Just Like Me, Only Better (10 page)

“Oh, wow.” Hank paused—too long. “That’s really nice of you to offer, Roni. It’s just, Darcy and I . . . she’s got this client with a timeshare in Palm Springs. He couldn’t use it this weekend, so he offered it to us.”

“Palm Springs?”

“Well, Palm Desert, actually. Nice place—two bedrooms, gourmet kitchen, golf course view. As long as we’re childless for the weekend, Darcy and I thought it would be a great opportunity to de-stress.”

De-stress? Hank hadn’t worked in over a year! What could possibly be stressing him out?

“I wish you had told me about the Cub Scout thing earlier,” I said, my teeth clenched.

“It’s no big deal. Actually, it should be fun—I’m sorry to have to miss it. I’ll e-mail you the specifics.”

I paused for a moment to keep from screaming. “My e-mail doesn’t work.”

“Oh. Ha! Right. You just told me that.”

 

 

Shaun Mott, early for once, appeared at the guesthouse door at 5:30 Saturday evening, his curly red hair puffing out from the sides of his Cub Scout hat like a clown. Chilly air blew in around him. “My mom told me to come over.”

“We don’t need to be at the park for a half hour.” I had just taken a very hot shower and had about five minutes to dry my hair before it could be classified as Beyond Repair. “I’ll come get you when we’re ready.”

“My mom told me to.” Shaun clomped into the little house and plopped down on the loveseat, where he proceeded to stare, dull-eyed, into space.

Ben, sprawled on the floor with an army of plastic superheroes, eyed Shaun’s hat, shirt, and neckerchief. “Are we supposed to be in uniform?”

Shaun’s lip curled into a sneer. “Uh—
yeah
.”

Ben looked at me, panicked. “My uniform’s at Dad’s house.”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” I said in the fake-calm voice I adopted whenever Ben freaked out because something was at the wrong house. “We’ll go get it.” My hair was going to look like crap.

“But Dad’s not there,” he whimpered.

Oops. “So, we’ll get it from the housekeeper.”

“She doesn’t work on Saturday or Sunday.” Darcy did her own dishes two days a week? Now that was shocking.

Shaun’s uniform was a different color from Ben’s: beige instead of blue. It had something to do with rank or age or . . . whatever.

“Hey—I bet Shaun’s got an old uniform you can borrow! Don’t you, Shaun?”

“My mom gives all our old uniforms to this place that collects stuff for poor kids.”

In the end, Ben wore his blue Las Palmas Elementary T-shirt over another, long-sleeved shirt. Because of the temperature, he had to wear his heaviest coat (which was actually just a lined, hooded sweatshirt). “So no one will know what you’ve got on underneath, anyway,” I chirped.

“I wish I had my hat,” he said, lips quivering.

A little before six o’clock, we headed for the minivan, my hands shaking from the cold as I pulled keys from my purse. Somewhere I had gloves—I kept them in the front hall closet when I lived with Hank—but I had no idea where they were. There were so many boxes I had never unpacked.

Deborah Mott, attired in blue jeans (she’d managed to get dressed at some point during the day), came out of the side door, two colorful cardboard cartons in her hands.

“Twenty-four Capri Suns.” She heaved the cartons at me.

Oh, God. “Was I supposed to . . . bring something?”

“Didn’t you get the scoutmaster’s e-mail?”

I shook my head. Damned Internet.

“They assigned something to everyone. It was in the e-mail.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “
Brr.
Chilly. Well, you all have fun!”

“Benji? Did Daddy mention anything about bringing something tonight?”

“No.”

I tried Hank’s cell phone: no answer. It was getting late, anyway; there was no time to pick anything up. Oh, well. The Cub Scout pack was huge. They wouldn’t notice some little thing missing.

In the dusty parking lot, I slid my big red minivan next to Terri Sheffler’s even bigger gray SUV. The vehicle was easy to identify by the license plate (FAB♥FIVE) and the row of stick figures on the back window. The stickers showed two parents, three kids, two dogs, and a cat, with a name underneath each: Terri, John, Ashlyn, Blaine, Tyler, Angel (dog #1), Laker (dog #2), and Duck (cat).

Brea Dam park was a flat, grassy expanse with picnic tables, grills, and a huge fire pit, where a bonfire now roared. The dam’s gravelly wall loomed beyond us. A wooded hill rose on another side.

We hurried toward the fire, my feet already cold in backless shoes. Ben pulled his hood over his head—something he rarely did because he didn’t want to mess up his spiky hair.

“You cold, buddy?”

“Don’t want anyone to see that I don’t have my hat.”

Closer to the fire, little boys ran around in the semidarkness, while mothers fussed over a line of rectangular tables, arranging fruit and vegetable platters, store-bought cookies, and juice boxes. Fathers clustered around a couple of enormous, smoking grills, which allowed them to look manly and stay warm at the same time.

“I’ve got some more juice boxes,” I said, handing the Capri Suns over to a woman at the tables. So what if I was kinda, sorta taking credit for Deborah Mott’s contribution. She owed me.

“Terrific.” The woman checked my face, tried to place me. “Your son is . . .”

“Ben Czaplicki.”

“Ben! Right. Of course. He’s a . . . Tiger? But I thought you were bringing . . .” She shuffled things around on the table until she uncovered a sheet of paper. She had to squint to read. “Hot dog buns. Did you switch with someone?”

“No, uh . . . I didn’t know about the barbecue until yesterday. My ex-husband usually takes Ben to Scouts.”

At the word
ex-husband
, her eyes popped, just the tiniest bit. “Oh! Right! So Hank is your . . . right.”

“You need any help?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

I smiled and nodded. My face hurt from stress and cold.

“For future reference?” she said. “You can get all the information you need from our website.”

I smiled some more and then slunk off to find my son. Ben was standing on a picnic table bench, arm in the air, yelling, “Ahoy, mateys!” Around him, little boys in Cub Scout caps jumped and yelped and made pirate noises.

I caught Ben’s eye. “Hey, buddy. You want to find a place to sit?”

He shook his head and turned his attention back to his friends.

Some adults had arranged themselves around the bonfire in folding canvas camp chairs. I wandered over to an empty patch of dry grass and stood there, hugging myself to stay warm, gazing at the fire and only occasionally squinting at the faces around me, trying to spot someone I knew. Even Terri Sheffler would be better than nothing.

Ben had begged Carson to join Cub Scouts, but Nina refused. “It’s like a Nazi cult. All those uniforms and saluting? Nuh-uh.” Mostly, I think, she didn’t want the 6:30 meetings to mess up her dinners twice a month.

That was okay with me. I didn’t like the idea of Nina chatting with Hank and possibly deciding that he wasn’t a complete and total asshole.

“Veronica? Hey!” At the sound of the male voice I turned to see John Sheffler.

“Hi, John!” I had never been so happy to see John’s puffy face before. In fact, I had never been even a little bit happy to see John, who never seemed to say more than, “Hi,” “Hey,” and “Is that right?” At social gatherings, he favored corners, where he’d stand with his arms crossed over his striped button-down shirt—he must have had a closet full of them, all the tiniest bit tight over his belly. He’d gnaw on his bottom lip and check his big chrome watch every fifteen minutes.

Once, at a PTA fundraiser, Nina (who’d had a little too much to drink) joined John in his corner and said, “Are we keeping you from something important?”

John looked so baffled you’d think she was speaking Cherokee. Finally, he shook his head.

“You keep checking your watch,” Nina explained.

“Is that right?”

“Is Terri here?” I asked him now. I’d give anything to camp next to Terri for the evening. I’d even dole out some new-and-exciting details of my divorce. Like: Hank originally claimed to have met Darcy through work, but I’d recently found out that they had hooked up at a bar. (I wouldn’t tell her that it was the same bar where he’d met me. That was too painful.) Or: Hank’s mother, who insisted I call her “Mom” for all the years we were married, responded to my last birthday card with a note that said, “In light of the circumstances, I don’t feel that either of us should feel compelled to recognize special occasions.”

As it turned out, Terri would have to wait for these juicy tidbits.

“It’s just me and the boys tonight,” John told me. “Ashlyn’s at a friend’s house, so Terri was going to take a long bath and watch a movie on television.”

Oh, great. Monday I’d get to hear about how lucky Terri was to be married to John, who took the boys out on a Saturday night so she could take a candlelit bubble bath. Terri had spent a brief stint as a PartyLites home sales representative, so pretty much everything she did involved candles.

“You put your chair down yet?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “I didn’t realize we were supposed to bring chairs.”

I mentally thanked him for not saying, “It was in the e-mail.” Instead, he said, “You can use Blaine’s.”

The Shefflers’ blue canvas chairs were set up near the fire. I had about twenty seconds’ worth of relaxation before I noticed all the eyes on me.
Hank Czaplicki’s ex-wife is hitting on John Sheffler!

Maybe it was just my imagination.

John leaned toward me. No striped shirt tonight—at least that I could see. His ski jacket was navy blue. “You having a good year this year?”

“Sure,” I nodded and forced a smile. Nothing like divorce and poverty to get you off to a great start. “You?”

He nodded slowly, as if considering. “Fantastic.” He held my gaze a fraction of a second too long.

Maybe it was just my imagination.

I leaned away, just the littlest bit, and looked back at the faces around me. Okay, it was true: people were looking at us. If I were married, people wouldn’t think twice about seeing me chat with John. As long I was single, I was considered a threat.

“I’m starving!” I announced (even though I wasn’t). “I think I’ll go get something to eat.”

People were already lining up at the long tables, including Ben and his fellow Tiger Scouts. I was scooping a mound of macaroni salad onto a paper plate when I heard a kid say, “Where are the hot dog rolls?”

“Yeah, where are they?” another asked.

And then:
Yeah, yeah—hot dog rolls! There are no hot dog rolls! How’m I supposed to eat a hot dog without a roll?

When I heard an adult say, “The person who was supposed to bring them didn’t read her e-mail,” I wheeled around, prepared to stalk off to the bonfire with my macaroni salad. Instead, I bumped into Ken Drucker, looking very tall and outdoorsy in a dark green Columbia ski jacket, tan pants, and brown hiking boots

“Whoah!” He put a hand on my arm.

“Ken—hi! Hope I didn’t get you with the macaroni.”

“No, I’m fine. Is that all you’re eating?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

He looked toward the bonfire. “Where are you sitting?”

“Nowhere,” I said. “I forgot my chair.” And the hot dog rolls. And my brain.

“I’ve got extras in the car. I’ll get you one.”

So that’s how I wound up spending my Saturday night in front of a fire with Ken Drucker. We talked about his recent snow camping trip and about how many times he had climbed Mount Whitney (seven). We talked about my teaching experiences at Las Palmas Elementary. We commiserated about the stresses and confusions of single parenting, and he said, “Ha!” (again, not the guffaw but the word itself) when I confessed that I was the one who’d neglected to bring the hot dog buns.

There were so many not-so-subtle looks and whispers that I blurted out, “Do you think our picture will be on the front page of the
National Enquirer
next week?” After my recent experience in Beverly Hills, I half-expected a photographer to pop out of the bushes.

“Ha!” he said.

I felt myself flush—worried for an instant that he’d take my comment the wrong way, as if I thought any of the sparks crackling in the night air were the result of chemistry between us and not the fire.

“Do you date much?” he asked. His tone of voice—purely curious and platonic—put my fears to rest.

“Nah,” I said. “I don’t have the time or the energy. I just want to focus on Ben, for now. How about you?”

He shook his head. “I don’t feel ready yet. And I don’t think the boys are ready, either. The divorce has been rough on them. Besides, I really don’t meet any attractive single women.”

Realizing what he’d said, he covered his face. “That came out wrong. What I mean is—”

I laughed. “It’s okay.”

He grinned. “I guess what I’m looking for—if I were looking, which I’m not—is someone who can share experiences with me and the boys. Someone who likes camping and mountain biking. Rock climbing, ice fishing—all the good stuff.”

“That sounds . . .” I paused, trying to find the right word. “Exhausting,” I finished. “And cold and wet and just generally miserable.”

This time he laughed for real.

When the time came for the night hike, Ken loaned Ben a flashlight that strapped to his head. I made it halfway up the steep dirt path through the woods before tripping over my slip-on shoes.

“You go back down by the fire,” Ken told me. “I’ll keep an eye on Ben.”

“Thanks,” I said, relief gushing through me. “You’re a pal.”

I meant it, too.

 

 

 

M
onday morning, I dropped Ben and the Mott kids at school and headed for Santa Fe Springs, where I found Rodrigo waiting in the El Taco Loco parking lot.