“That’s because the coaches don’t think I’m trainable; I think they’re embarrassed by me,” she said, laughing. “Though they might be right. I have two left feet. Milly, you should join me sometime.”
“Oh gosh, I don’t know if I even remember how to play.” Milly hadn’t played since high school, and even then it had only been to get out of taking gym class, but she liked Sylvia. She was so different from her—outgoing, carefree, and confident—all the things Milly wanted to be.
“Perfect; then you’ll make me look good!” Sylvia said. “And from what I’ve heard, it’s like riding a bike—you never forget.”
“All right,” Milly said, feeling a tiny ripple of excitement at trying something different with this new acquaintance, or maybe it was the cranberry Rangoon Ruby going to her head.
“How about Friday?”
“Sure,” Milly said. “I’d love to.”
The next morning it was still dark out as Milly stood at the kitchen counter pouring the boiling water into the coffeepot. She watched the grinds settle, letting the steam warm her face, knowing she’d only have the chance to gulp down a quarter cup of coffee, half if she was lucky; then she had the sudden urge to take her husband’s keys, get into the car, and drive far, far away. It was a shocking thought, one she regretted instantly as she heard Jack and Debbie singing along to “Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah” as they came downstairs. The moments of peace and harmony were blissful and she should be more grateful, she scolded herself, but they were far outweighed by the spells of chaos.
The night before, when they got home from Sylvia’s house, Debbie was still awake, hours past her bedtime, struggling with her reading. She stayed up until almost eleven o’clock in tears attempting to finish the first few pages of a book she hadn’t taken out of her book bag untilit was time to brush her teeth and put on her nightgown. By the time Milly left her daughter’s room, shuffled Lloyd from where he was snoring on the sofa to the bedroom, it was almost time to do it all over again.
She’d woken to the sound of Jack calling “Mommy” over and over again, followed by questions from Debbie that she didn’t really need help with: “Should I wear this white dress with the yellow sash, or the red one with the white collar?” If Milly gave her opinion, Debbie would undoubtably choose the other. Jack had demanded he have marshmallows for breakfast, because Leticia had let Debbie eat two for dessert the night before and he hadn’t had any. For a brief moment he forgot about the marshmallows and put on his new Flash Gordon sunglasses—the red ones with the yellow Flash mask in the center and the two tiny rockets on the side—only to have Debbie come along and snatch them off his face, saying, “Can I try them on?” sending Jack into a screaming frenzy, all before the sun was even up.
Lloyd emerged clean-shaven and gleaming, smelling like Gillette shaving foam and pine-tar shampoo. He grabbed his hat, briefcase, and keys from the kitchen table, kissed his children on their heads, and made a beeline for the door.
“What time will you be home?” Milly asked.
“Not sure.” He came back and kissed her on the cheek. An afterthought. “Bye kids. Be good for your mother.”
“Yes, Daddy,” they said in unison, then they ran to the front window in the living room to watch him drive away.
He’d have the send-off of a king, kisses blown, cheeks pressed up to the window, dramatic waves goodbye from the living room, followed by an hour of peace, cruising along the coast in his Oldsmobile, with no whining, crying, complaining. He’d roll the windows down and listen to the Chordettes or the Penguins, and he’d arrive at his office refreshed and calm and ready to take on the world. Milly resented him for that.
She smeared peanut butter and grape jelly onto white bread and crammed it in Debbie’s metal lunch box.
“I don’t like that lunch box,” Debbie began.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Hopalong Cassidy is a boys’ lunch box.”
“All right,” Milly said, dumping the sandwich and a cookie into a paper sack and adding a small Tupperware container of fruit salad. “Take this instead. I’m sure Jack will happily have it.”
“Don’t give it to Jack,” she whined.
Milly took a deep breath, walked to the bedroom to get herself dressed, and counted down the minutes until the school bus would arrive.
It had been Milly’s idea to move. She’d insisted, in fact, that they get out of Hollywood, away from the traffic, the pollution, the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, where Lloyd was constantly being pulled back to work long after he’d left the office. They’d be at dinner and he’d run into another studio executive or a director, and next thing you knew, Milly would be finishing the last sip of her drink, and Lloyd would be ushering her into a taxi and kissing her goodbye. “I won’t be late, I promise,” he’d say. “We just need to talk business; you know how it goes—you’d be bored out of your mind.” And she’d give him her cheek, and later she’d climb into bed alone only to hear him creep in at four or five in the morning or sometimes not at all.
She was surprised that he’d agreed to the move. Two months earlier they’d spent the weekend on Balboa Island for their anniversary, peeking into windows filled with charm and home-cooked meals and families of four sitting down together for dinner. “It would be good for you,” Milly said at the end of the weekend before they drove home. “You could leave all the stress of work behind and come home to this at the end of each day,” she said as she looked out to the yachts sailing by, the children building sandcastles by the water’s edge, the Balboa Pavilion across the bay silhouetted against the setting sun.
She had thought that if they lived here, an hour south of all that lustiness that Hollywood had to offer, a place where it was picturesque, patriotic, with clean, salt air, then he’d have less time to indulge in all that perfidy. They put down a deposit on a house on Amethyst Avenue, they enrolled Debbie in school, and found a nursery school that wouldtake Jack for two hours in the morning three times a week. They packed up their house in Hollywood and had everything delivered to the new house on Balboa Island. But now, instead of pulling him away from the temptations of Los Angeles, she’d simply taken herself out of the equation, making it easier for her and Lloyd to be apart. She’d had a plan, a grand plan, but she was becoming very concerned that it had backfired.
She had to do something to bring Lloyd into their new life on the island. She had to find a way to entice him to her, to ground them here, to make this new life permanent. And she had to do it fast.
