I'm Not Julia Roberts (14 page)

Glynn sipped her vodka-tonic, the lime juice stinging her lips. George might be a bit obsessed with death and dismemberment, but at least he had dignity; he had never injured himself trying to hurdle the furniture.

They played until the “High” table had twenty-one points. Roxie rang the bell to signal the beginning of round two and tucked the pencil behind her ear. “So, Glynn. How old’s your son now? Five?”

“He’s seven,” said Glynn. “But sometimes he’s two. And twenty.”

Sharon threw the dice again. “My girl was born thirty, so I guess that she’s now about forty-two. She’s currently having her midlife crisis. She’s not actually playing with her Barbies anymore, she just makes them have sex.”

“I did that,” Rita said.

“You had sex?” said Sharon. “That
is
news. What was it like?”

“Oh. I meant about the Barbies,” Rita said.

“What about the sex?”

Rita pulled at the neck of her sweater. “We’re trying to have another baby.”

Sharon grunted. “Oh,
that
kind of sex.”

Roxie turned back to Glynn. “Is your son with your ex-husband tonight?”

“Yes,” Glynn said. “It’s working out well.”
Do not say shithead do not think shithead.
“Joey loves his father.” A little sliver of lime had worked its way between her front teeth, and she worried it with her tongue. “Sometimes it’s a little weird for me,” she ventured. “To be without him. Joey, I mean.” She wanted to say that it was also hard
with
him, harder than it had ever been before, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“You girls better stop yapping and roll,” said Sharon. “Put down two for me, Roxie. I rolled a two and two.”

Roxie wrote a “2” next to Sharon’s name and grabbed the dice. One two. She passed the dice to Glynn, who got one two in each of eight rolls—eight points—before coming up empty.

“Isn’t he living with someone now?” Roxie wanted to know.

“Who?” said Glynn.

“Your ex-husband.”

Bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch.
“He has a girlfriend, but they’re not living together.”

“Yet,” said Moira, who had tipped her chair back and was listening in.

“Um . . . bunko?” called a voice from the back, from the losers’ table.

“Jesus!” Moira said. “Can’t a girl get a chance to roll before someone else gets a bunko?”

Sharon tossed the bunko bunny over the “Middle” table to Lu, who promptly dropped it.

Roxie touched Glynn’s hand. “Sorry,” she said. “But you know, she could turn out to be a nice person.”

Glynn felt suddenly sarcastic, and she didn’t like it. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Is
your
ex’s wife nice?”

Roxie tapped the pencil against the table. “Well, we’re not exactly typical. You wouldn’t want to use us as an example.”

Glynn wondered about the word
us.
Roxie and her ex? Roxie and her ex and his wife? The wife’s ex? How big did “us” get?

There was a thud from upstairs, and everybody looked at the ceiling. Glynn closed her eyes, imagined her new husband leapfrogging over the furniture.

“What the hell was that?” Moira said.

“The cat,” said Glynn. “Just the cat.”

“You don’t have a cat,” Moira said.

Glynn swallowed the rest of her drink. “The dog, then.”

They were on round six of the third game when someone rapped on the front door with the knocker. Moira, brandishing her third or fourth Scotch, said, “It’s the cat!”

“Why don’t you guys go to the kitchen and have some food? I’ve got spinach tarts keeping warm in the oven.”

“Spinach,” said Moira. “Who serves vegetables at a bunko bash? We’re here to get drunk and fat, aren’t we? We want hypertension! Clogged arteries and dead brain cells!”

“The tarts have lots of cheese,” Glynn said as she walked to the door. Because of her luck, she expected anyone and everyone—the cops, the firemen, the physics department of the local high school—everyone except her ex-husband’s girlfriend, that is. But it
was
her ex’s girlfriend, Stacey. So-proper-except-for-liking-to-leave-rubbers-around-to-advertise-her-sexual-peak Stacey, standing there in her skinny jeans, holding Glynn’s son’s hand.

“Glynn,” Stacey said. She was as tall as a model, with perfect, even teeth. “I’m happy you’re home.”

“What?” Glynn said, looking toward the street for her ex-husband. “Where’s Derek?”

“Out of town,” Stacey said. “He was called away this afternoon. They had some sort of problem with the plant in North Carolina or South Carolina. One of the Carolinas.” Stacey made spacey comments when she was uncomfortable; that’s what Derek, Glynn’s ex-husband, had said. “He took a two o’clock flight.”

When Glynn was uncomfortable, she got anal and aggressive, which Derek had also pointed out. “Derek left this afternoon?” She looked at Joey, who was glaring at no one or nothing in particular. “What about Joey?”

“Yeah,” said Joey. “What about me?”

Stacey’s absurdly full lips quivered. “Derek said it was all right if I took Joey to dinner before dropping him off here.”

“But why didn’t he call me?”
Why didn’t he warn me?
Glynn thought. But of course, that was ridiculous. Since when do you need to be warned that you have a son? You
always
have a son, don’t you? When do you suddenly not have a son?

“He
did
call. He talked to your husband.”

At this, Joey looked at his mother. “Dumb George.”

Glynn closed her eyes and leaned against the doorjamb.

Stacey pulled herself up to her full height, her Armani glasses sliding down her nose. “Look, if you’re busy, I can take Joey for the night—”

“No. No,” Glynn said, horrified at the turn this conversation was taking. “Of course not.”

“It’s just that I have to work in the morning. New client. You know the drill.”

If Glynn had had access to a drill . . .
Do not think about drills.
She took Joey by the shoulder and peeled him away from Stacey’s side. “I can care for my own son.”

Stacey’s hands tightened around her shoulder bag. “I know,” she said. “I was just saying . . .” She brushed away a lock of her hair, which was thick and wavy and perpetually windblown, like that of an actress at a photo shoot. Glynn could see that she was trying to be civil, and she felt a teeny bit sorry for her, an ass-impaired woman in her skinny pants. Yes, this was the person who had told Joey that his mother had “issues.” Yes, this was the person who had told Joey that perhaps his mother was “a little too afraid of being replaced.” Yes, this was the person who was ten years younger than Glynn, with better skin, better hair, and a better job. Glynn hated her guts, but she liked her feelings pure and unadulterated by pity. She wished Stacey would say something incendiary so that Glynn would have a good excuse to smack the fancy eyewear off her face and then keep smacking. Heat, entropy.

But Stacey, Glynn knew, was from somewhere out east where they jumped horses in their spare time, where they did not say incendiary things to their lover’s ex-wives, except behind their backs.

“I guess that’s all, then,” Stacey said. “Derek should be back in time for Joey’s Wednesday visit.”

Glynn nodded. Stacey gazed down at the top of Joey’s head. With her eyes, Glynn dared Stacey to try to touch him. But she didn’t. She just turned around and walked away, her bony turkey back straight and tall.

After she had gotten into her car and driven off, Joey looked up at Glynn. “She says it’s about time you got a job.”

“Well, she’s right about that,” Glynn said, sitting on the stoop.

“I told her that you were my mom. That’s your job.”

Glynn smiled up at him. “And you’re right about
that.
”

Joey reached out to pluck some bright red berries off the bush crouching next to the door. “Are we going to be outside for a while?”

“For a while.”

“It’s kinda cold.”

“Yeah, but you’re a tough guy.”

The tough guy nodded, shaking the berries like dice in his hands. “I’m going to smash these on the sidewalk.”

Her question was pure reflex: “Why would you want to do that?”

“It will look like blood.”

Sigh. “Of course it will.”

It appeared that the girls had devoured the tarts and moved on to the contents of the freezer. The smell of tomato sauce spiced the air, and Glynn could see the frozen pizza boxes littering the countertop.

Moira staggered into view, framed by the decorative arch separating the front hallway from the kitchen. “Ho!” she said thickly, swaying as if she were a sailor just finding her sea legs. “What’s the kid doing here?”

“He’s just saying hi.”

Glynn steered Joey into the living room and promised to give him a slice if he went upstairs and hung out with George. Quietly.

“I don’t want to be quiet,” Joey said. He spied the bunko bunny, which lay on its face on the floor by the losers’ table. “What’s that?”

“It’s Moira’s, and she’ll be really mad if something bad happens to it, okay? Please go upstairs and be quiet. Mommy has some friends over.”

“So?” he said loudly, thickly, swaying on his feet, like Moira in male, and in miniature. The woman whose name Glynn always forgot skipped into the living room, a bouquet of gnawed pizza crusts in her hand, stopping abruptly when she saw Glynn and Joey standing there.

Joey snickered. “What’s that lady doing with her face?”

Glynn took him by the arm before he had the chance to either get a chokehold on the bunko bunny or do another of his wicked impressions and brought him upstairs to the bedroom, where George was playing video games. When she’d married him—her George, lover of nonlinear foreign films and discordant, arty jazz—she hadn’t figured on the video games. The explosions and the blood and the bodies bursting like firecrackers.

“Hi, Joey,” George said. To Glynn, he said, “I thought he was at his dad’s.”

“He was. What’s-her-face dropped him off because Derek got called out of town. She said he spoke to you about it.”

“Derek did call, I forgot to tell you. But I’m sure he didn’t say anything about anyone going out of town.”

Glynn was equally sure that he had, but she didn’t want to get into an argument about it. George did the best he could, she knew he did, but he still hadn’t quite grasped the fact that Joey wasn’t a housecat with his own kitty door to the yard.

Joey staggered around drunkenly, rolling his eyes back in his head. “What are you doing?” George said.

“Moira,” said Glynn. “Look, the girls are still here, so could you keep an eye on him for a while?”

“Sure,” he said. “How long’s a while?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Can I play Mortal Kombat, Mom?” Joey said.

George put the console on the bed. “Can I take him with me if I go out?”

“Go out where?”

“You know,” said George. “The Addams Family?”

“Who’s that?” Joey said.

“No! You guys just stay up here. You’re not even supposed to be home, remember?”

“Phone home,” Joey said, and held up his finger. “Can I call Dad?”

“What?” Glynn said, more sharply than she wanted to. “Why?”

“Because he’s my dad. Children should always be able to call their fathers whenever they need to,” Joey said, his voice prim, sounding much like a certain assless person.

Do not say shithead do not think shithead.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t call your dad. Of course you can. But he’s out of town right now.”

“So I’ll call the town he’s in.”

“You know, I think I am in the mood for a little Mortal Kombat,” said George, relenting. “You can be that chick with all the arms, if you want.”

Glynn gazed out the window, watching the trees buckle under a sudden wind. Joey had always been a somewhat moody and stubborn child, but all the changes in his life had turned him cranky and mulish. Glynn had read all the books, knew the stats, understood that in the long run, boys fared much better in remarried families, in the company of other boys. Joey seemed to tolerate George well enough, and vice versa. But their common interests were the bloody sort—the war games, the crime dramas, the nature specials that began with some sweet animal baby sticking its innocent nose out into the world and ended with some bedraggled-looking predator making a snack out of said baby. When she protested, they called her a girl, which made her furious, because she was beginning to suspect that gender had something to do with it all. Why couldn’t she just get along with Stacey? her ex wanted to know.
He
certainly didn’t have any problems with George.

Ha. That was because her ex was more successful than George, or thought he was. And because, while Joey thought George was okay, he clung to his father like a kinkajou to a banana. These things vindicated the ex in every mind but Glynn’s.

Besides, she “got along” with Stacey just fine. They managed. Glynn didn’t appreciate the snide little comments and judgments delivered via her son, that’s all. She didn’t care for the preferences and desires and observations of this strange woman creeping into her life, this spacey-Stacey-seepage.

And she didn’t like the woman’s stupid, beautiful face.

When you got right down to it, this was all her ex’s fault for trying to turn his girlfriend into his son’s mother, for assuming that if there was a lunch to be made, then his woman would make it; a nose to be wiped, then his woman would wipe it. Glynn knew her ex would be content with a little hero worship and the ability to retreat to the drawing room when there was some child-made mess to clean up—part of the reason she’d left the bloodless asshole in the first place. It wouldn’t be long before Stacey or some other Stepford Girlfriend was helping with homework, taking an afternoon off to cart Joey to the dentist, or staying home with him if he was sick. When would Stacey start believing that she had a right to an opinion? When would she tell Joey to call her Momma-Two or Stacey-Mommy or some other such horror? What if he
wanted
to? What if he could sense his own mother’s distraction and sought comfort from the other woman trying to win his favor? What if he turned into one of those wretched men who were always seeking comfort from some other woman?