Mrs. Perfect

I call Z Design on my way out and get the answering machine. The office is closed for the day. I’m not surprised, since it’s almost five-thirty and completely dark out, but driving home, I keep feeling this funny little tug inside my chest.

Marta isn’t so bad, I think, swinging by the house to get Monica’s check and head to the bank. Marta might even be nice.

Monday night after dropping a check by the landlord’s, I flex my fingers against the steering wheel and grin. Our rent’s covered now until June, and we should have enough for my car payment, too. My job will pay for groceries, child care, and incidentals.

I should call Nathan. He’d be proud of me.

I reach for my phone, call him on speed dial. To my delight, he picks up right away. “Nathan, great news,” I blurt out breathlessly, “I’ve just sold all our furniture for twenty-five thousand dollars!”

I’m met by dead silence.

“Did you hear what I said?” I say, a hint of hurt creeping into my voice. “I sold our furniture to Monica and Doug. Twenty-five thousand dollars, Nathan—”

“Taylor, the dining room set alone cost twenty-five thousand dollars.”

His voice is chilly and remote. I pull over to the side of the road, lean on the steering wheel. “Are you mad?” I ask incredulously.

He exhales. “You’re so impulsive, Taylor. You just don’t think.”

“That’s not fair!”

“It’d cost us a hundred thousand dollars to replace all that furniture. The couch in the living room was more than twelve grand. The two armchairs were five thousand each. How are we going to be able to replace that?”

I press the tip of my tongue to my teeth, press hard, pressing to silence my protest. I can’t win with him anymore. Nothing I do is right.

“But we don’t have a house it’ll fit in,” I answer after a moment when I’m sure I’m calm. “None of the pieces will fit in the rental house, and we can’t afford to store it all. Nathan, we have furniture to fill a six-thousand-seven-hundred-square-foot house. The rental house isn’t even two thousand square feet. It’s itty-bitty. Trust me.”

“So why pick that house?”

“Because it’s available, it’s cheap, and it’s near the girls’ school.”

He’s silent so long that I think he’s hung up, but then I hear a low, heavy sigh. “You don’t even need me anymore,” he says quietly.

Something in my chest wrenches. “That’s not true.”

“It’s what it feels like to me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Yeah. That’s what I keep hearing.”

Our conversation weighs on me the rest of the night, and I phone him back the next day on my way home from work but then don’t know what to say.

Come home, let me support you? Quit your job and live in the ugly rental house with us?

I swallow hard as I drive. Nathan was raised with money, by a stay-at-home mom and a father who made millions in the seventies and early eighties in Silicon Valley. Nathan was expected to make millions and millions, too. Instead we’ve lost everything, and my handsome quarterback husband is slogging away in Omaha.

There’s times I think I have it hard, but looking at the big picture, Nathan has it worse. He’s a man. He’s supposed to be the provider. He’s supposed to be in control. Knowing Nathan, knowing his family, I’m sure he feels like a failure.

Wednesday is a short day at Points Elementary, which means Eva appears in the Z Design doorway at two-thirty in the afternoon.

Robert and Allie are presenting to a client, Mel’s on a plane to New York, and Marta’s in the house searching for something her mother either wants or needs. Eva in the meantime is in the studio office, spinning in the chair at the corner workstation. It’s the extra computer for when Marta has part-time employees, but there aren’t any part-time employees right now, just Eva making me crazy.

“I talked to my mom,” she says, pausing in her spinning to look at me. “She says you’re not her secretary. You’re the office manager. Apparently there’s a big difference.”

I look up from the letter I’m typing. “Thank you, Eva. That’s good to know.”

She spins once and stops herself by grabbing the edge of the desk. “Did you want to be her secretary?”

Does anyone like to be tortured? “Not particularly, no.”

She’s hugging her knees to her chest now, her red sweater bright against her blue jeans. “Why are you working here?”

“I needed a job.”

“Why?”

It feels as though she has a nail and she’s tap-tapping it into my forehead. “Why does your mom work?”

“Because she’s smart and she likes it.” Eva makes a face. “And because she’s a single mom. My dad’s a sperm donor.”

I’d just reached for my coffee, and I nearly spit the mouthful all over the computer screen. Wiping coffee dribbles from my chin, I turn to look at her.

She nods matter-of-factly. “Apparently he donated a lot of times, too. He wasn’t supposed to, but he went to different clinics and somebody in New York just figured it out. They called my mom and said I probably have ten or twenty brothers and sisters out there.” Eva reaches up to rub her cheek. “That’s a lot of brothers and sisters.”

“Uh-huh.” It’s a terrible answer, but I don’t know what else to say. Eva’s not like most little girls around here.

“The thing is,” she continues, studying her nails, “I have to be careful I don’t marry my brother. It could cause defects.” She pauses, frowns. “Besides, it’s gross.”

The office door opens and Marta appears. She’s tugging off her jacket and dropping it on the back of her chair. “You’re not supposed to be bugging my staff,” she says, crossing to her daughter’s side and dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

“I’m not,” Eva answers blithely, sliding from her chair to head to the office door. “I’m just telling Mrs. Young about my dad.”

She leaves and Marta stands there a moment, hands on her hips, before shaking her head. “That has to be her father’s genes. Can’t be mine.”

“Can’t be you,” I agree, uncertain if I should be impressed by Eva’s nonchalance or horrified. “You’re not a rebel.”

Marta laughs and drops into her chair, stretching her long legs out in front of her. She’s wearing old jeans, a white men’s shirt with the tails hanging out,

and her hideous combat boots. “God, I’m tired.” She tips her head back and rubs her neck before turning to look at me. “I’m not paying you enough for you to work this many hours, Taylor. Susan never worked past three on Wednesdays and twelve on Fridays.”

I gesture to the stack of paperwork on my desk. “There’s too much to do for me to leave.”

Marta lifts an eyebrow. “There will always be too much to do. You’ll never get to the bottom of the pile because new stuff will come in. Just do what you can do and when everyone else dashes out, you should, too.”

“Well, let me at least finish this letter I was working on. Once it’s printed I’ll take off.”

Ten minutes later, I’m going through the document one last time doing spell check when I feel Marta’s gaze. It’s incredibly unsettling. I look over my shoulder at her.

“Have you always been such a perfectionist?” she asks quietly.

I frown. “Why do you think I’m a perfectionist?”

“I’ve been watching you. You’ve read the letter through at least four times, maybe five. Move on. Be done with it.”

“I just don’t want a letter going out from Z Design with mistakes in it. It’d look bad—” I break off as Marta laughs. “Why are you laughing? I’d think you’d care about appearances—”

“I do.” She’s no longer laughing, but she’s still smiling a little. “I do, but I also know what it’s like to juggle home and work. Go home, Taylor. Your girls had a short day, too, and I’m sure they’re dying to see you.”

The girls are screaming at the top of their lungs as I open the front door. “It’s all your fault!”

That’s Jemma, I think, closing the door between the garage and mudroom.

“It’s yours!”

And that’s Brooke. Sagging with fatigue, I hang up my coat on a mudroom wall hook, set my purse on a bench, and head toward the kitchen.

“If you weren’t such a spoiled brat, we wouldn’t have to move and sell all our things!” Jemma again.

“If you weren’t such a jerk, Dad wouldn’t be in Omaha!” And that’s dear Brooke.