Odd Mom Out

But she knows something’s up. How can she not? I can’t stop smiling.

We spend the rest of the day at Mom and Dad’s house, making roll-out sugar cookies that Mom helps us frost and decorate for Halloween. Dad’s housekeeper has put a roast in the oven for us, and I whip up mashed potatoes and green beans and salad.

Mom goes to bed early, though, almost as soon as we eat, and Eva and I go home to watch Desperate Housewives. It’s not a show for kids, but Eva loves it. She thinks she’s Eva Longoria.

Monday morning I get another big call at work. Trident wants to go with us.

How’s that for getting exactly what I don’t want?

We don’t get Freedom Bikes, but we do get Trident.

I should be thrilled that we’ve got new business, but my gut has told me from the beginning that Trident’s going to be a mistake. They’re based in New York, and they’ll require some serious travel. Fortunately, Chris likes to travel, and since he once lived in Manhattan, he’s looking forward to getting home more.

But as the team pow-wows after the phone call, I don’t feel better about the deal. I feel worse. I mention my concerns to the group, and Chris shoots me down with a dismissive, “Without Freedom we need them. We don’t have a choice.”

I shuffle papers, change subjects, but my gut says we’re in trouble. My gut says we’ve just boarded a sinking ship, which is always a bad, bad, bad decision.

Monday evening, I get a text message from Luke. When can I see you again?

I text back, When do you get back?

He texts right away, Tonight. But I leave in the morning again for 10 days.

I stare at the screen on my BlackBerry for a long time before texting my reply: Then stop by tonight on your way home.

Luke arrives late enough that Eva’s already in bed sound asleep. I quietly close the door to Eva’s room before leading Luke to the kitchen. “Hungry?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers, backing me up against the refrigerator. The kiss is explosive. Hot, so hot that I grab on to his shirt and hang tight.

“Let’s go to my room,” I whisper.

“Eva’s here.”

“We’ll be quiet.”

“You’re not that quiet.”

My eyes flash. “You shouldn’t be so good.”

We head to my room, and Luke barely gives me time to lock the door before he’s sliding his hands from my waist down my hips and over my butt.

I gasp a little at his touch and grab the ends of his hair, tug on them, before covering his mouth with mine.

I feel like a savage, but as he strips the clothes from me, he seems just as fierce and hungry.

Making love is wild. When he enters me, I’m not even properly on the bed, but somehow it’s right. Everything about being together is right, as long as we are together.

It’s the being apart that’s getting hard.

Luke leaves at midnight, and I stand beneath the hot, steamy spray of the shower.

I won’t see him again for at least ten days. He’s heading in the morning for Europe, and this is what he does. He’s on the road more than he’s home.

I touch my breast, still feeling the imprint of his hand on my skin. Ten days until he touches me again. Ten days until I see his blue eyes again.

After turning off the shower, I grab my towel and press the terry cloth to my face. Even if I wanted to see Luke more, I couldn’t.

And that thought somehow fills me with despair.

Luke calls me Tuesday noon from Hamburg. It’s evening there, and he’s just wrapped up a day of meetings. “How are you?” he asks.

“Good,” I answer, taking the phone and heading from the studio outside so I can have some privacy. “How about you?”

“Long day, but productive.”

“Good.”

His voice drops. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

I wrap one arm across my chest. “I feel the same way.”

“Ten days is too long.”

“I agree.”

“Come see me.”

I laugh. “Can’t. I have a business to run. Come home.”

“Can’t. Have a business to run.”

I laugh again. So does he. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says.

“You don’t have to.”

Luke makes an exasperated sound. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

“You too.”

The rest of the afternoon passes, and before long it’s six o’clock Tuesday night and we’re all still buried in the studio, even Susan, and she’s got three kids at home waiting for her.

“Susan, get out of here,” I tell her, rubbing a knot at the base of my neck. I’m currently on hold with Gord from Jet City—he’s going to round up his partner to continue our unhappy conference call.

Jet City Coffee feels as if we’re dropping the ball. We’re not as creative or responsive as we used to be. They’re not getting phone calls returned. They don’t like the numbers on their last ad campaign. And frankly, they’re beginning to think it’s time they moved to another agency, one with fresh ideas and new blood.

Susan does eventually leave, but Allie, Chris, Robert, and I remain to finish the conference call.

By the time the call ends, it’s seven and Eva’s curled up in a bean bag chair that she’s brought from the house, reading a book.

“That was a long call,” she says.

“Tell me about it.” I look over her head at my exhausted team. They all are grim and gray. There’s no way anyone’s in the right mind frame to discuss the call tonight. “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I tell them.

Nodding and muttering good-byes, they grab their coats and go.

Eva watches everyone leave and then looks at me. I smile tiredly down at her and then stoop to give her a kiss. “You must be starving,” I say.

She shrugs. “I made myself a peanut-butter sandwich.”

“Good for you.”

She reaches up, touches my hair and then my face. Her dark hair curls in little wisps around her face. “Mom, I know you’re tired and you’ve just had a really bad conference call, and I don’t want to bother you . . .”

Eva reminds me of Natalie Portman right now with her big dark eyes and pixie cut. “What, baby?”

“Tomorrow’s Halloween, and Phoebe’s party,” she blurts out. “And we never got me a costume.”

Oh, shit.

We head out immediately to Redmond to look at mermaid costumes, princess costumes, cowgirl and Native American costumes. We look at scary, gory, bloody, pretty, charming, classic, silly.

As we shop at the cavernous Halloween Outlet, I catch a glimpse of my image in one of the tall, skinny mirrors and hardly recognize myself. I still feel so young, yet right now I look disturbingly middle age, with shadows under my eyes and creases at the corners and pinched lips that look as if they could use some collagen.

Suddenly, I remember the older ladies I saw at Tully’s and how each looked so stretched and pulled and tucked. I remember how I vowed I’d never do that, never chop me up and pull me back together again, but I don’t want to look old, either. Don’t want to look . . . beaten.

And maybe that’s how those older ladies ended up getting all that work done. Maybe one day they looked into the mirror and they didn’t recognize the face they saw anymore. Maybe one day the face in the mirror wasn’t familiar.

Last year, Shey told me a story about aging and our faces. She said she and her mom were talking, and Shey said on the inside she still felt thirty, and her mom laughed and said that was good, because she only felt like forty.

Perhaps that’s the difficulty with aging gracefully. Our hearts don’t age, yet the rest of us does.

Which sends us to the doctors in search of miracles, drugs, and cures. Nips and tucks and little fixes. A bit of Botox here, a touch of filler there. Yet no matter how little or much we do, we can’t ever stop time, so in the end we must make peace with the little girl inside us, the one that doesn’t want to grow up, or age, or ever die.

“There,” Eva says, plopping a witch’s hat on my head. “Now you look like that lady. Morticia. The mom from The Addams Family.”

If I recall, Morticia didn’t exactly look young. In fact, I thought she was downright old. But I don’t say any of that to Eva. I just pat her head and murmur, “Isn’t that fantastic?” even as I wonder what time Luke will call tomorrow from Hamburg. Will it be day or night?