Lauren Takes Leave (28 page)

I mentally wade through the muck of Jodi’s story until I
find the clear stream in the middle of it. “So…I get it. It’s not Lenny!” I
tell Jodi.

“Then, who is it?” she asks, confused.

“No, I mean, that’s what you’re telling me, right? It’s
the
idea
of Lenny.”

“
Oh!
Of course, that’s what I’ve been saying all
along,” she agrees, popping another cherry into her mouth.

I miss the promise of new love—or lust, at any rate. It’s
that completely unexplored, exciting, flip-flop in my stomach, first kiss,
“high school high” feeling that my life has been missing.

I crave that spark that Doug and I misplaced long ago,
that spark that happens when you connect with someone new, when you enter into
some territory you have not yet explored. Doug and I used to have that static
electricity, like a feeling of being pulled by the same orbit around any room
we were in. We loved touching each other, or even thinking about touching each
other.

Now it’s just a peck on the cheek in the morning and some
vanilla sex a few times a month and on most of the major Jewish holidays.

Don’t ask.

Jodi passes me a drink and I take a sip. “Skinnygirl
margarita,” she explains. “My fave.”

I find Lenny dancing with a young blonde again. They are
laughing about something. He towers over her and has to lean down to speak to
her. She stands on tippy-toes to catch his words.

Kat notices me and Jodi watching Lenny. She waves
tentatively in our direction, then gives me a thumbs-down sign.

I plaster on a smile and wave back. Is she trying to tell
me that Lenny is bad news? That she doesn’t like the new song that the DJ is
spinning? “I’m going to fill Kat in on the drama, okay?” Jodi says. I shrug in
response, which she accepts as my acceptance of her blabbing to Kat.

I have to wonder, could that excitement still be there
with Doug? Or is the feeling only present in the danger, in the newness, in the
this-is-not-my-husband factor of someone like Lenny?

Some young girl bumps into me and spills her drink on my
shirt. “Sorry!” she giggles. A guy with a baseball cap on backward helps to
steady her and gives me a wink. I wonder if the girl’s mom knows what she’s up
to tonight.

I take another sip of Skinnygirl and study Lenny.
Breakdancing, charismatic, YouTube-sensation MC Lenny. He’s the life of the
party, the polar opposite of Doug.

Why won’t Doug ever dance with me? At bar mitzvahs and
weddings, why does he stand against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and
shake his head no? Anger bubbles up so quickly that it surprises me.

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m drunk-dialing my
husband.

“H’lo?” Doug picks up. He sounds groggy, and I realize
it’s after 11:30 at night. But now that I’ve got him, I can’t let go. My words
come out fast and sort of slurred, but I feel a clarity I haven’t in years.

“I love to dance, Doug! You
know
that! When we got
married, you led me to believe you did, too. I thought you were a fun guy, a
guy to grow old with like those couples on the dance floor that move together as
one! But…you lied! So, I need you to tell me you’ll dance with me! Right now!”
I realize how that sounds and try to explain. “I mean, not that you’ll come
dance with me right now—oh—this isn’t coming out right…but anyway, it’s of
utmost importance!” I guess I’m pretty buzzed, because a swarm of bees have
taken up residence in my head.

“Where are you?” This is Doug’s response.

“In a hotel. Sequestered. I told you before.”

“Uh-huh.” He sighs. “With all that noise in the
background. Dancing.”

“No!” I backtrack. “I’m not dancing
now
. You’re
confused.”

“
I’m
confused.” He laughs, unmistakable irony
lacing his tone.

“Well, maybe I’m
tip
sy.” I have to shout a little
to be heard over the crowd as it cheers for something that I can’t see. I try
to get a grip, recall the lie. “Yes, Doug. You see, I’m sitting here with my
fellow jurors in Alden, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Of course! We
raided the minibar and now we’re playing some music because we aren’t allowed
to put on the television.” I pause and try to hide a burp. “We happen to be a
very lively jury.”

“I see,” he says. “A very lively jury. Indeed.” He either
coughs or laughs, I can’t tell.

“Yes. And this…jury. They’ve got me really thinking. This
case, it’s about…infidelity…a wrong turn…I can’t say more. And I’m deliberating
right now, I mean, we’re in the midst of these very emotional deliberations,
and I can’t help but think of us.”

“Cunts!” some guy yells at a group of women who have just
walked away from him at the bar.

“What was that?” Doug asks.

“Bailiff asked us if we wanted
pints
. Of beer.” I
move away from the center of the courtyard and try to find a quiet corner.

“How does this court case involving infidelity remind you
of us?” Doug asks softly.

“I wonder…if the woman in this case had no choice. For the
past twelve years, her husband left her alone a lot of the time, you know, with
work demands, lots of travel. She raised these kids all by herself, when she
wasn’t working, and she had this horrible babysitter who often used her ceramic
straightening iron!” I explain. “And then the husband didn’t even make
an
effort
to romance her! No dancing, he said, no time or money for vacations.
He would criticize her and the children and all that they were doing wrong, but
never compliment her as a mom or wife for all that she was getting right. I
would imagine she was really bummed out, living with a man like that, a man who
sucked the joy out of her life. Maybe this woman had no choice but to commit
adultery with”—I fish for a descriptor that is not “YouTube rapping
sensation”—“the tennis instructor. Maybe she was forced into fantasizing about
a guy who was much more fun than her husband. Dreaming of a different life, a
younger life. Maybe she had to stray, to save that little piece of herself that
was dying more and more each day.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my free
hand.

I scan the crowd for Lenny and find that he’s not with the
blonde anymore. He’s talking to a perky redhead who I immediately decide is a
ho. What the fuck? Is Lenny just a crazy flirt, throwing all the spaghetti
against the wall to see what sticks? Or did he really come here for me?

Choice A: Cheat and go back home. Choice B: Give up on my
marriage. Neither one seems all that great. I conjure a third option. Choice C:
Give away the man I love to flirt with and try to make it work with the man I
still probably love. Let Lenny find someone really available.

Which he’s kind of doing anyway.

“Asshole!” I say, partially into the phone, watching Lenny
do the cabbage patch dance with the redhead. Then I remember Doug. “I mean, the
tennis instructor. The wife ultimately killed him. He
really
had to go.”

“Lauren, are you there?” Doug shouts. “I can’t tell if
you’ve been listening to me.”

“I’m here,” I sigh, turning my back on the crowd and
sitting down on the edge of the pool. “But I haven’t been listening.”

“I love you and I
will
dance with you from now on.
I just…suck at it; it’s embarrassing. A forty-year-old guy doing the Macarena.
But I will try, for you. Not, like, all the time, but occasionally…I’ll dance.
I won’t ever sing karaoke, though. But I promise to go easy on the kids,
especially Ben. I just need you back. From…jury duty. So we can talk, for real,
face-to-face. Please,” he begs.

“Face-to-face,” I repeat. I remember my forehead and wonder
if Doug will notice.

“Saturday night. I don’t want to end up like that husband
in the court case. Or the tennis instructor.” I can hear him smile.

“Saturday night. At Jodi’s dancing event at her temple?
It’s a date.”

“Lauren, I love you,” he says. “I want our life back.” He
sighs. “Good luck deliberating.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I’ve made up my mind now,” I say,
wondering whether Doug knows we are speaking in code.

“That’s good. That’s great!” Doug declares. “And Lauren?”

“Yeah?” I giggle, high on a newfound interest in my own
husband.

“Send my love to Jodi and Kat, would you?”

Sobustedsobustedsobustedsobustedsobusted!

How does he know?

What
does he know?

I am trying to find my partners in crime to tell them that
we’ve been found out—somehow, to what extent I’m not sure—but the crowd has
grown so thick with bodies that it’s hard to see past the person in front of
me, much less around the whole space.

So instead I grab some strapping young college boy and ask
him to dance. Maybe I can have a good time in Miami without damaging my
marriage any more than I already have.

The funny thing is, I think, shaking my hips and trying to
get into the music, is that Doug didn’t sound mad. Not at all.

Maybe I misunderstood him. Maybe what he really said was,
Let’s
buy a cat.

It is certainly possible, with all that noise and all that
alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, that I misheard him. Right?

The guy I’m dancing with is twenty-one, tops. He’s
youthfully skinny, with long arms and a pronounced Adam’s apple. He’s looking
at me really strangely. “Where you from?” he asks, trying to make polite
conversation.

“New York!” I shout. “You?”

A shadow crosses his face, and then he breaks into a huge
grin. “Mrs. Worthing?” he asks. “I thought that was you!”

“Johnny?” Second period. Sixth-grade English. About a
decade ago. Fourth row, second seat. B-plus student. “Johnny Dawes?” I’m going
to be sick.

He laughs. “It’s Jon now.”

“Of course it is.” I nod solemnly, not wanting to laugh in
his cute (very cute, maybe even sexy—stop it, Lauren, for God’s sake, he was
your student!) face. It’s amazing how boys do that, grow up and become men. Men
like Jon, here, with all these muscles peeking out from under the short sleeves
of his T-shirt.

I am foul and awful and horrid.

We’re still dancing, though I’ve reined in the gyrating
and am now doing a 50’s-style sway. I’m going to look uncoordinated and uncool,
but that’s better than being pegged as a cougar. The song is a sexy rap number.
Usher’s lyrics “I want to make love in this club / in this club” float past me
and I cringe in humiliation.

What would be worse? To stop dancing or to pretend this is
normal? I go for normal. “How’s your mom?” I shout over the noise.
How’s
your mom?

“She’s fine, thanks.”

Which one of us is going to stop the madness? Unless. I
look at Jon’s face. He’s giving me the eye. It’s like he’s
into
me.

Don’t get me wrong: I
want
to be wanted. Just not
by a twenty-one-year-old who could never tell the difference between the
homophones
their
,
there
and
they’re
.

At least he’s legal, I think. Neither one of us really has
anything to hide. It’s just a harmless dance.

Except that I’m married and I used to be his teacher.

“Hey?” Jon asks. “How come you’re not in school?”

Oh, and that.

I jog my alcohol-soaked brain for an answer. “I’m here on
a conference, with…some other teachers.” Which is sort of true.

“Cool.” He doesn’t really care. “I go to college in
Massachusetts,” he says, “with those guys.” He points to where Jodi is dancing
with two beautiful specimens of fraternity life.

“Oh, that’s my friend with them! I’ve been looking for
her!”

“Hey, I think that friend of yours is giving Steve and
Patrick her number,” Jon comments.

“No, I’m sure she isn’t,” I counter. Jon shrugs.

So now I’m curious. I turn to see that, indeed, Jodi’s
BlackBerry is the center of that little group’s attention. She holds it as they
all talk and dance at the same time. She’s smiling and laughing and typing
something on her phone.

“Do you mind?” I call out to Jon, gesturing that we should
dance our way over to them.

“Hi-yyy,” Jodi says, enveloping me in a one-armed hug.

“Hi?” I say. “I have a weird question for you?” I decide
to hold off on telling her about Doug, since I’ve decided not to trust what I think
he said.

“O
kaaay
,” she purrs. Her pink floaty top moves back
and forth with the music, and her hips sway slowly. “Say hi to Pat and Steve.
They go to Harvard.” Johnny Dawes goes to Harvard? This really is a parallel
universe.

“How nice for them. And Jon,” I add, smiling over at these
boys. “Hey, Jon, come here and meet my friend Jodi.”

“Mrs. Moncrieff?” Jon asks, clearly shocked by his
double-whammy of good fortune. Van Halen was right:
I’m hot for teacher.

“What the fu—?” Jodi says, stopping herself short from
dropping the whole f-bomb in front of one of her former third graders. “Johnny
Dawes?”

“Hi!” he says, smiling in a way that reveals the little
boy underneath all the years.

“It’s Jon now,” I say.

“Nice one, Lauren.” Jodi whispers.

“He’s legal, not jailbait,” I assure her.

“Oh, good. Now I feel much better,” she says
sarcastically.

“Hey, Jon says that you were taking down his friends’
phone numbers just before. On your BlackBerry.”

“What?” Again, she looks at me like I’m crazy. “
Oh!
”
She laughs and takes her phone back out of her tiny purse. “The boys from
Harvard here said that they thought I was hot. So, first I told them that they
were correct,
naturally
. And then I told them that I’m old enough to be
their
mother’s much younger sister
.”

On the screen of her BlackBerry glows an image of Jodi’s
three daughters, taken last summer on the Cape.

“I was like, this is Jossie, and she’s eight, and Lyndsay
is six, and my baby Dylan is already five! Can you believe it? And here they
are skiing, and here they are at the ballet recital…” she says, flipping
through the pictures.