“I’m Lisa.” She holds her hand out while Mom and I just stare at each other, then at her, then back at each other, then back at her. She puts her hand back at her side. “You must think I’m so crazy, right? I know. I just had to do this.”
“I…” Mom stammers. “What the f… I mean. Why?”
“The money is nothing.” Lisa’s voice actually makes this statement believable — it drips of wealth. You know those voices? The ones that were just made to say words like terrace, Jeffrey, and sauté. “I felt for you two in that courtroom.”
Nonna’s bullshit detector goes off in the form of a suspicious squint in Lisa’s direction.
“But why?” Mom repeats.
“Yeah,” Nonna echoes. “Why?”
“I have an idea!” I say. “How about we stop second-guessing the motives of the woman who just saved our asses from jail and say thank you instead?”
Lisa chuckles at this.
“I’m sorry,” says Mom. “It’s just —”
“I was seeing him too.” Lisa tilts her head in pity. “Richard.”
Mom and I exchange stunned looks, the subtext of which are obviously holy-shit-the-double-D-bra. We swing our gazes directly to Lisa’s breasts.
Oh my God! They’re huge — basically daring the top button of her blazer to pop off. How did I never notice them before? (Oh, wait — duh.)
So Lisa is not just Joggy McBitch. She’s also Big Tits McGhee.
Joggy is Big Tits! Big Tits is Joggy!
Mom gasps as she apparently comes to this revelation at the same time as me. “I have so many questions for you.”
Nonna straightens her posture. “We can’t let you —”
“Too late,” Lisa says. “I already wrote the check. I just ask for one favor in return.”
“Literally anything,” I reply immediately.
She grins. “You must let me take you out to lunch.”
Lisa may be the first rich person in the history of the world I don’t hate at least a little bit. I mean, how could I feel anything but unconditional love for her? After what she’s done for us. We were so wrong about her. She’s not just another Hillary. She’s not just Joggy McBitch. And/or Big Tits McGhee. She’s our savior. I kinda feel bad for hating her and giving her such a horrible nickname all this time. But I guess that’s the danger in thinking you know everything about a person just based on where they live and what they look like. You could end up being entirely wrong.
I can tell by the way Mom is letting herself smile as we walk across the street to the mall right now that she’s been having similar thoughts. Lisa has officially transitioned from this bitch to that bitch. Honestly? For twenty thousand dollars? She’s the bitch.
The four of us get seated in a cozy booth by the window. Lisa orders a round of drinks. The waiter cards me like an asshole, so I make a mental note to steal a sip from Mom’s sangria the next time she’s not looking.
“So you and Richard,” Mom says. “How? I thought all his time in New Jersey was spent with me.”
“I’m sure it was.” Lisa takes a swig from her wineglass — a very unsurprising Chardonnay (basically rich-white-lady juice). “I settled for scraps from him — a night here, a morning there. I was still going through my divorce when it started. He told me he was dealing with the same thing — splitting up with his wife. It was something we bonded over. I thought for sure we’d be together once…”
“He fed me that same bullshit,” Mom offers.
“When I saw the For Sale sign go up on his house on Monday, I was flabbergasted.” Lisa wipes a stray tear from her foundation-heavy cheek. I’m guessing she uses either Lancôme or Estée Lauder. Maybe Clinique. Definitely not drugstore. “He broke up with me later that day, and I swear to God, if you didn’t burn that godforsaken house down, I might have.”
You’d think someone like Lisa would know better than to get involved with a guy like Richard. She already lives in Short Hills! She’s pretty, she’s blond. She’s got that natural rich-person confidence. She’s Hillary to a tee.
Then again. I guess the thing Mom and I tend to forget about Hillary is that she was a victim of Bill’s bullshit, too. Even if she would never actually call herself one. He cheated on her. Maybe she was just as heartbroken as Monica. Maybe she just never allowed herself to feel it. Or maybe she did feel it, but figured out a way to heal in private. Without all the hysterics and arson and whatnot.
“I found out the same exact way,” Mom says. “And he broke up with me that day. He had the nerve to tell me I was ‘too high maintenance’ for a side bitch.”
“That makes one of us,” Lisa scoffs. “He probably loved how low maintenance I was. I made it so easy for him.”
“He’s a real prick,” Mom says.
“A scumbag,” I chime in.
“A rotten rat bastard,” Nonna adds.
Look at Nonna! Engaging in man-bashing with us. I’m so proud.
“I trust too easily.” Lisa shakes her head. “My ex-husband cheated on me throughout our entire marriage — and I made it easy for him, too. Always had my own life, career, friends. He probably thought I deserved it for not revolving my entire world around him.”
“Even when you do revolve your world around them, they still do that shit,” Mom says. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
“The humiliation is the worst,” I add, thinking back to how bad I felt about myself after I found out Luke was cheating on me. How I ate three plates of Nonna’s linguine while worrying about what people would think once I scrubbed him from my Instagram grid. “It’s like the whole world gets to see how bad you are at being loved.”
“Well here’s what my therapist tells me,” Lisa says. “It’s not that we’re bad at being loved. It’s that we’re drawn to people who are bad at loving. And we have the power to break that pattern.”
Nonna hits my arm and then Mom’s. “Are you two listening?”
Lisa half-smiles. “Hopefully it’s an easier lesson for you to learn than it has been for me.”
Honestly? I feel like it might be. Because for some reason, this advice lands with me in a way that no other relationship wisdom ever quite has. There’s nothing wrong with Mom or me. And maybe we’ve known this — deep down — all along. Maybe that’s the real reason we’ve always been so prone to rage in the face of our breakups. Because guys like Richard, Luke, Leo, and whatever-the-fuck-Lisa’s-ex-husband’s-name is — they make us forget it. They try to make us feel smaller than we are. And we let them. And then we regret it after they cheat and we realize we’ve been shrinking ourselves for nothing the entire time.
“Can I tell you something?” Lisa lowers her voice to a low hum. “I recognized your car that night. I’d seen it in his driveway before on countless other jogs. Deep down, I always knew it belonged to a woman. Which is probably why I never questioned him on it.”
She leans forward and touches Mom’s hand. “I could see it in your eyes. Both of you. When I ran past you at the stoplight. And then again this morning in the courtroom. There was so much pain. I saw myself in your faces.” Her tone deepens into a new level of sincerity. “That’s why I pretended not to know the make or model when the investigators asked me about your car. I knew I had to report the fire — but I didn’t want to be the reason you got caught. You have no idea how horrible I felt after they found you anyway and issued the warrants for your arrest. I’m just glad I was given the opportunity to help somehow.”
The waiter brings over a fresh round of drinks. I lean forward and sneak a sip from the long black straw sticking out of Mom’s refill.
“There was something so cathartic about seeing that house burn down,” Lisa adds. “When I look back on it in my mind, knowing the context now… it kind of makes me smile.” She chuckles to herself. “Is that bad?”
“Yes.” Nonna sips her espresso and side-eyes Lisa. “It is.”
“You’ve never gotten revenge, have you?” Mom asks Lisa.
“Only in the form of a divorce settlement.” Lisa gives a sadistic little laugh. “But it felt empty.” She pauses. “There were no flames.”
The way she says this makes it so painfully clear. Revenge is best when it’s just a concept — something you fantasize about but never actually see through. Kind of like how Mom and I have always loved all those angry breakup songs. It’s not because we needed to actually get revenge. It’s because Carrie and Beyoncé and Rihanna allowed us to experience it vicariously through them — from a safe, comfortable distance. Without the guilt and prospect of jail time.
“You wouldn’t have done what we did, though?” Mom asks Lisa. “Would you?”
She seems a little taken aback by the question. “I mean, I wish —”
“But you never actually would. Right?”
“I suppose that’s true.” Lisa places her glass down. “I couldn’t bring myself to do something that extreme.”
“See?” Mom pokes my arm. “We need to be more like Lisa.”
Yes, I reply via knowing head nod. I just came to this revelation on my own two minutes ago.
“Well, anyway.” Lisa wipes a strand of blond hair from her face and purses her lips in sympathy. “You’re both so young. I’m sure you’ll find good men in no time.”
I wince as I wonder what Marco and Will are doing right now up in Bumblefuck.
Mom reciprocates with a sad smile. “Thanks.”
“Let’s make a toast!” Lisa exclaims. “To Joey and Gia.” She smiles. “For burning it all down.”
Nonna shakes her head. “You are not toasting to that.”
Mom, Lisa, and I burst into laughter.
“We weren’t going to!” Mom places her non-sangria hand on Lisa’s shoulder. “To you. How can we ever thank you for what you did today?”
Lisa dismisses this notion with a fling of her hand. “You wanna thank someone? Thank my ex-husband.” She flashes a devilish grin. “I paid for it with his money.”