The Botox Diaries (18 page)

“I didn’t know if you like things spicy,” I say.

“Like everything spicy,” he says, going for yet another frat-boy double entendre.

Where’s that geek writer when you need him? Probably off polishing his Keds.

Hoping to move things along, I pass Boulder the tall, oversized, prop-man-supplied pepper mill. Could they have found a bigger one?

“Pretty thick, isn’t it,” Boulder says lasciviously. “Takes two hands, huh?”

That knocks me over. No, actually, I do the knocking over. In a split second, the pepper mill goes crashing into the crystal, sending the fresh-squeezed orange juice flying all over the nonabsorbent Irish linen and the no-longer-picture-perfect omelet.

“CUT!” Mindy cries.

I sit back, watching the rivulets of orange juice splashing off the table and onto Boulder’s crisp khaki pants. For once in my life, I don’t apologize. And having learned my lesson at Dr. Paulo’s, I’m not getting down on my knees to clean up, either.

The prop guys rush forward to take care of the mess, and instantly new goblets, napkins, place mats, and orange juice appear.

“Let’s do that one more time,” Mindy says. “We’re ready to roll again.”

“But my pants are soaked,” Boulder complains.

“We’re not shooting below the waist,” Mindy says efficiently. “Just take them off.”

Boulder does what he’s told, unabashedly stripping off the drenched khakis. Spilled o.j. probably isn’t the kind of accident his mother had in mind when she told him always to wear clean underwear. Still, at least this answers the age-old question. His are boxers, not briefs.

But now a real crisis emerges.

“We’re out of egg whites,” an assistant reports tremulously, hurrying up to Mindy. “Can’t make him another egg-white omelet.”

“Then make him a goddamn
yolk
omelet,” Mindy snaps.

Boulder, who’s been willing to woo an older woman, to get all his good lines from a geek, and to sit at my breakfast table in his underwear, now takes a stand.

“I won’t eat a yolk omelet,” he declares. “I haven’t had a yolk in a year and a half!”

That does it. I should be upset, but instead, I burst out laughing. Loud, giddy, peals of laughter that keep building. Boulder looks stricken, which only makes me laugh harder.

“It’s not you,” I sputter, between gasps. “It’s not the yolks, it’s not even the boxers. Or maybe it is the boxers,” I say, cracking myself up all over again. “I would have guessed briefs.”

Across the set, I hear ripples of laughter as Jen and various members of the crew break into guffaws. In a moment, the whole room is rocking with laughter. My Surfer Dude date looks embarrassed, but then his good nature wins out, and he’s doubled over, too.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me, “I rarely take off my pants this early in a date. You’re a good sport.”

And goddammit, I am.

But now the writer chimes in. Again. “Hey, Mindy,” he says, knowing that his paycheck depends on his bright ideas, “as long as Boulder’s pants are off, do we want him to sleep with Jess?”

Is this another product placement opportunity? Did they bring condoms along with the Quaker Oats?

Mindy consults her notebook. “Good idea, but three of the other bachelors ended up in bed with their dates,” she tells the writer. “This one’s slated as the heartwarming segment. No sex. Just gooey family stuff.”

That’s a load off my mind. I can only do so many new things in one day.

We finish up in the house and head off to the park for what is apparently the gooey family stuff. The writer, out of ideas, leans against a tree. But Jen doesn’t need any help with heartwarming. And neither, bless him, does Boulder. They ride bikes and shoot hoops. They get Fudgsicles at the Good Humor truck. And they even have a water-gun fight that makes her screech in delight.

Clearly, Jen picked the right guy, if not for me, then for her. Instead of marrying Boulder maybe I should just adopt him.

Six hours, five locations, and four outbursts from Mindy later, we wrap.

“When’s this show going to be on?” Jen asks, as the crew spiffs up my house one last time before leaving.

“We air late August,” Mindy says. “An hour special.”

“A whole hour?” I ask, impressed.

“Well, it’s really forty-four minutes, after commercials,” Mindy amends. “Then we leave ten minutes for host wraps. Three minutes with the
Cosmo
editors. Maybe four. A two-and-a-half-minute tape on all the letters that came in. Interviews with each of the top-ten bachelors. And finally the date segments. Yours should be …” She hesitates. “Well, your stuff was good. We might even get two minutes out of it.”

Two minutes? So much for my fifteen minutes of fame.

But Boulder’s happy. And he’s the last to leave.

“You’re a cool kid,” he tells Jen, who’s already crumpled onto the sofa, exhausted from the day’s activities.

“I had fun,” she says happily. “Thanks for the bike ride.”

Boulder, her new buddy, gives her a kiss on the top of her head, then comes over and hugs me.

“I really enjoyed myself. Maybe we can do this again,” he says, giving me the final Boulder grin of the day. “And I meant what I said before. You’re really swell for someone your age.”

“Thanks,” I say, and I can’t help smiling.

As he’s walking down the front path, I call out after him, “Say hi to your mom for me, okay?”

FOR THE NEXT WEEK
, Jen is a hero at school and her friends are convinced I’m the new
Cosmo
girl. One of her buddies sends me a glittery construction-paper heart that says “Boulder Loves Jess.” The bridal shop in town calls to offer a discount on my dress—if I can get them a credit on the show. They don’t believe me when I say I’m not getting married. And if I were going for product placement, I’d call Vera Wang.

“Get the dress,” Lucy urges. “You never know. Better Boulder than Jacques.”

“I thought you liked Jacques.”

“Not since you told me about his affair,” she says vehemently. “I
hate
him now.”

“All he did then was what you’re doing now,” I say simply.

“It’s different. He hurt you. I’ll never hurt Dan.”

And maybe she’s learned a lesson, because when I see Lucy and Dan a few days later at the school Science and Technology Fair, they’re huddled close and holding hands. When Dan whispers something to her, Lucy giggles and glides her manicured fingers over his chest. They look like the coziest couple around. I try to decide if I should interrupt them. Yes, I’ve already seen Lucy having tantric sex, but this scene seems a lot more intimate. And less fake.

I mill around the elementary school fair, looking at the baking-soda-and-vinegar exploding volcanoes, the plastic-and-duct-tape exploding rockets and the Malthus-inspired exploding-population graphs. Didn’t I build that same volcano a million years ago? Science marches on but science fair projects haven’t changed since Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub yelling “Eureka!”

I go over to check out Jen’s entry. Mounting her graphs on a floral-patterned poster board was a nice touch. Though the rest of it is pretty lame.

“Good-looking project,” Dan says, coming up behind me.

“Looks good, but it’s phony data,” I admit.

Dan laughs, thinking it’s a joke, but I’m not kidding. Jen’s project was supposed to be simple. Three identical plants. One plant watered regularly for ten days. One overwatered. One not watered at all. What would happen? We checked every morning, but who knew Home Depot stocks houseplants that could survive even Cruella de Vil? Ten days without water and Philodendron #3 was dry as dust but not even drooping. Poor Jen. I had no choice.

“See that plant that has no leaves?” I ask Dan. “Had ’em until last night. I pulled them all off.”

Dan eyes me suspiciously. “Really?” he asks.

I shrug. “Science fair was today. I had to do something.”

“I see,” Dan says, mulling over my confession. “Good thing you don’t run the Human Genome Project.”

“Yeah, with my data I’d have us all related to Yoda.”

Dan looks me over carefully. “No family resemblance yet,” he says amiably.

“Just wait nine hundred years,” I warn. Reflexively, I stroke my face, wondering if wrinkles could ever possibly look as cute on me as they do on Yoda. Good thing he didn’t use Botox. Spielberg would never have cast him.

We stroll over to join Lucy. She’s standing by Lily’s project, which has a big
FIRST PLACE
blue ribbon proudly pinned in the corner.

“THE EFFECTS OF HABITAT DESTRUCTION ON ENDANGERED SPECIES,”
I say, reading the headline on the poster. “Wow. Sounds complicated.”

“But important,” Lily says with the passion of a new Greenpeace recruit. “Everything on the earth changes so fast now that lots of species can’t keep up.”

Yup. Know just how they feel.

I ponder Lily’s poster, which shows how many “breeding females” are left on Earth for six endangered species. Figures. The boys’ projects explode. The girls’ projects breed.

But Lily’s not fooling around here. She’s taking the fate of the Komodo dragon and the Goliath frog pretty seriously. Someone has to. And look at that. Only one hundred thousand female leatherback sea turtles left. Exactly how many do we need? Fifty thousand sounds like plenty to me. Just a thought—which I won’t share with Lily.

“Hey, Jess,” says a young man behind me. “What’s a big TV star like you doing at the science fair?”

I turn around as Dean and Dave, Lily’s tall, handsome twin brothers, come over, all confidence and jocular good cheer.

“Figured I should be prepared in case the Discovery Channel calls.” I laugh.

They banter with me for a few minutes—are high school boys supposed to be this polite?—and then drape their arms around their little sister. They tower over her, and she looks up at them adoringly.

“My sister, the big winner,” one of the boys says good-naturedly. I don’t know which one. I can never tell them apart. It was easier when Lucy put Dean in a red snowsuit and Dave in blue.

“Not as big as your tennis blue ribbon, but not bad,” Lily says happily.

“You might have won a better prize if you’d let me help,” the other one jokes, punching Lily playfully on the arm. “I’m the one who got an A plus in physics.”

Lily punches him back, giggling. “Yeah, right, Dave. If you’d helped, I’d have proven the Earth is flat.”

Dave laughs and hands her a small shiny box that he pulls out of his pocket. “From me and Dean,” he says. “It’s a really cool, glittery frog pin. For our sister who’s going to save the world.”

“We looked for a frog on a
lily
pad, but couldn’t find one,” Dean teases. “Get it? Anyway, we’re really proud of you. I mean it. Really proud.”

What’s the matter with these kids? Never heard of sibling rivalry? Didn’t they read the handbook?

Lucy and Dan are beaming and they wrap their arms around each other, exchanging a warm don’t-we-have-the-best-kids-in-the-world gaze. I guess that’s the look you get to share when you’ve been married a long time and you’ve made it through all the tough days and the ordinary days, the sleepless nights and the family fights—and then someone gives you a blue ribbon. Whatever else Lucy and Dan have done wrong, they’ve done one thing—the big thing—just right.

“You’re a great mom, Mrs. Baldor,” Dan says, squeezing her tightly.

“And you’re a great dad,” Lucy says affectionately. “We did a darn good job with these kids.”

It’s a
Walton’s Family Christmas
photo-op if ever there was one. And I might feel jealous—if it weren’t so nice to see Lucy and Dan this happy together.

While Lily’s glued to the spot in front of her first-place project, trying to convince all comers not to forget the Komodo dragon, I spot Jen across the room with a group of friends. I stroll around the rest of the fair, hoping to come up with some ideas we can use next time. Although given our plant debacle, maybe I should just hire Dave and Dean to oversee Jen’s next science project and be done with it.

Above the science fair din, I hear the piercing voice of Cynthia, the dreaded PTA president.

“I can’t believe Lily Baldor won,” Cynthia wails loudly to one of her acolytes. “She couldn’t have deserved first place. Her mother wasn’t even home last week.”

That’s an interesting twist. Lucy had to be home for Lily to win? Was it against the rules for the kids to do the projects by themselves?

“I’ve heard Lily’s mother doesn’t just work. She
travels,”
says Cynthia’s sidekick, supermom-in-training Martha, rolling her eyes back in disgust.

Now there’s a woman who probably needs to get out of the house more. And didn’t her mother ever tell her that if she rolls her eyes like that, they might get stuck that way forever?

“I thought your Isabella’s project was fabulous,” says Martha, groveling to get on Cynthia’s better side. As if she has one. “I would have given Isabella first place.”

“I would have, too,” Cynthia agrees loudly. “We had Bill Nye the Science Guy to dinner and he said her planet mobile was as creative as any he’d ever seen.”

Planet mobile. Now it’s all coming back.
That
was my fifth-grade project, not the volcano. Of course, Pluto was still a planet back in my day. Which means Isabella had one less Styrofoam ball to worry about.

“Maybe we should think about letting Lily into our mother-daughter book club,” Martha proposes. “I’m still not sure about the mother, but Lily might add some cachet. She did get first place.”

“Fine, as long as we all understand that she didn’t
deserve
it,” Cynthia says huffily.

Catching my eye—and probably realizing that I’ve heard every word—Cynthia tosses me a plastic smile and waves me closer. “Jess, you’re friends with Lucy, aren’t you? You can give her the good news. She’s in the book club.”

Cowabunga. Lucy will be thrilled. But to paraphrase Groucho Marx, why would she want to join any club that would have Cynthia as a member?

“Sure, I’ll run to give her the good news,” I say, grabbing the excuse to get away. “In fact, I’ll go find her right now.”