And One Last Thing... Part 5

I found that message a little more cheerful, but I was still awake at 5:00 a.m. and not sleepy in the slightest.

I hadn't been awake to see the sunrise in years, so I decided to go out to the front porch and enjoy it. I settled into an old cane rocker with some juice and propped my feet on the porch railing. I loved the quiet time at the lake in the mornings, before the birds started chirping or the boaters and the jet Skiers started their wake wars. The water reflected a bright coppery light that made you feel cleaner and somehow healthier and more virtuous just for being outside in it. Even the gentle lapping of the water seemed muted and kinder.

I might have worried about the fact that I was wearing just an old Wildcats T-s.h.i.+rt, panties, and a surprisingly chipper expression. But the only cabin within sight was the old McGee place, about fifty yards down the sh.o.r.e.

The McGees had been friends of my family for generations. They were sweet people who co-hosted decades of Fourth of July barbecues with my grandparents. But the tradition had died with Gammy Muldoon. My parents preferred entertaining at their house and I hadn't quite graduated to hosting family holidays yet. I was still doing "hostess training wheel" events like baby showers and bridal teas. Besides, Harold McGee was getting older and no one had opened up the house for years. I thought so right up until the front door opened and my new neighbor stepped out onto his porch.

"Gah!" I yelped, tumbling off of the chair in a panty-baring heap. If there was one thing Mama drilled into my head, it's that you never have a second chance to make a first impression. And I had just made a first impression on my new neighbor with my a.s.s in the air. Lovely.

Maybe I could commando-crawl into the house without him realizing I was even there. I peeked over the porch railing to see him staring at me, openly smirking. "Morning."

Maybe not.

"Morning." I said, standing and trying to pull my s.h.i.+rt down as far as possible. I stood behind the rocker, hoping it at least would cover my bare legs.

My new neighbor, hoo boy. I will admit that the only reason I own the X-Men trilogy on DVD is that I have an unnatural fixation with Hugh Jackman. And here I was living next door to Wolverine personified. Old battered jeans, black T-s.h.i.+rt, bare feet, a lot of dark wayward hair and sideburns that desperately needed a trim. Sharp hazel eyes and sharper cheekbones, and a wide, generous mouth set in a grim line. He raised his coffee cup in mock salute and padded back into his house.

"I usually wear pants!" I called.

Later that afternoon I sat at the scarred maple breakfast table, my hands on my chin, staring at a Saran-wrapped Bundt cake. It was my special Ugly Cake recipe. Chocolate cake swirled with a cream cheese and dark chocolate filling. Once baked, it was about as attractive as homemade sin. But it was a really good ice-breaker, even if it was "Sorry you started off your day being confronted by my airborne a.s.s" ice.

And yes, I do consider cake mix and cream cheese to be essentials when I stock up on survival groceries.

Normally, baked goods wouldn't pose such a heated internal debate, but I was absolutely mortified by the whole pantybaring welcome. That whole incident had thrown me off-kilter. I came to the lake for solitude. I didn't particularly want to be on friendly terms with my neighbor. But here I was, having l.u.s.ty feelings for the Wolverine look alike, which could not be healthy in my present emotional state.

"Oh, screw it," I muttered, scooping the cake off the table and bounding for the door. "It's just cake."

I shoved the screen door open just enough to pop my new neighbor in the nose before I realized he was standing there. "Gaah!" he yelped, clutching his free hand to his face.

"Oh!" I cried. "I'm so sorry!"

"You are reedy bad at meeting people, aren't you?" he groaned, blood trickling out from under his fingers. In his other hand, he held a key ring.

"Come in," I said, chucking the Bundt and grabbing a handful of paper towels. I pressed the paper to his nose. "I'm so sorry."

He tilted his head back. "I broght you some keys that Mrs. Witter left for you," he said. "I did not expect a door to the face."

"I'm so sorry. I usually don't a.s.sault my neighbors. And I'm wearing pants. Look, see?" I said, indicating the very covering jeans I was wearing.

"Very nice," he muttered, blotting at his reddened nostrils. He extended his other hand and shook mine. "Lefty Monroe."

"Seriously?" I said. "You tell people that?"

He gave a brief flash of gleaming white teeth, then tucked them back away. It was the first time someone had smiled at me and then taken it back. Interesting. Lefty? And to think I was embarra.s.sed that I was going to call him Wolverine.

"Lacey Terwilliger," I said, extending my hand. I shook my head and corrected myself. "Lacey Vernon."

"New alias or multiple personality?" he asked, arching a brow, not shaking my hand.

"Newly separated. I'm taking my maiden name back," I said primly. I didn't think guys with prison nicknames should throw stones. But I did just hit him in the face, so...

"Sorry," he muttered, his eyes immediately putting up what I can only describe as "defense s.h.i.+elds." Well, that was just fine. No matter how good he looked in worn Levi's, I planned to maintain and defend the no p.e.n.i.s policy.

"I made you a Bundt cake," I said, handing him the plate. "But now I think I owe you another one for smacking you in the face."

"I would feel better if you kept your distance," he admitted. "G.o.d knows what you could accomplish with a cabinet door. Mrs. Witter said she would have left the keys in the house, but that she was afraid to. She told a very long story about you managing to lock yourself out of every room in the cabin in one afternoon."

"I was eight!" I cried. "This is the problem with continuing your acquaintance with people who have known you since your awkward adolescent phase. I'm expecting mine to be over just any day now. I'm really sorry about this morning. I didn't know anyone else was up here. The McGees haven't opened the house in years. I haven't seen anyone coming and going..."

"I'm renting from the McGees. I work from home," he said, his tone harsh and clipped. "I stay holed up for days at a time. I keep to myself."

The message could not have been more clear if he'd put up an electric fence. Stay away. Neighbors will be shot on sight.

"Oh, that's fine. I plan on being a quiet, keeps-to-herself, we-never-expected-to-find-those-bodies-in-the-deep-freeze type of neighbor, without the actual bodies." I said. "That probably wasn't rea.s.suring, was it?"

He shook his head, turned on his heel, and walked out of the house without another word. Generally, people wait until they've known me for a while to have that sort of reaction. I stared after him as he made his way to his cabin, as much in bewilderment as to seize the opportunity to catch sight of his denim-clad b.u.t.t. He seemed to walk with a slight limp in his left leg. And if I wasn't mistaken, one of his cheeks was, well, fuller, than the other. It was an a.s.s with character.

"Well, at least that wasn't weird," I marveled as he slammed the front door to his cabin behind him.

Of course, his being exceedingly grumpy and potentially crazy didn't change the fact that I sort of wanted to see him naked. Fine. I really wanted to see him naked.

10 * Meryl and Me.

It was the Fourth of independent - also of July, Independence Day. And I was known as alone and it wasn't so bad. I sat on the end of the dock, dangling my feet into the lake, watching revelers enjoy some ill-advised and not-quite-sober nighttime boating. I sipped lemonade treated with just a smidge of vodka while I watched the residents of Lighthouse Cove set off fireworks down the sh.o.r.e. Mama would have been horrified by the notion of my drinking alone, but mostly because I was so close to a body of water. She would have told me if it could kill Natalie Wood, it could kill me, too In my mother's mind, cautionary tales are timeless, however tenuously connected I watched the lights reflecting off the water, violent blooms of color that made my eyes ache and my chest tighten. It was a little lonely, knowing that there were families out there, celebrating. It reminded me of the Fourth when Emmett and I were diagnosed with pinkeye and had to sit inside while all of the other kids ran around with sparklers. Every echo of a Roman candle taunted us I had never spent a single holiday alone. As much as I used to resent being summoned to my parents' house or to the in-laws', it was sort of disorienting to have nowhere to go, nothing to do. If not for the fact that my mother kept making up excuses to call and check up on me - including calling to wish me a Happy Fourth that morning - I could have been eaten by wild boars or brutally murdered by my antisocial new neighbor and no one would know for weeks.

At the same time, I didn't have to make three dozen deviled eggs or a.s.semble some sort of patriotically themed outfit for the occasion. I wasn't responsible to anyone, for anything.

My soon-to-be ex-husband didn't seem to get that.

Mike had apparently decided that it was okay to break his lawyer's contact embargo if he needed something from me. Because he was basically a giant five-year-old. Earlier that afternoon, I'd been lounging on the couch, reading The Stand instead of the Emotional Homework for New Divorcees book Mama had insisted I bring with me. I'd unearthed King's masterwork from the front closet. I think one of my uncles had left it behind after a weekend visit. I was normally a Nora Roberts or Mary Higgins Clark reader, but I hadn't been able to put this book down. It turned out that I really liked Stephen King, or at least post-apocalyptic, metaphorical Stephen King. (I was still decidedly against child-devouring clown Stephen King.) Who knew?

My cell phone rang and, distracted by the seemingly ba.n.a.l, creeping evil of Randall Flagg, I answered it without thinking. There was no greeting or acknowledgment of any kind, just Mike imperiously demanding, "I need my blue suit. Where did you leave it?"

I was so stunned at hearing his voice, I almost barked out that I'd dropped it at Speedy Cleaners on Schultz Avenue. Like a trained seal.

Despite recent personal revelations, my instinct to soothe and serve shamed me. I was so accustomed to jumping whenever Mike needed something, to catering to his whims before he realized he had them, that my response was automatic. I wasn't a wife. I was a personal a.s.sistant - one of those harried, abused ones that sold their celebrity employers' secrets to the tabloids.

Of course, my mouth didn't have to catch up to my brain while I processed this, so my response was something along the lines of spluttering, "Beg pardon?"

"I. Need. My. Blue. Suit," he said, enunciating every word as if he were talking to a very slow preschooler. "Where did you drop it off? Oh, and did you mail my Netflix envelope?"

I stared into the phone, sure I had just hallucinated what he'd said. He hadn't talked to me for days, on the advice of counsel, and now he wanted to make sure I'd returned his rented copy of Alien vs. Predator?

Seriously?

Pressing the receiver to my ear, I demanded, "Do you have anything to say to me? How about, 'I'm sorry. I've been cheating on you. I was wrong'?"

"Oh, Lacey, I don't want to go through this again."

"We never went through it the first time, Mike. I mean, really, could you possibly be more cliche? Nailing your receptionist? Why not a c.o.c.ktail waitress? Or a stewardess? I file for divorce, and all you have to say is, 'Where is my blue suit?' What is wrong with you?"

Unused to hearing this sort of talk from me, Mike stayed silent on the other end of the line. He finally snorted derisively and said, "I think you've said enough for both of us. d.a.m.n it, Lacey, I was trying to stay civil here. But you just can't let it go, even for your own good. I know we were having problems, but I never thought you'd be dumb enough to pull a stunt like that e-mail. Why didn't you come to me so we could try to work things out? How could you be so stupid? Nothing can fix this. Do you understand? My parents are never going to forgive you, never. I thought my father was going to have a heart attack.

"What did you expect to happen, Lacey? That you'd write this horrible, slanderous piece of garbage and send it out to all of our friends and family and I'd suddenly want you again? And did you think about what you were doing to the business? Or Beebee? She had to go home to Natchez to visit her mother, she was so upset. She's humiliated."

"One, it's not slander if it's true. And, pardon me, but Beebee has been humiliated? I'm supposed to worry about Beebee? How about me? How am I supposed to feel knowing that the entire area code knew that you were cheating on me? That you didn't at least have the respect to try to hide what you were doing... from anyone besides me? I mean, really, what did you expect from me, Mike?"

I could hear him flipping channels on the TV. He had already checked out of the conversation. I was talking about the destruction of our marriage and I still couldn't hold his attention. "Come on, Lacey, you had to know something was going on with me and Beebee. I thought we had an arrangement. We were having problems, but I thought we had some sort of unspoken agreement to keep up appearances. I thought you knew to hold up your end of the bargain."

"My end of the bargain?" I exploded. "I a.s.sumed my husband was a decent human being who wouldn't do that to the woman he was married to. If I missed some obvious signs, it was because I wanted to believe you respected me enough to honor our marriage vows ... or at least not c.r.a.p all over them. And if you thought we had some sort of unspoken arrangement, that's because you didn't have the b.a.l.l.s to ask me about it and find out for yourself."

"You knew I wasn't happy. I mean, I was never home, [acey. I was always working. And when I was home -"

"When you were home, you weren't home," I told him. "You were talking about work, making calls for work, getting ready for meetings related to work, thinking about work, or h.e.l.l, probably thinking about Beebee. I'm not saying I was any happier. But at least I didn't run off and sleep with some Cheetos-colored bimbo."

"You don't talk about her that way," he growled. "Beebee cares about me. She listens. She cares about what I want, what I need."

"Asking whether you want to be on top or bottom doesn't mean she cares about you. Beebee's looking for a meal ticket, Mike. She wants an easier life and, fortunately for her, you are more gullible than she could ever have imagined."

"She wants to see me sail my boat, Lacey. She even came up with a name for it. The Liquid a.s.set."

"You don't have a boat, Mike."

"Yeah, but she wants me to finish it," he said petulantly. "She wants me to have a hobby, to relax. All you ever want me to do is work."

"When the h.e.l.l have I ever said that?" I demanded. "When have I ever insisted that you work more? If you felt pressured because we had to pay for the ba.s.s boat, which you wanted. Or the condo, which you wanted. Or the truck or the jet Skis or the club members.h.i.+ps - well, then maybe I could have gotten a job to help out. But you didn't want me to work. It was embarra.s.sing, you said. My job was to keep you going, to build this perfect, stupid life for you. That was what you wanted. Don't blame me because you changed your mind!"

"Beebee's what I want, Lacey. And I'm not being fair to her. I can't keep making promises to her that I can't keep."

"Oh, you're not divorcing me because of Beebee. You're divorcing me because I managed to shame you as much as you've shamed me."

"You won't last five minutes without me, you know," he sneered. "The house, the money, the credit cards. I'd love to see how you're going to get along without my credit cards."

"Aw, Mike, I wouldn't worry about it. I recently liquidated some a.s.sets of my own, so I think I'll have some pocket money for a while. Mr. Goote really is very generous."

"Mr. Goote? Why would you go to Leo -" Mike gasped. "Your ring? You hocked your engagement ring? That was a - Do you have any idea how much that ring cost?!"

I shrugged. "Probably twice what I sold it for."

Mike growled. "I'm going to leave you with nothing. No cards, no cash, no house, no car, nothing. By the time Beebee and I get done suing you, you'll be living with your parents, working double s.h.i.+fts at the Sizzler -"

"Oh, go sting the b.u.mbleBee," I sniped, shutting my phone off.

How, I wondered as I stared out over the water, could two intelligent adults end up like this? Well, one intelligent adult. Why was it that other relations.h.i.+ps had flourished and ours seemed to have stalled and died an agonizing, horrible death? Mike and I had been given all the tools to build a good life together. Both sets of our parents b.u.mped consistently along the gla.s.s ceiling between middle and upper cla.s.s. We had good orthodontia, summer camps, swimming lessons, new cars for our sixteenth birthdays. We graduated college without student loans. We got married at the First Baptist Church and our reception was held at the Singletree Country Club. The down payment on our sweet little starter house was a gift from my grandparents.

Maybe the problem was that we never struggled. There was nothing to bond us together, us against the world. We didn't have to turn to each other and figure out what the h.e.l.l we were going to do to pay the light bill or make the next house payment. We just coasted along. The thing about coasting is that it usually means you're going downhill.

I knew we were pathetic excuses for adults. I knew we should have told our parents to back off and just let us be. But it was so easy to let the hard stuff, the bills, the worrying, the minutiae, be taken care of so we could focus on getting our lives up and going.

I screwed myself over. That's the worst part. I did this to myself. I'd never lied to myself about the level of contentment in my marriage. I knew I was never blissfully happy. When I realized our newlywed life wasn't the ecstasy-fest I'd hoped for, I thought, "Well, no one is completely happy." And when I had to fight harder and harder to find the bright spots in my marriage, I thought there was something wrong with me. I had a beautiful home, a husband who provided for me, security, position within my community. Most women would have been thrilled with my life. I thought maybe I didn't feel things the way people were supposed to. Maybe my expectations were unreasonable. I even thought about going on antidepressants for a while, but we just don't do that in my family. Three b.l.o.o.d.y Marys for breakfast was perfectly acceptable, but a Xanax or two showed character flaws.

To give a more explicit example, in eight years I'd never had an o.r.g.a.s.m with Mike. Ever. Not even a promising twinge. I read somewhere that a good lover played your body like an instrument, listening for the right sounds and striking the ideal notes at the perfect time. Mike's playing style was more like "Chopsticks," hitting the same notes over and over again and n.o.body got any enjoyment out of it.

At first I was convinced it was because I was just too nervous that Mike might trick me into s.e.x that I couldn't relax enough to enjoy our "we'll do everything but that one thing" phase. That was followed by our "let's just get it out of the way so there's no pressure on our wedding night" phase, followed by the "is that it?" phase. Just after we were married, I convinced myself that I was still too new to s.e.x to enjoy it properly. About three years in, I finally realized that Mike Terwilliger was just lousy in bed.

By then, the mere mention that we might need to buy a book or get some counseling sent Mike into a snit that lasted two weeks. It wasn't his fault that I didn't respond to him, he said. If I would just relax and give in to some of his naughtier fantasies, I'd be having multiple o.r.g.a.s.ms in no time. Unfortunately, most of his fantasies weren't all that naughty. He really thought having s.e.x in our tent on a camping trip was living on the edge.

I convinced myself my problem was clinical, like I had some nerve endings disconnected somewhere. I even tried talking to my doctor about it, but Dr. Metzger, our general pract.i.tioner, had been treating me since I was four and was extremely embarra.s.sed by the conversation. He used some Yahtzee metaphor I didn't understand, something about scoring combinations and not expecting multiple Yahtzees in the same round, and then quickly left the exam room.

Of course, my self-diagnosis that I was dead from the waist down changed when I attended Genie Howett's Pleasure Chest home sales party. Genie, who Mama had always called "fast," had taken up selling various toys and lubes at home parties for pocket money. She announced this after her husband, Duke, cut up her MasterCard.

At the time, none of us were sure whether she did it because she enjoyed the work or because she wanted to embarra.s.s Duke into opening another account for her. Three years later she was the regional s.e.x toy queen managing five saleswomen. But this was her first party, a sort of trial run, before she launched herself on the public. While Duke was away on a duck-hunting trip, she invited about a dozen old friends to her house for "tapas, margaritas, and s.e.x swing demonstrations."

Mike practically lay across the driveway to keep me from going. He considered the idea of me buying a vibrator a direct insult to his manhood. He seemed to think the other women in the room would know what his "shortcomings" were based on what I bought. He'd almost talked me out of attending - heck, I was almost apologizing for wanting to go - when he said, "You're not going to go spend my money on that c.r.a.p." I don't know whether it was the tone of his voice or the "my money" part that p.i.s.sed me off more, but I shoved about two hundred dollars from my mad money jar into my purse and slipped out of the house.

Imagine sitting in a perfectly respectable living room full of giggling women you've known since your Tumble Tots days, drinking from obscene margarita gla.s.ses and pretending not to be looking at a hot pink catalog chock-full of things you've only seen on the internet. You're expected to maintain eye contact with a saleswoman as she uses words like "c.l.i.toral stimulation" and "nipple tingling."

"Now, if you want to know whether a toy is powerful enough for you, touch it to the tip of your nose," Genie managed to say without any irony. "It's the most sensitive non-erogenous part of the body."

Despite the fact that several women gamely pressed candy-colored small appliances to their faces, I declined. After several seconds of nose-buzzing, Genie laughed and said that putting the toy to the web between your thumb and forefinger worked just as well. Despite their margarita consumption, our embarra.s.sed, red-nosed party compatriots were not amused at Genie's attempt at breaking the ice, so she started pa.s.sing stuff around the room to appease the crowd. I was handed something called the Velvet Slide, a small, blue, curved piece of pliable plastic that, frankly, looked like something a naughty dentist might use. I blocked out Genie's explanation of where exactly I was supposed to use it as the slender body jolted to life. I glanced around, but no one was looking at me. They were fixated on hardware of their own. I pressed the flat tip to the crook of my hand and felt... tingly. A strange, full awareness in my special places. It was primal and powerful and -...

This must be what gun nuts felt like at the firing range.

I wanted this. I wanted to take this home with me right now. The woman sitting next to me practically had to pry it out of my hands to pa.s.s it to the next woman. I leaned over to Genie and whispered. "I think I want that one."

"Good girl!" she squealed, clapping her hands like an over-caffeinated cheerleader. "Your first vibrator! I'm so proud!"

I laughed, sipping my drink as I was handed a large purple latex wand with elaborate p.r.o.ngs and probes coming off the sides. "Dear Lord!"

"I see we've moved on to the heavy artillery," one of the other guests marveled, her eyebrows raised.

"Is it a tuning fork?" I asked, poking a finger at the little probe on the back. I was beginning to suspect it was meant to go where nothing had ever gone before. "Why are there little Greek G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses molded on the sides?"

Ever helpful, Genie reached over and turned the dial on "high."

"What the -" I cried as the vibrator started spinning and twirling like a carnival ride.

"We call it Zeus's Thunderbolt," Genie said, winking at me. "It's one of the most powerful vibrators on the market."

"Why would anyone want a Greek-themed vibrator?"

She was caught between a grin and grimace and nodded at the offending probe. "Well, you know, the ancient Greeks were into -"