Mrs. Perfect

The lump in my throat grows bigger, and I quickly head out the door, walk down the drive, my head bent beneath the chilly rain. I splash through puddles, my leather flats so low that my wheat-colored cords are getting drenched at the hem.

I use my key to open the mailbox and drag out the armful of mail. Catalogs, catalogs, magazines, and four inches of statements and bills.

I close the mailbox door, lock it shut, and stand in the rain, flipping through the statements and bills. The envelopes arriving aren’t just white. A handful of the envelopes are pastel hued, shades of pink and purple and green. I open one of the colored envelopes with dread. I’m right to be worried. It’s from a collection agency. They’re threatening legal action. I know now what’s in the other colored envelopes.

And it’s not good.

Chapter Ten

The next morning I wake early, hoping if I call Nathan he’ll pick up. He doesn’t answer. I hang up furious and frustrated. But only seconds after hanging up, I dial again. “Nathan, we love you and miss you. Hope you can come home for a visit soon. I know the girls would love to have you watch them play in another game before the season ends.”

I hang up once more. This time I bury my face in my hands and rage silently.

Maybe I did spend too much. Maybe I wasn’t listening closely enough. But I didn’t lie to him. I’ve never lied to him. He has no right punishing me like this.

He was the one who lied to me for over six months.

He was the one pretending to go to work even though he had no job. So where did he go for all those months? What did he do? Play golf? Internet solitaire? Gamble at Diamond Lil’s?

Yet as angry as I am, I know I can’t blame him, and I can’t give up. I won’t lose this house. I won’t have my children embarrassed. I won’t let us become a source of gossip and laughter for the neighbors.

Pulling my hair back into a ponytail, I take a deep breath and open the Word file containing my résumé.

For the next half hour, I work on polishing my résumé. Then, using last Sunday’s classifieds, I write a cover letter for six different jobs I think I could do.

For each job application, I double- and triple-check my cover letter for spelling and typing errors before printing the letter on pristine Crane parchment paper. Then I rework my résumé for each different application, trying to refocus my résumé’s objective statement to reflect what I could do for each company. Even to my eyes, my résumé looks sadly outdated. I haven’t held a paying job since before Jemma was born. Over ten years without employment. Twelve since my last job search.

Scary.

I’m still working when the phone rings. I grab for it, see that it’s Nathan.

“Hey, stranger,” I say, sitting back in my chair.

“Hey,” he answers, but his voice sounds strange. Strained. “I got your messages.”

“You don’t sound so good, Nathan.”

“Just homesick.”

“Then come home.”

“I wish I could.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Taylor . . .”

“I’m going to get a job, Nathan, and when I do, quit that job and come home. You’ll find another one here. We can make it work here—”

“I need to go, honey. Sorry.”

“Nathan—”

“My appointment arrived early, Taylor. I’m sorry. Give my love to the girls.” He hangs up.

I stare at the phone a moment before putting it down. What’s happening to my life? I feel as if I’m starting to lose my mind.

I take a breath, and another, trying to slow my crazy pulse. I don’t like feeling this way. I don’t want to feel this way.

With a shaking hand, I press print and my résumés start to churn out, one after the other.

I will find a job. I will help out. We will get through this.

While the résumés print, I go wake the girls and do the morning routine. Once the big girls are off to meet their bus, I dress Tori and then head to my room to get ready for the day.

In my closet, I spot a long honey suede skirt hanging in the back. I pull out the skirt and see tags still attached. The skirt’s been buried in my closet since last fall when I bought it brand new. I’ve never worn it, and I look at the tag. Michael Kors, $1,800.

With the way things are now, I’d take the skirt back if I could, but it was purchased in New York when I accompanied Nathan to a conference there last year. We stayed at the Four Seasons, ordered room service every morning to a tune of $75 a pop.

Play money. Monopoly money. That’s what it was. I’ve lived on my credit cards, rarely paying cash for anything. I had no idea that Nathan was living the same way. It didn’t cross my mind that we were living dangerously. That we could run out of money.

Tori wanders into my room, sucking her thumb. She’s got her favorite stuffed green frog beneath her arm, holding it close to her body. She outgrew her thumb and the frog a year ago. “Going to wear that?” she asks around her thumb, using her pinkie to point to the suede skirt.

I start to hang the skirt back up. “No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like it.” She looks at me, her blue eyes so serious. “Wear it. With boots.”

Oh, my baby. I scoop her into my arms and hug her, kiss her. “Did you want to pick out a pair of boots for Mommy to wear?”

She nods and disappears into my closet. She’s always loved my shoes, and she takes her time finding black stack-heeled leather boots. The toe is slightly pointed like a cowboy boot, but the black leather shines and the heel is four inches high and sexy. “These,” she anno

unces, dragging the pair to me.

I sit on the chaise to put on stockings and tug on the boots. “You’ve got good taste.”

She stands in front of me as I finish dressing, watching as I pull an off-white sweater over my head and cinch the waist with a wide black leather belt highlighted by an enormous round buckle.

“Pretty,” she says approvingly as I comb my hair straight, leaving it loose.

I put down my brush. “You think so?” She nods soberly, and I nod back at her. “Mommy thinks Tori’s very pretty, too.”

She adjusts Froggie under her arm. “I look like Mommy.”

It’s all I can do to keep from pulling her into my arms again. I’m so scared for her, so scared for all of them, but I can’t let her see my fear. Nathan’s going to call. Nathan’s going to help me make everything right. “Yes, my darling girl, you look like Mommy and Brooke and Jemma. We’re a family.”

She nods once. “And Daddy.”

Nathan. Nathan, call. Nathan, please come see us, please come home. “And Daddy.”

I pick up my purse on the floor, not bothering to change it. It’s mink brown and doesn’t match my outfit, but suddenly I’m too tired and too busy to care. There are more important things on my mind, more important worries weighing on my heart.

It rains on the drive to drop Tori at preschool, rains during yard duty, rains during lunch duty, with no sign of letting up.

After lunch duty ends, I head to the office to copy and collate the bulletin. Lori and Kathleen aren’t working in the copy room with me today. Instead it’s a new face, a mom I haven’t met yet but who seems to struggle with everything from working the copy machine to stapling the pages in the right corner to counting out the bulletins for the various classrooms.

I’m still trying to sort out the bulletins when my cell phone vibrates. I don’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Young?”

“Yes?”

“This is Cottage Preschool. We have Tori still here. Your nanny didn’t show today, and we’ve tried her cell phone several times—”