Burning Down the Spouse (5 page)

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Authors: Dakota Cassidy

Tags: #Separated Women, #Greek Americans, #Humorous, #Contemporary, #Women Cooks, #General, #Romance, #Humorous Fiction, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage, #Love Stories

BOOK: Burning Down the Spouse
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Whoever the hell said idle hands were the devil’s playground was full of horse puckey.
“My employment agency helps train women just like you. Trophy and even some non-trophy wives who’ve been sedentary in the workplace for long periods of time, and you do have a skill or two, Frankie. You just don’t know it yet.”
Yeah. She could work the shit out of a Magic Bullet. Definitely employers all over the globe would trip over themselves to hire her because of that priceless skill.
Yet Maxine’s smile was infuriatingly serene. “Tell me what you did when you worked for the Bon Appetit Channel.”
“I did the food prep for Mitch’s show. I chopped and organized, made sure everything was at his disposal. I’m good with color, size, and texture for a camera, and that’s it. Seeing as I pitched a nationwide fit, I don’t think there’s a television station from here to the remotest regions of Siberia that would hire me. I guess my camera-worthy food prep days are over. Now McDonald’s might find me appealing, but I don’t suppose I can earn a living there as head Big Mac maker.” And she didn’t want a job anyway. She just wanted to go back to bed because that whole slew of sentences had taken way more energy and focus than she had to give.
“But you probably learned a lot about cooking because you were exposed to so much of it, right?”
Oh, she’d learned. In fact, she was responsible for many of the recipes Mitch featured on his show. But she’d also learned early on—shortly before Mitch proposed to her—she hated to cook. Like really hated it. Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “I know enough.”
“Those are valuable skills, Frankie. How could you not see that?”
Gail waved a cheese Danish at her. “Tell her where you went to school, Frankie,” her aunt prompted, a hint of the pride she’d earlier shown for Maxine in her words.
Her voice lowered in more ugly shame. If this kept up, she’d have to hyphenate her name with the word. “I dropped out of the Culinary Institute of America.”
“Because of Mitch?” Maxine asked, folding her hands on the table, staring directly at her.
Her eyes began to feel heavy, every word an effort. “Not just because of him, no. He made for a good excuse, though. The truth is I really hated cooking school. It wasn’t nearly the fun my mother made it while I was growing up.”
“Frannie was a good cook. The best of the best, my sister was,” Gail chirped, her eyes glassy from unshed tears.
Yes. Her mother, the woman she’d been named after, had been the best of the best. Frankie would give up a major organ just to be able to talk to her right now.
Her throat tightened, but she pressed onward, hoping to speed up Maxine’s departure. “There’s a lot of pressure in a professional kitchen versus the one you grew up in where no one flipped if you did something wrong. I just didn’t love the process the way I thought I would. I kept thinking, ‘It’s just food, not the cure for erectile dysfunction.’ I could never buy into the big deal a chef would make if someone screwed up an order, but to them, it’s like an offense of the highest order. Anyway, I was waiting tables and going to school when I met Mitch. At the time, he was the sous chef at the restaurant I waited tables for. He loved food enough for the both of us. I used to really love to watch . . . to watch him . . . cook.” Frankie gulped.
Maxine pressed a hand to hers in comfort. It felt strange and reassuring all in one touch. “And then he changed, I take it?”
Had he—or was he always the self-absorbed, callous prick she’d born witness to the night she’d caught Mitch and Bamby? She couldn’t remember if he was always so domineering or if at that time in her life, his dictatorial behavior was the kind of guidance she’d needed rather than resented. “I don’t know. Maybe I changed . . .”
Maxine nibbled on a Danish with pretty white teeth. “It’s neither here nor there. All of those things can be worked out later in our group sessions. For right now, you have a job interview. So go get your pretty on, and we’ll go.” She turned her attention back to her coffee, nonchalantly stirring it with the spoon, as though she hadn’t just set off a grenade.
Frankie’s mouth fell open. A job interview? With whom? Who would hire her to do anything but maybe babysit their cave? “I’m not ready—to—I”—she sucked in an anxious breath—“I can’t . . .”
“No, you can, and you will.” Maxine gave her the mom look, brushing crumbs from her hands onto the yellow paper napkins Gail provided. “You have to. You’ve been in bed for six months. Do you have any idea how much time you have to make up for? So no more lollygagging. Go put on something that says ‘hire me,’ and hurry. We have to meet Nikos at five at the diner.”
The diner. The. Diner. Unmoving, Frankie said, “The diner.”
“That’s right. The diner,” Maxine confirmed, her eyes sharp with amusement. “Are you going to give me grief because it’s not a five-star restaurant and insult all the hard work it took to nab you this interview?”
Gail grinned, holding out her hands to Kiki. “Good then, it’s a date. I’ll babysit. Come see your Auntie Gail,” she cooed to a stoic Kiki.
White-knuckled, Frankie’s legs shook, and she wasn’t even standing yet. There was absolutely no way in friggin’ hell she could go on an interview, let alone work in a diner. Or anywhere.
 
Well, so much for protests. There was something to be said for the brand of vitamins Maxine was taking. She’d pried Frankie’s fingers from the molding around the door with the strength of a sumo wrestler.
Leaning against Maxine’s passenger door, Frankie huddled deeper into her sweater, reluctant and petulant. It was the heaviest piece of outerwear she still owned, but it wasn’t cutting it against the sharp November air. Her teeth chattered and her body shook.
“You’re cold because you haven’t been eating, Frankie.” Maxine’s observation came as she yielded into traffic.
“Thank you, FDA,” she muttered.
Maxine’s tongue clucked in disapproval, but her grip on the steering wheel was relaxed. “If you could put as much effort into preparing for this interview as you did into clinging to the doorway at your aunt’s, you’d be golden.”
“How am I supposed to prepare for something I wasn’t aware of until fifteen minutes ago?” Oh, she sounded so peevish.
“Someone had to throw you into the deep end. It wasn’t going to be Gail. She’s too soft, and she loves you too much to upset you. I, on the other hand, have no compunctions about dragging you from your cave, and I don’t care if it upsets your precarious balance or your beloved pity party.”
She might not have felt a whole lot in the past six months, but today, right this second, she hated Maxine Whatserface for forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do. “So who are you? The patron saint of divorced, depressed ex-trophy wives? And how did I get the label ex-trophy wife anyway?”
Maxine pulled into the parking lot of a place called Greek Meets Eat Diner, touting a huge banner that read, “Home of the World’s Best Meatloaf,” and laughed. “You’re snarky. I like that, and no, but I already told you, I know where you are. I know how hard it is to even consider surviving, let alone summon up the will to want to when you’ve been dumped in such a public way. I know what it’s like to have nothing. Absolutely nothing. So I started an employment agency for women just like you and me. Which leads me to the definition of an ex-trophy wife. Typically we’re pretty young things who marry a much older, rich man who likes to display his eye candy in the way of nubile. When we’re not so young and nubile anymore, we’re downgraded, and many times we lose everything because we were stupid enough to sign prenups. Hence, we’re not so trophy anymore.”
Frankie grunted. Thank God she knew who she was. The wife formerly known as trophy. Labels were good. She didn’t get it. If Maxine was back in the black, why did she give even a small hoot about women in a predicament she was no longer in? “And so you bought an employment agency to help ex-rich girls out? With what? Your new rich husband’s money?”
Maxine’s smile was glib when she put her car in park, but she didn’t rise to Frankie’s bait. “You know what, someday, when you get past behaving like a spiteful three-year-old who’s been forced to potty-train and give up her sippy cup all in one day, I might tell you exactly how I came upon the money to open my own employment agency and why I did it. Until then, let me just be really clear. I’m not the enemy. You’re your own worst enemy. I want to help. But you have to help me help you. Financially, you’re in dire straits right now. You might not care because you’re all caught up in the ‘bury your head in the sand’ stage of divorce recovery, but the time will come when you will care, and it’ll be too late, Frankie Bennett. Your aunt asked me to help because she was at her wits’ end with worry over you, and she didn’t know where to turn. I’ve never seen her as upset as she was yesterday at my mother’s. She was good to me at a time when good was hard to come by. I never forget that kind of good.”
Remorseful tears stung her eyes again. One minute she was railing in defensive rebellion for being dragged from her hibernation, the next, she was weepy and repentant. No matter how depressed, she’d never intentionally hurt Gail. “I’m sorry. I know my aunt is trying to help. I don’t want to hurt her.”
Maxine cocked her head, turning in her seat to capture Frankie’s gaze. She reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. It brought curious warmth to the pervading chill her body couldn’t shake. “I know what you’re doing isn’t intentional, Frankie. You just want to be left alone. Sometimes, during something so life altering, so painful, you withdraw because hiding’s easier than getting back in the game. You’re lethargic and disinterested in everything. It’s depression.”
“Wow, I sound like one of those commercials where everything’s gray and dreary until you take a Xanax or, in this case, a Maxine, whatever it is, and poof, it magically makes your world go all bright with shiny colors again. Well, except for those nagging side effects like the anal weeping and eyeball leakage.”
Maxine chuckled, then sobered. “The thing is you
are
like one of those people, Frankie. The only difference is you haven’t been clinically diagnosed. But we could change that, if you’d like. I’d be happy to take you to the doctor,” she offered with her irritatingly pleasant tone.
Frankie sobered, too. She didn’t need a pill. She needed a bed with a blanket.
“Look, while you mope, the people around you, who love you, suffer, too. That’s why you have to get up off your ass and do something about it—even though you know it’ll suck. So here’s the skinny—get over yourself long enough to at least give this a try.”
Frankie lowered her eyes to her ice-cold hand in her lap. “And suck it up, princess, right?” Such a dumb expression.
Maxine chuckled again, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s exactly right. It’s my life mantra. Now c’mon. You’ll like Nikos and his family. They all have a hand in the diner in one way or another. They’re a big, loud Greek family who’ll fatten you up in no time flat. Not to mention, they’ll provide you with a distraction while you heal.”
Heal. Like she had the flu.
Her stomach began to revolt by rumbling while waves of anxious panic swept over her. She couldn’t possibly convince anyone to give her a job in this state. She hadn’t been out of her aunt’s house but maybe ten times in six months. She’d forgotten what kind of common courtesies and communication were involved in meeting new people.
How in all of fuck could she possibly meet and impress a possible employer? Frankie’s fingers went to the handle on the door, gripping it for all she was worth. “I don’t think I can do this, Maxine. I—”
“You’re panicking. Understandable. But you
will
do this, Frankie. Even if you don’t get the job, it’s a beginning. A starting point. So just pretend this is a practice run.” With those words, Maxine hopped out of the car and went to the passenger door as if she were skipping through a vibrantly scented field of wildflowers.
Frankie locked it with fumbling hands.
Maxine’s eyebrows rose, but her smile was wicked when she held up the key fob with two fingers. The beep signaling the door unlocking made Frankie jump.
Maxine popped it open, holding out her gloved hand. “I win. So c’mon. If nothing else, I’ll buy you a bowl of soup and a sandwich. Now gird your loins and get crackin’.”
Frankie’s breath shuddered in and out, the cold air blowing steam from her panicked gasps. Maxine took hold of her arm, pulling her toward the diner’s doors, doors that were see-through with etchings in gold, giving Frankie a glimpse of the diner’s interior.

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