Playing For Keeps. Karen Templeton
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you and wondering, Who the hell is this person and what is he doing in my bed? And, hey, just because two people shared living space, body fluids and three kids, where had she gotten off thinking that that also meant they shared the responsibility for the living space and the three kids who were the direct result of sharing body fluids?
Still, it hadn’t been all bad. The sex had been nice. And not infrequent, she thought on a despondent sigh. And there’d been laughter, at least in the beginning when she still believed she could count on Bobby to do what he’d said he’d do. She did miss that. And the sound of a man’s voice booming out to the kids when he came home from work—even if “work” had been a hand-out job from her father. She missed family dinners and Christmas mornings with everybody in their pajamas and secret winks over small heads and clandestine gropes when nobody was looking.
What she didn’t miss were the fights or the blank looks in Bobby’s eyes when she’d light into him about something and he’d look at her as though she were speaking Klingon. What she didn’t miss was who living with him had started to turn her into. Stewing in resentment was not her idea of a fun time. The thing was, she’d been more than prepared to give her fifty percent. Sixty, if push came to shove. But marrying Bobby had been like buying a jumbo bag of potato chips only to open the bag and discover it was half air. Even the make-up sex grew stale after a while. Phone calls from creditors really wreaked havoc on the afterglow, boy.
She’d felt cheated, is what. Although…well, to be truthful, not so much by Bobby as by her naive expectations. The nine years had definitely been a learning experience, that was for damn sure. But she also felt…what? Jolted awake? Something. Sort of a well-gee-there-he-goes-off-to-have-a-new-life-and-where-does-that-leave-me? kind of feeling.
Actually she knew where that left her. In a house with a leaky roof, ancient plumbing, a half-empty bed and three children with various and assorted issues probably stemming from the divorce and/or the shared custody backings and forthings. Oh, and two credit cards on the verge of meltdown. Although she supposed things could be worse: at least she had a roof, leaking though it might be, and everyone was healthy and…
And…
Well, hell. That was it?
Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.
Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.
“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”
“So does this.”
“But, Jo—”
“Hey. You invite yourself along, you ride in the van. I don’t have time to switch stuff over.”
“But, honey—”
“Mom? Get in. You can always duck if you see anyone you know.”
Glynnie did, her fashionably pale mouth set in a glistening line.
“And, if it makes you feel better,” Jo said as she backed out of the drive, “I’ll park far enough away from the gallery that nobody’ll see it. ’Kay?”
“And aren’t we being Miss Sensitive this morning?”
“I’m not the one who just looked at my car like it was dog poop.”
“I just don’t understand why you won’t let your father find you something a little less…used-looking.”
“Why, when this one already smells like the children?”
“I noticed,” Glynnie said, then lifted a manicured, beringed left hand to her hair, which, much to Glynnie’s perpetual chagrin, shot the control-freak image all to hell. Hundreds of itty-bitty corkscrew curls shuddered around her mother’s face, curls that had triumphed over every straightening and relaxing process known to cosmetology. At one time—like last week—her mother’s hair had been redder than Joanna’s. Today, however, it was kind of a strawberry-blond.
“Nice color,” Jo said.
“You really like it?”
“Yes, Mom, I really like it.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Glynnie said on a sigh. “Sylvia thought the natural color was getting too harsh for my face.”
Joanna swallowed a smile, then said, “So how come you’re not off slaying dragons this morning?”
“Because, my dear, your brilliant mother brought a particularly nasty one to its heels yesterday.”
“You’re kidding? Hawthorne versus Northstar? You won?”
“My ego really appreciates your confidence in my abilities.”
“Sorry. But from what I’ve heard, the case was anything but a slam dunk.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna caught her mother’s smug grin. “It wasn’t. Which made victory all the sweeter.” The grin widened. “Your father helped me celebrate.”
“With champagne and dinner?”
“That, too.”
Joanna’s already gloomy mood got gloomier. Her mother noticed.
“Okay. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Nothing. Exactly.”
Her mother waited. Joanna sighed. There wasn’t a person alive who could withstand her mother’s let-them-crumble-on-their-own tactic.
“Okay, Bobby came to take the kids to school this morning.”
“No wonder you’re grouchy.”
“I am not grouchy. At least, not just because he came over,” she muttered in response to her mother’s raised brows. “Tori’s pregnant. So they’re getting married. Bobby and Tori.”
“Sounds like a dance team from Lawrence Welk,” her mother said, then added, “What is the child thinking?”
Joanna had to smile. Tori had been temping at her father’s Lexus dealership—as a means of putting herself through college—when Bobby met her. By all accounts, she was bright, focused and mature for her age. How on earth she’d fallen prey to Bobby’s charms was anybody’s guess. But then…
“Ohmigod…Tori’s practically the same age I was.”
Beside her, curls bobbed. “Wondered how long it was going to take for that to click in.” She sensed her mother’s eyes on her face. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine. I think. But not because I have any feelings left for Bobby,” she hastily added.
After a moment her mother said, staring out the window, “You remember that blue Ellen Tracy suit I had, the one I gave away about five years ago?”
“Vaguely. Why?”
“I got rid of it because it no longer fit, for one thing. And I was bored with it, for another.” She turned to Joanna. “But damn if I wasn’t pissed when I saw some woman wearing it a few months later.”
Joanna chuckled. “I get your point. But that’s not it.”
“Then what?”
And without warning, Joanna’s mouth fell open and half of what she’d been thinking that