So Much for My Happy Ending (31 page)

“Fine,” Tad said sulkily. “Can we eat now?”

I took another bite. The pancakes were great but for some reason I no longer had an appetite. I just wanted Tad to go to work so I could have some space to breathe. So when Tad kissed me before leaving and asked how I wanted to celebrate my birthday that night I told him that I had made plans with Allie. “Girls' night out.” Tad knew it was a lie and I could see the hurt in his eyes. I felt horrible, but I couldn't celebrate with him. I could barely stand to be in the same room with him.

About an hour after he left, Bobe called. “Happy birthday,
mummala
. So how does it feel to be such an old lady?”

“Tiring,” I answered. Bobe laughed. She thought I was joking. Over the last few months I had managed to keep my conversations with Bobe brief and infrequent. If she knew about everything that I was going through she'd be devastated, but lying to her was beyond awful.

“So what plans do you have for the day? Perhaps Tad is taking you out for a proper meal for a change?”

“For a change?” I plopped myself on the chair by the phone. The one thing I had been able to consistently count on Tad for was a good meal.

“Last time I saw you, you were too skinny. You need to eat more.”

I looked down at my ever-thinning figure. The last time Bobe had seen me I was getting married, at which time I was probably seven to ten pounds heavier than I was now. How had that happened? “I'll have a large meal tonight,” I said.

“Good. Tad will be wanting children soon and it's not good to become pregnant when you are malnourished. Very bad for the baby.”

My neck muscles tensed. Bobe had no idea that I had already lost one child. She didn't know how understanding and caring Tad had been, and she didn't know how much I wanted out of my marriage.

I put my hand over my heart and stifled a gasp.
I wanted out of my marriage.
When I had thrown the word
divorce
around at the Bubble Lounge I had told myself that I was joking…just being dramatic in the face of controversy. But I had meant it. I had sworn that I would stand by him in sickness and in health, and now he was sick and I wanted out. I hated myself.

“
Mummala? Mummala,
are you still there?”

“Yes, Bobe, I'm still here but I have to get going. Tad took the day off work for my birthday and I'm supposed to meet him at our favorite breakfast spot.” It was frightening how the lies rolled off my tongue.

“Oh good, you go and eat,” she said. Then more tentatively, “When will I see you again,
mummala?
It's been so long.”

It had been quite a while. A lifetime. “I'll come down next weekend. Tad won't be able to come due to a new business deal he's putting together, but I will.” I looked up at the painting Tad had purchased with my credit card. “I actually have a gift for you.”

“It's your birthday and you're giving me gifts?”

“I bought it awhile ago, and have been meaning to give it to you.”

“Nothing too extravagant. Don't waste your money on me.”

“Don't worry, it's just something to hang on your wall. Look, Bobe, I really have to go. I'll call you in a few days?”

“Of course,
mummala.
You go meet that husband of yours. Such a handsome man and a real mensche, too.”

I winced and muttered a last goodbye before hanging up. A real mensche. A real sick mensche married to a real selfish bitch.

The phone rang again. It was unlike Bobe to call back…“Hello?”

“April, it's Mom.”

I bit my lip. I had been waiting for things to settle down before trying to reconcile with her, but I now realized that by the time that happened we'd both be dead. “Mom,” I said in my best professional voice, “I've been meaning to call you.”

There was a long pause before she spoke again. “You're not going to hang up on me?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Really.” Another silence. “I wasn't expecting that.”

“I'm sorry, did I throw you off? If it would help I could hang up on you now.”

I heard my mother sigh into the receiver. “I called to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

“I got you something. I had my astrologer do your chart.”

“Of course you did.” The words slipped out before I was able to check them. I really didn't want to be sarcastic. I cleared my throat and decided to throw her a bone. “What did my chart say this year?”

“It says that this will be a year of self-discovery and…well, it just says lots of stuff.”

Now,
this
was different. Usually she couldn't wait to give me the details of my horoscope. “What did my chart say, Mom?” I asked again, this time with genuine interest.

“It said that the year would be filled with self-discovery and that a relationship will end while others will become stronger. And in September, Saturn will be entering your seventh house and, well, that's bound to stir up lots of trouble.”

I slumped back in my chair. “That's just fucking great.”

“These things aren't always right, you know.”

My eyes flew open. My mother had broken up with men based on their sign and now she was telling me that “these things aren't always right”? Was she saying that to spare my feelings? That would be a first. “Is everything okay, Mom?”

“I want you to have a nice birthday. We used to have so much fun on your birthdays when you were little. Do you remember how we tried to make a vegan ice-cream cake for your ninth birthday? We even tried to make the ice cream ourselves.”

“But the cake never rose and the ice cream never hardened so we made giant milk shakes and ate the cake with a spoon.”

My mother laughed. “I never could bake anything.”

“You did okay with the hash brownies.”

There was another long pause and again I regretted my words.

“I want you to have a nice birthday. I know I owe you that.”

I furrowed my brow. She was acting as if she had a lot more control over my day than she really did. “Okay,” I said carefully. “I'll have a nice birthday.”

“Good. Look, I need…or…Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Sure.” I could tell that there was something going on, but it was also obvious to me that neither of us wanted to get into it right now.

“I'll call you tomorrow then. Happy birthday, April.”

“Thanks.” I put the receiver into its cradle. That had been weird. Granted, I hadn't spoken to her for over four months now, but there was more to it than that.

I shook my head. I had other things to deal with. I pulled out Tad's prescription and looked at the chicken scrawl that was written across the white paper. This was the answer to my problems. Tad would take his medicine and everything would be back to normal.

It had been normal once. Hadn't it?

M
y mother did call the next day but only to set up a face-to-face meeting, but she had just started a job with some medical marijuana advocacy group and her work schedule wouldn't allow her to get into the city until the end of the week. So now, five days later, I sat at a little two-person table at Herbivores and waited for her to arrive. She hadn't wanted to meet at my place, which had been fine with me. Even though Tad wasn't home very often I still didn't feel comfortable being there. Caleb and Allie had ended up taking me to a movie on the evening of my birthday and afterward Caleb had handed me the enrollment papers for Berkeley's summer language program. The forms had a box to check if you needed housing. I had been
soooo
tempted. How sad was it that living in a dorm at the age of twenty-seven seemed preferable to living in a house with my husband?

When I saw my mother's figure appear in the front entrance, I took a moment to study her before waving her over. She was wearing a long A-line tie-dyed skirt and an orange tank top with an open oversize denim shirt hanging over it. Her burgundy highlights had gone red but it looked as if she hadn't touched them up for a while. She was tugging at the end of her shirt and looking around as if she expected to see a gunman pop out from under a table and take her hostage. I had seen her behave like this before and I knew what it meant; she was in trouble. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit. I did not need this. She had probably gotten involved with another idiot who didn't take kindly to being dumped, or maybe she had been busted for possession and had skipped bail. Whatever it was, I didn't want to deal with it, and I resented the hell out of her for having the nerve to drop it in my lap after she had skipped my wedding. I considered ducking under the table but it was too late. Her eyes caught mine and she managed a shaky smile. She crossed over to me and I stood up to give her the hug I knew she expected.

“April, you're so thin!”

I pulled back. My mother never noticed my weight. I smoothed my shirt and realized that my rib cage did seem a little more pronounced.

I motioned for her to take a seat and pushed a menu in her direction. “The vegan dishes are marked with a star, so you don't need to quiz the waiter about the ingredient list.”

My mother didn't even look at the choices printed in front of her. “Does Tad know you're meeting me?”

Deep in the recesses of my mind a little warning bell went off. “No, I didn't get around to mentioning it to him.” I had barely gotten around to speaking to Tad.

My mother nodded and finally looked at the menu. “I'll have mixed green salad,” she announced.

Now I knew something was wrong. The mixed green salad was the most conventional thing on the menu. It didn't even have tofu in it.

The waiter came over to our table and I ordered, despite my complete lack of appetite. The minute he left, my mother leaned forward and took my hand. “April, I know you're angry with me and maybe you have a right to be—”

“Maybe? Are you kidding?”

She shook her head and continued as if she hadn't heard me. “I just need you to know that I really liked Tad. I wouldn't ever say anything bad about him if it wasn't…if it wasn't true.”

The warning bell had turned into a siren.

“Mom, what do you know about Tad?”

She looked like she was going to cry. “The whole calendar and bumper-sticker thing…it's just a mess, April. He promised he would give everyone a refund for the calendars or at least redo them, and the bumper stickers, well, those still haven't arrived, and now the other congregants think that Tad and I conspired to take their money or something. I mean, the Children of the Earth are the most forgiving and patient people in the world but everyone has their limits and now I'm afraid…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I held up my free hand to stop her. “What are you talking about? What calendars? What bumper stickers?”

“The ones that he was supposed to make for the Temple of the Earth Goddess. You knew he was going to make them.”

“No, he promised me that he wouldn't.”

My mother's eyes narrowed. “Then it's you? Are you the reason that he didn't fix the calendars?”

“There weren't supposed to be any calendars to fix.” My voice went up a few decibels. “He was never supposed to start the project. He promised me before we were even married.”

“Oh…” My mother looked puzzled. “But he did do some work on them since then. I got the first shipment a month after you got back from Spain. April, they're horrible. He got all the holidays wrong, and some of the pictures show these horrid man-made structures…”

“Tad sent you the calendars a month after our honeymoon?”

“Yes. I suppose everyone could have lived with the pictures, but the holidays…instead of putting the Day of the Bear on May fourth like it's supposed to be, he put it in December. December! Bears hibernate in December! And he completely forgot about the Day of the Amphibian, and that's one of the biggest holidays of the year!”

Was this seriously happening? I withdrew my hand from hers and nibbled on what was left of my fingernails. I had bitten them to the quick weeks ago. “So you're saying that Tad made these calendars for you and then when they weren't up to snuff he refused to fix them?”

“No…not refused exactly. He said he'd fix them. He just didn't. Oh, and the order was short by twelve calendars, and the bumper stickers never came in at all. We paid him up-front for all of it, April. He said that it was necessary to cover his production costs. Now whenever I try to call him his secretary puts me through to his voice mail and he never returns my calls….”

“You could have called me!” My voice carried through the restaurant and a few heads turned in our direction.

“Sweetie, I did call you but you never returned my calls. I left you lots of messages explaining everything. Didn't you listen to any of them?”

She had left several messages on my cell and I had listened long enough to determine that it was her before pressing the delete button. “You could have tried my home,” I mumbled, knowing damn well that I wouldn't have listened to those messages, either.

“What are you talking about? I left at least ten messages on your answering machine last month and at least that many the month before.”

“No you didn't or I would have gotten them….”

I felt a stabbing sensation in my chest. Tad always checked the messages from his work. And if he was checking the messages he could have been deleting them, too.

One by one, more of the puzzle pieces were fitting together. Tad had good reason to encourage the recent estrangement between my mother and me. He hadn't wanted me to find out that he had conned her and her friends. Once again he had been trying to conceal the true nature of his character.

“How much money have people shelled out for this little business venture?” My voice was icy. I was beyond angry. I was beyond any emotion that I had ever experienced.

“A little over three thousand.”

“For calendars and bumper stickers?”

“Well, there were about a hundred and thirty or so orders for calendars and almost two hundred orders for bumper stickers…”

“I'll talk to Tad.”

My mother shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “April, I'm picking up some very bad vibes. Have there been other problems between you and Tad? You just don't seem as…as shocked as I suspected.”

“You were trying to shock me?” I let out a humorless laugh. “You should have shown up with a French manicure and an Ann Taylor suit.”

“There have been problems, haven't there? The few times I talked to Tad on the phone, he had a lot of negative energy.”

I met her eyes and considered my options. Telling the truth about Tad's illness might buy him some time with the jilted Earth Children. That would be a good thing, especially since California was a community-property state, which meant his debt was my debt. “Tad's been going through a hard time,” I said slowly. “He was recently diagnosed as being bipolar.”

My mother gasped. “Bipolar? Who diagnosed him with that? A western medical doctor, I bet.”

“Well, it wasn't his acupuncturist.”

“They're always trying to diagnose people with things these days. I bet they put him on medication, too. That's why he's acting this way.” My mother shook her head in dismay. “Listen, April, Tad's just a free spirit. I'm sure he's simply having a hard time harnessing all his creative energy while working in that corporate job of his.”

“SMB isn't a corporation, it's a private partnership.”

“Private partnership, corporation—” she waved her hand in the air dismissively “—it all falls under the same evil capitalist umbrella. He needs to find a career more suited to his enlightened mentality. It's the medication, I'm sure that's why he hasn't been able to fill the product order. When you were a little girl I hooked up with this guy named Jordy. His doctor told him he was bipolar, too, but he didn't buy it. He never took a pill and he was just fine.”

“Jordy…I think I remember him. He was the one who was arrested for writing bad checks, right?”

My mother tapped the table thoughtfully. “I forgot about that.”

I threw some money down on the table and got up. “Mom, I've got to go. I'll call you as soon as I talk to Tad, okay?”

She flashed me a relieved smile. “Thank you, April. I knew I could count on you.”

It took me exactly sixteen minutes to get home. The first thing I noticed was Tad's car. He was home early. Good. That saved me another unpleasant trip to SMB. I stormed inside and found him sitting in the living room listening to Mozart while staring into a glass of what looked like whiskey or bourbon. He didn't even bother to look up as I entered. So it was Barcelona all over again. Wonderful. But this time his behavior didn't scare me as much as it just pissed me off.

“Tad?” I spoke his name at a volume that would suggest that we were separated by a football field rather than a coffee table.

His eyes rolled up in my direction but he didn't say anything.

“Why are you home?” I asked, although I wasn't at all sure if I cared.

“I decided to call it an early day.” His voice sounded hollow. “It was just a bad day, that's all.”

“You had a bad day? What a coincidence, I had a bad day, too. I bet if we compared notes we might even find out that we both have the same problem.”

“What would that be?” Tad asked.

“You.”

He straightened up. Now I got a real good look at him. His face was flushed and his eyes were glazed over and red. No doubt he had been drinking for a while now.

“What are you talking about?” With an unsteady hand he lifted his glass and slammed the rest of his cocktail.

“I just had lunch with my mother.”

Silence.

“You son of a bitch,” I hissed. “All this time you were telling me that I needed to cut my mother out of my life because it was the best thing for me but it wasn't about me at all, was it? It was all about you, as always.”

Tad shook his head and clumsily pulled himself to his feet. “No, I didn't want you to talk to your mom 'cause she's bad for you.”

I took a step back in disbelief. I wasn't sure if I had ever seen Tad this hammered before.

“She's bad for you, April,” he continued. “You don't need her.”

“Oh, really? So I should just disappear from her life the way you disappeared from your mother's life?”

“Yes!” Tad nodded enthusiastically.

“Because that worked so well for you. I mean, look at you. You're just the poster boy for mental health, right?”

Tad didn't answer, just gazed at his empty glass.

“And your advice didn't have anything to do with the fact that you ripped off my mother's Earth Goddess cult to the tune of three thousand dollars?”

Again, no answer.

“You are amazing.” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked up at the ceiling. “The bipolar piece is just the tip of the iceberg isn't it, Tad? I mean, your problems go way beyond that. You're a full-blown sociopath.”

“I'm not a sociopath,” Tad growled.

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “Let's see what Webster's dictionary has to say about that.” I marched over to the bookcase, pulled out the dictionary and flipped to the correct page. “‘Sociopathic—characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder.' So let's think about that. Do you think you were being very social when you were staring at the wall of our hotel room in Barcelona? Do you have a healthy social relationship with your sister or brother? Oh, that's right, you're an only child.”

Tad snatched the dictionary out of my hand and threw it to the ground. “Listen, I didn't—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I don't want to listen. You'll just lie to me. You know I could have forgiven the unfilled bumper-sticker order, but for you to try to convince me to disown my mother just to protect yourself…that you could erase her messages…” I shook my head and fought back the tears of hurt and anger. “I'm leaving you, Tad. I'm going to pack my things right now and I am leaving you.”