“I LOVE MINIMUM DAYS,” SAID SLOANE, EXPERTLY SPEARING A PIECE OF salmon sashimi with her chopsticks. In the middle of the afternoon on Valentine’s Day, she sat between Adam and Mel at the breakfast nook in the kitchen window, the three of them sharing a platter of take-out sushi.
“You can say that again,” said Adam, pouring miso soup into the pretty Japanese stone bowls Mel had gotten him for his birthday last year.
“I love Minimum Days,” Sloane repeated, giggling.
“Me too,” said Mel, trying to sound convincing, though she resented the many ordinary school days declared “Minimums” by John Wayne Elementary, meaning that school ended at one thirty instead of three o’clock, always for some utterly inessential reason. Today, for example, the PTA (Mel made the “strongly recommended” contribution of two grand to join, but had never attended a single meeting) needed to decorate for that evening’s Friendship Fiesta, their careful euphemism for a Valentine’s Day Dance, as if any direct reference to the romantic holiday would cause the children to instantly rip their clothes off.
Then again, given the texts—ugh, sexts—Sloane had been swapping with Tyler Fabian, Mel didn’t mind the name of the dance quite as much as she normally would. Although Sloane had been on her best behavior since the meeting with the principal, accepting without protest her full month of No Screen Time of Any Kind, and dialing back her snarkiness, Mel still couldn’t see her daughter in quite the same way as she had. A certain innocence had been lost, the door to puberty’s menace flung wide open.
More than anything, Mel couldn’t stop wondering if she’d been responsible for her daughter’s troubling behavior. Yes, the sexts had happened before Mel had climbed into the van with Zack, but could Sloane somehow have sensed the terrible, family-wrecking choices her mother was going to make? Could the sexts have been some sort of preemptive cry for help, Sloane’s subconscious attempt to throw Mel off her disastrous course? Sloane was noticeably happier since her parents had reinstated kindness in their marriage—the kindness Mel had derailed in the first place.
What sort of mother left her daughter in aftercare an extra hour so that she might tear off the clothes of a thirty-two-year-old gym coach who had voted for Trump?
Stop it, Mel commanded herself, taking a sip of miso soup. Since she’d ended things with Zack and recommitted to her (non-cheating, exceptionally handsome) husband, her self-loathing had ratcheted up higher than ever.
“You okay, Mom?” Sloane asked. “You’re doing a weird resting face.” She tipped her head and peered at Mel curiously, eyes wide.
“I’m fine, honey. I was just . . .” Mel’s voice caught in her throat. How had she let herself risk hurting her sensitive, quirky, brilliant little girl by having—she forced herself to think the accurate description—an affair?
“Meditating?” guessed Sloane.
“Something like that,” said Mel.
“How lucky am I,” Adam said, clearly sensing Mel’s mood and hoping to lighten it, “to be having lunch with both my girls today?”
“Women,” corrected Sloane. “Right, Mom?”
“Sorry,” said Adam quickly. “Women.” Mel knew he was trying; normally, he would have responded with some sarcastic, barely cloaked criticism of her—Well, Mommy is the word police, she could almost hear him saying.
Instead, Adam was being nice to her. So why wasn’t she feeling more grateful? After all, she’d been wrong about him. Dead wrong. And those fawning Santa Monica mothers, the ones who’d batted their lash extensions at Adam during soccer games, the ones Mel had privately labeled ditzes, had been right: Adam was a good man. The best, really. And somehow, he still belonged to Mel. Her life was full again.
So why did she feel so empty?
Adam lifted his ceramic teacup. “A toast, please. To my favorite women.”
“Hashtag cheesy!” said Sloane, but clinked her cup to Adam’s with a grin, and Mel could hear the delight in her daughter’s voice. She willed herself to focus on this—her happy family, sitting in their beautiful kitchen, winter sunshine pouring through the leaves of the magnolia in their front yard—and ignore the fact that Sloane’s hashtag comment had caused Zack’s face to appear in her mind, his aqua eyes and brown curls as clear and vivid as a photo.
Mel wasn’t completely sure he’d be attending the Woolsey Fire Benefit, which she’d impulsively offered to host, but a part of her hoped, desperately, that he would.
No. Zack was the past. Mel now lived in the present, just as everyone in Southern California had been suggesting for the past two years. Facing forward.
Who was she becoming? Was it possible she was losing her inner Brooklyn? Had leaving New York made her not only a shitty, lust-crazed wife and negligent mother, but also shallow, just another California mom floating from school drop-off to the gym to Whole Foods and kids’ soccer games on the beach?
Sloane abruptly dropped her chopsticks onto the table and leaned forward, toward the large window facing the front yard and Georgina Avenue and beyond, as if suddenly hypnotized by something outside.
“What is it, honey?” said Mel.
Sloane extended her arm and pointed toward the street.
“Look,” she said. “Someone’s spying on us.”
Mel and Adam looked.
Idling on the curb directly in front of their house was a rusted maroon pickup truck.
Mel felt the miso soup and seaweed salad she’d just eaten rise. Zack was sitting right there, in broad daylight, with the window rolled down, his elbow propped casually on the frame.
“Hey,” said Sloane. “I know that guy!”
“You do?” said Adam, sounding genuinely curious.
Mel was sure she was going to throw up. Maybe this was it: the punishment for her sins. The premature arrival of the hell she’d been so certain didn’t exist. You didn’t get to do what she’d done—fuck a guy who wasn’t your husband in half the hotels of Los Angeles County—and get away with it.
“Yeah,” said Sloane. “That’s the guy mom was holding hands with at my soccer game.”
“Oh,” said Adam. “Is it?”
Mel snapped into survival mode. “Holding hands? What?” She tried her best to sound incredulous. She might be a terrible, weak person, but she didn’t deserve to lose her family now, in one fell swoop.
Did she?
“And why were you holding his hand, Mel?” said Adam calmly.
“Holding hands? Ha! Not at all. Though I can see why you thought that, Sloanie. That’s just some . . . trainer guy from my old gym. I bumped into him at Clover Park a few weeks ago and he gave me a high five. He’s always giving everyone high fives! He’s, like, famous for it. It’s a . . . like a tic. He’s kind of an . . . idiot.” She heard herself stumbling over her words, saying like too much, as if she were a teenager caught breaking curfew.
In short, acting guilty.
Shit shit shit.
“Is he also ‘kind of’ a stalker?” said Adam, hooking his fingers into air quotes. “Because showing up at the home of a client from the gym strikes me as odd behavior.”
Out of nowhere, Regina flashed to her mind. Mel could almost hear her saying, You got this, Goldberg, in her firm, imperturbable way.
What would Regina do in this very moment?
Breathe, Mel commanded herself.
Then she turned to Adam and forced what she hoped was a confident smile. A Regina smile. “You know what? I bet I know why he’s here. You remember how I’m hosting that community fitness event thingy next week? The fundraiser for the Woolsey Fire victims? I’m sure I told you, but maybe I—”
“I remember,” Adam interrupted. “What’s it got to do with anything?”
“That trainer.” She gestured to the window. “He’s . . . involved with the event. He’s probably just scoping out the location. The event is kind of high-pressure. And he’s kind of an idiot.”
“You mentioned that already,” said Adam, ice-cold. “Call me crazy, but I don’t like idiots loitering outside my house.”
“I can go—talk to him,” she managed, through her nausea, feeling her heart accelerate to what felt like a hazardous pace. Surely, she was in the red zone. “I’ll go tell him to leave.”
Her attempt to conjure cool and capable Regina had failed.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Adam, rising from the table, still holding his chopsticks, the “hand-sharpened” ones made of cherry bark that Mel had purchased from the Brentwood Country Mart at a whopping price. You could literally stab someone with these, the dippy cashier had said with a laugh as he rang her up. “I’ll go have a word with him.”
“Careful, Dad!” said Sloane. “I saw that guy’s muscles at the park. They’re huge.”
“So are mine,” said Adam, and before Mel could stop him, he blazed out the front door.