Trophies, p.13
Trophies, page 13
The mantel in the master bedroom held an eclectic array of fine art. There was a Robert Graham torso sculpture, a translucent, lapis lazuli Egyptian bowl, six Art Nouveau hand-carved, blue-and-green glass fish, a trio of silver-framed family photos, a delicate, life-size magnolia blossom fashioned from pink jade, and a bouquet of parrot tulips in an exquisitely paper-thin Tiffany vase.
Richard’s mother had given them that vase on their wedding day. It was inscribed with the advice Always forgive, always forget. But never forget, you’ll always be my baby.
Marion threw that first.
There were screams, more projectiles, spectacular bursts, and scrambling flesh. Somewhere in the storm of bedclothes, Richard bellowed, “What the fuck is going on?!”
Following the sound of his voice, Marion began hurling glass fish like Ninja fighting stars.
“The destruction of fifty percent”—(hurl!)—“of YOUR COMMUNITY PROPERTY, ASSHOLE!” Hurl! “THAT’S WHAT’S GOING ON!”
The masseuse, no less than Richard, was acting as if she had no idea how she came to be naked under Marion’s naked husband. She scrambled to hide her (bad-boob-job) body with a pillow and make bullshit expressions of astonished terror. She had a scratchy, annoying voice.
“Ahhhh! Quit it, crazy bitch! Whatthefuck…”
That’s when Marion caught her in the mouth with the Egyptian bowl and sent her sprawling over the edge of the bed.
Despite two framed photographs and a well-placed magnolia, Richard managed to stand and take a step toward her. The Robert Graham missed him completely. (But fortuitously destroyed that awful bust of Abe Lincoln he’d brought home from his office!)
“Honey, what’s happening? I feel drugged!”
Then, as if to illustrate his pronouncement, Richard’s eyes fluttered, his knees buckled, and he fell face-first onto the carpet like he’d been KO’d in a prizefight. This gave Marion pause as she realized that none of her ammo had connected with his head.
She’d been targeting his crotch.
Marion turned toward the fleeing masseuse, who’d placed a large bed sham on her back and was speed-crawling away like a silk jacquard turtle on meth. But unlike a turtle, the masseuse didn’t look where she was going and smacked headfirst into the marble fireplace. A moment later, she flattened out like a turtle roadkill.
Satisfied that the masseuse wasn’t going anywhere, Marion turned back to Richard.
Did he say drugged?
A new scenario bubbled to the surface of Marion’s brain. This masseuse was new. They were rich. What if the masseuse slipped him something and was staging what she would call a rape in order to blackmail them? She’d heard about those date-rape drugs, where the victim didn’t remember anything. Maybe they were being set up.
Nailing Richard with the last fish (in case her hypothesis was wrong), Marion then bent down and checked his pulse, respiration, and pupils (in case her hypothesis was right). He was definitely high but his heart was beating and he was breathing normally. After covering him with a robe from her dressing rooms, she lunged for the bedside and slapped at the panic button.
By the time Carter and Gary burst in, Marion had already phoned her doctor and lawyer and checked the masseuse’s bag and the master suite’s trash receptacles for evidence. The still-naked masseuse was just staggering to her feet and the guards tackled her with gusto. Marion wasn’t too drunk to note that Carter was taking his sweet time covering the girl with his jacket, so she swatted away his hands and tossed a blanket over her. Suspended between security guards, the masseuse, Marion noticed, also appeared groggy and drugged.
“Le-lemme goo, mutherfucks!” she blurted, slurring her words.
“Gary, call Roger,” Marion said. “I need to know what Richard drank.”
Her guards looked at each other for a second. What was this about?
“Roger had a date tonight,” said Gary.
“And he really couldn’t miss it,” added Carter.
Great. Two ex–Navy Seals were terrified of a guy who rolled pastry for a living.
“Okay, so you covered for Roger. Didn’t you think it was strange that the masseuse was still here after midnight? A massage lasts two hours, tops.”
Gary looked at Carter. Carter stared at his shoes. Then Gary spoke.
“I—we thought maybe he…had a lot of knots?”
Even better. They were covering for Richard.
“Say no more.”
“Yoo-hoo! Psssycho!” squalled the masseuse. “I de-mand you call the policcce! I’ve been like, dosssed or ssssomething by your husssbanddd!”
By the sound of her accent, the masseuse was San Fernando Valley born and bred. She did seem woozy, but catching a lapis lazuli Frisbee in the mouth, followed by a head conk on solid marble, could probably produce the same effect.
Staring the masseuse down, Marion picked up a fireplace poker and advanced. This elicited moans and squeaks, but instead of braining her, Marion used the poker to collect the woman’s clothes and offer them to her like diseased linens as she said, “And I de-mand that you get dressed. These gentlemen are licensed security officers who will detain your person in our guardhouse until the authorities arrive.”
(After she’d covered all the bases with the doctor and lawyer.)
“I’m not a perssson!” the masseuse returned. “My name is Tawnee! Tawnee Dymns!”
Lovely.
Carter and Gary released her and she wriggled into her G-string, jeans, push-up bra, and tank top with the words NATURAL BLONDE emblazoned across the front. She wasn’t. Marion did a quick appraisal and put her age to be around twenty-four. A slightly chunky, unremarkable twenty-four. Marion felt insulted. If Richard was going to cheat on her, he could at least do better than this.
But the masseuse wasn’t done yet. “Ya hear me, psssycho violent lady? You’re making a big fuckin’ missstake!”
“And you were making naked farts under my husband in my bed. But your biggest ‘missstake’ is assuming I want to hear your annoying voice.” This said, Marion turned her back. “Get her out of here.”
Carter and Gary wrangled the struggling masseuse out like two cowboys in a bulldogging event while Marion knelt down to check Richard. He was shaking his head as if trying to clear it.
“Ugh! So foggy! I need coffee. Do you know how to—”
“I wasn’t always married to you, Richard. I know how to do a shit ton of things. But you’re not drinking anything until Dr. Purdue gets a urine and blood sample.”
“It was the masseuse. She did it!”
“Funny, she said the same thing about you.”
Richard looked alarmed. Or as alarmed as a groggy guy can look. “Good God, you don’t think I would…Marion! I didn’t touch her…This is crazy. Honey, ya gotta believe me!”
Marion really wanted to. She wanted to tell him she wanted to. Instead, she helped him to an armchair with as little physical contact as possible. Richard strained to look at the folded massage table against the wall.
“I started out there.” Then, pointing to the bed, “How’d I end up there? I need to know how this happened!”
Marion nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”
Then he put his arms around her hips and held on. She didn’t pull away. Not just because she’d peppered him with bruises and cuts, or because he was drugged and confused (maybe), or even because he looked so forlorn in her pink satin robe with the marabou trim. Marion let her husband hold on to her because it just felt so damn good.
Richard sighed and let his head rest against her tummy. “Oh, Marion! I wanna sober up.”
“Not me. I want to stay tanked for a month.”
“You call Barry Shapiro?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“And Dr. Purdue is on his way?”
“Yep.”
“So now we just wait?”
Marion looked around the room. The mementos she and Richard collected over twenty years of marriage had been reduced to shards in seconds.
“Yep.”
“Mmm.”
At this point Richard started nuzzling her tummy. It felt nice. A little too nice. Like being pulled into warm-husband riptide. Pulling her down toward his lap…
(Oh, no you don’t.)
Ten minutes earlier, this riptide was lying on top of a naked twenty-four-year-old.
Marion pulled away and headed for her closet. It was way too early for such tender affections. Not without seeing some drug-test results. Yes, she and Richard shared a twenty-year bond so close they knew each other on a freakin’ cellular level, and up until this horror show she would have bet her life that he could be trusted as a faithful, loving husband. But she’d seen too many trusting casualties of twenty-plus-year unions. Life had shown her “faithful” can turn into “bored” in the blink of an eye.
When push came to shove, Marion’s instinct for protecting her heart was stronger than the instinct that made her risk losing it to a man.
Extracting her Black Book from the safe, she flipped past the vast numbers of listings under the categories of Babies, Baggage, Ballet, Ballrooms, Banks, Bankers, Beach, Beachclubs, Biographers, and Biologists and stopped at the category titled Body Workers. Marion ran her finger past the international listings and the state listings, arriving at the Los Angeles listings, then, specifically, the House Calls section. She practically tore a hole in the page, drawing a thick black line through a newly entered service agency named Total Satisfaction. She added a cautionary skull and crossbones next to the cross-out, emphasized by three exclamation points—the strongest warning possible. And who had recommended this junk-show service, again? She had to erase half her cross-out line to see the name.
Marion returned the Black Book to the safe, moved back into the bedroom, and grabbed her purse from the hearth. She fished her cell phone out and flipped it open.
“What are you doing, now?” Richard complained.
“Texting Lyndy. I’m letting her know the massage agency she so highly recommended sucks.”
Unfortunately, the first thing that popped up on Marion’s screen was a close-up of Richard and Tawnee-of-the-Valley.
“Big-time,” she added.
21
A Fresh New Start
“This waffle smells like ass.”
“Manners, Brooke,” said Billy, without looking up from the fax he was reading.
That’s it? thought Claire. Manners?
In spite of last week’s torturous first night as a stepmom, she’d risen at five and painstakingly prepared strawberry-and-whipped-cream-topped Belgian waffles from scratch, fresh-squeezed orange juice, French coffee, and hot cocoa with teensy tiny marshmallows, also from scratch. It took half an hour to locate the waffle iron in Billy’s huge white-with-genuine-marble-countertops kitchen and she’d torn off a fingernail trying to open the evil European monster. Running late, she rushed on the nutmeg and grated the skin off a knuckle, burned her thumb, slopped orange pulp on her Ralph Lauren slippers, and ruined her new Hermès top with chocolate blobs and strawberry juice. The top cost more than her last car, back in Winamac. All in the name of getting a fresh new start with the girls.
The feast she’d laid out in the baby-pale yellow breakfast room was nicer than anything she’d ever seen in Redbook or InStyle, but when the three girls came in, they walked past her and her table without so much as a “Good morning” and started looking for cereal in the pantry. The only greeting she received was from Katia.
“We eat in the car, so we’re on time for school,” the nanny announced.
If you could call venom a greeting.
Luckily, Billy came in and coaxed the girls into joining them at the table. But as soon as he sat down, he buried his nose in his fax papers, leaving Brooke and Haley free to poke the waffles on their plates as if they were biology frogs for dissecting. Now they were openly insulting Claire! Why wasn’t Billy defending her? Where was her prince?
“Maybe they like that smell in Belgium.” Haley giggled. “Booty waffles!”
“It’s vanilla and fresh nutmeg,” clipped Claire, who’d had just about enough. “See? Here’s the knuckle I scraped off on the grater because I was rushing to make everything perfect for all of you.”
Brooke dropped her fork. “You bled in the food? That is so unsanitary!”
This wasn’t going well. They were baiting her and she was taking the bait. Kill ’em with kindness, remember? Just rise above.
“Nooo. Don’t be a silly! The only things in these waffles are organic farm-fresh ingredients and I think you’ll find they’re delicious if you’d stop poking and take a nice big bite.”
“I love this breakfast! It’s delicious!” yelled Eva.
She was the only one eating. Billy had barely sipped his French coffee. Judging from the six-year-old’s wildly smiling, sticky face and hyper-bouncing knees, Claire could tell that Eva was coming on to the hot chocolate and syrup.
“Well, thank you, Eva! Why don’t you show your sisters what they’re missing?”
“I’m going to take the biggest bite in the world!” Eva shrieked. “First a plump, juicy strawberry, then a crispy golden waffle, then some syrup and a big blob of whipped cream!”
Correction: Eva was experiencing a full-spectrum sugar rush.
“Atta girl,” cheered Claire.
It was working. The big girls weren’t about to let their sister be the only one to get a treat. Brooke actually took a bite and Haley sipped her hot chocolate. Nobody could resist this breakfast. Soon they’d be digging in. Claire clapped her hands in delight as Eva strained to get her jaws around the bite she’d speared. Everything was going to be fine.
“Eva, that is too big a bite.”
Katia entered and put her hands on her hips in disapproval. Claire wondered if the nanny came equipped with a pleasure detector that sounded an alarm for her when any opportunity arose to crush some joy in the vicinity. Well, she wasn’t about to let a sourpuss ruin a Secret Rainbow Princess Breakfast Party Moment. (Claire had revised her promise to incorporate marriage and stepchildren.)
“That’s the only way to eat Belgian waffles, Katia! Go, Eva, go!”
Eva’s sisters joined in. “Go, Eva! Go, Eva! Go, Eva!” they chanted.
Even Billy looked up from his reading. “Whoa, that is some bite!” He chuckled.
(Take that, sourpuss.)
Eva did her best imitation of a boa constrictor unhinging its jaws and stuffed the forkful in her mouth. She bit down, squirting strawberry juice, syrup, and cream goo all over herself. Everyone cheered. Everyone except Katia.
“Now look what you’ve done. You’ve ruined your sweater,” she snipped.
“Well, we’ll get her another one,” countered Claire. “Dig in, everybody. Let’s see if we can beat Eva’s record.”
“We won’t get another sweater like that one. Her grandmother knitted that sweater.”
“Well, she’ll just have to knit another one, because it’s waffle time!” Claire sang out, with glee.
Then she noticed everybody had stopped eating. And smiling.
“Our grandmother died last month,” said Haley.
“Oh, I’m so sorry…” Claire gasped as the whirlpool took hold of her.
“She knitted that sweater for me,” said Brooke. “I handed it down to Haley and she gave it to Eva. It was the last thing she knitted before the stroke took away the use of her hands.”
Correction: not just any old whirlpool, a giant toilet. Katia pointed out the handle and her stepdaughters gave it a six-handed flush.
“Go upstairs, Eva,” commanded Katia as she lifted the girl from her seat. “We need to get you clean clothes and wash that nasty syrup out of your hair.”
“I loved my grandma!” Eva yelled at Claire, without removing her thumb from her mouth. Then she burst into tears and ran upstairs.
“I didn’t know,” Claire said helplessly, wondering if it would kill Billy to step in on her behalf. He was back in his papers!
“Now you do,” spat Katia, and followed Eva out.
Making a quick mental estimate, Claire figured the nanny’s head was just thin enough to fit between the jaws of the waffle iron.
“Now we’ll be late,” mumbled Haley.
“Oh, God, I’ve got a test!” gasped Brooke. “I knew we shouldn’t have sat down!”
“Daddy to the rescue,” said Billy, rising. “My chariot awaits.”
He was rescuing the wrong princess. And Claire was the wrong dragon.
“Can I make anyone a to-go package for the road?” she offered in desperation.
Haley and Brooke looked at her like she’d offered to stab them, while Billy shook his head for her to back off.
“Grab your stuff, girls.”
Claire simply couldn’t compute what was going down. How was it happening? How, in this baby-pale-yellow breakfast room with the tasteful crown-and-baseboard moldings, with the best breakfast ever served? She’d always been the most popular—always crowned, never runner-up. And never, ever, a loser! How the hell did Belgian waffles turn her ‘Breakfast Moment’ into a shit sandwich? No. No, this wasn’t a disaster, just a tiny bump in her Promise. Claire was a Rainbow Princess and Billy’s wife, and Eva, Haley, and Brooke’s stepmom. She’d act like a stepmom and she’d be one, goddammit! Claire threw back her shoulders and flashed her best pageant smile at the girls.
“Bye, Brooke. Bye, Haley. Have a nice day at school! I’ll have chocolate chip cookies for homework, this afternoon!” she said, with dazzling enthusiasm.
They snatched up their backpacks and ran past her for the car without saying good-bye. Billy looked at his watch and drained his coffee. Thinking fast, Claire took his hand. If they could use tears, so could she.
“Oh, Billy, I tried so hard to make a nice breakfast for them. I didn’t know the grandma died.” She sniffed.
“Of course you didn’t, Cookie. Don’t worry, they’re just fussy in the morning. I’ll see ya tonight.”
Fussy? Claire had another adjective in mind. He’d called her Cookie again too. “But you didn’t even get to try the waffles.”
