Mike, Mike & Me

  The fact that I have found myself fantasizing lately about being single again has nothing to do with wishing my husband dead.

  I love Mike. I’ve loved Mike for almost half of my life.

  It’s just that I’ve loved him more passionately in the past than I happen to love him right now.

  Right now—as in, these days—he gets on my nerves.

  Right now—as in, right this second—he’s really getting on my nerves.

  “I thought Melina came yesterday,” he says.

  Melina is our cleaning woman, and I know where this is headed. Teeth clenched, I scoop more baby food onto the spoon and say tersely, “She did come yesterday.”

  “The sink doesn’t look clean.”

  “It was clean after she left.”

  He bends over to inspect the caulked groove where the white porcelain meets the black granite. “There’s a speck of red gunk that was here yesterday morning. It’s left over from the lasagne pan you washed,” he informs me. “It’s still here.”

  “Then why don’t you scrub it off?” I snap.

  “Because that’s Melina’s job. That’s why we pay her a hundred bucks a week. Why are we paying her if she’s not doing her job?”

  Why, I wonder, are we having this conversation yet again?

  “If you don’t want to tell her that she has to shape up, Beau, I will.”

  “I’ll tell her,” I say quickly, driven by the inexplicable yet innate need to protect Melina from the Wrath of Mike. “It’s just hard. She doesn’t speak English.”

  “Then show her. Bring her over to the sink and point to the gunk. Then bring her to the corner of the upstairs hall and show her the cobwebs that have been there for two weeks. Then bring her to the boys’ bathroom and show her the grunge growing on the tile behind the faucet. Then—”

  “Okay! I get it, Mike.”

  “Right. So will she, if you show her.”

  I sigh. “Yeah, well, I can’t follow her around the house every time she’s here.”

  “Then maybe you should fire her and hire somebody who doesn’t need to be shown how to do their job.”

  “We can’t fire her. She has two kids to support here and three more in Guatemala. She needs the money.”

  Mike shakes his head and mutters something, his back to me.

  “What?”

  He doesn’t turn around. “I just said, I don’t understand how a mother can leave her kids behind like that.”

  I bite back another defense of Melina. I don’t understand it, either. The thought of leaving my babies behind—even when they’re adolescents—to go live and work in another country is as foreign to me as…well, as Guatemala is. Intellectually, I understand her reasons. Maternally, I’m at a loss.

  I’d never heard of such a thing until I moved to Westchester and had my first brush with domestic help. In the past seven years, I’ve met countless nannies and housekeepers with children and spouses back in South America or the Caribbean or wherever it is they’re from. I used to find it shocking; now it’s merely unsettling.

  I, after all, didn’t think twice about leaving behind a promising career in television production to become a stay-at-home mom after Mikey was born.

  All right, maybe I thought twice. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a no-brainer. Maybe I believed I could have it all: marriage, children, glamorous career.

  Maybe some women can.

  But when my six-week maternity leave was over, I found myself crying daily on the commuter train that carried me away from my precious child. I lasted two weeks, until Mikey—poor sacrificial lamb—caught his first cold from a sick toddler whose working mother sent him to day care with a green runny nose.

  That was when I knew the jig was up.

  Hadn’t I been weaned on seventies TV? Didn’t I know that if you were going to make it after all, you had to be spunky and single and living in a bachelorette pad with a big gold initial on the wall?

  I was never going to be Mary Richards. It was too late for that. No, I was destined to become Ma Ingalls meets Olivia Walton meets Marian Cunningham.

  Tyler gurgles adorably and swallows more food.

  I smile at him, spoon in another orange glob, and watch Mike try to catch his reflection in the window above the kitchen sink. He fusses with the dark hair that fringes his forehead, a forehead that seems to be getting taller with every passing day.

  I never imagined that my handsome husband would have a receding hairline by his fortieth birthday. Most men do, I know. It’s just that Mike has always been as effortlessly good-looking as…

  Well, as I was.

  On that grim note, I watch him turn abruptly, cross back to the table and take his suit coat and briefcase from a chair. He asks, “Do you think you’ll be able to pick up my dry cleaning today, Beau?”

  Oops.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry I forgot yesterday. I took the boys to the mall to get them out of Melina’s way, and I forgot to stop at the cleaner’s on the way home.”

  “I need my gray suit for tomorrow.”

  “Your gray suit?” I frown. “I don’t remember dropping that one off.”

  “I wore it last Friday and then I put it into the dry-cleaning hamper.”

  “Well, I dropped off the dry cleaning on Friday morning, so it must still be in the hamper.”

  “Beau, I needed that suit by tomorrow.”

  “I’m not your wardrobe mistress, Mike,” I snap.

  “Fine. Whatever. Bye.” He plants a kiss on Tyler’s head and heads for the door.

  “Bye,” I say as it slams behind him, remembering that there was a time when he wouldn’t leave—or come home—without kissing me, too.

  Tyler coos. I flash an absent smile in his direction, my thoughts drifting back over the years, remembering the path that led to this place—and wondering what would have happened if, when I arrived at the inevitable fork, I had chosen instead to head in a different direction.

  four

  The past

  So life was good. I was young, pretty, living in New York and madly in love—not to mention happily employed.

  I adored my job as a production assistant on J-Squared, aka J2 or the Janelle Jacques Show.

  Back when I was fresh out of college and interviewing for the position, I thought I’d be the luckiest entry-level drone in the city if I actually got it—which I doubted I would. Ironically, most of the other candidates competing for the job were huge fans, but I’d never even heard of Janelle Jacques before I moved to New York. She was a fairly well-known soap opera actress, but I rarely watched the soaps, aside from a few months leading up to Luke and Laura’s wedding on General Hospital my senior year in high school.

  Turned out, I was wrong about my not getting the job. I was also right about being a lucky drone when I did. My job was one of those too-good-to-be-true things fate throws at you, so good that you just know the bottom is going to fall out somewhere along the way…and then it never does.

  A year later, the freshly hired glow had yet to wear off. It was hard work, but I was still fascinated by the whole behind-the-scenes television studio process. Disillusioned, yes, but fascinated just the same. Perhaps even more so as the months went on and I realized that in the entertainment industry, nothing is ever what it appears to be.

  As an actress, Janelle Jacques had won a decent fan following and was even nominated for a daytime Emmy. As a talk show hostess, she left something to be desired.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t have stage presence, because she did. She was svelte and statuesque, with a flaming-red mane, porcelain skin and delicate bone structure. All she had to do was walk onto the set and the rest of us instinctively stopped whatever we were doing or saying to focus on her.

  But when it came to interviewing her guests, she just wasn’t very…good.

  Yeah, okay, she sucked at it. I mean, even I knew, courtesy of my high-school journalism class, that you don’t ask simple yes-no questions when you’re conducting an intervie
w; nor do you ask questions that can be answered in one word.

  Apparently, Janelle Jacques never took a high-school journalism class. Her Q&A sessions were almost painful to watch.

  Janelle Jacques: Did you have fun making your new movie?

  Up-and-coming starlet: Yes, I really did.

  Janelle Jacques: That’s great. Great!

  Up-and-coming starlet: Yes.

  Janelle Jacques: Where was the movie filmed?

  Up-and-coming starlet: In Paris.

  Janelle Jacques: And do you speak French?

  Up-and-coming starlet: No. (Beat.) No, I don’t.

  Janelle Jacques: So was it hard to live in Paris and not speak French?

  Up-and-coming starlet: Yes, it was.

  I mean, come on, Janelle! I kept expecting one of her guests to respond to one of her vacuous queries with an eye roll and an exasperated “Duh,” but nobody ever did.

  Sometimes, as I watched the show taping from behind the scenes, I could see Janelle’s eyes glazing over and realized that she wasn’t even listening. And sometimes, when I had a clear view of the guest’s eyes—or more specifically, the guest’s magnified pupils—I realized that they’d ingested—and/or smoked—something stronger than Jolt Cola and cigarettes as a pre-greenroom pick-me-up.

  But like I said, I was still enchanted by my job. Despite the inept host and the competitive late-night time slot—opposite Arsenio Hall’s new hit show—J-Squared was doing fairly well, so far, in its ratings. It didn’t hurt that the week before the pilot aired, Janelle eloped with Caleb DeLawrence, her former costar.

  Naturally, the tabloids were all over the marriage, proclaiming the madly-in-love and stunningly beautiful newlyweds king and queen of daytime television. Almost immediately, the Star had Janelle trying to get pregnant, the National Enquirer had her well into her first trimester, and the Globe had her on bedrest expecting triplets, with Caleb hovering at her side, massaging her swollen feet.

  Meanwhile, backstage at the show, an infinitely juicier rumor had it that the marriage was a publicity stunt. Supposedly, rugged heartthrob Caleb had a male lover and so did Janelle—only hers was married to a conservative congresswoman up for reelection in November.

  At first, I didn’t believe any of it. After all, whenever Caleb was on the set, he and Janelle were nauseatingly lovey-dovey. Then I caught a reluctant glimpse of Caleb with his purported lover when he thought they were alone in the wardrobe room one night. I may have been a small-town girl who had never knowingly met a gay man before Gordy, but even I knew that straight men didn’t ruffle each other’s hair. And they sure as hell didn’t kiss, which my best work friend and fellow production assistant, Gaile, swore she’d seen them do.

  Whatever. I mean, Janelle’s sham marriage was the least of my concerns that summer. I was preoccupied with dreams of—okay, plans for—my own matrimonial future with Mike.

  The day of his arrival from California plodded along. The taping seemed to take forever, and when it was over, Gaile caught me looking impatiently at my Swatch.

  “You’ve still got an hour to go before we’re off work,” she pointed out as we carried tubs of dirty dishes and utensils from a cooking segment to the kitchenette backstage.

  “I know, but I thought I could cut out early and get a head start on a cab to the airport.”

  “What are you going to do when you get there and have a couple of hours to kill?”

  “I don’t know…read?” I was in the middle of a Danielle Steel novel the hopelessly sappy Valerie had forced on me.

  “You could read,” Gaile agrees. “Or get drunk in the bar. That’s what I always do in airports.”

  I laugh.

  “I’m serious. Then I don’t have to worry about plane crashes.”

  “Why did you have to bring that up?”

  “Sorry. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.”

  I scowled at her. “That’s easy for you to say. Why did I have to go and rent La Bamba last weekend?”

  “La Bamba?”

  “You know, that movie with Lou Diamond Phillips as Richie Valens. You know…the day the music died.” I sing a few bars of “American Pie” for her.

  Apparently, Gaile has no idea what I’m talking about.

  “Never mind,” I say, giving up. “So, will you cover for me?”

  “You’re going to stick me with all these greasy pans?”

  “I promise I’ll clean the whole stage on my own the next time Janelle has that animal guy on the show.”

  Gaile tilted her cornrow-and-turban covered head, considering it. “I’ll take grease over piles of monkey shit any day,” she concluded. “Deal.”

  “Thank you!” I squealed, giving her a hug.

  She laughed. “You knew I’d do it, Beau.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Sure, you did. You always get people to do what you want.”

  I bristled at that until I saw the twinkle in her brown eyes. Still, I asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing bad. Just that you’re a little bit spoiled, girlfriend.”

  “Spoiled? Me?” I feigned shock, but I’ll admit it: This wasn’t the first time I’d ever heard that. People were always saying it when I was growing up.

  I guess, when you’re the youngest child of four—and the only girl—you grow accustomed to people doting on you. Back home, I was the princess.

  Here in New York, I sometimes had to remind myself that not everyone was going to drop everything to cater to my needs.

  Then again, people often did. Especially men.

  “I’m going to go change my clothes,” I told Gaile.

  “What did you decide on? The red or the black?”

  “The red,” I told her. “What do you think?”

  “I think that it’s the least blah out of two blah choices.”

  I rolled my eyes and grinned. When it came to fashion, Gaile was anything but blah. She’d jumped wholeheartedly on the currently hot Afrocentric-garb bandwagon, decking herself out daily in exotic headdresses and flowing robes. The contrast of bright-colored native fabrics against her ebony skin was dazzling, but if you asked me—which she never did—her jewelry, invariably made of bones, tusks and teeth, made her resemble a one-woman archaeological dig.

  And if I asked her—which I frequently did—my jewelry and my wardrobe were in desperate need of pizzazz. But whenever I tried to follow Gaile’s fashion advice, I wound up feeling as if I belonged on MTV with an all-male, eye-liner-wearing backup band.

  “Let’s face it,” I told her now. “I’m a blah girl, Gaile.”

  “You’re gorgeous and you know it.”

  “Well, I have blah clothes. What can I say?”

  “You don’t have to be blah.”

  “Yes, I do. I have to be blah. Blah is my style.”

  We deposited the tubs of dishes on an already cluttered countertop, next to a basket of bagels that had been sitting out since this morning, and half a dozen red-lipstick-stained, half-filled coffee mugs. Janelle was a caffeine hound, and she refused to drink out of the foam coffee-service cups. Only real porcelain—and just-brewed, steaming hot coffee—would do. As soon as the contents of her mug grew lukewarm, she pushed it aside and had an assistant—often, me—bring her a fresh cup.

  But for today, I was finished with catering to Janelle’s every whim and cleaning up after her. Thanks to Gaile, I was free.

  “Good luck, Beau,” she said as I headed for the door.

  “Luck?” I stopped short. That struck me as an odd thing to say. “Good luck with what?”

  “You know…”

  “Not really.” I waited.

  She looked me in the eye, as Gaile likes to do. “Your plans,” she said simply. “For you and Mike. I hope they work out.”

  “They will.”

  She ran water into the sink.

  “They will,” I said again.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You said good luck.”

/>   She shrugged.

  “You don’t think Mike’s going to want to move here after all?”

  “I don’t know what Mike’s going to want to do, Beau.” She squirted Palmolive into a pan.

  “He’ll want to be with me,” I assured her with confidence.

  But what if he didn’t?

  What if, for the first time in my charmed life, things didn’t go my way?

  In the ladies’ room, I slipped out of my blah black leggings and tunic and into my red dress. Being blessed with a good complexion and nice features, I rarely wore much makeup. But this was a special occasion.

  I stood in front of the mirror and outlined my green eyes in dark liner, coated my lashes with black mascara and painted my lips the same color as my dress. When I was finished, I sprayed Obsession in the hollows behind each ear and each knee, and Aqua Net all over my head. I teased my bangs a little higher, sprayed again, and surveyed my reflection.

  Perfect.

  Okay, not perfect, perfect. I mean, I still looked like Elvis’s Priscilla, but by then Elvis was long gone and his ex-wife had faded from the spotlight. And I wasn’t really a dead ringer for bombshell model Cindy Crawford, despite frequent assurances that I was, from Ramon, one of the show’s security guards.

  For one thing, I was almost a head shorter than Cindy. I knew that because Gordy and I spotted her in the Scrap Bar one night when she wasn’t famous enough to be recognized by anyone other than my celeb-crazed friend.

  Nor did I have Cindy’s mole, nor Cindy’s voluptuous build.

  My figure back then was straight and flat as the Long Island Expressway out East: no boobs, but no pesky hip, gut or thigh padding, either. Sometimes, I fantasized about cleavage, blissfully unaware that it would one day be in store for me—or that it would be bestowed only with cracked, sore, milk-spurting nipples and a baby attached to them 24/7.

  Satisfied with my reflection, I snuck out of the studio and into the subway station. Too broke to pay cab fare all the way from Manhattan, I took the jam-packed, un-air-conditioned number seven train out to Queensborough Plaza, descended the elevated platform down to Queens Boulevard, and spent almost fifteen minutes trying to hail a taxi.