13. Mandy
13
MANDY
“ U m, like, there’s a man here to see you.” Lauren, wearing a short sparkly dress and with half a bottle of champagne in her hands, stumbles through my small apartment and into the bathroom.
I wince as the door slams. Then, pushing myself up from my sagging bed, I blearily push the hair out of my face and yelp when a suited man standing in the doorway clears his throat.
“Amanda Miller?” He awkwardly sets the manila envelope on the bedspread. “This is certified mail from Clarke & Turner. We’d like to come to an agreement before filing a lawsuit.”
“A lawsuit? I didn’t do anything. What is this? Why are you doing this? What do I do now?”
“Ma’am, I do not discuss the papers. I just deliver them.” The door slams behind him.
“Maybe it’s not that bad,” I try to tell myself as I unwind the red string from the envelope.
The text swims in front of my eyes. “No.” The papers drop out of my hand onto the bedspread. Jaxon wants me to turn over Pepper to him, or he’s going to involve animal control.
“This isn’t happening.”
I had thought… Well, I had thought that if I just ignored the problem, it would go away. My stalker is trying to take my dog away. Pepper can’t survive in doggy prison. She is the poster child of spoiled pampered pooch.
It’s not fair. She was just trying to defend me. The panic grips my chest, and the room spins.
“You have this under control. We’re hiring a lawyer, see?” I pep talk myself as I type my PIN into my laptop. “We’re sending an email right now to the lawyer.”
The lawyer I found had a website with a smiling photo of a man in a suit. Sure he’s a little ick from the photos, but don’t you want a lawyer who is a little sleazy? Jaxon probably has a whole expensive law firm on retainer to come after me and Pepper.
Lauren walks out of the bathroom right as I hit Send.
“You know, you really screwed me over last night,” I tell her in my best big-sister voice as Lauren wraps my comforter around herself.
“You wanted me to study. It was like I had to take an exam. I shouldn’t have to study—I’m pretty! And you said I couldn’t even sleep with him. Besides, I had a magical evening. It was so worth it. I’ll meet your hot boss another time.” She yawns, her eyes drifting shut. “It’s better to make a man wait. They like to feel like they’ve won something when they finally get to sleep with you. ”
“Meet him another time?” I drag the comforter off her. “No. No, no, no. This was your one shot, and you blew it. You almost cost me my job. He was so…”—forceful, possessive, freaking hot in that tux—“angry.”
My sister makes a pouty face.
“Honestly, Lauren, you refuse to go to college, you refuse to get a job. Your only plan is a man, and you can’t even show up for a date with a rich guy.”
“He can’t just be rich,” my sister argues, sitting up. “He needs to have low self-esteem. If he’s mad at you because I didn’t show up, it sounds like a lost cause. I need one of those freshly divorced older men in their fifties who want a trophy wife and will let me max out their credit cards.”
“Wow, you really don’t care at all that you put me in a bad spot.”
“Did you lose your job?” Lauren argues.
“No,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “but I could have, and I cannot afford to get fired.”
My sister flops over on her stomach. “Stop being such a nag. I’m going to get enough of that from Mom. I’m going to have to hear her say ‘I told you so’ today.”
“We all told you so. Now, get up and get dressed. You can’t go to sleep—we’re going to Mom and Dad’s house for dinner.”
“What do you mean, we have to go to Mom and Dad’s for dinner?” Her voice is muffled in the pillows. “You can’t call it dinner if it’s served at two in the afternoon.”
My younger sister is dozing in the passenger seat of my rickety 1997 Camry. The front right headlight is held on with duct tape, you have to crawl in through the back seat because the passenger-side door doesn’t open from the outside, and the whole car is infested with ants.
Still, Salinger doesn’t pay me enough to buy a new car, especially if the only time I drive it is to go the couple of miles to work and to my parent’s house every Saturday.
I roll down the windows. The fresh ocean breeze from the bay is slightly tingly on my face. It’s a real struggle, but I’m doing my best to try and dissociate from the night before. Had I really worn that dress? With no undergarments? And had Salinger’s hands really been on my waist? And had he actually been staring at my cleavage?
It was probably because my boobs had been about to fall out of the dress the entire evening. He was probably just waiting for a chance to scream at me.
I know Salinger. I have worked with him for a while. I am not his type. There is no way he finds me attractive at all. I saw my reflection. “Stuffed-sausage casing” was an accurate description.
Though to be fair, because I’m trying not to be so negative about my body, my tits really did look hot in that dress.
We stayed ’til the bitter end of the party after the auction closed. Even though I’d drunk probably a bottle’s worth of champagne by that point to dull the anxiety, I wasn’t sleepy during the silent car ride back to Salinger’s penthouse, the oversized corgi painting wedged in between us.
The concierge of the building was waiting with a garbage bag holding my clothes. I accepted the bag while Salinger ignored me and answered a phone call from the Frankfurt office.
He didn’t offer to have his car take me back home, and I didn’t ask .
As I slowly drive up the winding residential road to my parents’ house, I fiddle with the radio then tap on the steering wheel and hum along.
“Gawd, stop singing. You can’t sing,” my sister complains as I pull up in front of the modernist brick house.
The lawn in front of my parents’ house is pristine—a deep, lush emerald green. My father is on his hands and knees, using a pair of tweezers to pull out an imperceptibly small weed at the edge of a perfectly elliptical planting area that contains several seal-gray boulders and a single bushy western hemlock that towers over the house’s flat roof.
My parents have lived in the same neighborhood my entire life. And for my entire life, my dad has always had the best lawn.
“We’re a little early—Pepper, stay off the grass,” I warn the dog. “Go to the neighbor’s yard.”
My dad smiles as Pepper takes a restroom break on a patch of scraggly grass next door.
“My girls!” Dad greets Lauren and me gruffly, pulling us into a hug, his mustache scratchy on my forehead.
My sister wiggles out of his grasp, but I hold on to him. I desperately want to ask someone for help, especially him—I am a daddy’s girl through and through. But the stalker is my problem. I am the one who invited him into my life. My dad is getting older and has been retired for several years, and I don’t want Jaxon to ruin his life too. Dad worked hard in the aerospace industry with a stressful job as an engineer. He doesn’t need to deal with my problems during his retirement.
The window next door opens, and an elderly woman yells out, “Keep your dog off my lawn!”
The door of my parents’ house bursts open, and my mother screams, “You call that patch of weeds a lawn, Nancy? That dog did you a favor. You spend twenty thousand dollars on sod, and this is what you have to show for it? Shameful.”
“I’m posting this on Nextdoor,” Nancy screeches then slams the window shut.
My mom beams at my dad. “See?” Then she props her glasses on her head and inspects me. “You have to speak a man’s love language if you want to keep him around.”
“I love you.” My father gives her a noisy kiss on the lips. “And she’s making my favorite for dinner.”
“It’s lunch,” Lauren complains loudly. “If it’s served at two, it’s lunch.”
“We’ve all been up since five.” My mother ushers us inside. “I had water-aerobics class, then I had to pick up your grandmother from the gas station.”
“It’s public property. I am allowed to be at the gas station,” my grandmother yells from the sunken living room, the ice cubes in her glass of wine clinking against the rim.
“Watch your step,” my mom warns me.
“Yes, Mom, I know there’s a step here.” At the wet bar, I set down the box of wine I brought.
“I can’t worry about you? Your own mother? I carried you in my womb for nine months.” My mother huffs into the kitchen.
“Thank god, reinforcements. Give me a top-up, girlie.” Gran waves her glass at me.
“What were you doing at the gas station, Gran?” I top up her glass and pour my own.
“Soliciting,” my mother shouts from the kitchen where she’s checking the twice-baked-potato casserole.
“I wasn’t. Like I told the cops, I was there for a hot dog, some Funyuns, and a pop. ”
“You know the snacks there are way overpriced.” I flop down on the couch across from Gran, sinking into the comfortable, familiar cushions.
Lauren sprawls out next to me. “You need to go to Costco.”
“What do you know about grocery shopping, Lauren?” Gran snorts. “I thought your boyfriend dumped you because you weren’t wife material?”
My father sucks in a breath then slowly backs out of the room.
“He didn’t leave me because I was a bad homemaker. He left me because he got some college girl pregnant.” Lauren makes a grabbing gesture, and I roll my eyes and hand her my wine glass. “This tastes like cheap grape juice.”
“It’s eight percent ABV—so what if it tastes like cat piss?” Gran grabs a handful of ice and dumps it into her wine.
“And it was only three dollars,” I add, pouring myself a new glass.
“I, for one, am glad Kenny’s out of your life.” My mother bustles back in with a midwestern charcuterie board. That’s right—just because my parents haven’t lived in the Midwest for almost forty years doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned their culinary traditions.
The QVC wood board holds slices of cheddar cheese, Ritz crackers, and slices of that sausage that you find next to the sandwich meat at the grocery store, the stuff that tastes like salt and bouillon cubes.
“Don’t eat too much—you don’t want to spoil your appetite,” my mom tells me as I assemble a cracker. “Or your waistline. Now that Lauren is single, maybe you two can go on double dates. You’re not getting any younger, Mandy. I’d like to be a grandmother while I can still walk.”
“A man is not a plan.” I take a bite of my cracker.
“Spoken like someone who refuses to put herself out there and date.” My mom sets coasters out in front of me and Lauren, placing our glasses on them.
“She needs a new bra.” Gran gestures with her glass. “You should take her to Target and get her a new bra.”
“I’m very busy with work—”
“You’re a secretary.” Gran slams her glass on the side table. “Getting a promotion as a secretary means you get married. Preferably before age forty. That’s how I met your grandfather. I was banging him on our lunch break.”
“Mandy does work late.” Lauren breaks off a quarter of a Ritz cracker.
“I am an executive assistant, not a secretary,” I remind my family.
“Well, of course you’re not—you don’t dress like one.” My mother reaches over to tug on the waist of my pants. “I don’t understand why you can’t wear a belt, Mandy. Elastic? Really?”
“It’s comfy. I had a long drive.”
“I just wish you would try a little harder, Mandy. You’re a pretty girl—I can take you to the Macy’s. The gal who works at the counter is very nice—she always give me free perfume samples. She could give you some pointers. She’s a personal stylist on the side.”
In the kitchen, the timer dings.
“Oh, where is Amy? She’s going to be late for dinner.” My mother rushes back to the kitchen.
“Dinner is at two,” my dad says stubbornly .
“Yes, we’re eating at two. Mandy, come get your drink. I saw this new diet-juice blend on Facebook. I bought extra. If you like it, you can take some home.”
“I’ll just have water.”
“You don’t want to try this drink? It’s low-fat.”
“I’ll just have water, Mom.”
I stick my glass under the ice dispenser, filling it up and breathing in the smell of casserole, freshly baked rolls, and home. I wish I didn’t have to go back to the city and my cramped little studio apartment with Jaxon lurking outside, waiting, plotting.
“Your recipes would be so much better without the whole northern hemisphere’s supply of cheese in every dish.” My sister makes a face as my mother sprinkles paprika over the twice-baked-potato casserole.
“I like cheese. It looks delicious, Mom.”
“It’s not my best,” she says with a heavy sigh.
“That’s because you used your mother-in-law’s recipe,” Gran declares, poking a fork into the roast that is resting on the counter.
“Mandy, take that into the dining room, and let your father carve it. Honestly, where is Amy?”
As Lauren and I parade the food into the dining room, Pepper sniffing hopefully at the rear, my father sits down at his place at the head of the table with a full view of his prized lawn through the picture window. He tucks his napkin into his shirt collar and breathes in appreciatively as my mom sets a steaming plate of the gooey casserole in front of him.
“There’s salad in your bowl, Patrick—it’s got that dressing that you like. Mandy, have some more salad.”
The front door creaks open right as I shovel a hot bite of cheesy casserole into my mouth .
“Amy!” my mother cries, wiping her mouth then jumping up to hug my younger sister as she appears in the doorway to the dining room. “We couldn’t wait for you. I’m sorry. You know your father.”
“Engineers like to eat on time,” Amy jokes.
“You look amazing.” Gran is in awe.
And it’s true—my younger sister’s cheeks are rosy, her hair is lush and full, and she’s practically glowing.
Amy unwinds the pink scarf I made her back when I used my free time to knit and not obsess over my stalker’s next life-ruining move. “Oh, do I?”
“Let me fix you a plate.” My mother bustles over to the serving dishes.
“What’s your big announcement?” Gran asks loudly.
“Let poor Amy have something to eat,” Mom says.
“I think maybe we can do the announcement first,” Amy says, sounding slightly breathless.
“Let me guess.” I take another bread roll and smear honey butter on it. “You’re pregnant.”
“Stop it, Mandy.” My mom flicks my ear. “She’s still in college—she’s not pregnant.”
“Actually…” Amy gives us a pained smile.
There’s a soft knock on the front door, and the hardwood floor in the foyer groans as male footsteps enter the house.
“You didn’t invite one of those gas station men over, did you, Ma?” my mom hisses to my grandmother while my dad continues to shovel his casserole in his mouth.
Amy looks nauseous.
“Oh my god, Kenny!” Lauren jumps up with a cry, racing to him. She wraps her arms and legs around him and kisses him. “I knew you couldn’t stay away from me. Are you here to propose? ”
“Uh, well… I, uh…” He looks desperately at Amy. “Did you tell them yet?”
Amy grimaces. “I was about to.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god. ” Lauren looks between the two of them. “Oh. My. God! You!” Lauren hauls back and slaps Amy in the face.
“You can’t hit me—I’m pregnant!” Amy screeches at Lauren and returns the slap.
“You cheating ho!” Lauren screams, throwing anything on the table she can reach at Amy.
Kenny gets spattered with casserole.
“You stole my boyfriend!”
Amy’s fingers latch onto Lauren’s hair, ripping out some of her extensions. “You were mean to Kenny. He’s with a woman who appreciates him. You were using him for money. You didn’t want to give him a child!”
“Fight! Fight!” Gran yells as my sisters roll around on the floor screaming and hitting each other.
My father quietly stands up and tiptoes out of the room.
“I would have given him a child—instead, he wanted to sleep with a literal child!” Lauren screeches as she rips Amy’s shirt.
“I’m twenty!” Amy hollers. “I’m an adult!”
“No, you’re a cheating, scheming ho!”
“She’s pregnant. Stop fighting.” My mom hits my sisters with her napkin. “That’s my grandchild. I don’t want my grandchild to come out as a lump. Lauren, get off of her. Mandy, do something.”
“Amy, you can’t seriously want to have a baby with Kenny, of all people?” I ask over the din, grabbing Lauren by the arm and hauling her back .
Amy immediately bursts into tears, just like she’s five again and using crocodile tears to worm her way out of a punishment and stick me with the blame. “You’re not being supportive.”
“She’s selfish and spoiled!” Lauren screams, trying to push her way around me. “You always take her side, Mom. Kick her out of the family!”
“You can’t kick me out—I have the first grandchild.” Amy rubs her belly.
“You’re on my side, aren’t you, Mom?” Lauren actually sounds legitimately heartbroken. And I’m sure she is. But…
“Lauren,” I remind her patiently, “we all told you this was going to happen. Kenny cheated on his wife with you. Now he’s cheated on you with Amy. You knew exactly who he was. Amy, take note.”
“I’m not stupid like Lauren. Kenny and I are going to get married.” Amy is haughty.
“I’ll believe it when I see a ring.” I sigh. “But let’s be honest—in five years, we’re going to be right here in this dining room with you complaining about how Kenny left you and isn’t paying child support.”
“That is not true,” Kenny declares. “I love Amy. We’re getting married. Amy…” He sinks down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”
“No!” Lauren wails.
“Yes!” Amy starts crying and throws herself into Kenny’s arms.
Outside, we hear a lawn mower rev up.
“Now you’ve done it!” my mom screams at us. “You’ve upset your father. He’s going to be out there all afternoon mowing the lawn!”