Dating The Mrs. Smiths

But that point was moot now. And the kids deserved people in their lives besides me.

Speaking of the children… I glanced around the corner into the too-quiet living room. Although it might seem counterintuitive to worry that silence signifies chaos, it was amazing what my cherubs could do covertly. They were like a little sneaky special-forces team, usually on search-and-destroy missions. For the time being, though, Sara was lying on her stomach on the floor, tugging at the carpet that needed vacuuming as she watched a video. Ben was stacking soft blocks in the corner, then knocking them down and clapping his hands. Gretchen was probably either asleep in the hallway or hiding under my bed from any geckos that had infiltrated the house.

If we moved to Boston, I definitely wouldn’t miss finding lizards in the tub. Nor would I miss palmetto bugs so large they flew into the outdoor electric insect zappers just for the head rush.

Not wanting to disturb the kids when they were behaving so well, I tiptoed back into the kitchen, where I followed the back-of-the-box directions to finish preparing our meal. I poured a cup of milk into the drained hamburger, then stirred in noodles and a powdered sauce mix. With dinner finally simmering on the stove, I picked up the cordless phone. All this pondering a move to Boston made me guiltily aware that I hadn’t found time to call Rose recently. Tom would have been disappointed in me.

What were the odds she wasn’t even home and I could just leave a dutiful “we’re thinking about you” message on the machine?

She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Rose, hi. It’s Charlotte. Charlie.” The informal name everyone else called me wasn’t quite as comfortable with her; it had taken me years just to stop referring to her as “Mrs. Smith.”

“What an unexpected pleasha to heah from you!” Though Rose and her tight-knit family were active in an Italian sub-community, a lifetime of living in Boston had my mother-in-law sounding more like a Kennedy than a Corleone—at least to my ears. “It’s so lovely you remembered, even if it is a few days late. But I always thought a birthday is better when you spread it out, anyway.”

“Um…absolutely.” Birthday. Last week. Damn. How could I forget when we were both September babies? Of course, I was in serious denial about turning forty later this month, so that might explain it. “Happy belated birthday! Did you do anything special to celebrate?”

“Had lunch with some friends, puttered in the green-house, spent the evening looking over old photo albums, thinking about the restaurant where Thomas Sr. used to take me on my birthdays. I don’t even know if it’s in business now. I don’t believe I’ve been since he passed on.”

The image of Rose alone in that big house, surrounded by pictures of her lost husband and son, made me feel like the worst daughter-in-law on the planet. The least I could have done was sent a card.

“While we’re on the subject of birthdays,” Rose said, “I saw something on sale I wanted to send you.”

“Oh, Rose, you don’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense. What kind of family would I be to ignore your birthday?”

Ouch. Direct hit!

“Just let me know what size you are, dear. Still carrying around all that pregnancy weight you gained?”

Yes. I’d thoughtlessly ignored her birthday and I was fat.

After a brief pause, I lied, naming a size two digits smaller than I could comfortably zip. It wasn’t as though I were likely to wear the gift even if it did fit. For herself, Rose has great taste in clothes. She knows exactly what colors and styles flatter her dark looks. Regarding my fair-to-the-brink-of-sallow blond complexion, she’s a little less successful. Last September, when she’d come to meet her grandson, she’d given me an early birthday present. A thick wool sweater unsuited to the muggy Florida climate, in a shade of unflattering army-green.

That night, in the privacy of our room, Tom had asked, “You are going to keep it, though, right?” My reply of “Sure, you never know when the bilious look might make a comeback,” hadn’t amused him, but when I’d promised to have the sweater on hand for future holidays with Rose, he’d pulled me into a grateful hug. He’d smelled like his favorite bar soap—a “manly” soap he’d always teased, telling me he’d leave the sissy moisturizing stuff to me. Sometimes I still caught myself reaching for his soap at the grocery store before I remembered no one in the house used it.

I sighed, missing my husband. He would have wanted me to make more of an effort with his mother. “Rose, I really am sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you on your birthday. Things have been so…” Description eluded me.

“Busy with that job, I imagine. How do you modern career girls do it, always on the go? It probably makes me something of a relic, but I was naturally the housewife type, with no outside ambitions. I believe a mother can do so much good at home with her children.”

Well, if your precious son hadn’t up and died on me—

Whoa. My heart was slamming and my vision swam in a red haze. I knew from the books on grief Dianne had badgered me to read that rage was just another expression of loss, but the unexpected flash of fury still sent waves of shock and guilt through me. Tom hadn’t asked to abandon us. And I’d come too close to verbally lashing out at Rose. So much for my theory that I was more balanced these days, moving on to the next stages of acceptance.

I spoke slowly, keeping my tone neutral. “Being a stay-at-home mom is certainly a noble choice.”

“I know it’s what Tom always wanted for his children.”

Since I had no honest response that didn’t seem cruel, I bit my tongue. I could manage that for one phone call.

But on a more permanent basis?

I’d forgotten how tense Rose could make me. Oh, I knew it on an objective level, but I’d repressed the actual physiological reactions she provoked—stomach in knots, palms clammy as I wondered what I would do or say wrong next. Living near this woman wouldn’t be in the best interests of my blood pressure.

I cleared my throat. “Why don’t I get Sara and let you chat with her while I finish making dinner?”

“I’d love to talk to the darling girl! But isn’t it a bit late for them to be eating?”

“It’s not that late. Well, maybe it is. Traffic was—” I did not have to justify my children’s eating habits. One look at them would assure anyone that I wasn’t raising underfed waifs. And tomorrow was Saturday, so there was no harm in letting them sleep in a little if our evening ran behind schedule. For that matter, it would mean I got to sleep in a little, assuming stress didn’t have me awake again in the murky predawn hours.

“I didn’t mean to sound critical, dear,” Rose said. “It takes time to properly prepare a good home-cooked meal, and I applaud you. Too many parents nowadays rely on fast food. What are you fixing?”

Glad I’d called her tonight and not after last night’s take-out kids’ meals, I glanced at the empty cardboard box and the plastic bags. “Um, lasagna.” Lasagna-flavored, anyway. I saw no reason to elaborate and find out whether or not the fare met Rose’s criteria for “home-cooked.”

“Wonderful! One of Tom’s favorites.”

My stomach clenched again. I wasn’t used to other people mentioning him so flagrantly, dredging up twenty years of memories each time his name was spoken. Dianne always waited for me to broach the subject. With the kids, I didn’t avoid talking about him—it was important they knew their father loved them—but I didn’t want to push, either. And, I admit, not discussing him sometimes made it easier for me to get through the day.

When I thought about him too much, wishing he were here to hug me and say everything would be okay, to reassure me I would somehow be enough for the kids, that I’d find the answers to the tough questions, that I’d—

“Mommy! Fire, Mommy, fire!”

I jumped at Sara’s presence as much as her announcement. I’d been too lost in thought to notice her wandering into the kitchen, so her voice at my elbow came as a shock.

As Rose demanded to know what had happened, I glanced toward the stove. My pan of simmering food had boiled over just enough that some of the noodles had fallen onto the burner and ignited. Pasta flambé. But nothing that would require actual firemen at the scene.

“Everything’s fine,” I assured my mother-in-law as I turned off the stove. “No reason to worry. I just ran into a snag with dinner. We’ll call you back tomorrow, if that’s all right.”

“All right? It will be the highlight of my weekend! Two calls, after months and months of not hearing from you? It’s a grandmother’s dream come true.”

I hung up feeling thoroughly chastised, not realizing until I was loading the dishes later that, hey, wait a minute, Rose had a phone, too. She could always call us if she wanted to talk to the kids…or further criticize the way I was raising them. A pocket of resentment bubbled up in me, despite the noble intentions I’d had when I’d first dialed her number. Ten minutes of Rose went a long way.

What would weekly—or, gulp, daily—interaction be like?

Oh, yeah. Moving to Boston was out of the question.

CHAPTER 2

“I can’t believe you’re moving to Boston!” Dianne, who’d waited until my daughter and her giggly best friend were out of earshot, looked suspiciously as if she might cry.

“No waterworks,” I warned, feeling shaky myself. “If you start, we’re both doomed.”

Bawling in my kitchen was not how I wanted to commemorate my fortieth birthday. Giving Martin my final decision this morning had been difficult enough. Still, Di’s recent announcement had made accepting the transfer a no-brainer.

Determined to be happy for her, even though I would miss her, I smiled. “You’re moving on to bigger things yourself. I didn’t even know lounge acts had talent scouts. And they want you to be headliner!”

“Yeah, but the cruise-ship thing is only temporary. I’m just subletting my place. And when I come back, you…” She turned away, unbuckling a newly scrubbed, fresh-faced Ben from his high chair. There for a while, it had been touch or go whether we’d ever find him underneath a layer of frosting.

“My son certainly appreciated your baking efforts,” I teased. When I’d come home for the evening birthday celebration we’d promised the kids, Dianne had greeted me with the announcement that she’d made a cake but doubted it was edible.

“Ben mistook it for face paint and didn’t know it was food. You were kind to have a slice, but face it, I lack your domestic-goddess skills.”

I thought about the accumulated fast-food dinners in the past few months and the fact that my bedroom had become a wildlife refuge for dust bunnies. “Fallen domestic goddess, you mean.”

She set Ben down, her gaze sympathetic. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, babe. You’re doing the best you can.”

That’s what worries me. What if it didn’t get better? Or, what if moving to Boston made things even worse?

I obviously didn’t hide my concerns very well because Dianne’s expression filled with guilt.

“It’s all my fault you have to go.”

“You’re not responsible for the company’s falling profits of the last two quarters and Kazka being edged out by the competition here in Florida.”

“No, but my being away for six months leaves you without a much-needed babysitter. Maybe if—”

“I’m sure you spent all those years in dance class so you could become an inadequately compensated nanny. Besides, you might have noticed I’m also without a much-needed job.”

She bit her lip. “There is that.”

In the two weeks since Martin’s “road diverging” speech, I’d been on several interviews with varying degrees of success. Two companies expressed polite disinterest, one company had offered a salary that wasn’t going to cover mortgage and child care, and the last interviewer was a sleaze who’d stopped one suggestive question shy of my reporting him to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Luckily, our office in Boston sounded happy to have me. In diametric opposition to their Floridian counterpart, Kazka’s northeastern division was doing so well that they’d expanded the sales force, promoting the woman who’d served as sales coordinator, the position I’d held here and would fill for them.

Moving was the logical step, even if I hadn’t yet found a place to live…or the courage to tell the kids. I’d put it off as long as possible, not wanting to upset them until I’d exhausted every option. The thought of telling Sara she’d have to leave the only home she knew filled me with dread.

You can’t shelter her from everything. Isn’t that what I’d told Tom on more than one occasion?

Rather than be faced with his daughter’s tears of frustration, he practically offered to tie her shoelaces until she was in high school. Like me, Sara had been blessed with a father who absolutely adored her. I’d never known my mom—her post C-section infection had been fatally complicated by diabetes—but my protective dad had tried hard to be the perfect parent. He’d done an admirable job, yet there were pains and losses from which even he couldn’t spare me. Especially after the stupid fall that had killed him while he’d tried to help a neighbor patch her roof.

I swallowed back a lump of emotion and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “I’d, um, better check on the girls. All I need for them is to get lipstick all over the carpet before we put the house on the market.”

Ben grinned up at me, cherubically unalarmed by the words house and market. As Martin had cheerfully pointed out today, I had a ton to do, and finding a real-estate agent was at the top of the list. I would also need to tell Rose about the move and probably beg her to help us find a place in Boston. Assuming anyone wanted to buy this place and that I could get us all packed in less than a month.

I’d barely finalized the decision to transfer and was already wondering how to accomplish it all, how to find a good school for Sara, wondering if I’d given up the job search here too early. It was funny—in that decidedly un-humorous way—how I’d been the one to make the bulk of day-to-day parenting decisions when Tom had been alive, but now that he wasn’t here I keenly felt the burden of responsibility. What if Sara never got better at math? Who was going to teach Ben to pee standing up? If either of them grew up to be a serial killer, guess whose fault it would be?

I supposed I could look into some sort of single-mother support group for my occasionally neurotic thoughts, but how was I going to find the time and energy to commiserate with other moms about my lack of time and energy?

With a mental shake, I poked my head into Sara’s room. She and her friend Callie both wore the traditional cardboard cone party hats, held in place with elastic chin straps. Sara had also placed one on Ellie, her beloved pink stuffed elephant.

“Hi, Mommy.” My daughter beamed up at me, pink lipstick smeared around her mouth and green shadow circling her eyes. “Callie doesn’t hafta go home yet, does she?”

“No, I was just checking to see if you were still playing beauty parlor.”

Sara shook her head. “Nope. We got pretty for a princess ball, and we’re going to that now.”

I grinned, glad Callie’s mom wouldn’t mind the “princess makeup” when I took her daughter home. “You guys have fun. I’m going to go say goodbye to Dianne.”

My friend had to work tonight, but it had been sweet of her to stay to have an early dinner and cake with me and the kids. I found her on the back patio, pushing Ben in his outdoor toddler swing. Even though we’d reached the end of September, it was still warm outside. Yesterday, the air-conditioning window unit in my office had crapped out and I’d felt as if I’d been trying to finish filing in a sauna.

“You know,” I said slowly, “it might be nice to live somewhere where they have actual seasons.”

Dianne sent me a comically blank look. “What are those?”

We definitely didn’t get a lot of white Christmases in these parts, and while I had nothing against palm trees, they don’t provide spectacular autumn foliage.

I snapped my fingers, remembering Rose’s birthday gift last year. “And sweater weather!” Just not army-green ones, no offense to those who were being all they could be.

Unflattering colors aside, I’d much rather be seen in a soft knit turtleneck than a bathing suit. Sure, some women looked good in swimsuits even after multiple pregnancies, but clearly they’d struck some sort of Faustian bargain.

Switching places with Dianne, I took over swinging my laughing son. “Boston won’t be so bad. Rose will lavish affection on the kids. And I’ll be fine, learning the ropes in the new office.”

“Who’s worried about you?” She sniffed. “I’m thinking of myself. When I come back, you won’t even be here!”

“Yes, but you’ll be rich and famous by then and can afford to visit me. Besides, you’re never gonna meet hot young guys if you spend all your time around a widowed suburbanite.”

Her lips curled in an appreciative grin. “Ah, hot young guys. Now there’s a topic that perks me up. Maybe you should give guys some thought, too.”

“What?” My head snapped in her direction, and I was so startled I let my hands drop to my sides. When I didn’t catch Ben’s swing on the rebound, it hit me in the midsection. “Oof.”

Dianne glanced down, and I didn’t know if it was because she was trying not to laugh or because she was hesitant about broaching the subject. “I know you’ve been through…more than I can imagine. But moving to a new city is like a fresh start in a lot of ways. Full of new opportunities.”

“You sound like Martin.”

“He tells you to think about dating, too?”

“No.”

Dating? An interesting idea, but interesting in the same way as me being an astronaut—unlikely and surreal. I’d been with Tom for half my life, almost all of my adult life. Would I even know how to date?

“I know I’m butting in,” Dianne said unrepentantly, “but that’s what best friends do. You’ll be meeting people, and Rose might be available for some weekend babysitting. You call yourself a widowed suburbanite—”

“Which part of that statement is inaccurate?”

“I’m just saying there’s more to you than that. A lot more.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I merely nodded. Theoretically, I wasn’t opposed to dating someday, but it was at the bottom of my very long list of concerns right now. Still, I was touched that my younger friend with the comparatively exciting life saw more to me than I suspected my sympathetic neighbors and co-workers often did. There was a brief silence as we recognized that we’d gone from playground chat to one of those girlie bonding moments often portrayed in commercials for yogurt and International coffees.

She gave a sideways little grin. “All I’m saying is that you should consider dating, and if you should meet any good-looking younger guys, feel free to tell them about me.”

“Who said I don’t want a younger guy?” I was kidding, of course, but one of the things I adored about Dianne was how I never had to explain that.

“You might need one to keep up with you. I’ve heard women really hit their stride at forty, get empowered and stuff. These will probably be your bad-ass years.”

Charlie Smith, bad-ass at large. I laughed, despite knowing in that moment how keenly I would miss her.

Encouraged, she continued. “I hope when I’m forty, I’ve still ‘got it’ enough that strange men risk sexual harassment suits just to hit on me.” Her joking helped take the edge off the awful interview I’d had early in the week.

“You’re deranged,” I said affectionately.

“Yeah, and I can’t bake a cake to save my life. When you start making new friends in Boston, try to trade up, would you?”

“Not possible.”

Her expression sobered. “Are you going to tell them tonight? I could stay if you want.”

“Your boss refused to give you the night off,” I reminded her. “You should probably be leaving now.”

“True. But I’m starting a new job in two weeks anyway. What’s he going to do, fire me?”

I sighed, torn between wanting her there when I broke the news to the kids, and being afraid that when they realized they wouldn’t see her anymore, the conversation would go even worse. “No, you get to work. I’m not going to tell the kids tonight, anyway. Sara’s been insistent about celebrating my birthday, and there’s no reason to bring it up before morning.”

Maybe by then, I would have found the right words and the confidence to assure them that everything was going to turn out great.

Nights were the worst. It’s so much easier not to worry during the day, not to remember, but when it’s dark and still, the things you don’t want to think about have a way of finding you. Especially if you’re alone.

It was a little pathetic, the way I wished Sara were here to stay up and watch movies with me, but Callie’s mom had invited my daughter to spend the night. Since I knew Sara and Callie wouldn’t be seeing much of each other in the months to come, I’d instantly agreed.

Ben was asleep in his room and I was doing my best to fall asleep in the living room watching television. Our powder-blue couch was nubby and going threadbare in the arms, and so many of the pillows were stained that I had to turn them backward when company came. The sofa was comfortable in a favorite ratty sweatshirt kind of way, though, and I didn’t think I could sleep in my room tonight.

When I’d turned thirty-nine, Tom and I had celebrated alone together, our first big night out since I’d had Ben. Tom had joked that the romantic dinner was for me, but that our having sex afterward was more like a present to him. Since it’s not always easy to work up enthusiasm for intimacy when you’re the mother of a newborn, that night had been the last time we’d made love. I wished now that there had been something unique about it, something special that stood out that I could hold on to in my memory. Like what, rose petals strewn across the comforter? But it had just been us, my husband and me, coming together as we had hundreds of times before. No more, no less. We’d had no idea that we didn’t have many nights left.

Tom had been hale and hearty in that macho “I don’t need doctors” sense, proud of how few sick days he’d taken at the construction firm where he’d worked his way into management. Although fiercely protective of his wife and kids, he wasn’t by nature a worrier and refused to stress over intangibles like his cholesterol count. I was the one who’d nagged him into that last checkup, reminding him that his own father had died of a stroke when Tom had still been in high school. Though he’d humored me by eventually making the appointment, he’d pointed out not unkindly that my dad had been perfectly healthy before the fall that had killed him, so there was no sense in obsessing over what we couldn’t control.

Even when the doctors had concluded that Tom needed the angioplasty and could no longer dismiss the chest pains he’d tried to downplay, my husband hadn’t seemed concerned. He’d told me everything would be fine—a frequent reassurance I missed but that had turned out to be hollow in this case. He reminded me that angioplasty wasn’t even considered a surgery anymore but just a procedure, that’s how low-key it was. He’d still been chiding me about it before they’d wheeled him away, before the arterial spasm that had caused damage, leading to an emergency bypass and freak fatal heart attack.

You worry too much, baby. Haven’t I always taken care of you?

He always had. But now here I was, my first birthday without him since I’d been eighteen—a lifetime ago.

The children had each had birthdays over the summer. The night Ben had turned one, after the kids were in bed, I’d sobbed until I threw up. Earlier in the day, well-meaning Gladys Winslow had assured me Tom was witnessing the milestone in heaven. My spiritual belief that he was indeed in a better place hadn’t stopped me from briefly wanting to shake my elderly neighbor by her frail shoulders and scream, “How is watching from some ethereal distance doing the kids and me any good?”