Something New (8 page)

As I scrape the last bit of raspberry yogurt from the container, I realize that my efforts at reinvention are on their way back to the crapper.

Twenty minutes later, I am on the treadmill, hoping against hope that the endorphins my body will release will drag me out of this self-pitying, self-flagellating place. I am sweating profusely to the sounds of Aretha Franklin’s Greatest Hits. Slowly, I do start to feel better. I am burning calories. I am doing something good for me. I am a powerful entity in the universe. Okay, so doing the treadmill doesn’t exactly elevate me to universal power status. Still. Two out of three ain’t bad.

After close to an hour of this punishment, I walk on spaghetti legs to the phone and dial my cousin’s number. I know I can’t put it off any longer. Jill is hosting tonight’s literary soiree and is counting on me to be her wingman. Or woman. As picture perfect as her house is, as anal-retentive as she is when it comes to plating appetizers or proffering stemware, she is completely insecure about having company. She rarely entertains because it is the one time when she second-guesses every single choice she makes, from the wine selection to the
cocktail napkins to the damn hand towels adorning the vanity in the bathroom. One party will send her to her shrink twice a week for a month.

“I put out the
lily
hand towels last night, Doctor! Don’t you see? Mona Emmerson’s mother died seven months ago and her favorite flowers were lilies. Can you imagine how those hand towels must have made Mona feel? She’ll never forgive me! And for God’s sake, I served cocktail wieners! How could I? Liza Pierce’s husband just lost his penis in a freak combine accident! Liza took one look at the wieners and burst into tears!”

I myself don’t stress about throwing a party. My feeling is this: If there’s a lot of alcohol and the food is delicious, no one will care that they have to dry their hands on a torn, mud-stained beach towel haphazardly slung over the shower stall in the bathroom. Give people enough booze and they wipe their hands on their own clothing, anyway.

“Are you bringing the cheese balls now or later?” My cousin doesn’t bother with a hello. She knows it’s me from her Caller ID and is getting right to the point.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” I tell her. “Which do you want first?”

She hesitates briefly. “It’s not about the cheese balls, is it?”

“No,” I assure her. “You’ll have your cheese balls. You just won’t have me.”

“
What?
” she shrieks into the phone.

“I can’t make book club tonight. Don’t worry. I’ll drop off the cheese balls later.”

“No!” she cries. “You can’t be serious! You are not missing book club, Ellen. You will be here tonight or I will disown you as my cousin,
forever
!”

“I can’t! Jonah conveniently forgot about a
very important
dinner with a
very important
client. It’s too late to get a sitter.”

I don’t even suggest that I bring the kids to book club. One of the first rules the seven of us made when we started the club was that children were not allowed. No exceptions. Not even when Sandy Herman’s husband got into a car accident that crushed his right leg thirty minutes before book club was to start. Sandy called up to explain what had happened and to ask if she could bring her son, Peter, because, of course, Ralph was in emergency surgery. (The fact that she even considered coming to book club instead of going to the hospital to be with her husband was discussed with great fervor during the first ten minutes of the meeting. Shock, surprise, and disdain were quickly replaced by complete understanding and acceptance when all of us realized that book club was as integral to our lives as caffeine. We agreed that we could go days without our husbands, but not a day without coffee.) But Sandy’s request to bring Peter was categorically and unanimously denied. Sandy showed up forty-five minutes late, sans Peter, explaining that she’d left him with her mother-in-law at the hospital. When we asked her how Ralph was doing, she shrugged and gulped down three Chardonnays in two minutes flat in order to catch up with the rest of us.

“Okay,” Jill says breathlessly, and I can tell she is starting to hyperventilate. “I’ll call Karin.”

“No, Jill. No. I am not having that girl watch my kids again. She’s a Wiccan, for God’s sake. She drew a pentagram on my kitchen floor with my one Chanel lip liner, made an altar out of my stepladder, and sacrificed a package of boneless chicken breasts on it! Do you have any idea how much boneless chicken breasts cost?”

“This is an emergency, Ellen. I
need
you here. So, she’s a witch. So she wastes poultry. It’s not like she’s an axe murderer.”

“No way, Jill. No.” I hate putting my foot down, especially when I know Jill is in distress, but I hadn’t mentioned to my cousin the seventeen piercings on Karin’s various body parts and the gleam in Jessie’s eyes when she saw them. I spent three hours the next day explaining to my daughter that when she was eighteen and not living at home she was welcome to pierce any part of her anatomy she so desired, to which she responded that I was nothing more than a warden in the prison of her life. Where do eight-year-olds come up with this stuff, anyway?

Jill is silent for so long that I think she has hung up on me. A moment later she says, “I’m going to call you back.”

“Don’t do anything rash,” I tell her, “like putting your head in the oven.”

“It’s electric.” Click.

T
rader
Joe’s is quiet on this Friday morning; only a handful of shoppers grace its aisles. Right now, I am gazing at fourteen thousand kinds of cheese, wondering if I should branch out and try a crazy variety for the cheese balls I will not be able to eat since I cannot attend book club tonight. Jill still hasn’t called me back. At least, I think she hasn’t called me back. I can’t really be sure since I left my cell phone on the kitchen counter. It’s a bad habit, and it drives Jonah crazy. Every time I “forget” to bring the little evil device with me, or, God forbid, I haven’t charged it and the battery is dead, my husband decides that he absolutely must get ahold of me
right this minute
. And when I finally do find the phone and see that I have thirteen messages from him and call him back, he rants and raves about how irresponsible it is of me, a mother of three and wife of one, to leave the cell phone, which he spent a fortune on by the way, at home/in the car/on the floor of my closet/in my discarded purse. “What if
there’s an earthquake or a tsunami? What will you do then?” he shrieks. Most of the time, I just fake static and hang up. That’s the kind of gal I am. I fake static
and
orgasms.

“Hi.”

I look up. It must be coincidence that just as the word
orgasms
flashes through my brain, I am greeted by none other than Ben Campbell. What this man is doing in the cheese aisle of Trader Joe’s at ten thirty on a Friday morning is a complete mystery to me. I should probably feel panicked, since panic is my go-to emotion when confronted with an attractive man. But the endorphins from my time on the treadmill are doing glorious things for my self-esteem, I am freshly showered, and I am fairly confident that the black capris I am wearing do not have a hole in the ass. Also, there is no Pop-Tart goo on my shirt since I am currently abstaining from Pop-Tarts.

“Lotta cheese,” he says with a grin, turning his attention to the refrigerated case.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” I say. It’s a lie. I was thinking
orgasms
, but I can’t really say that to my cousin’s sexy next-door neighbor, now, can I?

“You weren’t at soccer practice yesterday.”

He noticed I wasn’t there. This inconsequential tidbit gives me a tingle of pleasure. “Yesterday was Connor’s day. I was at his baseball practice. Miss me?” Did I really just say that? I mentally slap my forehead.

“Like you can’t believe,” he says, not missing a beat. “This gal named Tina gave me a lecture on recycling used toilet paper.”

“Sounds like Tina,” I say with a smile. And because I just can’t help myself, I ask, “Aren’t you supposed to be out chasing bad guys or something?”

He squints at me, then smiles sheepishly. When he opens his mouth to speak, he sounds like Joe Friday. “Ordinarily, I would be, ma’am. Lots of bad guys to chase. Not so much in Trader Joe’s, though.”

I nod in agreement. “I love Trader Joe’s. The bad guys don’t know what they’re missing.”

“You got that right.” We both chuckle companionably.

“I took some time off between the transfer,” he explains. “For the move. My wife had to start work right away, so we thought it would be good for one of us to get the lay of the land, get familiar with the neighborhood.”

“Good idea,” I say, and pretend to continue perusing the cheese.

Ben reaches for some goat. And no, that is not a weird way of saying he just adjusted himself. He chooses the kind with an herb crust, inspects it, and returns it to the shelf. I grab some English Cheddar with Caramelized Onions, a package of Neufchatel, and a tub of Romano. Ben takes stock of my choices and gives me a speculative look.

“Cheese balls,” I say.

“Back at you,” he retorts, eyebrows raised. We both laugh again.

“I’m making cheese balls,” I explain unnecessarily. Obviously, he knows what I meant. He’s a detective, for Pete’s sake.

He fixes me with a direct stare and says, “Let me ask you a question.”

I feel something stirring in my belly at being the recipient of such an intense gaze, and although I am struggling to appear placid on the outside, my insides are turning to jelly. I chide myself for having this kind of reaction to him, even though I know that there isn’t a damn thing I can do to
change it. Body chemistry and hormones are what they are. You can’t ignore them, just like you can’t ignore gravity when you go bungee jumping.

Ben is now looking at me expectantly and I realize he has already asked the question but my mental machinations were so loud that I missed it.

“What?”

“Is that a dumb question?” he asks, a hint of embarrassment seeping into his voice. “It is, isn’t it?”

I realize that he has mistaken my “What?” for a criticism of his question. I could save
myself
a lot of embarrassment and just let him continue to think that I find his question ridiculous and not worth answering. But then I’d never know what he asked. Better to make an ass of myself than to always wonder,
What was the question? What did he ask? Why was it dumb? What the HELL was it?
The unknown would keep me awake at night, tossing and turning and wondering, and for a woman fast approaching hot flashes, hormone surges, and night sweats, I really don’t need anything else in my life that will deprive me of sleep.

“No, no. I wasn’t listening with both my ears,” I tell him. “I really didn’t hear the question.”

He looks relieved, and then his lips curl up with amusement. “You weren’t listening with both your ears?” he mimics. “Okay. Well, it probably is a dumb question, anyway.” He pauses, as if waiting for a drum roll. “If you were cheese, what kind would you be?”

I can feel my jaw drop to my chest, and a moment later, a deep rumble of laughter escapes me. I can think of only a few times in my life I have ever been truly surprised by a man, and this has to be one of them. This gorgeous, sexy hunk of a man with his liquid brown eyes and six-pack abs and superhero job has an
inner geek
. I love it! He squints at me again,
immediately assuming that I am ridiculing him with my giggle fit. I quickly stifle the guffaws, wipe the tears from my eyes, and shake my head to disabuse him of the idea.

Before I can stop myself, I reach out and place a hand on his arm. In all seriousness, I say, “I think that might be the best question I have heard in a decade.”

Trader Joe’s is a great market, and it’s easy to linger for a while, but usually I am in and out in ten minutes flat. Not today. Ben Campbell and I peruse the aisles together as I play tour guide, pointing him in the right direction for each item written on the carefully itemized list his wife gave him this morning. He is an affable man, charming and self-effacing and unassuming, and once I have gotten past the fact that he is an out-and-out studmuffin, I find myself enjoying the easy banter we have fallen into.

As for cheese, he tells me that he would probably be Gouda. (He’d be
Gouda
, all right.) Tough, shiny, red skin on the outside with a mild, agreeable, if somewhat plain interior. I tell him I haven’t known him all that long, but I think he’d be more of a Cambozola. He laughs and asks if that means I find him stinky. I laugh and reply that I find him unexpected. Me, I’m more of a Brie kind of gal, I say. Simple, dependable, and high in fat.

We come to the end of the frozen food and I catch a glimpse of the sample station, the place where customers can try some of the tasty food the store has to offer. No matter how short on time you are, you cannot do Trader Joe’s without trying a sample. It’s almost like there’s some kind of electromagnetic force that pulls at you, and you have no choice but to succumb to it. I am desperately attempting to veer off course, since I don’t want Ben to think I am weak and gluttonous,
but I seem to have lost control of my cart. Two seconds later, Ben says something that fills me with relief.

“I love samples!”

Thirteen seconds later, I watch him stuff his face with turkey meat loaf and mashed potatoes, rice balls, and chocolate chip dunkers. I taste the turkey meat loaf and rice balls, think of my treadmill, and pass on the dunkers. Then we both chase the food with some pomegranate-cranberry iced tea. Ben sighs contentedly and drops his cup in the trash.

“I could’ve done without the rice balls,” he states thoughtfully. “But those dunkers are the bomb.” He gives me a sideways glance, then whispers, “Don’t tell my wife about the cookies. She’s keeping the family off wheat.” He thinks for a moment. “And dairy. Red meat. Sugar.”

All of the things that I love and adore
, I think. “So what do you eat?”

He grimaces. “Tofu. Lots of tofu.” He shudders emphatically. “But, hey. I’m on the job. If my partner is driving and he happens to choose McDonald’s for lunch, what am I supposed to do?”