Goodbye To All That (16 page)

“I guess I am retired,” she said as she straightened out the Vitamin C. All the bottles were white, their labels featuring a large red C. When she lined them up evenly, all the C’s extended across the bottles like links in a chain. “I’m retired from being a housewife. It was time to try something new.”

Bernie laughed. “Tell that to my wife. She’s the one who pushed me into finding a new job when the accounting firm handed me my gold watch. My pension pays for our expenses and First-Rate pays for our vacations. Last year we went on a Caribbean cruise.”

“How lovely.” Ruth had never been on a cruise, but some of her old friends went on cruises almost every year. Myrna had celebrated her eye lift with a cruise to the islands, and she came home eight pounds heavier. So much for the beautifying effects of the plastic surgery. She said she and Morty spent the entire six days eating and drinking and gambling in the ship’s casino—“Oh, and we visited Nassau and St. Thomas and shopped like maniacs,” she’d added. It was wonderful, she’d insisted. She would do it again in an instant.

Ruth had asked Richard if he’d like to go on a cruise and he’d said he’d rather rent a place on Sanibel Island for a week in the winter. They’d gone, eaten sensibly, he’d played golf and she’d sat in the shade of a cabana on the beach and read three novels. No gambling, no fancy evening wear, no maniacal shopping. Maybe it wasn’t glamorous, maybe it wasn’t adventurous, but they’d had a good time.

They could go again this winter, she thought. They could pay for it with her earnings. She’d wag the airline tickets in front of Richard’s face and say, “This trip’s on me.”

No, she couldn’t do that. They were separated. And she couldn’t really see the point of going to Sanibel Island without him.

Not this winter but next. She could save as much as possible and then treat the twins to Walt Disney World. Or Noah and Abbie, although Abbie would probably think she was too old for Mickey Mouse and a ride in a teacup like Francine’s.

But Madison and Mackenzie would be the perfect age for the Magic Kingdom. They’d love the rides and the Mickey-Mouse shaped ice-cream pops. They’d get a room at one of the Disney hotels and have breakfast with Snow White. They’d spend a day at the water park. They’d stay up late and watch the fireworks.

And the best part was, Ruth could plan the trip without any input from Richard. She could do it all herself. She was flying solo.

The caffeine from the Diet Coke she’d guzzled—one and a half cans by the time she’d settled in front of her computer at the kitchen desk—had energized her that morning. It had slaked the thirst of her muse. How could she wean herself from the stuff when it helped her to assonate?

Swimsuit text finished and sent, she’d driven to the Old Rockford Inn, which she and Gordon had booked for Abbie’s bat mitzvah reception. Gloria, the inn’s events manager, had sent her an email mentioning that the inn had made a slight change in its catering menu.

Jill had assumed that “slight change” meant a few new appetizers or side dishes. She hadn’t expected a price hike.

“We signed a contract,” she reminded Gloria, deciding she didn’t like the woman, who was too thin and whose face was the same shape as an olive, a perfect, shiny ellipse. She was irked by Gloria’s phony smile and the burgundy polish on her nails, which were also olive-shaped. She even disliked Gloria’s title: events manager. It sounded athletic, as if she were a gym teacher who coordinated the beanbag throw and the three-legged race at Noah’s school’s annual Carnival Day.

Abbie’s bat mitzvah wasn’t an event. It was an
affair
. One of Jill’s mother’s favorite jokes, repeated on the occasion of every family wedding or bar mitzvah, went: Mrs. Cohen runs into Mrs. Goldberg and says, “Sadie! I hear you’re having an affair!” Mrs. Goldberg grins and says, “It’s true. I am.” Mrs. Cohen says, “So? Who’s the caterer?”

“The contract includes a clause explaining that we may impose price adjustments on the food up to one month before the event’s date.” Gloria managed to recite this through her fake smile. She could be a ventriloquist. Her lips barely budged.

“Why? I mean, why are the prices going up, not why does your contract have a clause explaining that you can—”
rip me off
, Jill almost said. “Raise the prices.” She scanned the updated menu. The offerings appeared to be exactly the same as what she and Gordon had seen when they’d signed the contract in August. Prime rib. Poached salmon. Dijon-crusted chicken breast. Steamed green beans, which Jill knew damn well would be boiled, not steamed, and no one would eat them anyway. Fresh fruit cup—which would be canned, not fresh. A salad of mixed greens, including but not limited to spinach, romaine, bibb lettuce, arugula, radicchio, cress and iceberg, depending on availability—tossed with a delicately herbed vinaigrette which, Jill was willing to bet, would not be delicate.

“Gas prices have gone up,” Gloria responded to her question, still smiling.

“We’re not serving our guests gasoline at this affair.”

“Food has to be trucked in. We have to factor in the shipping costs.”

Jill pressed her lips together to keep from shouting, “Bullshit.” If she lost her temper, Gloria might tear up their contract and re-book the place for some other affair on their date, and then where would Abbie’s reception be? Much as Jill wanted to pound Gloria’s offensively tidy desk with her fist, she had to be a Good Mom.

“How about if you charge us the original amount per plate and provide us with a separate bill enumerating the shipping costs?” Jill asked, modulating her voice so she sounded utterly reasonable.

Gloria’s smile was so brittle, Jill half expected it to crack and then shatter, spilling tooth and lip splinters across her desk. “We find it easier just to add a fuel surcharge to each plate.”

“Easier for you,” Jill said.

“Well
 . . .
yes.”

They’d reached an impasse. Either Jill could yield on the higher price or she could void the contract. And she couldn’t do that to Abbie, who was already pissed that she’d been limited to inviting only forty of her best-friends-forever to the reception.

Good Mom,
Jill cautioned herself. Good, but not a complete pushover. “I’ll discuss the new rates with my husband,” she said, folding the print-out of the menu Gloria had given her and tucking it into a pocket of her purse. She wouldn’t commit to the new price yet. Let Gloria sweat for a few days before Jill got back to her.

She left the inn, resenting its charming clapboard façade, its sloping roof, the beautiful landscaping—sugar maple and oak foliage just reaching the peak of color, evergreen junipers and powder-puff-shaped white and rust chrysanthemums flanking the slate front walk and the perimeter of the parking lot. In the spring, when Abbie’s affair would take place, the mums would be replaced by tulips and crocuses, and the azaleas and rhododendrons bordering the front porch would be in full bloom. It was a lovely facility, even if it treated its clients like shit.

“Shit,” she said aloud. She was alone in the parking lot. She didn’t have to be a Good Mom anymore.

She slumped into the driver’s seat of her Subaru wagon and sighed. She couldn’t phone Gordon; right now he was—she glanced at her watch—teaching his fifth-period class on Greek and Roman classics. He was probably explaining the Iliad to his students. Some girl was probably asking him whether Achilles really looked like Brad Pitt in the movie, and he was trying not to laugh.

Nor could she call her mother to complain. Jill didn’t lean on her mother. She was the leanee, not the leaner. Her mother called her, sounded her out, asked her to solve problems, and Jill did.

Unfortunately, this problem didn’t spark any ideas in her mind. She saw no logical solution. She knew there had to be one; she just couldn’t imagine it. She felt exploited and resentful and upset. For once, she wanted to call her mother and lean. Maybe adding a fuel surtax to the catering bill had become a common practice. Maybe all her mother’s friends in the B’nai Torah Sisterhood had been discussing this very subject at their last meeting, and someone was filing a class-action suit, and her mother could tell her how to become a member of the class.

But Jill couldn’t phone her mother. Her mother was working as a clerk at First-Rate. Ruth Bendel wasn’t a Good Mom.

Jill pulled out her cell phone and punched in Melissa’s number. Melissa would be at work, too, but lawyers spent lots of their time sitting at their desks, pretending to be engrossed in on-line Lexis Nexis searches when they were in fact reading relationship blogs. Melissa wouldn’t calm her down—calming people down wasn’t a particular talent of Melissa’s—but at least she’d be a friendly voice, a receptive ear.

Someone who wasn’t Melissa answered Melissa’s phone. “This is Melissa Bendel’s sister,” Jill said. Feeling guilty for her craven desire to lean on someone, she added, “It’s not important.”

“Oh, wait,” the voice said. “Here she comes. Hang on.” Jill heard a thump—the woman clamping her hand over the receiver—and then her muffled voice: “Melissa? Your sister’s on the line.”

Not very professional. Jill concluded that the woman who answered was a fellow lawyer, not a secretary. Secretaries knew how to answer phones.

A few seconds elapsed, and then Jill heard Melissa’s voice: “Oh God,” she groaned. “This trial is going to kill me.”

“What trial?”

“Counterfeit handbags.” Melissa groaned again. “The shit-for-brains paralegal who typed up my brief misspelled ‘counterfeit’ I don’t know how many times. I was up until two-thirty last night, or I guess it was this morning, retyping the freaking briefs. Remember ‘
I
before
E’
?” She paused dramatically. “They lied. In counterfeit it’s
E
before
I
.”

Jill felt disoriented. This seemed so normal—Melissa whining, Jill listening. Jill wasn’t a whiner, any more than she was a leaner. But Gloria and the damned Old Rockford Inn had twisted everything around. Jill felt a profound urge to whine.