How I Came to Sparkle Again (20 page)

“I like to watch other women get dumped,” Lisa said plainly. “It’s been really healing for me.”

Horrified, Jill shot Lisa a look. “Huh?”

Lisa explained, “It makes me feel normal, you know, to see that everyone feels like they were robbed of their rightful destiny when they get dumped. But it doesn’t mean they were. Like this guy is totally wrong for that girl, and yet, when he dumps her, she’s going to go on and on like he was her soul mate. They all do. He’s not their soul mate. He can’t be all of their soul mates! That’s obvious to any objective observer. So I like to imagine that God is up there when I’m getting dumped and watching me like I’m watching them and thinking, Oh no, honey, he is definitely not for you. Believe me, this is for the best.”

Someone on the show managed to get four drinking words into one sentence, so they all took four drinks and then watched the bachelor dump some girls. The jilted ones went outside to cry. Everyone drank some more. Jill was drunk in about five minutes.

“This is more painful than calling a woman after sleeping with her,” Hans said.

“See?” Lisa asked. “Don’t you just want to go, ‘Hey, chica, that bozo made out with five other women last night! He’s no prize!’”

“So a man who has played the field is no prize?” Tom asked, looking right at Lisa.

There was an awkward standoff moment, and then Jill announced, “David served me with divorce papers today.”

“That fucker,” Lisa said. “Jilly, you’ve got to believe me, it’s for the best. You’re going to be much happier from here on out.”

Jill held up one finger. “And you know what else?… I forgot. Wait. Oh. You know what else? Even if no one ever loves me again, I am going to be much happier from here on out. Because I get to ski and that’s all I need to produce dopamine.”

“That’s right,” Lisa said. “We’ve got snow. We don’t need sex.”

The men rolled their eyes at one another.

“I have to go to Austin in two weeks for a hearing,” Jill said. She turned to Tom and said, “Boss, I’m going to need a few days off.”

“No problem,” Tom replied.

“I’m going with you,” Lisa said.

“Oh, Lisa, that’s sweet. You don’t have to,” said Jill.

“I’m going,” Lisa said definitively. “All right. It’s time for me to get my beauty sleep.” The show was over.

Jill walked her to the door and hugged her before she left. Three dogs immediately replaced Lisa and Jill and sat on the couch with Tom, who had flipped to a movie with fast cars and shooting guns. Eric and Hans had moved into the kitchen and were making marijuana cookies.

“Hey, Tom,” Jill said. “I’m drunk.”

“That’s okay,” he replied. “I’m drunk
and
stoned.”

Jill went to her room, found her cell phone, and held it for a moment while she contemplated all the girls on
The Bachelor
who felt their destinies had been stolen. Seeing just how hopelessly indignant they were should have helped Jill make a better choice, but she drunk-dialed her old phone number anyway. While it rang, she looked at her clock: It was eleven forty. Austin was an hour later, which meant it was past midnight there. After the fourth ring, it went to voice mail. David’s voice said, “Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Will you, David? Will you really get back to me as soon as you can? Because I called on Christmas, and you still haven’t called me back. You just sent a sheriff to give me papers instead,” Jill slurred, and started to cry. “David, is it because I can’t have kids anymore? Is that when I became so worthless to you? Is that why you had to replace me? Is it just that you want to be a dad so bad? Is that why? I’m just trying to figure out how someone who knew me so well could think I was so worthless. But it’s okay, because I get to ski and you don’t and I don’t need you. All right. Well, I hope I didn’t interrupt your hot sex with that home-wrecking whore. David, I really hope you get a very bad disease and your dick burns and blisters and then just falls off.”

She hung up and walked back out to the front room. “I just drunk-dialed my husband.”

The guys looked up and waited for some clue about what the appropriate reaction might be.

Finally Tom broke the silence. “Well, I don’t know why you would want just one husband when you can have this platonic harem here at the Kennel.” He began to rub his own chest. “All this manliness plus you get to ski every day. Why would you want to trade that for one lousy husband in
Texas
? Look, those guys make cookies. Did your husband make cookies?”

Hans held up a cookie, fresh from the oven.

“Why, no, he didn’t,” Jill said, and doubled over with laughter until she cried.

Tom continued. “I mean, do you really ever want to have sex again? Because you could if you wanted to. Any one of us would be happy to nail you, right, guys?”

Hans shrugged.

“Absolutely,” Eric said.

Jill laughed even harder.

“But,” Tom continued, “we don’t expect to have sex with you. We don’t feel entitled to have sex with you. You could live with us and we’ll put oil in your car, and not demand sexual favors in return. I really think you ought to reexamine what you want out of life because I think you’ll find that you have it right here.”

“I really don’t want to ever have sex again,” Jill said as if it were a big epiphany. “I’ve been through enough.”

“See?” Tom said. “Stay with us and you don’t ever have to have sex again.”

“That’s right,” Hans said. “We’ll love you and screw other women.”

“Oh,” Jill said. “You guys are so sweet. You really are the best husbands a girl like me could ever have.”

“But if you ever change your mind about the sex, I’ll make you even
more
glad it didn’t work out with your husband,” Eric said with a wink.

Jill blushed. “Thanks, sweetie. It’s nice to have choices. And P.S., you have the sexiest voice in the history of the world.”

“Oh, that’s just the start,” he said.

Then Tom interrupted, “Now go get some sleep, dear, because I think we’re going to have a big day with the storm on the mountain tomorrow.”

“Big storm coming,” Hans told Jill. “I can feel it in my knees.”

Eric said, “My knees are like having two big painful barometers with me everywhere I go.” He broke out the giant bottle of ibuprofen and passed it around. “I’m a big fan of the vitamin I chaser.” He threw back a shot of tequila with his pills.

Jill said, “You all can’t go eating pills like M&M’s.”

“Not pills—vitamin I,” Hans corrected.

“Very important supplement,” Tom added. “And isn’t it you that eats antacids like Neccos?”

“It’s just calcium,” Jill said. Then she paused and pretended to hear something. “Sh … wait. Do you hear that? It’s your kidneys screaming for mercy.”

They all pretended to listen.

“I can’t hear them over my screaming knees,” said Eric. “Can you, Tom?”

“That’s a negative,” Tom answered.

Jill shook her head, petted the dogs good night, and then stumbled down the hall, relatively happy, all things considered. She loved her platonic harem.

“Just you wait, Jilly Bean! You’ll become one of us yet!” Tom called after her.

“Never!” she shouted back lightheartedly.

*   *   *

It all got Lisa thinking about how women change after men have screwed them over. She remembered how irritable and irrational her own mother had been after her father’s indiscretion.

Once, Lisa had come home from school and walked straight into the kitchen, where pots and pans steamed away on the stove as usual. It had felt so good to be home from school, back in the smells of herbs and spices, in the savory steam that felt like fur, back in the warmth that was her mother’s essence. While her mother looked for something in the fridge, Lisa walked over to the stove, picked up a wooden spoon, stuck it in the sauce, and brought it up for a taste.

“No!” her mother shouted as she slapped Lisa’s hand, knocking the spoon out of it. “That is only for your father! For your father only!” Lisa still didn’t know how her mother got across the kitchen so fast.

She stood there for a moment, stunned. No experience in her whole life would have ever led her to believe she’d be struck for tasting sauce. Tears bubbled up from deep inside her, and she started to cry. She looked at her mother to see if she would comfort her, to see if she had any idea how much all of that stung.

“No more tasting sauces, Ragazzina. Very important. Now stop crying and go outside and play.” And that was all she said.

Thinking about it now, so many years later, Lisa still felt mad. And drunk enough to pick up the phone. She didn’t care that it was almost two o’clock in Florida. She wanted answers. After seven rings, her mother finally picked up.

“Ragazzina?” It was her mother’s name for her—an Italian term of endearment. “Is everything okay? It’s so late!” Her mother sounded panicked.

Lisa said, “Mama, do you remember when I was little and you slapped my hand for tasting the sauce? Why did you do that?”

“Lisa, have you been drinking?” her mother asked.

“Yes, but that’s not the point. I want to know why you slapped me for tasting sauce.”

Lisa’s mother laughed softly and then took a breath. “Oh, Ragazzina, I am sorry, but after your father was unfaithful, I was so angry that I put dog shit in all his food for about two years. You were about to taste his sauce, and I didn’t want you to eat the dog shit.”

Lisa sat on her end of the phone, stunned. Then slowly she started giggling, until at last she erupted into full-blown hysterical shrieking. Her mother joined her. They laughed and laughed until they cried.

Finally Lisa said, “Okay, Mama. I think I can sleep now.”

“Okay, then, Ragazzina, I love you!”

“I love you, Mama,” Lisa said through her laughter.

*   *   *

In the middle of the night, Cassie put one of her pillows on top of the other and draped the white fuzzy bathrobe over them on the bed. Then she brought over the treasure chest full of rocks and set it down. Carefully, she got on the bed and curled up against the pillows. When no one was looking, she often did this—pretended to sit on her mom’s lap. Sometimes, figuring that she was ten and too old for such things, she would pretend that she was simply sitting next to her mom; but other times the smaller girl inside her, the one who wanted to be on her mom’s lap, would cry louder, and she would give in. Tonight was one of those times. She opened the treasure chest and took out the rocks one by one, admiring each and realizing their individual stories were beginning to fade a little.

She took out some notebook paper and began to write the stories before she forgot them completely. She sketched each rock next to the corresponding story. Eleven pages. All together she wrote eleven pages. She couldn’t believe it.

And suddenly, she was remembering all kinds of other things she didn’t want to forget either, but there was too much to write in one night. So she made a two-page list of all the things she wanted to remember to write about, and just having that list of things she didn’t want to forget made her feel better.

chapter fifteen

SNOW REPORT FOR JANUARY 16

Current temperature: 10F, high of 13F at 2
P.M.
, Low of 2F at 5
A.M.

Clear skies, no wind.

63" mid-mountain, 72" at the summit. 0" new in the last 24 hours. 1" of new in the last 48.

Of course Jill had thought about it. Mike was handsome. And unlike David, he was honorable. Of course she had looked at their family pictures and wondered why she hadn’t been lucky enough to marry a man like Mike.

And yes, it was as obvious to her as it was to everyone else that they were both single and about the same age. It was equally obvious that they both had been through too much. Not only that, but recently. The traumas were still very, very acute. Far too unbearably acute. But still, she thought about it.

Ever since his bad day, she had been thinking about their conversation and about how much she liked who he was.

It was easy to imagine a different set of circumstances as she cleaned up the kitchen at his house, especially in the morning when he came home from work. Easy to imagine for just a moment or two that she had married him instead of David. And even though the fantasy was never particularly detailed or involved—it was just a feeling for a moment—she always felt stupid when the moment passed. Guilty, too. Somehow, it just felt wrong. Even though Kate had passed, Mike still felt married to her.

Nonetheless, Jill found herself excited to see him on her mornings at their house. She wished she didn’t, but she did.

She pulled blueberry muffins out of the oven just before Cassie had to run out the door. Yes, she had made Mike muffins. It looked as though she’d made them for Cassie, and sure, she had made them for Cassie, too, but really she wanted an excuse to sit for a minute with Mike before she left.

“What are these crunchy things?” Cassie asked as she bit into one.

“Millet,” Jill answered.

“I like it,” she shouted as she opened the door and headed out.

Mike walked up the sidewalk just in time to intercept her. They hugged a few seconds longer than a normal hug, and as Jill watched through the window, she wondered if it was because Mike had another difficult shift and a call involving a kid, or if it was about Kate.

“Mm! Smells good!” he said as he walked in.

“Hi!” she said, and smiled.
Is it obvious?
she wondered. She hoped it wasn’t obvious.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Get it in check
, she said to herself.

But he put a muffin on a plate, poured himself some juice, and sat down at the table. And something about that, about him sitting in his chair, and the other chair slightly askew, was like an open door or an invitation. And as she sat in her place with a muffin on her plate and a cup of hot tea, it struck her that it wasn’t really male company she looked forward to on these mornings; it was understanding.