There's Cake in My Future (11 page)

Scott puts his arm around me and leads me toward the refrigerator. “The perfect appetizer to my filet mignon.”

“And wine. I will need a lot of wine.”

“The perfect dessert.”

Scott’s phone buzzes to let him know he has a text. He pulls out the phone. “Who is it?” I ask him, thinking it might be Mel.

Scott reveals a shy smile as he reads the text. “No one.”

I can’t help myself. “It’s not Sherri, is it?”

Scott’s smile widens. “No,” he says, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “You’ll be happy to know Sherri’s out. I’ve moved on.”

Fuck. Now I definitely need ice cream.

Twelve

Nicole

I used to fantasize about family dinners. Seriously. As a child of divorce, I always had this rose-colored dream of everyone sitting down to a nice home-cooked meal (made by me, of course), talking about our days, sharing our dreams, and being each other’s biggest supporters against the trials and tribulations of life.

I wonder where those families are. Colorado maybe?

Seriously, after a day like today, I am exhausted, overwhelmed, and feeling like a total failure at this whole stepmotherhood business.

Let’s start with that home-cooked meal. I spent the morning shuttling kids back and forth to their various “enrichment” classes, everything from Spanish for fourth graders to Chemistry for Tots—a title that scared the Hell out of me when I first read it. Then I raced over to the school for Malika’s kindergarten orientation, only to learn that my lovely husband-to-be was stuck at a meeting and would not be able to attend, and could I please collect all of the required paperwork, sign anything necessary, then write down any important school dates on the master calendar? Back to the Valley to pick up the girls from their classes, then over to a kids’ clothing store that specializes in school uniforms, where we picked up the assorted skirts, shorts, logoed shirts, and cardigans needed for the coming year.

Next was a trip to the toy store for not one but two birthday presents for the birthday parties this week ( just this week!), a trip to Target for school supplies, and a trip to the pharmacy for drugs. The drugs (sadly) were not for me but for Malika, who needed a refill of a liquid antibiotic that I spilled all over her bedspread last night when she accidentally kicked my arm as I was pouring the fruit-flavored syrup into the teaspoon, thereby splattering the filled spoon and open bottle all over everything and making her bedspread look like a Rorschach test.

By the end of the day, all I had time to make was a phone call to the local Thai restaurant for takeout. Dinner consisted of twelve assorted white boxes filled with various exotic dishes. We all grabbed a plate and scooped out what we wanted.

Side note: I want to know where that mom is who successfully cooks only one meal at night—take it or leave it, she’s not a short-order cook. Because that bitch is making me feel bad, and I want to go to her spotless house, with her gourmet kitchen and her perfectly behaved children, and tell her to fuck off. Between Malika’s refusal to eat meat or anything with sauce on it, Megan’s abhorrence of anything even vaguely resembling a vegetable, and a fiancé who absolutely refuses to have any of his food touching any of his other food, dinner in this house has become more of a train wreck of late than a bonding experience.

Well, there is talking. That part is very nice. I get about ten minutes every day to feel like we are an actual family. We do a version of thumbs up, thumbs down, in which we tell each other our favorite part of our day and our least favorite part. For example, today I learned that Megan hates her new skirts and wishes the school would allow free dress days on Fridays, a policy a few other private schools have recently adopted. Which led to a discussion on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, which was interesting. And I learned that Malika wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, provided that she doesn’t have to give shots to dogs or clean up their poop. (Note to self: make sure we don’t get a dog.) Finally, I learned that Jason needs me to pick up his tuxedo tomorrow.

Of course he does.

That was his thumbs down. His thumbs up was that he gets to marry me on Saturday.

Big happy face. He sure is cute tonight.

“Wanna play Rock Band, Daddy?” Malika asks her father right after dinner.

“Okay,” Jason says, standing up from the table, “but only for a little bit.”

“Yay!!” the girls yell excitedly, before bolting out of their seats and running to the living room. Jason stands up, walks to my seat, and leans down to give me a soft kiss on the lips.

“Are you up for a video game?” he asks me.

I smile at him sweetly. “Hi! My name is Nic, and I’ll be your fiancée today.”

Jason laughs. “Are you going to try and get some work done?”

“Probably,” I lie. (In reality, I will most likely head on over to my computer, stare at a blank screen for ten minutes, then hit Facebook, latimes.com, wwtdd.com, and the Web site that shows my favorite daily comics.)

“All right,” Jason says, smiling and giving me another kiss.

As he heads over to the living room, I gaze at the wreckage of tonight’s meal and sigh. Dirty plates, uncleared, plus dirty serving spoons and empty cartons of pad see ew, pepper and garlic shrimp, and chicken panang.

I know this is my fault: I have gotten into the habit of clearing the table by myself. At first, I did it because I wanted Jason’s night to go smoothly. We were still in our early stages of dating, back when the girls were only here part-time. I didn’t want him wasting precious daddy time cleaning. So cleaning up was my way of quietly helping him get all he could out of what little time he got with them.

But now the girls are here most of the time. And I find myself quietly resenting them for being so messy. It’s not something I would ever say aloud. I don’t want to be the wicked stepmother or the imperfect wife. I like my role as the cool “bonus mom,” as they like to call me. And I know that Jason does appreciate how effortlessly the house seems to run these days. And he is working, and I’m not, blah, blah, blah.…

And yet … I don’t know … I’m starting to feel unappreciated.

I yell from the dining room table, “Before you guys start, can everyone please clear their plates so that I can begin cleaning up and winding down for the night?”

I can hear Rock Band’s opening blare from the T.V., but I hear no children coming toward me. Nor do I hear my soon-to-be husband. I walk into the living room and yell, “Can everyone…”

But then I stop. Megan is sitting at the drums, Jason is on fake guitar, and Malika is standing in front of the T.V. screen with her microphone. She turns to me. “Hey Nic, can you please come play bass?”

“No, honey. I just want to—”

“Please…” she begs, giving me the desperate puppy eyes.

What grown-up can resist the desperate puppy eyes?

I absolutely hate video games, but I seat myself on our plushy red couch, grab the pretend bass, and get ready to jam.

Three songs in, my fingers are cramped, and I already have a headache. I love Malika, and she is a gorgeous girl. But let us just say that she does not have a voice to match her looks. It’s a good thing she wants to become a vet, because her growing up to be a mezzo soprano is about as likely as my growing up to be a gymnast.

I excuse myself, and head back to the dining room to clean up.

Cleaning is a little like good newspaper reporting: if done well, it is invisible. A good article focuses on the subject, not the writing. A clean kitchen focuses on the beauty of the granite countertops, not the wife being taken for granite. (Little joke there. Not making me feel better.)

As I rinse off the dishes, our home phone rings. I walk over to the phone and check the caller ID to see it is Mel. I pick up. “You know, there are some advantages to being single,” I tell her without so much as a “Hello.”

There’s a pause on her end before she asks, “Like what?”

“For one thing, if you clean your house at night, and you go to bed … when you wake up, it’s still clean.”

Another pause. “Yeah. That’s true, I guess,” Mel concedes.

“And you get a first kiss. I’ll miss those,” I think aloud as I rinse off a large serving spoon and put it in the dishwasher. “First glance, first touch, first heated make-out session where sex isn’t just
expected
…”

“I’m getting married!” Mel practically screeches to me over the phone.

Whuh?

“Oh my God! Honey—that’s great!” I force myself to say in the cheeriest voice possible. Even though the poor girl has been hysterically crying about Fred’s affair since Saturday. “So the cake charm was wrong,” I add. “Good news for the rest of us.”

“Well no,” Mel tells me. “Technically, it was right, because Ginger got engaged first. But it’s also right about the red hot chili pepper! He bought me flowers, took me to the Water Grill, and is out at the store right now buying a bottle of Cristal!”

“Wait, you’re not with him?” I ask her, confused.

“No! I wanted to take a few minutes to call my best girls. So, will you be my maid—no wait, matron—of honor?”

The three of us made a deal years ago: since we all love each other equally, we’d take turns being the bride, maid of honor, and bridesmaid. Seema is my maid of honor, I am going to be Mel’s maid of honor, and Mel will be Seema’s maid of honor. “I can’t wait!” I say, filling my sentence with forced glee. “So, have you set a wedding date yet?”

“No,” Mel says excitedly. “I need to see if my parents will cover any of it, and if they want it in Oregon, things like that. But I already know that I want my colors to be black and white!”

Ick. I’ll have to work on her about that. Actually, there’s a lot of stuff I need to work on her about. For example, her choice of groom. Or, as I plan to refer to him from now on: Fuckface.

Mel continues, “Fred and I don’t want to steal your thunder, so we’re going to wait to announce the engagement until after you leave for your honeymoon.”

My honeymoon. There’s a loaded word these days. I haven’t told anyone about my change of honeymoon plans yet. And now is definitely not the time.

“Honey, that’s such good news!” I lie. “Don’t worry about stealing our thunder. Shout it from the rooftops!”

I could not sound more fake. Hopefully, she’s so obliviously happy, she won’t notice.

My phone beeps. “That’s my other line,” I say. “Can you hold on one sec, and I’ll get them off?”

“No, no. I should go anyway,” Mel tells me happily. “I have so many more people I need to call. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“And Nic?” Mel says, suddenly striking a more serious tone.

“Yeah?”

“I really want to thank you for not saying anything bad about Fred these past few days. I know what he did looks really bad on the outside, and it would have been so easy to condemn him. Your not judging him or me has made me feel so loved and accepted. And it … well, it just means a lot to me.”

Well, I guess I can’t say anything now. “No problem,” I tell her. “I love you very much. You know that.”

“I love you too,” Mel says. “Fred’s home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay, have a wonderful rest of the night.”

I hang up the phone and click over to the other line. “Hello.”

Seema opens with, “What the fuck?”

“I know! Right?!” I concur. “Did you tell her what you really thought?”

“Scott says I’m not allowed to,” Seema tells me. “The phone rang, and I let the machine pick up. When Mel screamed her news into the machine, I ran to the phone to pick up and start shouting, ‘Wrong!’ But Scott wouldn’t let me answer. He says I can’t say anything now, and that their relationship will either blow up on its own or there’s nothing we can do about it … Did you tell her?”

“No,” I admit. “I couldn’t figure out how to work ‘You’re making the second biggest mistake of your life’ into the conversation without looking unsupportive.”

“Second biggest mistake?” Seema repeats.

“Her biggest mistake would be if she breeds with him,” I reason.

“Indeed,” Seema agrees. Her mouth sounds full as she says, “I thought I’d open with, ‘How can you even think about marrying Fuckface?’ ”

“Jinx! That’s my new name for him too. What are you eating?”

“I’m sublimating my rage with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s while Scott cooks us dinner. What are you having?”

“Oooohhhh.… Good idea,” I say, opening the freezer door and pulling out a box of Trader Joe’s vanilla bon bons, which are these delicious little bite-size ice cream cakelets covered in dark chocolate. They are heaven in a box, and just the thought of popping one in my mouth makes me feel better.

I think for a moment, then reluctantly put them back into the freezer. “Wait no, I have to fit into my dress on Saturday. Anyway, I think rage is a little strong. She’s old enough to make her own choices.…”

“I’m not sublimating my rage over Mel. I’m sublimating over Scott.”

“Wait. Why?”

Seema’s mouth is even more stuffed as she says, “Because he’s having sex, and not with me.”

I’m confused. “Right now?”

“No, not right now,” Seema tells me like I’m an idiot. “He recently had sex with Sherri. Remember that awful—”

“I remember.”

“Yeah, well, apparently she called him a few weeks ago for revenge sex. Only he doesn’t even realize it’s revenge sex, and it was meaningless to him, so she gets to have him instead of me. But even worse, he just told me she was, and I quote, ‘Before Britney.’ ”

“Wait. There’s a Britney? Who’s Britney?”

“Um girl I ate … Oo are so uggy…”

“Your mouth is full, I can’t understand you,” I tell Seema.

I hear Seema swallow. “Sorry.” Then she lowers her voice and clarifies, “Some girl I hate. You are so lucky. I mean because you’re getting married Saturday.”

I hear the dryer buzz, alerting me that it’s done with my latest load of darks. Oh goodie—more clothes to fold. Before I can say anything else, Seema says, “Scott’s yelling for me. Dinner’s ready. Gotta go. Love you.”

“Okay, love you too,” I tell her. “Good luck tonight.”

“Schyeah right.”

Seema hangs up.

I look back down at the dishes and decide I’ve had enough for the night.