Window Dressing. Nikki Rivers
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waitress showed me to a booth and I ordered iced tea. When she left, I opened the menu and immediately honed in on the dessert section. Chocolate Suicide. Yeah, I could use a little suicide, especially if it was sweet. But then I remembered the receptionist’s tight, taupe skirt. When the waitress came back, I ordered the salad of field greens with grilled chicken.
When it came, it was huge and it occurred to me that maybe I should eat half and take the rest home for dinner. I mean, maybe I was going to have to start doing that kind of stuff. Maybe I was going to have to start doling out my food so a loaf of bread would last me a week and a jar of peanut butter would last me a month. I’d have to start putting milk in my coffee instead of more expensive flavored non-dairy creamers. Unless, of course, I ended up living under a viaduct in a discarded washing machine carton where I’d only have refrigeration from October to May.
I nibbled while I thought of the humilities I might have to suffer, but as soon as the food hit my stomach I started to feel stronger.
I was right about this and Roger was wrong. I had four more years to get my act together. Not that I was admitting that I’d been irresponsible. You can’t be irresponsible and serve as PTA president, block watch captain and room mother. You can’t be irresponsible if you tucked your child in every night and made him breakfast every morning.
I stabbed a hunk of something green and ruffly and shoved it into my mouth. I was getting angry again. After all, marriage was a contract. A bargain between two people. Both Roger and I had been up-front before we’d gotten married about what we wanted and expected. I had kept my end of the bargain. Roger was the irresponsible one who hadn’t. It was hard to believe that in the beginning we’d both wanted the same thing.
I met Roger the summer before my junior year of college. I was working at a day-care center and I’d taken a group of seven and eight year olds on a field trip to the Milwaukee Art Museum, perched on the edge of Lake Michigan. We’d brought bag lunches and eaten them on the lawn near some huge, metal sculptures. Afterwards, I’d passed out little disposable cameras, given the kids a quick lesson and told them to get snap happy. It was such a joy to watch them decide what they wanted to shoot. I was grinning ear to ear when Roger came up to me and told me that he’d never seen anything as beautiful as how I was with those children. I was speechless. I mean, here was this terrific-looking man dressed in a gorgeous suit, looking at me like I was the best thing he’d ever seen. He handed me his business card and asked me to please give him a call so he could ask me out to dinner. I watched him walk away then looked down at the card.
An engineer. And at a firm I’d heard of. A firm everyone had heard of. You bet your life I called.
He wanted a traditional wife, he’d told me on our first date. Someone who would stay at home and raise his children. Someone who would care about his career, which was just starting to take off, as much as he did. It sounded like heaven to me. Raised by a single mother, I was a latchkey child before the term was even coined. Being a stay-at-home mother was exactly what I dreamed about being someday. I loved kids. I was only twenty-two, but my biological clock had been ticking ever since I’d started babysitting at fifteen.
After six dates, Roger declared himself enchanted and proposed. How could I refuse? He was offering me everything I ever wanted. This handsome, ambitious man wanted to take care of me and our offspring for the rest of our lives? Blame it on fiercely independent mother backlash, but I was more than happy to let him.
I became pregnant with Gordy when we were married less than a year. We bought the house in the Cove. Bought the minivan and the infant car seat. Life, as far as I was concerned, was beautiful.
Until Roger made partner. The youngest ever in the firm. He started to travel more on business. He started to buy more expensive suits. He started to complain about how I dressed. But the real fighting began when he enrolled us in a wine-tasting club. I just couldn’t get behind the idea of spitting out deliciously expensive wine once it was in my mouth.
By the time Gordy was six, Roger was no longer enchanted. Two years later, we were divorced.
Just as I was signaling the waitress for more iced tea, my cell phone rang. I dug in my purse for it and flipped it open. It was my lawyer.
“So, I’m right, aren’t I?” I asked in a rush of certainty that I really wasn’t feeling in my belly anymore. “I still have four more years.”
There was a moment of silence, then, “Lauren, maybe you should make an appointment and come in so we can discuss this.”
I closed my eyes. “No, give it to me now.”
She sighed as the waitress refilled my glass.
“All right,” she said. “No. You don’t have four more years.”
My mouth went dry. I looked at the retreating waitress in a panic. I didn’t have enough spit to call her back, so I took a gulp of iced tea then yelled, “Excuse me? Miss?”
She turned around and I said two words. “Chocolate Suicide.”
CHAPTER 2
Buzzed from the caffeine in two orders of Chocolate Suicide, I ran up the stone steps of Moira’s Tudor and jabbed the doorbell.
“Door’s open,” Moira yelled.
I found her in the living room, wearing only a pair of French-cut panties, rolling around on a Pilates ball.
“Jesus, Moira, what if I’d been the UPS guy or something?”
Moira jumped off the ball, her breasts bouncing with enthusiasm. “Then I guess I would still be getting some exercise,” she said with a smart-ass grin.
Moira was always alluding to other men and rumors were rife among the neighbors on Seagull Lane. I’d taken a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude and had no idea if the rumors were true.
“Geeze, honey,” she said as she took in my appearance, “you look like hell. And what’s that all over your shirt?”
I looked down. “I’ve just done two rounds with Chocolate Suicide.”
“Well, it obviously didn’t kill you, but, sweetie, you sure look wounded.”
For one harrowing moment I thought she was going to hug me. I don’t consider myself to be all that narrow minded, but that didn’t mean I wanted to feel Moira’s bare breasts against my T-shirt. Thankfully, she grabbed a kimono off the sofa and slipped into it. But not before I had enough information to put another Seagull Lane rumor to rest. Not an ounce of silicone on that body. I’d never seen them in action this long before. They were real, all right.
Heavens, was this any time to focus on another woman’s breasts? My world was crumbling. What did I care about silicone? “Something terrible has happened—” I began.
“Well, I’m here to listen and help but you seem awfully rattled. Before you start spilling your guts, you need a martini.” She peered at me again from under her false eyelashes. “Or maybe three.”
I was in no shape to argue. I followed her into the kitchen and watched her make a shaker of martinis.
“Here,” she said, handing me one. “Drink up.”
I’m usually a white wine kind of gal, but the first sip went down easily. Delicious and cold enough to ice skate over the surface. I took another sip. And another.
“Good,” Moira praised. “The color is starting to come back into your cheeks. Now let’s go get comfortable so you can tell mama everything.”
I followed her into the living room and sank onto one of the two white sofas that flanked the fireplace. While the women of Whitefish Cove often worked for years at taking layers of paint off their woodworks and crown moldings, Moira had done just the opposite. Everything was painted a creamy white—even the stone fireplace. Sacrilege to most of the ladies of the Cove, but I thought it was really quite striking. The color in the room came from a red shag rug on the floor and the artwork on the walls—which were mostly