Better With You Here (9781609417819) Page 6

  Ms. Hubacek may be young, but she’s obviously dealt with arguing parents before. She says, “Mr. and Mrs. Davila, I understand your concerns about Alex. I’m committed to making sure he doesn’t have any more accidents in class.” She looks at me and adds, “And that no one bullies him.” Then she turns to Mike and gives him a big smile that matches the ones he’s been giving her. I wonder if she thinks he’s good-looking, like I used to, back when I was her age.

  The meeting’s over now, so we get up and make way for the next parent, a tired-looking black woman wearing a pin-striped skirt suit. I break away from Mike and Missy and turn the corner to the front of the school, where Sara and I agreed to meet. Behind me Mike calls my name. I pretend not to hear him and keep walking. Whatever he has to say to me, I don’t want to hear it.

  I make it to the front, to the big foyer where lots of parents are milling around talking, and I look for Sara. It won’t be easy to see her in this crowd, given that she’s pretty short.

  Mike and Missy have caught up to me. “Natasha. Would you wait a minute? I wanted to talk to you,” he says.

  I turn to face him, arms crossed over my chest. This is it. He’s going to try to defend Missy’s honor because of the other day, and I’m going to have to tell off both of them, right here in front of everyone. God help me.

  He says, “I think you should let Alex spend more time with me, so I can help him with his math and his other issues at school.”

  Is this a joke? Some kind of prank? No, it’s Mike trying to show off for his girlfriend, and for everyone around us. He wants to look like a good dad, and he thinks I’m going to play along. But he’s not, and I won’t. I say, “Look, Mike, I don’t know why you’re here, pretending you care about the kids’ school all of a sudden, but you can give it a rest. I have it under control, all by myself, just like I always did.”

  Missy stands there with one hand on his arm and her other hand on the stroller, looking at Mike or at the baby—anything other than me. I’m sorry he’s dragging her into this, making it awkward for her, but it’s not my problem.

  He leans close to me and says, “You’re being a real witch, you know that? I’m just trying to do what’s right for my kids.”

  I can’t help but laugh at that. “Oh, really? Since when?”

  He takes a step back, and I take the opportunity to walk away. I have to walk away now, before things get really ugly. I hurry around a group of couples chatting, bolt toward the front doors, and practically run into Sara.

  “Natasha. Hey. What’s wrong?”

  Do I look like something’s wrong? Yes. I’m practically trembling, I’m so angry. “Nothing. Except…that was my ex I was talking to.”

  “Just now?” she says.

  “Yeah.” I lead the way out the doors, into the parking lot, and she follows.

  “Was that his girlfriend next to him? The blond chick with the baby?” she says.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  We don’t say anything else until we’re safe in my Blazer. I grip the steering wheel to force my hands still, to try to get hold of myself. “I can’t believe he showed up here. He never comes to the kids’ school for anything.”

  “Did he try to start shit with you?” Sara asks.

  “Kind of,” I say. “I mean, he was just sitting in there, interrupting everyone and acting like he was in charge of everything. Then he followed me out and started telling me he thinks Alex should spend more time with him, since he’s such a good dad and I’m doing such a bad job taking care of the kids.”

  “What? That’s total bullshit,” Sara says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck him,” she says. She sounds as angry as I feel. She clenches her fist, crumpling the sheaf of colored papers she carried from the school. “You know what? Fuck that noise. He was just trying to show off in front of his girlfriend, to make himself look good.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking, too,” I say.

  “What an asshole,” she says. “You know what, Natasha? Don’t let him bother you. You’re a good mom. He’s just pissed that you left him and now the best he can get is that skank.”

  I laugh despite myself. “You think she looks like a skank?”

  Sara rolls her eyes. “Big time. I saw all that makeup she was wearing and all that shit in her hair. Plus, the girl has no ass at all. You look way better than her.”

  Is she serious? No, she’s just trying to be nice. Loyal, like a friend would be. “You saw Mike, though. He can do better than me.” I don’t like saying this, but I don’t want to sit here and lie to make myself feel better, either.

  “What?” says Sara. “No way. I mean, I didn’t see him. I couldn’t, because there were people in the way. But fuck him. Natasha, you’re pretty, and you’re smart as hell, and you’re an awesome-ass mom. You take care of your kids better than anybody I know. He was stupid to let you go, and now he’s just trying to get back at you for it. Don’t let him get to you with that shit.”

  I know she’s just trying to be nice, but it feels good to hear what she’s saying. To have someone be so firmly in my corner, instead of a bunch of women who are only my friends because they live nearby and who have to stay diplomatic for the sake of their husbands. Sara reminds me a little of my friends from school. My best friends, before we lost touch.

  “You know what? You’re right,” I say. “Fuck him.” The word sounds funny coming out of my mouth, and we both laugh. Suddenly I feel like everything’s okay. Forget Mike and his pathetic attempts to look important. He doesn’t matter.

  I start the engine and pull out of the parking lot. “So how’d your conferences go?”

  Sara’s smiling now, all her anger purged and forgotten. “They went good. It was just like you said—the teachers gave their little spiel, and all I had to do was listen. Oh, check this out. Angelica’s teacher said she was doing real good and I should think about putting her in some special thing. Gifted something.”

  “Gifted and talented?” I say.

  “Yeah. That. What do you think? Is that a good thing? Does it cost money?”

  It feels nice to have someone so eager for my opinions, for my advice. I am a good mother, I can’t help but think as we drive back home. No matter what Mike says.

  Alex

  Mom and Dad are fighting again. I can hear them through the door. Dad’s saying, “Quit being such a witch, Natasha.” But then he’s saying the other word, too. The B-word. Mom’s screaming at him, and I’m scared. I don’t like it when she screams like that. Like she really is a witch. If I open the door, will she be Mom or will she be a monster, with a green face and red eyes? I can’t open the door.

  We’re in the car. It’s not Mom screaming, it’s Lucia. She’s saying, “No, Mommy, don’t forget Daddy!” Mom’s driving too fast, and I see Dad in the back window. He’s getting tinier and tinier, and we’re going up the freeway, and it’s too high. I stick my hands out the window, but Dad can’t reach me. He can’t see me anymore.

  “Alex,” says Lucia. Then she says it again, in my ear. “Alex. Alex.”

  I wake up.

  “Are you having a bad dream?” she says. She’s standing on the ladder that goes up to my bed, like Mom always tells her not to. “About Mommy and Daddy?”

  “No,” I say. “Get down before you fall.”

  She says, “I’m not going to fall.” But she climbs down the ladder and goes back to sleep.

  Natasha

  Alex and Lucia are in the doctor’s office, and he won’t let them out. They’re locked in. He’s going to take them to the hospital, without me.

  “It’s your fault,” Mike says. “You eat too much butter. You’re always eating a whole stick of butter.”

  “I don’t eat butter!” I scream at him. “You do!”

  I’m so mad at him for lying like this. He’s lying on purpose, to make me mad. I try to hit him, but I can’t reach. I swipe and barely graze him with the tips of my fingers. He doesn’t even flinch.

/>   “It’s your fault,” he says. He points behind him, as if to illustrate. There’s Missy, skinny in a pair of cutoff shorts. She’s bending over, doing some kind of exercise. Her thighs are impossibly slim, like a child’s.

  I’m so angry, so frustrated I can’t breathe. I’m trying to get the words out, to defend myself. “You lie!” I pant. “You tell lies all the time!”

  It doesn’t make a difference. The doctor gives me a look of disgust, probably believing that yes, I eat butter by the stick. He isn’t going to open the door and let me take the kids home.

  I can’t take this. I can’t freaking breathe.

  Damn it. Thank gosh for the too-loud alarm clock. How else would I have gotten out of that? I was about to have a heart attack in my sleep. I sit up and force myself to breathe slowly.

  “Mommy! Are you awake?” It’s Lucia, resident early bird.

  “I’m awake, baby.”

  “Is it time to get ready?” she asks. I see her silhouetted in my doorway, the night-light in the hall making her a shadow in pajamas.

  “It is time, baby,” I say. “Good job. Is your brother awake?”

  “Yes. I made him wake up.”

  “Good job. Go wash your face. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  She scampers away, and I rub my eyes, waiting for the violent images to dissipate. This doctor/butter dream is a new one. Usually it’s that we’re moving into a beautiful new house and then I find out that Mike has to live there with us, because I never actually divorced him. I wake up feeling stupid, like a failure. Or, worse, I dream that I’m having sex with him and that I’m enjoying it. Then I wake up hating myself. I feel betrayed by my subconscious and have to spend several minutes reminding myself why I would never, ever live with Mike again. As if there’s any risk of that, outside my dreams.

  Why can’t I dream about something good, for once? Such as Hector and a replay of Monday at the hotel.

  No. That would be even worse. Why am I thinking of that now?

  Because it’s the opposite of my nightmare. Because I’m lonely. Or maybe just because Monday at the hotel felt so damned good.

  Stop thinking about it. I can’t do that again. It was stupid. Dangerous. I’m too old to act that way.

  You know who’s stupid? Missy. Mike has her totally fooled. She thinks he’s so fabulous—that he’s a great catch who had bad luck on his first marriage. A nice guy done wrong by some crazy woman. But she’ll find out. Once they move in together, he’ll start showing his true colors, and she’ll see why he’s divorced. He’ll quit paying attention to her and her baby and start spending all his time with his friends. He’ll stop listening to her, shush her when he’s watching TV. He’ll treat her like she’s nothing more than his maid, his cook, his nanny, his blow-up doll, and he’ll be incredulous when she has the nerve to complain about it. Then she’ll realize that there are two sides to every story, and she believed the wrong one.

  Unless he really has changed. Is that possible? He did put her on his emergency contact list at school. That’s a pretty big commitment for someone like Mike.

  What if he really loves this woman, more than he loved me? What if he never really loved me at all?

  Maybe she really is more than just a rebound for him, and being with me all those years made him realize what he actually wanted in a wife. And he’s happy with her, and that’s why he’s treating her well and wants to be a good stepfather for her baby.

  No. It’s not possible. Is it?

  No. This is Mike. Selfish, inconsiderate Mike. He’ll slip back into his old ways, and then Missy will be heartbroken and have to dump him. I almost feel sorry for her, imagining it. It’s not her fault that she was dumb enough to fall for his act.

  I was that dumb, too, once. And no one feels sorry for me.

  Not even I do. It’s time to quit wallowing and get up.

  The other women at work hate using this old blue IBM typewriter, but I like it. Banging the keys and making them clack so loud is a good way to vent frustrations, and Lord knows I can use that.

  I like this job in general and feel lucky to have it, this sweet little gig as assistant at a law firm, in this nice little building with its plush carpet and single-serve coffee machine with all the flavors of the rainbow. We get all the normal holidays and Jewish ones, too. I like the peace and quiet in the mornings, before the lawyers and the lazier assistants coast in. There are two kinds of assistants who work here—the pretty ones and the ones who do the work. I know which category I fall into, and I don’t mind. Those other girls can keep giggling and applying lip gloss while I get certified as a paralegal. Prettiness lasts a few years, but certification is forever—assuming you keep up with the continuing-education requirements.

  The phone rings, and I have to get up from the typewriter, slip back into my shoes, and hurry over to my normal desk. It’s my personal line.

  “Waterson Price Merman O’Connell. This is Natasha.”

  “Natasha, hi. How are you? It’s Hector.”

  Oh, no. Hector. Why is he calling? I blame myself. I willed him to call by thinking about him this morning.

  Now that I think about the lunch hour we spent together, here in broad daylight I feel completely ashamed. A little nauseated, actually, remembering the things we did in that nasty hotel room. Worse, the things we said. All the sex-​related things and then, afterward, all the sad things. I think he cried. I don’t know. I don’t want to remember. Just hearing his voice now fills my mind’s eye with a close-up of the hole in his black dress sock. And I feel like I have a wiry black hair rolling on the back of my tongue.

  “Hector. Hi. What’s going on?”

  “Listen, I know it’s really late to be calling about the weekend, but I just realized that your kids are probably going to their dad’s tonight.” He speaks quietly, undoubtedly because he’s at work, too. “And I was thinking that maybe we could have dinner?”

  “You know, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, actually.”

  “You’re not?” he says.

  “No. I’m sorry.” I need to do this quickly, like ripping off a bandage. Shoot him down and get it over with. “The other day…It’s not that I didn’t enjoy your company, but I don’t normally do things like that.”

  “I don’t either. I don’t go around looking for women to…I’m not that kind of person, generally, and I know you aren’t either.” He sounds flustered and sincere. Really sincere. “But I’m glad that things turned out the way they did, because—”

  I cut him off. “Hector, I’m not ready to get involved in that kind of relationship right now. Or any kind. But no hard feelings, okay? Nothing personal.”

  He says, “What if it’s just dinner? Nothing else? What if I want to get to know you?”

  I say, “No, I think it’s best if we just leave it where it is. Otherwise I’d just be leading you on.”

  He’s quiet for a second, then says, “Well, okay. If that’s the way you want it.”

  Mr. Merman walks in, and that’s my excuse to cut the conversation short. “I have to go. Thanks for calling. Good-bye.”

  It’s over. I sigh. Maybe that was a mistake, but I doubt it.

  Get back to work. Move forward.

  Natasha

  According to the State of Texas Handbook for Divorced Parents, I’m not supposed to bad-mouth Mike or argue with him in front of the children. It states that even if Mike is a self-centered, insensitive jerk, he’s still the kids’ dad and therefore I have to keep all my anger to myself while in front of them. That’s in chapter 3, I think. That chapter also says that it’s not the kids’ fault that their dad’s a jerk. It’s mine.

  This is my punishment, until Lucia turns eighteen: Being forced to face the mistake I made—the man I married—every first and third weekend of every month. Being forced to pretend that I can stand the sight of my children’s father’s face and that I don’t fantasize about him disappearing from the face of the earth. It’s going to be especially difficult to do
this tonight, after last night’s episode at the school.

  We meet him in the complex’s front driveway, where the kids catch the school bus. He hasn’t been inside our apartment since we first moved here, when he made that crack about Alex and Lucia sharing a bedroom. I don’t want to give him any more ammunition for criticism. Never mind that he lived in a one-bedroom apartment for months after we split, even though he easily could’ve afforded better, and made the kids use sleeping bags during their weekends with him. There’s always a double standard—a whole other set of rules and expectations for Mike. When he had the kids sleeping on the floor, he whined that he was going through a rough period and I needed to cut him some slack. Meanwhile I spent money I didn’t really have on a sturdy set of bunk beds. But, according to Mike, the fact that Alex and Lucia sleep in the same room makes me a bad mother. “It’s not good for a boy and a girl to share a room,” he said.

  I hate it when he says that. I don’t even understand what he’s trying to imply, and it makes me wonder what kinds of things went on between Mike and his own sister when they were growing up. Either that or he seriously believes that sharing a room with a girl might turn Alex gay. That’s his number-one secret fear, I know—that Alex will turn out to be homosexual. When I met Mike, he acted as if he was okay with gays—as if he had the same basic political beliefs that I did. But the longer I lived with him and heard him make ridiculous comments—like, “Nat, don’t let Alex mess with your lip gloss. We don’t want him getting the wrong idea”—the more I realized how many idiotic beliefs he really held in that big head of his. Thinking about it today makes me wonder why I didn’t divorce him years ago.

  Most annoyingly, he seems to feel especially qualified to judge me, now that he spends half his time in someone else’s house—a house paid for by some other woman’s child support! It’d be funny—hilarious—if it were happening to someone else. Someone on a stupid sitcom, maybe.