind. I’m coming over and we’re lighting shit on fire,” she says with determination and a hint of excitement.
Reaching across the counter, I smack over a picture frame that holds a photo of Brian and me at a cooking class we went to a few years ago.
“What was that? What are you doing?” Ariel asks when she hears the smack of the wooden frame hit the counter.
“I just knocked over a picture. It’s no longer facing east,” I tell her with a slightly hysterical giggle as I grab the salt shaker and unscrew the lid, dumping the contents all over the counter.
I quickly turn and rush over to the kitchen table, kicking each chair as I move around it until they’re all askew. I’m still laughing like a lunatic but can’t stop the chaos now that I’ve let it loose. I stalk over to the lower kitchen cabinets, opening the first one I come to and yanking out all of the pots and pans tossing them behind me, the clamor of them hitting the expensive tile Brian insisted we import in from Italy so loud that I can barely hear what Ariel is saying.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouts.
“I just messed up the kitchen chairs, dumped salt all over the counter, and now I’m throwing everything in the cupboards onto the floor.”
Holding the phone between my shoulder and cheek, I jerk open the silverware drawer, pull it completely out and flip it upside down.
I laugh louder as forks, knives, spoons, and spatulas rain down around my feet, thankful that when I checked on Anastasia before I came down, she was curled up in the middle of her bed with a pair of earbuds in, the music blasting so loudly that I could hear the muffled beat of drums from the doorway.
“Back away from the kitchen, Cindy. Do NOT do anything else until I get there. I need to see this shit in person. I’m bringing matches,” Ariel says in an excited voice.
I ignore her as I continue making a mess of my kitchen, dumping an entire canister of confectioner’s sugar in the middle of the floor, mesmerized by the way the fluffy powder puffs up in a white cloud as it flutters to the ground.
“I’m making foot snow angels in powdered sugar on our Italian porcelain-tile floor that cost eighty-two dollars a square foot, and I’m pretty sure I just nicked half of them. Brian would be so mad right now,” I tell her with a giggle. “This is what rock bottom looks like, Ariel.”
“It’s not rock bottom unless you get down on your knees and start snorting that shit,” she replies. “Fuck. Do NOT get down on your knees and start snorting that shit, Cindy. At least not until I get there with a fully c
harged cell phone battery so I can record it.”
Grabbing one of the dirty dishes from the sink, I lift it above my head and then hurl it across the room, watching it smack against the far wall and shatter into a million pieces.
“OPA!” I shout.
“Sweet Jesus, you’re not Greek. You’re a WASPy woman losing her shit. At least scream some obscenities, so I can be proud to know you,” Ariel sighs.
The chiming of the doorbell makes me freeze with my hand hovering over the sink, fully prepared to grab another plate and launch it against the wall. Still holding the phone to my ear, I hustle through the kitchen and into the foyer.
“I told you not to come over. I’m fine,” I complain to Ariel, looking back over my shoulder at the mess of my kitchen, realizing I’m really not all that fine, but at least my hands are no longer shaking, and I don’t feel so angry and ashamed.
The doorbell chimes again as I turn my head away from the kitchen doorway and reach for the door handle.
“Uh, I didn’t come over,” Ariel says as I fling open the front door.
My eyes widen in shock and the phone slips from my grasp, clattering to the floor.
“Is this a bad time?” PJ asks with a raise of his eyebrows as he looks me over from head to toe.
I don’t even need to look in the mirror hanging on the foyer wall next to me to know what he’s looking at right now. I’m still wearing the navy-and-white tweed suit from Ann Taylor that he saw me in at the club earlier, minus the jacket. The white, button-down silk blouse I wore under the jacket is sticking to me like a second skin after all the sweating I did during my kitchen tirade, and it’s now a wrinkled mess. My previously neat-and-tidy bun has come loose, and out of the corner of my eyes I can see strands of hair falling down around my face and sticking out all over the place, not to mention the powdered sugar that currently coats both my feet and goes halfway up my bare legs.
“Hello?” PJ speaks again, waving his hand in front of my face, since I’m just standing in my doorway staring at him with my mouth wide open, unable to move or speak.