That solution would be perfect, because at ten in the morning neither Jack nor Jill would be home.
I know, I know. Jack and Jill. The names alone are almost too cute for words. Together, they make me gag, with or without their names. Sometimes I just call them
Jerk
and Jill. Never in front of my children, of course; just to my best friend, Teresa Curtis. And with a story involving Jack and Jill, which part do I play, exactly? Mother Freaking Goose?
“
No, Mom.” Gina shook her head. “I want to see Dad tonight.”
Starting to shake my head, I looked into her eyes and tried hard not to let her obvious hurt sway me.
She picked up the phone. “Do you have a problem with me calling him?”
“
Now?”
Was she kidding? The last thing I wanted was my soon-to-be-ex dropping by while the house and my hair were such a mess.
The closer the divorce had come to being final--and we were at about three weeks and counting now--the more I regretted the loss of the marriage. Not Jack as he’d become so much as Jack as he used to be. I missed my intact family, the memories, the good times, the hopes and dreams.
I wished we could at least stay together until the kids were grown. I’d like to go back to when my family sat around my kitchen table for dinner, when my children weren’t upset with me for how things turned out, before my youngest daughter had decided black was a lifestyle.
And the more I dealt with both the impending freight train of a divorce and my still confused feelings about getting left at the last station, the more I found myself uncluttering my house, racing through rooms like a mad woman intent on tossing memories. The ties that bind no longer bound me, but remnants remained in every room, and I was determined to eradicate them.Unfortunately, some of those released-but-not-yet-tossed memories lay piled around the living room, the same room Jack would see in fifteen minutes or so, the amount of time it would take him to drive from the fancy condo he shared with his mistress to the house he used to share with me.
Could I toss everything back in the guest room in fifteen minutes? I didn’t want to. I had spent hours going through this stuff, and now it would likely get all jumbled up again. One step forward, two steps back.
I wanted desperately to tell Gina not to call. But at the need I saw in her eyes, I tamped down my resentment at her father and his betrayal. If my daughter’s happiness depended on seeing her father tonight, who was I to dim the expectant light in her eyes?
I suppressed a sigh and forced a smile. “No problem, honey. Go ahead and call him.”
***
I could hear the murmur of Gina’s voice, muffled as it seeped its way from the kitchen, as she spoke with her father. I looked at the mess, and began once again to run around like a mad woman, plucking up the clothes destined for the thrift store from the coffee table and the two bags of bagged paper trash against the wall that needed to go out to the curb.
I raced everything back to the spare bedroom, which had become my biggest clutter pit--it was the next room I’d work on, honest!--over the past year. A year when, yes, I’d admit it, I’d been lonely and somewhat depressed over losing the man I’d loved and been married to for twenty-three years. That was enough time to give birth to three children and, coincidentally, was also the same amount of time needed for my body to sag. The upside was I’d gained a great place to stash a pencil. What great perks (as it were) to growing older.
Gina walked into the living room, slipping her cell phone into her pocket. “When Dad comes to get Seinfeld, talk to him, Mom, okay?”
I straightened up, wary. “What about?”
“
Tell him you’re sorry and you want us to be a family again.”
“
Oh, baby.” I exhaled deeply. “It doesn’t matter how much we want things to be different, it’s over between your father and me.”
Gina’s lips thinned the way they did when she got upset. “Why can’t you even try to be nice? Why do you have to be so mean? You’ve ruined everything.”
Stunned at her words, I said, “Your father did something I just can’t get over. It was a huge shock. He made a choice that changed everything.”
Catching your husband in bed --
your
bed -- with another woman tends to sour a marriage relationship.
“
And what if
I
do something you don’t like, Mom?” Her voice was angry, but at the same time her chin quivered with emotion. “Will you throw me away, too?”
“
Of course not.” I eyed the feather duster, but I couldn’t continue cleaning while Gina was so upset, even if the minutes until Jack arrived were ticking away. I put my hand on her arm to comfort her.
She pulled away from my touch. “Emily’s family stayed together after her father had an affair.”
“
That’s because Emily’s father didn’t leave her mother for a much younger woman.”
Gina shouted, “No, that’s because her mother didn’t kick the crap out of her dad.”
“
He was in bed with another woman!” I happen to hate confrontation, but there have been times in my life when I have become extraordinarily angry and done things I regretted for a long, long time. The day I found Jack and Jill having sex in my bed was one of those times.
Fortunately for me, Jack’s guilty conscience — what else could it have been? — had kept him from filing charges against me, even though the hunky police officer who’d responded to Jill’s 911 call had advised him to do so. I’ll admit I went a little nutso that day. But don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same. You might have stopped before you broke your own hand in beating up your husband, though.
Unfortunately, all three of my children now blamed me for the resulting divorce, even though my husband had had the affair. My son Greg is the most sympathetic to me, though I know he’s still upset. My oldest daughter Laura has been cool to me this past year.
Gina had harbored the most anger. “So are you going to try to get him back or not?”
“
Gina, honey, he doesn’t want me back.”
“
He would if you’d just be nice.”
“
It’s not that simple.” How could I possibly word this — for the ten-thousandth time — so that
she
understood?
“
So you won’t try and win him back from Jill?”
“
I’ll be nice to hm, but I’m afraid it won’t be enough. You don’t understand. He’s moved on.”
“
I do understand. You just don’t care what I want.” She picked up Kramer and stormed to the hall, then turned back to face me. “
You’re the worst mother ever
.”
Ouch. That hurt.
Before I could respond, Gina yelled, “If you’re not going to get back together with Dad, then I want to go live with him this year for school.”
With school only a few weeks away, I panicked. I didn’t want to lose my youngest daughter, who was already struggling to find herself in a sea of goth black clothes and attitude. I couldn’t toss her into Jack and Jill’s den of iniquity.
“
Wait,” I said. “Please wait.”
This was a lose-lose situation, no matter what I did, but I had to try. For my children’s sake, especially for the sake of my relationship with Gina, I had to at least go through the motions of attempting to reconcile with my husband.
Maybe even for me. “Okay. You win. I’ll talk to Dad when he comes to pick up
Seinfeld
.”
Gina stroked Kramer’s fur and her voice lowered. “And you need to go to Tammy’s wedding reception with him.” Tammy was the daughter of the Olsens, some of our family’s oldest friends.
“
He won’t take me to something like that.”
“
Ask him.
Nicely
.”
Nicely?
Now why didn’t I think of that? As if my simply asking Jack
nicely
could change everything. “Gina, the event is in two days and your father is living with Jill. He’ll be taking her, no matter how nicely I ask.”
“
Then you need to go with a date and make Dad jealous.”
I hadn’t dated anyone for the same twenty-three years I’d been married to Jack, and certainly not since we’d separated, so a date might prove to be the largest hurdle to Gina’s whole insane plan.
“
Mom! A date! Or I’ll move in with Dad. I’m serious.”
“
Okay, okay. But I’ll have to find a guy who’ll ask me out.”
“
What about that guy you picked up in the supermarket?”
“
I did
not
pick up Bradley Ivans in the supermarket.” Actually, he’d tried to pick me up in the dairy aisle last week, largely due to my new, improved body. Yes, I admit to some minor plastic surgery in the last two months. I no longer have baggy eyelids and I’ve also had to come up with a new place to stash my pencils. And I took up karate, toning up my muscles and losing fifteen pounds of fat in the dojo.