Why is there a squirrel wearing a diving helmet at the bottom of the ocean?
I hear the distinctive rumble of Quentin’s car, sigh, and put the half-eaten spaghetti bowl on the coffee table. He pulls out of the driveway and glides down the street in front of me. I turn my head to watch him go and sob, shaking as remorse clutches hard in my chest. Is this it? Is he gone now?
I shake my head and drop back into the couch. The spaghetti doesn’t feel so appealing anymore but I slowly eat it anyway, cutting the meatballs with my fork. I eat the whole damned bowl, put it in the sink, and come to the couch with a double helping of cheesecake covered in cherries. Sweeter than sweet, they pop in my mouth and melt into the velvety cream cheese.
By the time I’m done, I can hardly move. My head flops back against the couch and I start to doze off again, staring at the ceiling.
I sleep lightly for the next few hours, snapping awake every now and then. I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something, but it’s just nerves. I’m used to being at work or hovering over my kids twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I don’t remember how to relax anymore.
When I finally wake up after some weird dreams influenced by overeating and the cartoons droning in the background, it’s almost time to go get the kids. I yawn and look down at myself. I’m in my pajamas and there’s spaghetti sauce on my chest. I wipe it up with a napkin but it leaves a stain anyway.
Fuck it.
Yawning, I put on my sneakers, grab my keys and start plodding down to the bus stop. Great, now I feel fat.
I can’t help but look over my shoulder. Quentin’s car is in the garage. He hasn’t left yet.
He could still change his mind. I should go…
Go what, crawling on all fours, begging for him? No. I’m not going to let some man wrap me around his finger ever again. Never ever. I did that before and look where it got me. The only thing I have in my life is my girls.
My girls.
I wait at the bus stop with the other moms. It’s weird how many of my neighbors don’t work. Half of them are in sweatpants and the other half are dressed up from whatever part-time job their husbands pat them on the ass and send them off to during the day. Selling houses or whatever.
The kids file off the busses (the neighborhood has enough kids to require two) and I wait.
I wait, and I wait.
All the kids pile off. The doors slap closed, and the busses’ diesel engines snort as they roll off, rumbling, and my kids aren’t there. Karen and Kelly aren’t there.
Panic reaches up from somewhere deep and squeezes my heart.
I’ll call Karen. I pat my pockets. No phone. I left my fucking phone at home.
Turning back to the neighborhood, I bolt, running full tilt, ignoring the burn in my legs and lungs. I run all the way back to the house and stop, almost falling when I spot Russel’s Jeep in my driveway.
I can’t muster the energy to run. It feels like I’m swimming up to the house. The door is open.
Russel is in my fucking house, and so is his slut. Her name is Skyler. She’s twelve years younger than I am. When she started riding Russel’s dick she was barely older than Karen is now, a freshman just like I was, although this time he learned his lesson and plucked a flower that wasn’t in his classes.
I hate the sight of her. Tall and willowy, she has a model’s proportions, a pretty heart-shaped face with rosebud lips and high cheekbones, and a haughty look. Her hair is bleached blonde and she’s either wearing a padded bra or she’s gotten implants since the last time I saw her. She’s in my house, making sandwiches in my kitchen.
“Oh, hi,” she says, “The kids were hungry.”
Kelly doesn’t care. She’ll eat anything anybody puts in front of her. If looks could kill, Karen would burn a ragged, hot hole through Skyler’s forehead. She accepts the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in sullen silence and takes one bite before slapping it contemptuously on the saucer and folding her arms.
Russel stands in the living room, staring at the television.
“Hello, Rose.”
“What do you want? Why are you in my house?”
“It’s my house,” he says blithely.
“Then you should pay the mortgage.”
“I’m up to date on all my payments.” He gives the tomato sauce stain on my chest a contemptuous look. “I see you’re keeping yourself up.”
“I had a day off from work. I don’t get many of those. I have to work myself to the bone taking care of my kids and paying the mortgage on this monstrosity.”
“That’s a shame.”
Russel doesn’t look much different from the first time he connived me into his bed. He’s got a little more gray—when I first fell for him he had those little wings along his ears and exuded that “older man” charm that dumb girls like me fall for so easily. God, I’m such a cliché. If I’m not falling into the arms of an older man I’m getting used as a fuck toy by an obnoxious bad boy.