“So… When are you gonna tell your ex about us?” I knew this was coming. Sooner or later I was going to have to introduce my new boyfriend, Mark, to my evil ex-husband, Bill, but not today. And not tomorrow either. How about never!
“I don’t know. Soon, okay?”
“You look nervous.”
“Do I?” I tried to smile and laugh as if I didn’t feel sick to my stomach, but he was right. We were headed towards Bill’s mother’s house in Mark’s car at that very moment to drop off Faith to accommodate Bill’s visitation rights. He was bound to notice the shiny red camaro and the hunk of beef cake behind the wheel. This was step one of my master plan. First, they would establish visual contact from afar… many, many times. Then Mark would stand outside his car and say “how’s it going,” or something equally casual as I hefted Faith’s baby carrier and diaper bag through the front door of Bill’s mother’s house. And then…
“Hey, is that it?” Mark asked, pointing up Lakeshore Circle at the grey two story house with the perfectly manicured lawn. Oh God! We’re here! The car slowed to a stop in front of the mailbox with the 401 label. “Sharon
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, this is it.” I scrambled out of the passenger side door to get Faith from the backseat. “I’ll just be a minute inside, okay?” He was already getting his seatbelt off. “Really, this stuff isn’t that heavy.” I tried my best to make lifting Faith’s two-ton diaper bag and car seat over my seat and under the shoulder strap of the front seatbelt look effortless. I failed miserably, grunting and making embarrassing faces to boot. Darn two door cars! I need to work out more.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Before I could say no, or even think Oh, shit, Mark got out of the car to help. He grabbed everything and headed for the front door with me in tow. Wait! I’m not ready for “and then…” yet!
I rang the doorbell and walked in. The door was left open for me. It usually was in case Bill and his mother were in the backyard or the swimming pool. “Hello,” I called out loudly to announce my presence. I didn’t want Mrs. Engle to die of a heart attack if she saw Mark first. Wouldn’t that have been a cheerful way to start our visit. Hello Bill. Sorry about your dead mother. By the way, this is my boyfriend, Mark. At least, I hoped she would be the one to greet us.
No such luck.
Bill came through the back screen door from the patio and found me standing in the hallway next to Mark, who was picking Faith up out of her carrier. If I hadn’t known Bill since middle school, I would have said that he took in the new and unexpected male presence with perfect ease, but I saw the awkward, split second up and down, side to side glance he gave Mark before recalling his usual cool. I smiled to myself.
“Hey man. How’s it goin’?” Bill waved his greeting at us from across the room. Ha! Yeah, that’s right. Mark here could crush you like a bug.
“Hey Bill. This is Mark Foster.” What did I say his last name for?
“Foster? As in Melissa Foster?” Melissa is my best friend, also from middle school.
“Yeah. Mark is her older brother. He just got back from the Navy.” I just had to throw that last little tidbit in there.
“That’s cool… (long silence)… So, can you pick Faith up at around ? We are going to cook dinner on the grill out back.” He was addressing me. Only me.
“Yeah, no problem. We were just gonna hang out until you called us anyway.”
“Oh. Okay then,” he said, taking Faith and the diaper bag from Mark. “I’ll see you guys later.” Faith began to fuss as usual, but I knew that in about thirty seconds Bill was going to hand her off to his mother so that he could swim or play video games anyway. To be honest, I felt Faith was safer with her. Then again, what was the point of me bringing her over there if he was just going to ignore her anyway? I let it go. She had Mark now.
Once we were back outside, I grabbed a hold of Mark’s arm, laid my head against his hard bicep, and began to breath normally again.
“You see,” he said looking down at me with his gorgeous dark brown eyes and pouty lips. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I knew he hadn’t been planning on meeting Bill that day. He just did it. I could not be mad at him, not while he gave me that look. His face was a mixture of tenderness, assurance, and playfulness, and it said, “Of course that wasn’t that bad silly. I was right there with you, and I always will be.”
Thump-thump, flutter-thump.
Oh, boy. Here I go again.
As I said before, Mark is my best friend’s older brother, a dream come true for every young girl who ever wanted to be sisters with their best bosom buddy. The first time I went to Melissa’s dad’s house in Towanda , Illinois
“Whoa! Who is that! He’s hot!” My thirteen-year-old hormones were in overdrive.
“That’s my older brother, Mark,” she said, not even bothering to turn around to see which family picture I was ogling.
I turned to Melissa’s father, who was sitting at the kitchen table near by and said, “Yup. That’s the man I’m going to marry.” He laughed.
I wasn’t joking.
There were a few problems with my plan. For one, he was only a picture. Since he was in the Navy, I would never be able to get to know him except when he came over on holidays, and holidays are for family. Secondly, and more importantly, I was thirteen. If he was in the Navy, he had to be at least five or six years older than me. In other words, my plan was illegal. Finally, the next year, in eighth grade, I met Bill. I settled on obsessing over “Mr. Right now” instead and left Mark adrift at sea.
But now I was 22, and he was… (How old is he anyway?), well, older. I was single. He was single. We lived in the same state, and, oh my gosh, he was even better looking in person. I had met him before when he came home on leave every so often, but I always enjoyed his good looks from afar. The law demanded as much.
And so, when I was invited over for Thanksgiving dinner the year I left Bill, the most painful and devastating year of my life, I found myself staring across the long table at Mark as if he were an angel in blue jeans and a tight cotton shirt. “Doth thou want some more sweet potato casserole” he might say. “Why yes, thank you,” I would reply, blinking my lashes at him.
“He’s hot.”
“Excuse me?” The dream vanished. I was now staring at Melissa’s goofy grin. The color of my cheeks must have rivaled the cranberry sauce.
“What? Oh… I said, ‘Careful, that’s hot’.” Her smile widened, as did mine. I knew it was a lame cover, but I thought I might get points for being clever. “Oh come on! You know what I said.”
“Yeah, I know what you said,” she teased. “I’m just happy you found something nice to think about. You deserve to be with a good guy.”
Apparently, Melissa was not the only one who thought so, because every time Mark was to come to his mother’s house, I was invited over. I found out later that his mother, father, brother, and sisters were all on board, telling him how smart, funny, and sweet I am, assuring him that I would make a good wife, and giving him general pep talks to ask me out. I was not spared this treatment either.
They would start in on me as soon as I came in the door.
“Did you know that Mark led drug patrols in the Navy? He received medals and everything. He’s never smoked or drank alcohol either…”
“Mark is a pre-med student, and he is doing really well in school. He is so goal oriented and studious, just like you…”
“Do you want to come over next weekend? ‘Why,’ you ask? Oh no reason. Mark is going to be here, and I think he was hoping you would be here too…”
“Mark said the sweetest thing about you the other day. What was it? Oh, darn. I forgot, but you can call and ask him. Here’s his number…”
Still, I wasn’t quite ready to dive back into the deep end right after I nearly drowned. Time was not my friend, especially at night after I put Faith to bed. I sat alone in my tiny studio. I was a failure. I would sit on my little red couch with my knees drawn up under my chin, hug them to my chest, and do nothing but stare at the walls for hours. I almost never slept. I bought myself a clock with bright blue numbers to keep me company. It’s . You’re a failure. It’s . You’re a failure. It’s . You will always be a failure.
Before the divorce, I had purpose. I was on fire and so ready to be free, but the reality of divorce was like a bucket of cold water. I sat on my couch night after night, a sopping wet pile of ashes living in a dark, three-hundred-fifty square foot hole with nothing but an obnoxious clock to tell me that my situation was never going to change. And then along came Mark. On the days I saw him, I basked in every compliment I got from him or through his relatives as if the words were rays of bright golden sunshine. When night came, I had a ready supply of pleasant warmth. Little by little, I began to dry out.
In the second week of March, the first hint of balmy spring weather appeared. As usual, I was out in Colfax to visit “Melissa,” who lived there with her mother, Linda, her step-father, David, and her baby girl, Skyla. Mark was staying there through his spring break. As always, I was wearing two or three extra layers to keep myself warm in Linda’s personal ice box of a house. I rubbed my arms as I stared out the window, then at the babies playing on the floor, then at Mark.
“Does anyone want to go for a walk? It’s really nice out,” I said still facing Mark.
“Yeah. I’ll go. We could take the kids to the park,” he said immediately. He must have been waiting for the invitation.
“Yeah! That sounds great.” Suddenly Melissa and Linda figured out what was going on and couldn’t leave it alone.
“We’re coming too! But… you can start without us. We’ll be right behind you.”
And they were. They puttered along innocently pushing the babies in strollers about twenty feet behind us with Christina, Linda’s eldest daughter, on the phone, giving her a play by play of the action.
“Are you going to be up here this whole week then?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll be out here mostly, but I’ll be coming to town to visit my dad and my grandma.” I lived “in town” too, which is Bloomington-Normal. “What about you?”
“Oh. Well… I usually try to come out here on the weekends, like today. He’s going to ask me out! Just breathe. Act normal.
“So, what are you doing on Monday then?”
“Nothing. I have to work until five. Then I get Faith from the daycare. Why?” He slowed down and almost stopped. I did the same. I looked up at him, waiting for him to continue.
“I was just wondering… do you want to go out to dinner with me?” Yes! Yes! Yes! But…
“I’d love to…but, I don’t have a babysitter. It’s hard enough leaving her in the daycare. I just… I can’t leave her.”
“I know. I want both of you to come.”
“Really!?!”
“Of course.” He paused for a moment, contemplating how he should say what he wanted to say. “I understand that you and Faith are a package deal. I would never ask you to exclude her.”
“Are you sure you want to take all this on?” I asked, pointing my thumb back in the direction of the strollers.
“Well, most men my age already have families.”
“Most men as good looking as you could have any woman they wanted.” He smiled.
“I suppose. But most women are not like you. So… will you have dinner with me?”
“We’d love to. Oh, wait just a sec,” I said, turning to face our stalkers. “Hey! He asked me out! We’re going to dinner on Monday.” The squeal coming from the receiver of the phone was audible from twenty feet.
“By the way, just how old are you anyway? …Really! You look younger than that.”
I called my mother when I got home that night to tell her the news.
“Guess what I’m doing on Monday,” I said quietly. Faith was asleep in her section of the room as I sat on my couch painting my toe nails cherry red with the phone pressed between my ear and my shoulder.
“Hmmm. I don’t know. Are you… going shopping?”
“I have a date. I’m going out with Mark Foster.” I was beaming.
“Oh. Huh. Is he that big guy with the ponytail and all the tattoos?”
“No! That’s his brother, Scott.”
“Oh. So Mark is the one who was in the Navy then?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well good. I’m happy for you.”
“I think you’ll like him. You should come visit so you can meet him.”
“I think I could manage that. Until then, I want you to tell me all about him.” Oh boy. Here comes the hard part.
“Well, he’s uh… he’s thirty-two,” I began.
“Uh-huh.” Did she hear what I just said?
“He’s ten years older than me, Mom.”
“And?”
“So, you’re okay with that?”
“Of course. I’ve been telling you for years that you need someone at least seven years older than you. You’ve always been much more mature than the boys your own age.” Phew! “Speaking of which, how are things going with Bill and the visitations?”
“I don’t know. Bad, I guess. I stopped calling him to see if he wants to have Faith come over because every weekend he says he’s sick or cancels last minute when I call to see what time he wants me to drop her off. I’m just tired of the whole mess. I thought I’d be done with all the arguing and excuse making when I got a divorce.”
“I hate to tell you this honey, but the mess has only just begun.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?”
“Seriously hun, you need to be prepared to deal with him, and so does Mark if he ends up sticking around.
“Mark won’t have to deal with him. I will.”
“Yes he will. Believe me. Whether you like it or not, Faith’s connection to Bill makes Bill something like… your ‘other man’.”
“Well, in that case, Mark is really never going to meet or talk to him then. I’m not going to lose the perfect man over him.”
“You don’t need to go that far. I just wanted you to be prepared. When the time is right, they will meet, or talk on the phone, or whatever. If Mark really is the perfect guy for you, he’ll stand by you and help you deal with your relationship with Bill.”
Back on the lawn at Bill’s mother’s house, I smiled up at Mark. The perfect man. The man who could make fire dance on water.
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