Rules for Life (2 page)

I remembered her question. Which time? “Well, um … all of them, I guess,” I said.

“Jimmy was my first love.” She smiled. “We were only married two years when he died. A month later I found out I was in the family way.”

Family way? Oh yeah, she meant pregnant.

“I didn't know enough to be scared,” she went on. “I was so happy that part of Jimmy was going to live on.”

“So what about … number two” I asked, sliding into the chair next to the camera.

“Oh, when we met it was like something in a movie. I slipped on the ice and Richard caught me.”

“You're kidding?”

She shook her head. “He said when I fell for him, he fell for me.” She grinned at the joke. “Six months later he asked me to marry him.”

“And you said yes,” I said, folding my legs up under me.

“Actually, I said no.”

“No? Why?”

“Well, my mother always said you should know a man through all four seasons before you marry him.” She patted her gray curls. “I hadn't thought I would get married again, after Jimmy. But Richard was kind and strong and he adored the twins. I wanted them to have a family. And I knew we'd be happy.”

“But they did have a family. They had you.”

“It's not the same,” she said, shaking her head. “I wanted them to have two parents.”

“But maybe it's not what they wanted.”

“They were as crazy about Richard as he was about them.”

I wasn't crazy about Anne and I'd bet she wasn't crazy about me.

I hesitated, not sure if I should ask, and then I did. “Did you love him?”

That got me another smile. “I know it must sound kind of strange to you, dear,” she said, “but I loved all three of my husbands. Every time I took my wedding vows I truly meant every word.”

“So what about your third husband?” I asked, twisting in the hard chair. My right foot was going to sleep.

“Oh my,” she touched her cheek and actually blushed. “Malcolm was the most incredibly handsome man I had ever seen. I decided on our first date that I was going to marry him.” She gave me a smug little grin. “And I did.”

“Mrs. McKenzie, you fox!” I pretended to be shocked, then grinned to show I was only kidding.

I stood up, shaking my leg to get the blood flowing again. “Thanks,” I said. “Ready to start taping?”

“Any time,” she said, giving her hair one last pat and crossing her ankles like a perfect lady. I was still trying to get the feeling back into my foot. Maybe I needed to start sitting like that.

I took one last fast look through the lens and opened my notebook to my list of questions. I asked Mrs. McKenzie the first one, but as she answered, my mind wandered back to what she'd said before. So my dad was getting married because he wanted to give me some kind of new family or because he was horny. Great. It didn't matter what the reason was. It wasn't going to work. He'd married my mother twice. I remember one time her saying he liked the idea of being married better than the real thing.

There was no way this would work. There had to be some way to stop it.

Rule #18: A good plan is better than a good excuse
.

What I needed was a good plan.

3

I slid my arms around Rafe's neck and kissed the hollow spot on his neck just below his ear.

“Quit it,” he said. “You're making me crazy.” He stopped typing and pointed at the computer screen. “Look. That whole line makes no sense.” He lowered his voice. “My dad is in the kitchen. And anyway, isn't it the sixteenth?” Rafe keeps better track of my periods than I do.

“You're the one who's making me crazy,” I said, flinging myself melodramatically back across the sofa in the Kelly's family room. “My father stayed out all night last night and I was home at nine thirty.”

Rafe made a face. “Gross. Don't talk to me about your father having sex. I don't want to think about anyone's father or mother doing it.”

I folded my arms under my head. “Well I don't know about anyone else's parents, but my dad was doing it last night and now he wants to marry her.”

That got Rafe's attention. He turned from the computer. “Your dad's getting married?”

“No!” I came up on my elbows. “I mean, he wants to ask her, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen.”

“That's generally how it works, Izzy,” he said.

“Not always.”

Rafe came and sat on the edge of the sofa. He's your typical Nordic god—blond hair, green eyes, wide shoulders and tall, about six foot three. In a word, yummy. And we fit together perfectly because I'm five foot seven, which is kind of tall for a girl.

We met about six months after my mother died. I was making microwave popcorn in the
Informer
(the school newspaper) office. Next thing I know the room is full of smoke. Rafe comes tearing in with a fire extinguisher and blasts the microwave halfway across the room. Oh yeah, and pretty much destroys the mock-up of that week's edition.

You might say the sparks were there between us from the beginning.

“So what's the potential evil stepmother like?” he asked.

“That's the thing. I hardly even know her. How can my father marry someone I barely even know?” I flopped against the cushions again. “We're having dinner tonight.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Her name's Anne. She started working on the show back in January,” I said.

“You mean the blond with the big—” I shot him a warning look “—teeth?” he asked.

I shook my head. “You never see Anne on air.”

“Maybe you'll like her.”

“Yeah and maybe I'll spontaneously combust too.”

“Oh, come on, Izzy. Give her a chance.” Rafe gave me his best pretty-please smile. Easy for him. His parents have been together about a week less than forever.

“I never told you that my mom and dad were married twice, did I?” I said, sliding down so I was sitting on my tailbone.

“What do you mean, ‘twice'?” Rafe said.

“They were married and they had Jason. Then they got divorced. I think Jason was about two. Then a couple of years later they got married again and had me.”

“But then they stayed married.”

“Only because my mother was crazy about him. And she could do everything. So it didn't matter that he'd get caught up in some project and stay in his shop for two days, or that he didn't notice Jason had flushed someone's shoes down the toilet.” I sat up. “See, husbands are like your dad. They have practical cars and sensible hair and they come home for supper. That's just not my dad.”

“If your dad gets married, it could be great,” Rafe said. “A whole new life.”

Except I didn't want a new life, thank you very much. I liked the old one.

“Kiss me,” I said. “I have to go home and get ready.”

Rafe leaned forward and his mouth came down on mine and his tongue slid inside. For a second I couldn't breathe and it seemed as though I could hear the rush of hummingbird wings in my ears. And the thought flashed through my mind: Was that what Dad felt when he kissed Anne?

4

I stood in the bathroom, one leg hiked up on the sink, carefully pulling the razor up my left shin. Tricky work. The Lady Sophisticuts razor (cuts, get it?) was supposed to adjust to the contours of my curves. What it generally did was knick me somewhere. I'd been suckered by a catchy TV jingle again.

I thought about pitching the Sophisticuts and swiping my dad's razor. It was his fault I was doing this anyway. But
Rule #23
got in the way:
A woman should have her own razor and her own bank account
.

Somehow I managed to shave both legs without severing any major veins. Then I filled the tub with hot water and eucalyptus oil and soaked until I was totally pruned. Spencer wandered in while I was drying off. The eucalyptus made him sneeze. He swished his ginger tail at me and stalked off.

What to wear? Skinny blue skirt with the slit because if I'd gone to all the trouble to shave my legs, then they were going to show. Purple shirt because it was my favorite. The bracelet Rafe gave me for Christmas—a string of amber beads—because I always wore that.

Then I took down my wooden treasure box from the top of my dresser and sat on the bed with it. It was about a foot long, maybe eight or nine inches wide. Set into the wooden top was a teddy bear, sitting with his head tipped to one side. It took forty-three pieces of wood—six different kinds—just to make that bear.

My dad made the box when I was nine. It's what he does. He makes things out of wood—mostly furniture. It seems bizarre that anyone would pay hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars for a chest or a bed, but they do. Of course a lot of the stuff he makes now is for the TV show.

I lifted the lid of my box and took out my mother's silver and amethyst bracelet. I fastened it on my arm above the beads and put the box back.
(Rule #20: Chocolate chip cookies and good jewelry go with everything.)
My mother might be dead, but she was still my mother. I knew that, even if my dad seemed to have forgotten.

I did the fast makeup thing and twisted my hair back into a low knot.

Ready. Now what? It was only five to six.

I wasn't good at waiting. I ended up at the computer trying to finish the script for my video. I got so into the words I didn't even hear Dad and Anne come in.

Suddenly, there they were. We kind of smiled at each other awkwardly because we had met before, but we didn't know each other. Anne had short, dark hair that curled all over her head. She was a couple of inches shorter than me and at least seven or eight years younger than Dad.

But what struck me was that she was nothing like my mother. My mother had shiny blond hair the color of corn silk. And even when she was mad at you, her eyes never stopped smiling. She was almost as tall as Dad, with long, long legs. He'd tease her and say he only fell in love with her because she had legs up to her neck.

“What are you working on?” Anne asked, gesturing at the computer.

I gave her the short version of my project.

“It would make a good history project, as well,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, shutting down the computer.

“I have my dad's collection of 78s,” she said. “Let me know if you need some music from that era.”

Seventy-eights?

“Vinyl records,” she explained, guessing from the “duh” look on my face that I didn't know what she was talking about. “Old ones. And I have a turntable to play them on.”

“Um, thanks,” I said. Great. Here she was being nice to me and I hadn't even decided yet if I wanted to like her.

I turned to my dad. “Is Jason meeting us here?” I asked.

“I left him three messages but I haven't heard from him.”

My first thought was that I was going to kill Jason for leaving me to do this all by myself. That's what Jason did. He acted like a shit sometimes, and where did that leave me? Because he was three years older he'd gotten to be the selfish, rebellious one, and by the time I came along, all that was left in the box was nice.

And then for a second I wondered if he was out getting wrecked somewhere. Had he fallen off the wagon, off the straight and clean path he was on these days? That was mean of me. I wondered if I was ever going to stop thinking that way.

“Ready?” Dad asked.

“Sure,” I said. I was a lot more ready than Anne, who looked queasy and uncomfortable.

We had dinner at a little Greek restaurant. Anne and Dad talked about the show and I talked about school and we were all very polite.

I was back in my jeans with my feet on the back of the couch and my head on the floor—I was hoping for inspiration to hit so I could finish my script—when Dad came in from taking Anne home. They'd dropped me off first.

“So, what do you think?” Dad asked, picking up the pile of mail from the table by the door and shuffling through it.

“I told you what I think already,” I said.

“So tell me again.”

“Okay. I don't see why you want to get married.”

He looked up. “How can you feel that way now that you've gotten to know Anne?”

“The only thing I know about Anne is that she has a collection of old records and she doesn't like black olives.”

He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. “All I want is to be happy. I want us to be a real family again. Is that so bad?”

“Well, what have we been up to now, Dad?”

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I don't think I do,” I said stiffly. “What's so wrong with our life?” I dropped my legs to the floor and sat up. “We always have birthday cake, and turkey at Thanksgiving. We have clean underwear and toilet paper and all the bills get paid on time. We're a family. You and Jason and me. Even Mom. She's still a part of this family even if she is dead. No one's in jail. No one's getting stoned on the street—not even Jason anymore. What are we if we're not a real family?”

“I want a wife,” he said, dropping the mail back on the table. “I want someone to share my life with, someone to talk to.”

“We talk,” I said.

He shifted from one foot to the other. “I know, but …” His voice trailed off.

“I mean, I thought we had a deal. I could tell you anything and you could tell me anything.”

“And I don't want you to stop talking to me,” Dad said. “It's just that … I'm the parent … I don't think it's appropriate for me to be telling you so much.” He held up a hand like he was trying to block any objection I might make. “And I know it's my fault. I told Anne that.”

My Greek salad began to burn in my stomach. “What do you mean, ‘told Anne'? Told her what?”

“I asked her opinion, that's all.”

“She doesn't even know me,” I said. My voice sounded sharper and louder than I'd meant it to.