I hoped the Coburns weren't watching my ex-boyfriend use their son for his fifteen minutes of fame.
Eric wasn't the only one who'd been approached by the media. Oh, yeah. I'd been called, too. Thanks, but no thanks. I let them all go to voice mail.
The Friday meeting with Eric that Jonathan had set up loomed like a tornado on the horizon. Eric had even sent me an email to confirm. And another to Jonathan, cc'ing me, saying how much he was looking forward to our "pitch" and seeing how it compared with the others he'd been fielding.
Jonathan had sent me a memo with bullet points on the pitch. It was color-coded.
At least I had Kate to look after. Though I felt guilty about it, I was glad to have a purpose. I baked her a chocolate cake to temper her cramps and found some sci-fi movies for us to watch. Brooke and her sons had come over the other night, and the second she walked in the house, Brooke started to cry. I took the boys into the media room and played astronaut with them, tipping them back in the chairs and doing a countdown with all sorts of drama and blastoff noises. At least I'd been able to make them smile.
Kate was quiet and appreciative. She'd always been on the reserved side, always seemed so together, always a little removed from the complicated, messy, intense feelings the rest of us dealt with. Maybe it was the camera, always by her side, always documenting life rather than making her live it, in a way.
Even so, I still felt fairly useless. I wasn't able to think too far into the future. My job wouldn't cover rent on a decent place in town, and I loved Cambry-on-Hudson. I scanned the internet for jobs that might pay more than the magazine, but there wasn't much out there. Nothing for philosophers, nothing for disgraced news producers.
Interior decorating might be fun, but I quickly learned that was a field glutted by housewives who thought they had good taste (like me); any real career came only after a degree and an apprenticeship.
Dog-washing? Dog-sitting? Ollie told me with his beautiful brown eyes that I was the world's greatest person. At least I had him.
On Monday night, Kate told me she was going back to the grief group, and I perked up. "That's great!" I said. "Hey, do you mind giving me a ride? Not to your group this time, but, well...maybe the divorce group."
And so it was that I walked into the basement of St. Andrew's, waved to the adorable Leo and the even more adorable George, then went into the next room. Alas, it was AA, where they were chanting the Serenity Prayer. I finished with them-"And the wisdom to know the difference" could be applied to so many situations, after all-then went into the correct room, according to the sign. DWI: Divorce With Integrity.
"Catchy name," I muttered.
And there was Jonathan, who did a double take at the sight of me. Super. Still, I smiled. It was not returned.
There was no Lileth for this group, just four people, two middle-aged women: one wearing yoga pants and a tired T-shirt, no makeup; the other decked out in skintight leather pants, stacked heels and cropped top more suitable for an eighteen-year-old French prostitute than a fifty-year-old soccer mom. Tiny frame, double D boobs, tight eyes. Her teeth were so white they hurt my eyes. Seemed like she'd coped with divorce by becoming a plastic surgery junkie. She reminded me a bit of Candy.
For men, we had Jonathan and another guy, about forty.
"Hi," I said. "I'm Ainsley. I work with Jonathan, and my boyfriend of eleven years dumped me on his blog. Do I qualify for this group? The widows and widowers kicked me out."
They swarmed me (minus Jonathan). Marley and Carly were the women, each divorced in the past year, both with kids. Henry was the other guy-midforties, good-looking, well dressed and possibly in the closet. If not, I might introduce him to Kate. When the time was right, of course.
The metal chairs were in a circle, same as the grief group.
"Sit, sit," Carly (or Marley) suggested. "We'd love to hear your story. You're Sunshine, right? Sorry, I read the blog. Who hasn't?"
"Yep. Feeling more like a little black rain cloud these days." I looked at the chairs. "Can I make a suggestion? Is there any reason why we can't go out for a drink instead of staying here?"
"We always meet here," Jonathan said.
"You have a point," Marley (or Carly) said to me. "I could go for a strawberry daiquiri. Why do we meet here, anyway?"
"To avoid becoming bitter alcoholics?" Jonathan suggested.
"Who's bitter?" Henry said. "A piña colada would taste great right now. And if things go south, we know where to find AA."
* * *
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in Cambry Burgers & Beer. I'd suggested Hudson's, which was closer, but Jonathan grimly insisted on this place, which was lively and fun (surprising, because Jonathan had picked it.)
We ordered drinks and appetizers and exchanged the usual getting-to-know-you chitchat. Except Jonathan, who already knew me, of course.
"So I went on my fifteenth first date this weekend," Marley said (I'd ridden with them and figured out who was who on the ride over). She had an inch of gray roots showing and cracked her knuckles as she spoke. "He won't call. I'm surprised he even made it through the entire drink."
"What did you wear?" I asked.
"Does it matter?" Jonathan said.
I turned to him. "Yes. It's all about first impressions, Mr. Kent." I looked back at Marley. "I would love to give you a makeover."
"I've been asking her to let me do the same thing for a year," Carly said.
"So I can get a pair of these, Barbie? No, thanks," she said, jabbing Carly fondly.
"Maybe we could do mutual makeovers," I suggested. "All us women style each other."
"Except you, Ainsley, you're adorable. I wouldn't change a hair," Marley said. She chugged half her margarita. "You really think you could help me? I'm old, honey. I'm fifty-four."
"That's not old, and sure!" I said. "I love clothes. And makeup. And shoes."
"That would be fun," said Henry. "I'm a hairdresser. I'd love to have at you both. Not you, darling, you're perfect," he added, adjusting a strand of my hair. "Though a streak of gray would be very on fleek."
"I've thought about it," I said, smiling at him. "So on this first date, Marley, did you talk about your divorce?"
"Of course. He has to know what I've been through."
"Ah, that's a no-no. My mom is Dr. Lovely, the advice columnist. She just wrote about this."
"Really? I love her! I read her online every day! No wonder you know so much."
I smiled, oddly proud of Candy.
Jonathan stared fixedly at a point past my head. Carly detailed a wretched first date she'd had with a ninety-one-year-old man who'd lied about his age by three decades, and Henry told us he wasn't quite ready to put himself out there just yet.
I did wonder about Jonathan. I'd seen him on that date the night Eric dumped me. And I was dying to know what my stick-up-the-colon boss did in his spare time. Taxidermy seemed about right.
"Okay," Marley said after we'd put a dent in the appetizers. "We actually do talk about divorce stuff, Ainsley, so let's get down to business. Everything's confidential, okay? That's one of our rules."
"Nothing is confidential, since we're in a public place. Anyone could overhear us," Jonathan said.
"Who wants to go first?" Carly asked. "How about you, Ainsley? Since you're new?"
I had just taken a bite of a very delicious slab of quesadilla, but I nodded and chewed, held up my finger and chewed some more. "Well," I said finally, "my boyfriend seems to have had some kind of nervous breakdown or something. The man I love is not the man who's doing all this. But all this is being done just the same, you know? So how do you reconcile that? I mean, I want to get back together with him. How long do I put up with this? And how do I forgive him? And when do you think he'll snap out of it? He really was the best boyfriend ever."
Three sad, sympathetic faces looked back at me. Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Oh, save your contempt, Jonathan," I said. "You didn't know him before cancer. He was great before cancer."
"He was your only boyfriend, isn't that right?" Jonathan asked.
"Yeah. So?" I was a little surprised Jonathan knew this.
"So you have no point of comparison."
"I didn't need one," I said.
"I told myself the same thing," Henry said. "That Kathy was going through a midlife crisis, that she wasn't herself and that we could get back to the way things were. Hasn't happened, and the truth is, I'm starting to feel...happy. Like I'm free from all the expectations of our life together and can start to be the real me."
Hairdresser, piña colada, free to be the real me. Yep. Henry would be marching in the gay pride parade next spring. Maybe Deshawn and he could hook up. The old opposites attract thing.