Better Off Without Him (Romantic Comedy) Read online

  I entered Mr. Arnold’s office still trembling. He rose from his desk and took my arm, leading me to the sofa and sitting down with me. We faced each other, knees almost touching, and he actually patted my hand.

  “Mrs. Berman, first let me repeat that Lauren is fine. That is, she is unhurt.”

  “You’re sure it’s Lauren?” I asked, reaching for any straw.

  “Oh, yes. And she did confess.”

  “Confess?” My eyes started to well with tears. “Oh, Mr. Arnold,” I whispered, “she was my best hope.”

  “Yes,” he said, waving his hands helplessly in the air. “I know. She’s always been a model student. An example for others, really. Which is why her behavior is so upsetting. I feel I must ask – is there anything going on at home that may have caused her to, well, act out?”

  I took a deep breath and lifted my chin, blinking away the tears. “Well, as a matter of fact, my husband is leaving me. Us.”

  Mr. Arnold nodded his head. “Well, that might explain it. I’m sure that hit Lauren very hard.”

  “Well, no, because she doesn’t know yet. He just told me himself, um - ” I glanced at my watch - “fifty-three minutes ago.”

  Mr. Arnold drew back. “Are you saying that your husband just now, this morning, told you that he was leaving you?”

  “Yep.”

  Mr. Arnold looked amazed for a moment, then slipped back into his I-can-help-I’m -a-professional mode. “Well, you know Mrs. Berman, sometimes these separations can result in the strengthening of a marriage.”

  I looked at him rather coldly. “I don’t think that will be true in our case.”

  He lifted one eyebrow. “Don’t be too hasty, Mrs. Berman. Why, my wife and I recently had a bit of a problem, and the time apart did us a world of good.”

  I tilted my head at him. “Did your bit of a problem involve you schtooping a thirty-year-old French whore?”

  Mr. Arnold looked shocked. “No, of course not.”

  “Then I don’t think we’re on the same page with this one, Mr. Arnold. Now, what about Lauren?”

  “Yes. Well, she assaulted a fellow student, and as you know, we have a zero tolerance policy about that sort of thing. She faces an automatic three-day suspension, and we will insist she attend anger management classes.”

  “Assault? Are you telling me that she hit somebody?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

  This was so not making sense. “Hit? She hit somebody with her hand?”

  “Well, no. She hit them with her science project.”

  I made the leap from surreal to impossible with no effort at all. “Her science project? She hit someone with a five-foot-tall model of DNA?”

  Mr. Arnold nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

  I stared past Mr. Arnold to the wall behind his desk. Apparently, he graduated from the University of Virginia, Summa Cum Laude. I looked back at Mr. Arnold. “Why?”

  “It really doesn’t matter why she did it, Mrs. Berman, the fact is – “

  “It matters to me,” I interrupted.

  “Well, I really don’t know why. Let’s bring her in, shall we?” He got up, spoke into his telephone, and a moment later Lauren walked into his office.

  She looked miserable. Her shoulders were hunched, her eyes were red, and her perky braid had come undone. “Mommy, I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, and started to cry.

  I stood up and swept her into my arms. My poor baby. My heart was breaking for her. Really. I wiped the hair from her eyes and looked into her unhappy little face. “What the hell were you thinkin’?” I yelled at her.

  She took a lungful of air. “It’s just that she broke it,” she wailed.

  I shot a look at Mr. Arnold. “Who broke what?”

  “Bernadette,” Lauren explained at a gallop. “ See, Jessica was supposed to carry the project from Mrs. Chambers’s room, and when she brought it in, all the strands along the top, you know, the green ones, well, they were all broken off, so I started to yell at Jess, and Jess said she didn’t do anything, and Ahmed said he saw Bernadette reach up and break them as Jess walked by, so I went to Bernadette and asked her if she broke our project, and she said yeah, she did, that it was a stupid project anyway, and then she started to laugh. So I grabbed the project from Jess and hit her over the head with it. Hit Bernadette, not Jess. Jess just stood there with her mouth hanging open.” Lauren moved her shoulders in a pitiful kind of way. “I was just so mad.”

  I was staring at Mr. Arnold, who had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “So, Bernadette ruined the science project that you and your sister spent six weeks working on?” I asked Lauren, but my eyes never left Mr. Arnold’s face.

  I could feel Lauren nod. I narrowed my eyes. “Let’s hear Bernadette’s side of this, shall we, Mr. Arnold?”

  Mr. Arnold left the room. I shook my head at Lauren. “You bopped her with five feet of plastic straw and miniature marshmallows?”

  A smile played along her lips. “Yes. I’m really sorry, Mom, but she is such a bitch. Honest. She is.”

  “Lauren, honey, I believe you. But you’re the one who keeps me from running off to join the circus. If you start acting like your sisters, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Daddy’s going to be pissed, isn’t he?”

  I exhaled slowly. “Oh, dear. Well, I don’t know. I have a feeling you’ll be getting away with this one.”

  Mr. Arnold returned with Bernadette and Bernadette’s mother, a shallow-faced woman I recognized at once. Sometime in the recent past, during a sixth grade PTA bake sale, she had given me a hard time because I only wanted six brownies and refused to pay for a whole dozen. Her name, as I recalled, was Bridget or Britta or Greta. I didn’t like her.

  “My daughter,” she said at once, “could have been seriously injured. She called me on her cell phone as soon as it happened, she was so distraught.”

  “Your daughter,” I spat back, “got hit with plastic straws held together by miniature marshmallows and craft glue. The only way she could have gotten hurt is if one of the straws went so far up her nose that it severed her brain stem. Who are you kidding? Injured?” I looked hard at Mr. Arnold. “So, what is going to be Bernadette’s punishment?”

  Mr. Arnold looked puzzled. Bernadette and her mother looked immediately on guard.

  “What do you mean?” Mr. Arnold asked.

  “There’s a zero tolerance policy when it comes to assault. What’s the policy about the deliberate destruction of personal property?”

  Bridget/Britta/Greta looked nervous. Mr. Arnold still didn’t get it.

  “Those kids last year,” I went on, “the ones who slashed the tires in the parking lot? Didn’t they get an immediate suspension too?”

  “Well, now, Mrs. Berman, this isn’t quite the same thing now, is it?” Mr. Arnold could see the trap, looming wide ahead of him, and he was trying to steer as clear as possible.

  “Oh, Mr. Arnold, I think it’s exactly the same thing. You can’t place a monetary value on what Bernadette destroyed, because it involved weeks of work, and that’s so hard to calculate, not to mention the affect on both of my girls’ grades. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? Personal property is personal property, and Bernadette deliberately destroyed my daughter’s property. How long were those boys out? A week? And maybe Bernadette should also be required to seek counseling. After all, there may be some deep, underlying reason she sought out this particular science project, and if there are DNA model issues, we wouldn’t want her to repeat the same grave error later on in life, would we?”

  Mr. Arnold rolled his eyes in defeat. Bridget/Britta/Greta clenched her jaw. Bernadette looked clueless. I dared not look at Lauren, because I could feel her shoulders shaking with laughter, and I was afraid if I looked at her, we would both become hysterical.

  “I can’t suspend somebody for breaking a science project,” Mr. Arnold said.

  “Sure you can,” I said, my voice steely.

  “It’s possibl
e,” Lauren suggested in a clear voice, “that Bernadette did it by accident.”

  “And it’s also possible,” Bridget/Britta/Greta said from between clenched teeth, “that Lauren tripped and the project just fell on my Bernadette.”

  Her Bernadette opened her mouth to protest, but got her foot stomped on. Mr. Arnold looked beaten. He took a deep breath and asked, “Does Bernadette wish to withdraw her complaint?”

  Bridget/Britta/Greta nodded.

  “Apparently, then, this has just been a little misunderstanding. Bernadette obviously overreacted, making a false accusation.” Mr. Arnold clapped his hands together. “Okay, everybody, sorry for the commotion. Why don’t we just get back to what we were doing, and forget all about this?”

  Bernadette, still protesting under her breath, got dragged from the room. Lauren had turned to leave, but my hand shot out to stop her.

  “What about the science project?” I asked.

  Lauren looked back in surprise. Mr. Arnold just looked annoyed.

  “Was Mr. Coopersmith able to evaluate the girls’ work before the project was, um, accidentally destroyed?” I pressed on.

  Lauren’s face fell. “No. It was in Mrs. Chambers’s room. Mr. Coopersmith never saw it.”

  I smiled sweetly at Mr. Arnold. “It would be a shame if my two daughters received a failing grade because their project was the victim of a little misunderstanding, don’t you think, Mr. Arnold?”

  Mr. Arnold sighed. “What would you suggest, Mrs. Berman?”

  “Since it was sitting in Mrs. Chambers’s room all morning, and Mrs. Chambers is also a science teacher, perhaps she can recommend a grade for the girls.”

  Lauren grinned. Even Mr. Arnold looked happy. “Excellent suggestion, Mrs. Berman.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Isn’t it.” I gave Lauren a quick kiss. “Go back to class, honey.”

  I watched her go with a warm feeling. Kicking ass for the sake of my kids is something I do quite naturally. I don’t send back bad food in a restaurant, and I’ve never returned an appliance if it breaks while under warranty. I even feel bad about telling the sales clerk at Chico’s that she forgot my Passport discount again. But with my daughters, I grow an instant backbone.

  Mr. Arnold put his hand on my shoulder as I started to leave. “Mrs. Berman? “

  I turned. He looked the soul of sympathy and understanding.

  “Is there someone who can be with you today? After that kind of news, you probably shouldn’t be alone. A sister perhaps? Or a neighbor?”

  ‘Darling,’ he whispered into her hair, holding her gently, ‘what can I do? How can I help you?’ She leaned back to gaze into the dark tenderness of his eyes. ‘Just love me,’ she said, pulling down his head to meet his mouth with her own.

  “Better than that,” I said. “My plumber.”

  He looked confused, but smiled. “If you ever feel the need to talk,” he went on, “please think of me as a friend. I can understand that having your husband leave you for a younger woman can be a very humbling experience.”

  “Mr. Arnold,” I said between clenched teeth, “looking into a lighted make-up mirror with a plus-seven magnification is a humbling experience. Having your husband leave you for a younger woman just plain sucks.”

  And then I left.

  When I got back home, everything looked exactly the same. The furniture gleamed softly. Fred was stretched out in his favorite patch of sunshine on the living room floor. Lana was curled up on the softest pillow of the window seat. I could sense a vague feeling of something missing, probably my luggage, but my home looked the same as it did when Brian was still living in it.

  I sat down in the hall and called my best friend, Patricia Carmichael. Everyone needs a best friend like Patricia. She’s very rich. I mean, she’s a Carmichael, born and raised on the North Shore of Long Island, the same neighborhood Jay Gatsby lived in. That’s the kind of rich she is.

  Now, you might ask, why would I, being a Quincy by birth, be impressed by that? Because I’m not one of those Quincys. My Polish great-grandfather, coming over to America and standing in line on Ellis Island, was told that his name was too long and too hard to pronounce. The clerk helpfully suggested that my GGF take five letters from his last name, and use those as his Americanized name. GGF looked at his wife, who picked out Q,N,Y,C, and I. They rearranged the letters, and presented the new name to the same nice, helpful clerk, who pointed out that, in America at least, if you really wanted a Q in there, you’d need a U as well, and the Quincy family, later of Belleville, New Jersey, was founded. If those were the letters they wanted to keep, you can imagine the ones they left behind. Surprisingly, the DAR has never approached me or any other members of my Quincy family tree. Those DAR babes know the score.

  Back to Patricia. She is very beautiful, which, in addition to the really rich part, is a little hard to get past, but once you do, she’s a wonderful person and the best friend you could ever want. We’re friends because, being a Carmichael, she’s a patron of the arts, and in Westfield, New Jersey, writing historical romance is actually considered art, and about fifteen years ago we met at a Westfield Salutes the Arts festival. I didn’t know who she was, I just knew by looking at her that she was way out of my league. You’ve seen the type, probably in Bloomies or Saks. She’s one of those impeccably dressed women, with very expensive-looking ash blond hair, amazing bone structure and knock-your-eyes-out diamonds in very classy settings.

  She approached me, a martini glass in one hand, and when she found out who I was, she told me she was a fan of my books. I didn’t believe her. I thought I knew my demographic, and it didn’t include her. But she insisted, smiled, and leaned in very close.

  “You must tell me,” she asked in a low and husky voice. “All those marvelous sex scenes you write? Do you really have that good an imagination, or are you the luckiest woman in New Jersey?”

  After an ice-breaker like that, I was smitten. We met a few times for coffee after that, but our friendship was cemented one afternoon when we had lunch at the Highlawn Pavilion and she taught me how to drink.

  The Highlawn Pavilion, for those who don’t know it, is a breathtaking mansion with an even more breathtaking view of the Manhattan skyline. She picked me up for lunch in her baby Mercedes, and we were soon ensconced in a deep banquette, surrounded by quiet, luxury and the promise of excellent food. The waiter, a very proper-looking gentleman, who knew Patricia and addressed her by name, which impressed me like you would not believe, asked what we wanted to drink. I said a Tequila Sunrise. The silence at the table fell like a dead hippopotamus. The waiter did not write anything on his little pad but instead turned to look at Patricia. So did I.

  Patricia leaned forward slightly and spoke gently. “Really, darling, wouldn’t you rather have a martini?”

  I was game, but ignorant. “What’s in a martini?”

  Patricia took a small breath. “Well, it’s very simply made, you see, which is why it’s so perfect. There’s gin, very cold, and a splash of vermouth, also very cold, and an olive. Very cold.”

  “Mmmm.” I looked back at the waiter. “It sounds lovely, but I don’t like gin.”

  The waiter’s face actually cracked, as though I had just told him his mother died. He looked back to Patricia. So did I.

  Patricia, being extremely well bred, smiled serenely. “No problem,” she said. “Vodka?”

  Ah.

  “Vodka martini,” I said obediently, and the waiter, looking like he had just been spared having to throw himself in front of a speeding train, bowed and left.

  We’ve been drinking them together ever since.

  Patricia does not have caller ID in her house. She has staff to screen her calls for her, so it took a minute or two to get through. “Mona? Love, how are you?”

  “Oh, Patricia,” I started, then found I could not go on.

  “Mona. Is it Jessica?” See, I’m not the only one.

  “No. Well, there’s Lauren. She hit a student over th
e head with her DNA.”

  Patricia, who was over last week and had the girls preview their project for her, took a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, I’m sure she must have had a good reason.”

  “She did. It’s fine now, actually, but, Patricia? It’s Brian. He left me.”

  There was silence. “He left you? But, darling, why?”

  “He met someone else. Dominique.”

  More silence. Then she chuckled. “Oh, Mona, not to worry. Obviously, this is some feeble cry for attention. There are no real women named Dominique.”

  This is why she’s my best friend. “Yes, she’s real. She’s French.”

  “Oh, my God. Mona, darling, I’m coming right over. Make sure the vodka is cold.” Another reason why she’s my best friend.

  I went into the kitchen and sat. Four years ago, when we did our big kitchen/family room remodel, I insisted on a full-sized refrigerator and, right next to it, a full-sized freezer. I told Brian it was so that I could stock up on sirloins and swordfish from Costco, and could always have more than just one flavor of ice cream on hand, but the real reason was so that I could stash four one-liter bottles of Grey Goose at the bottom, where they would always be perfectly cold and ready for anything.

  It took her fourteen minutes to arrive, which meant she hit all the lights. I was still sitting in the kitchen when she burst through the back door. She gave me a very long and hard hug. Then she stepped back. “Mona, I’m here now. We’ll get through this. Do you have olives?”

  I nodded. Patricia knows her way around my kitchen, and in no time flat, had the martinis made. She poured mine and slid it across the countertop. I took a long, icy swallow.

  The classic martini is a very simple thing, but they always taste better to me when Patricia makes them. I have tried her technique many times, but it’s never quite the same. I think it’s something in the way she fondles the ice. Here’s how she does it.