Best Friends & Other Liars Page 4

“What is wrong with you?” he asks, voice rising, accent thick. “You say go to boat! Then, no go to boat! Then go to boat!” His hands slice through the air as he speaks. “What do I do? Go to boat or no go to boat?”

  “Go to boat,” Vi says at the same time as I say, “Don’t go to boat.”

  I glower at her and she glowers back. The taxi driver throws up his hands in disgust. He folds his arms over his chest and slumps into the seat. “I will not moving until you figure out,” he tells us.

  “Leah, Richard isn’t even at home. Can we just go to the boat and go on this vacation and have a good time?” Vi’s eyes are pleading with me. I also know she’s lying to me. I saw Richard’s car in the driveway.

  “I thought you didn’t want to go? I thought it was going to ruin your marriage.”

  Vi miserably slumps back into the seat. “My marriage is already ruined anyway. There is nothing that you or I could say at this point to fix it.” She yanks off her wedding ring and shoves it in her purse. She turns to me and shrugs. “Might as well enjoy myself now, right?”

  I brighten at this optimistic attitude.

  “Really? You mean it?” I grab her arm and pump it with enthusiasm. I’m also thrilled she took her wedding ring off—a wedding ring would be kind of difficult to explain on a divorce cruise.

  She offers me a haggard smile. “Yeah. No use crying over spilt milk, right? I’m sorry I flipped out before. There’s no reason to ruin the vacation because of Richard. I’ll have to deal with that when we get back. The damage is already done.” Her face falls ever so slightly, despite her best efforts to smile.

  I’m torn between wanting to comfort her and to plow ahead with the cheerful attitude that she’s chosen to adapt. I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt knowing that it’s my fault that she and Richard are at odds with each other today. Well, not completely my fault, because their marriage was in shambles to begin with. The cruise is just the straw that sent the camel over the edge with a broken back. Or something like that.

  Just roll with it, I tell myself. There’ll be plenty of time to comfort her later. Like when she wants to kill you because she finds out she’s on a divorce cruise before she’s even gotten a divorce.

  “Absolutely! I totally agree!” I tap the partition once again. “Okay! To the boat we go!”

  The cab driver shakes his head with disgust as he puts the car into gear. “Women,” he mumbles, pulling back into the street. “I give up job as doctor in my country to deal with women. I should be gynecologist.”

  Men. I guess we piss them off even if we don’t belong to them.

  VIOLET

  We enter the parking lot next to the boat, and even though Leah has showed me pictures, they didn’t do this majestic ship in front of me justice at all. This was definitely not what I was expecting, although, I’m not so sure I know what I was expecting. I have never been on a ship...heck, I haven’t even been on a vacation that didn’t involve a theme park in over twenty years.

  As I step out of the cab and stare upward at the giant cruise ship docked next to us, I nearly stop breathing—I feel so much like Kate Winslet in Titanic. Ironically, that’s my favorite movie of all time.

  “We’re going on that?” I ask, staring at Leah who is handing the cab driver money. I’m too awestruck to dig in my bag to play our usual, I’m getting the check! No, I’m getting the check game.

  Leah nods as she grabs her rolling suitcase and jerks her head toward my suitcase and over the shoulder bag that the driver has deposited next to me on the sidewalk. “Get your bags. He’s not going to carry them.” The cab driver gives her a dirty look before climbing back into his cab.

  I feel like I’m in a daze as I pull the bag onto my shoulder and grab the suitcase handle. I blindly follow behind her, the working wheel of my suitcase spinning, while the other side of the bag thumps along, scraping the sidewalk.

  “Not what you were expecting?” she asks. “Are you disappointed?”

  “Disappointed?” I squeak. “How could I be disappointed? It’s so...huge,” I exclaim as I catch up to her.

  She smirks. “Men love to hear that.”

  I ignore her sexual innuendo. “I just didn’t expect it to have so many floors.” Using my hand as a shield over my eyes, I stare upward. There must be fifteen floors or more on this thing. “It’s bigger than the mall.”

  “It actually has a mall inside it,” Leah tells me as we roll our bags toward the entrance of the ship. Well, she rolls, I bump.

  “Are you kidding?” I squeal, grabbing her arm. I love the mall. Yeah, it’s a little cliché, but there’s nothing like roaming a large building with hundreds of stores...everything you could possibly want all in one place. It’s an ultimate time saver when I have to get stuff for the kids. If our mall had a food store I’d probably never have the need to shop anywhere else.

  “No, I’m not kidding,” she laughs. “Didn’t you read the brochures I sent you? It has a mall, three swimming pools, four hot tubs, a nightclub, a spa, thirteen restaurants, a bowling alley, and a theater.”

  I stare at her with an open mouth as we join the line to check in. “All that on this little ship?”

  “I thought you just said it was huge,” Leah remarks, raising her eyebrow.

  “Well it is,” I stammer. “I didn’t think it was big enough to fit all that and hotel rooms, too. It’s gotta get crowded with so many people. Not to mention all the kids running around.”

  Leah sucks in her breath and looks away. Kicking a twig with the tip of her boot suddenly seems to be fascinating her. I have known her long enough to tell that she’s hiding something from me.

  “Leah?” I poke her boot with the tip of my flip-flop. It’s the foot that’s not painted. Leah is right. It looks awful. But it’s not like I had a choice.

  I was in the middle of my pedicure this morning when Jeremy called me. He had basketball practice and was supposed to be catching a ride with his friend Anthony, who lives down the block. Apparently, Jeremy stayed up way too late last night and overslept, missing his friend’s repeated texts. He called me in a panic, needing a ride because practice had already started and the coach had called him, saying if he didn’t have his butt at practice in the next fifteen minutes, he was getting cut from the team.

  So I had to throw a twenty at the girl doing my pedicure and to rush off with only one foot done.

  When I finally got back home after dropping Jeremy off, I was filled with fury as I entered the house and saw Richard at the kitchen table, reading the paper and sipping from a mug. I had forgotten he was working from home today.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice reaching unnatural octaves.

  Richard glanced up from his paper and stared at me blankly. “Reading the paper. What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you’re not actually working and that you could have taken Jeremy to practice!” I cried out. I was on the verge of tears at this point. Was he purposely mocking me by sitting there and having a cup of whatever the heck he was drinking? I was willing to bet it was green tea because it was unlikely that Richard would “poison” his body with anything else.

  Richard shook his head. “No. I just sat down now.” He glanced at his watch. “From ten seventeen to ten thirty-four I take a break every day. Seventeen minutes is the optimal amount of time for a break.”

  I was not usually at home when he worked from home, nor did I know what he did when he was working at the gym, but I was certain that if my anal-retentive husband said it was so, he did actually take a break between those obscure times.

  But still, I was fuming, which was rare for me. Okay, okay. I tend to get angry with my family on a daily basis, but I hardly ever tell them about it. I bite my tongue and ignore it—usually. Most of the times, my aggravation manifests itself by complaining to Leah or writing pretend farewell notes. I know that sounds sick and twisted, but it usually is enough to make me realize my life isn’t all that bad and that I would never do
something as rash as attempt to kill myself over a little bit of family angst. It calms me down and lets me look at the big picture...in perspective.

  But this time, I guess I had just had it, and there was no more of me taking it on a stiff upper lip. I. Flipped. Out.

  “You couldn’t have possibly taken that break a few minutes earlier so that you could take your son to his practice? You couldn’t have saved me from rushing home and looking like an idiot with half painted toes, by taking your precious break ten minutes earlier? It would have taken you five minutes to drop him off!” At that point I had both my palms planted on the kitchen table and was leaning into his face.

  Richard didn’t react. At least not the way a normal person would. He simply blinked and continued to stare at me blankly.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be a break then, would it? I would still have to take a break after that and I’d get behind on the work that I need to do.”

  I didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or he was baiting me. At any rate, his response only fueled my anger, so if that’s the reaction he was going for, he got it.

  “Heaven forbid you get behind in your precious work to take care of your children!” I shouted, flicking my finger at the newspaper he was still holding, causing him to recoil, almost like a human. “Whatever that work may be. I can’t imagine you would have much to do anyway. You have twenty people down at the gym running the show for you. They’re the ones who register people and show them how to use the machines. They’re the ones who teach the classes, not you. They’re the ones who counsel the clients about what to eat and what not to eat. What work do you actually have anyway?”

  Richard lowered the paper, his face stony. “There’s more to running a gym besides showing people how to use machines and teaching classes.” He placed his own hands on the table and stood up, pushing back the chair. “There’s ordering to be done and payroll—”

  “You have people for that!” I shouted back. “Jennifer is your accountant and Harry orders everything for you. Even the stupid water bottles you put in the vending machine! And everything that they don’t do, Vic does!”

  I could feel the veins on my neck bulging at this point. Part of me was worried they would burst and I would drop dead on the floor, and the other part was hoping that would happen. “You do nothing at that gym except take up space!” I practically spat. “Just like here.”

  I should mention that Richard is over six feet tall and rather imposing. I’m not too short myself at five foot seven, but he towered over me, especially at that moment. Usually I would shrink back from him, but not this time. I was so raging mad that I didn’t care if he was a ten foot tall elephant in front of me. I was standing my ground.

  “I’ll have you know that my gym accounts for over eighty-five percent of our household income. My job is a hell of a lot more important than your idiotic job.”

  “My job isn’t—”

  He interrupted me by waving his hands around in the air. “I’m Violet and I work with people who aren’t ever going to amount to anything ever again. My job exists solely to bleed insurance companies dry,” he mumbled in the same voice someone who has had a stroke might.

  I stared at him like he had slapped me clear across the face, not even believing that he could have just said what he did.

  “Yeah, you heard me,” Richard spat. “Your job is pointless. Teaching those old coots how to talk and swallow their food? For what? So they can have another stroke two weeks later and die? Now my job, my gym...I help people. I help them so they don’t get fat and have a heart attack or stroke to begin with.”

  He pointed to his puffed out chest in such a self-righteous manner, I thought he was joking. And then, as I stared at his hard eyes, I realized, he wasn’t. The man that I had married really was that cruel and ill-informed.

  “People don’t just have strokes and heart attacks because they’re fat,” I said, my voice wavering. “People have strokes for a variety of reasons, many of which are not preventable and are not their fault.”

  Richard rolled his eyes. “Listen to you. You sound like one of those textbooks you poured over when you were getting your degree. And now you’ve given up taking care of your family to take care of some blithering fools with drooling mouths, and your children are running amok. They can’t even get up on time for practice. I can’t wait to see how they are when you come back from a week of ‘me’ time,” he sneered, with air quotes.

  This time, I actually staggered backward. Forget slapping me—he might as well have stabbed me in the chest. I grabbed at my chest and collapsed in the nearest chair, causing Richard to roll his eyes again.

  “Oh, you’re gonna get all dramatic on me, Violet?” He shook his head with disgust and glanced at his watch. “It’s ten thirty-six. See what you made me do? I went over my break time.”

  He grabbed the paper from the table and folded it neatly under his arm before sweeping past me to deposit it in the recycling bin. “Have a nice trip,” he said as he headed downstairs to his office. As usual, I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

  I sat there in shock, paralyzed by his words, for I don’t know how long—well, until I heard the sound of yelling. It jarred me out of my fog and I glanced at the kitchen clock to see that it was nearly eleven o’clock. I knew Leah would be by any second to pick me up.

  I should stay home, I told myself. Obviously, I’m doing a horrible job at being a mother. Richard’s right. I shouldn’t be going away on cruises. They need me at home. I’ve abandoned them far too much already working all the time. I’m going to stay home. I have to stay home. My kids and my marriage depend on it.

  I reached in my pocket for my cell phone to call Leah, to beg off this trip. I was prepared to quite possibly lose my best friend over this. As much as I loved Leah, she would never understand, or condone giving up so much for my family.

  I was actually dialing Leah’s number when I heard a crashing sound from the other room, followed by a high-pitched scream. I dashed toward the source of the sound, certain that one of my babies needed me. I could just picture Matthew or Samantha crumpled and broken at the bottom of the stairs.

  Instead, I found Matthew in the living room, feet up on the coffee table, spooning cereal into his mouth and watching cartoons. Samantha was in the recliner, noise-cancelling headphones on, deeply engrossed in a book. She probably wouldn’t have noticed if a T-Rex came storming through the living room on a firetruck. Since she was breathing, I assumed she fine.

  “What happened?” I asked Matthew.

  “Huh?” He paused his cereal eating, but didn’t take his eyes off the TV for a second. The milk dribbled out of his mouth and onto his chin.

  “The noise I just heard in here? The crash and the scream?”

  “Uh, I think it was on TV.”

  “You think? You don’t know?” I asked, in complete disbelief. How could he not remember if he heard a crash and a scream in the past thirty seconds? What the heck is he watching anyway?

  He shrugged at me, still not looking away from the TV. I shook my head and backed away from the couch, only to hear a crunching sound underneath my feet.

  “What the—”

  I looked down, lifting my foot to discover shattered glass on the hardwood floor. I leaned in to inspect further. An ornament had fallen off of the Christmas tree. I grabbed the biggest piece, one that read Our Firs Christm Togeth. What used to say, Our First Christmas Together. It was a Lenox ornament that my aunt had given Richard and me for our first Christmas after we got married.

  And now, it was shattered, smashed into a thousand pieces. Okay, maybe just a couple of large pieces and a few itty-bitty ones, but still.

  The dog sat next to the tree, happily thumping his tail on the ground. I bet that he got so overexcited about someone walking past our house that he wagged his tail...into the tree. He probably wagged it hard enough to shake the tree, sending the ornament sailing from its perch on a branch that I thought was more than safe fro
m his overzealous wagging. Stupid me.

  Nothing is safe from breakage in this house...no matter how hard you try to shield it.

  I bit my lip, thinking I was going to cry. But instead, I found that I had an overwhelming desire to laugh. Like inappropriate at funeral type laughing. I backed out of the room, laughing hysterically.

  It’s destroyed! We’ve had that ornament for seventeen years and just like that, it’s gone!

  I have no idea why I thought it was so funny, but I laughed out loud for a full five minutes—at times, I laughed so hard I had to hold my thighs together to prevent myself from peeing my pants.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs and I knew that it had to be Richard, but I still couldn’t stop my uncontrollable giggling.

  “What the hell is so funny?” he asked as he stepped around me to get to the table.

  I needed to take some deep breaths before I could actually speak, while Richard was staring at me like I was a deranged lunatic, escaped from the nuthouse.

  “An ornament broke, that’s all,” I said when I finally caught my breath.

  “That’s funny?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “It’s not going to be funny when someone steps on it and cuts their foot open.” He glowered at me and then continued, “Oh, wait it doesn’t matter to you now, does it? Because you’ll be far away from here, ignoring your family while I have to do everything.”

  He shook his head in disgust and grabbed his phone off the table. “Forgot my phone,” he grumbled as he pushed past me in his efforts to get back downstairs.

  I stood with my mouth wide open for a full minute until I felt a tug on my sleeve. It was Samantha, headphones around her neck, holding a dustpan full of glass.

  “I swept up the glass, Mom.”

  My lip trembled as she threw out the remains of the ornament into the garbage.

  “Thank you,” I said in a barely audible voice.

  She shrugged indifferently. “No biggie. Now you can go on the trip and not worry about someone’s foot getting cut.”