Chapter 2
Thursday, 8:10 a.m., 113 Avocado Avenue
A lone at last, Gabby walked into the house to the waiting disaster. Spilled syrup, stray Nerf bullets, piles of paper from backpacks, and a never-ending mountain of dishes. Why did she bother? Housework was the background noise that no one cared about or even saw. A good wife and mother was basically a servant, completing all the tasks without drawing any attention. Gabby was so good at it that she’d achieved the highest degree of skill: invisibility. She was invisible when she was married to Phil, and she still hadn’t materialized.
Those thoughts weren’t helpful, though. They sure wouldn’t get the dishes done.
It had been four months since Phil moved out. She should probably get a job, but it had been fourteen years since she’d worked outside the house, not since Kyle was born. And she had been a travel agent. Her skills: buying plane tickets and booking hotels. She might as well have worked at Blockbuster. People booked their own travel these days.
She hit PLAY on her audiobook. Sloane Ellis would help her help herself.
The agency had been nice, a little place in a high-end strip mall in Pasadena next to a Verizon where she used to flirt with a hot phone guy. He’d given her a secret discount on her phone bill once. Those had been the days—grabbing a coffee or lunch with co-workers and planning tours of Irish castles. That’s how she’d met Phil. He’d planned a vacation for two to Mexico. At the end, he’d asked her to go with him. In retrospect, that was creepy. At the time, she’d really wanted a beach vacation, and Phil had had all of his hair. It had felt like something that would happen in a movie.
Sloane Ellis cut through her feelings like a knife. “Divorce is a new beginning. A rebirth.”
Was it? What was she going to be reborn as? She had an English degree (almost), two kids, and experience buying airline tickets. Her targeted ads were for online therapy, an endless list of vitamins to alleviate PMS, and vibrators. Who knew her better, Sloane Ellis or the algorithm? Of course, it wasn’t up to the algorithm to see her potential. She rinsed a plate and slid it into the dishwasher.
“Stop with the negative self-talk. You might have a prehistoric résumé, stretch marks, and a house you can’t afford, but you can change it all.”
Could she? She scraped a plate of sticky burnt pancake into the trash.
“ You are ready for an adventure.”
She ran the garbage disposal. The sound of grinding metal assaulted her ears, and she fished a spoon out of the drain.
“Not just a weekend away, you are ready for the adventure of a lifetime: self-discovery. A rewarding career, romance, parenting, and above all, self-determination. A life of your own.”
Gabby caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window above the kitchen sink and tried to imagine herself as someone else. Her frizzy hair tamed into a sleek style, her skin lasered extensively. What would a freshly lasered Gabby do?
“The first task on your adventure is—”
The sound of the doorbell cut off Sloane’s comforting yet commanding voice. The dog sprang to action, a low rumble in his throat starting as he ran toward the suspected intruder. Gabby tried to block him with her body while she cracked the door. Mr. Bubbles, a persistent devil, ran between her legs like he was a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound rottweiler instead of a ten-pound fluff ball wearing a bow tie.
“Mr. Jonathon Bubbles!” Jonathon was for Lucas’s preschool teacher, whom Lucas idolized because he did balloon tricks and also had a penis. Gabby once had had a short-term relationship with a guy who made balloons, so she couldn’t blame Lucas. She grabbed the dog’s collar while he pawed at the air. “Sorry.”
The mailman asked her to sign for a package and hurried away with a muttered curse. Another legal document from Phil. Damn divorce papers, like they were even in English. She tossed it into the corner without opening it. Then she held Mr. Bubbles high in the air and stared into his unrepentant face. “ Mr. Bubbles, you are such an asshole! ”
She stopped herself. She was taking out her feelings for Phil on poor Bubbles.
He panted, exhausted from his effort defending his home, and wagged his tail.
Her heart melted, and she smiled at the little asshole. Why did she have such bad taste in men, even dogs?
She grabbed a broom and hit PLAY on the audiobook. “The first task on your next adventure is to assess yourself coldly and objectively. Your physical self, your emotional self, and your potential. Let’s start with physical.”
That was easy, she was twenty-five pounds overweight in a pair of black yoga pants. She took a swig of coffee.
Sloane started in, “Sorry, but you can’t have yoga pants. They are lying to you.”
Gabby choked on her coffee. Had Sloane bugged her house?
“I’m serious. Stop laughing. Your first task is to stand in front of a full-length mirror completely naked. See yourself for who you are and stop lying. Pause the audio, find your workbook, and press play when you’ve stripped down physically and emotionally.”
Shelly across the street had recommended this book to her. Had Shelly stood naked in front of a mirror and cataloged her faults?
It seemed dumb, but if she was really going to try to change her life, she needed to actually try. So far Sloane was the only one with any ideas.
Gabby expelled a breath, grabbed the workbook, and walked upstairs. In her bedroom, she pulled off her sweatshirt and yoga pants. She was still wearing a nursing bra. Lucas was eight. That joke about “easy access” had stopped being funny five years ago. Had Phil ever laughed?
The workbook was a basic drawing of a woman, like the one pathologists used for autopsies, at least TV pathologists. Sloane wanted her to autopsy her old self, catalog her self-esteem’s cause of death. It wasn’t a single, crushing blow, it was a combination of so many little things.
Gabby was game. She was gonna change her life even if she had to count every bright white stretch mark.
“Don’t lie to yourself. Know your advantages and disadvantages. No blame or guilt. Only then can you make a plan.”
She was fully naked and wondering if she should draw a double chin on her sketch—everyone had a double chin from certain angles—when the doorbell rang again.
The mailman must have forgotten a package, hopefully something other than legal documents.
She threw on her robe and hustled.
It wasn’t the mailman. From the landing, she could see two women dressed in black. They looked serious. Not Mormons. Mormon missionaries were always eighteen-year-old boys in button-down shirts and skinny ties their moms had probably bought. Too polished for lawn care people.
Tupperware? Someone on the neighborhood LISTSERV had been hyping Tupperware sales like it was 1977, and Gabby had gone down a rabbit hole. Tupperware came in a lot of colors these days and was part of a strategy for saving the planet by reducing single-use plastic. “Be part of a movement that creates change every day,” the website proclaimed. She had clicked on the link that read, “Embrace your inner entrepreneur,” but then the kids got off the bus, and she hadn’t finished filling out the online form.
If she was going to buy Tupperware, she was going to sell it to herself. Thank you very much for the pep talk, Sloane Ellis! These ladies would have to find some other housewife to sell silicone muffin tins to.
She opened the door resolved to say no politely but firmly so that they wouldn’t ask twice. This time, Mr. Bubbles cowered behind her. Just like Phil, he had a problem with strong women.
“I’m so sorry, but I don’t need any Tupper—” she started to tell the women whose outfits were giving TV cop vibes. They were clearly newbies to door-to-door sales. If they wanted to sell stackable storage containers for yesterday’s spaghetti, they should try to look more approachable.
The short-haired woman waved a badge in Gabby’s face. “Ma’am, we’re with the CIA. Can we come in?”