Burning Down the Spouse Read online

  Oh, wait. The flowers . . .

  Was that what this was about? Was Mitch upset that she’d crushed them to oblivion like his stupid black French truffles? Jesus. He was so picky. It was just some water on the floor and rose petals. Big shit.

  Kiki curled up over her neck, shivering. She might not be able to hear Mitch, but she certainly sensed his fury. “You’re angry about the flowers,” Frankie stated rather than asked, bouncing Kiki to soothe her. “They’re just roses, Mitch. Go buy yourself twelve dozen. God knows you make enough money. I’m going home to take a bath. This last week with you before this live taping hasn’t exactly been a game of Chutes and Ladders.”

  Mitch’s grip only became more forceful, matching his rising anger. His fingers dug into her upper arm, refusing to let her leave. Eyes, lined with crinkly webs of an age he was finding harder and harder to hide, grew wide. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “Just like one of those heart attacks Epson’s always prepping for,” Frankie responded, bland and disinterested. Once more, she made an effort to leave, ignoring the crowd gathering behind Mitch’s back.

  Mitch jerked her back, forcing her to face him and making Kiki cringe. A fury so crystal clear in his gray-blue eyes it scorched her with its venom. “You’re a jealous bitch! You never could handle my success, could you, Frankie?”

  “Handle it?” What was there to handle? It was all about Mitch or it wasn’t. Easy-peasy. Successful or unsuccessful, Mitch was da man of the hour—every hour of every single day. All Mitch, all the time.

  His mouth became a thin line, the veins in his neck, angry, blue, and pulsing. “Do you have any idea what the tabloids will do with that stunt you just pulled on live TV? They’ll rip me to shreds!”

  Frankie let her head fall back on her shoulders so she could properly display the huge amount of disinterest she was feeling about poor widdle Mitch and his poor widdle reputation. “So?”

  “So? So?” His face became a mask of furious disbelief. “You just accused me of being unfaithful to you on national TV, Frankie—with another Bon Appetit Channel chef all while you set my kitchen towels on fire! But not before you trashed everything in your wake on a live set. Half the world saw you behaving like you had roid rage!”

  Well, assuming half the world had actually tuned in . . . that might be a tad generous. Mitch’s ratings were pretty damned good, but he wasn’t exactly Emeril. Though, that was the intended goal for tonight. And it wasn’t like she’d accused him of being a bottom-feeding infidel without cause. Why was he always so hard to please?

  “Can you even hear me, Frankie? You’ve ruined my reputation. The tabloids will have a field day with this!”

  Yeah. It would probably be pretty ugly and obviously, Mitch needed some form of validation from her to prove his point. Her job as ego-stroker extraordinaire was never done, was it?

  Her shoulders lifted, despite the painful grasp he had on her upper arm. “Yeah. You’re probably right. So they’ll call you a disgusting, lying, cheating pig who’s boning a chick half his age named Bamby? With a ‘Y’ on the end of it, in case you missed that memo. She’s sent like twenty of them in the past month since she slept with the CEO and nailed Bamby’s Bakin’ to remind us. I don’t know about you, but for me, Bamby With A ‘Y’s’ repetitive nature is a little old.”

  Frankie paused, almost forgetting the original question. Oh, wait. She remembered. The tabloids. “Where were we? The tabloids, right? Is there some error in the statements I made while I trashed your live show and all of your ridiculously expensive Mitch in the Kitchen cookware? Did I miss a detail? If you want, send me an email memo so I’m sure I have it all ironed out and I don’t get a single, filthy stat wrong, because we all know how meticulous you are about the smallest details. Do that and mark it ‘IMPORTANT.’ You know, all in caps like you do so I won’t miss one out of the nine hundred you send me a day. For now”—she attempted to shrug off his iron fist, hiking Kiki up higher on her shoulder—“I’m going home.”

  Yet Mitch hung on to her. He might be fifty-eight, but he had some grip from all that hand mixing he did. “The hell you’ll step foot in my home! Never again, Frankie Bennett! You got that? It’s my brownstone. Mine. In fact, all of it’s mine! I want a divorce. Do you hear me? And so is Kiki!”

  Frankie sighed, cocking her head to the left, eerily detached. “Yep. I heard you. And Kiki’s mine. I’d bet my left foot and my right hand your fans would love to hear who really found Kiki. She doesn’t even like you. So forget it. And I guess I’m fired, too, huh? Bummer that. Good thing I’m blessed with the ability to color-coordinate food so it has camera appeal. Bet it’s a skill that’ll come in handy when I look for work. Oh, and geez, I hope my new boss is a total tyrant. I can’t work unless someone’s screaming at me. Know what else? I really, really hope he’s an anal, egotistical, self-serving, whiny, aging half-man who has manicures once a week like some soccer mom. I can’t see why anyone would ever want to work for someone who doesn’t have at least two of those traits.” She yawned. “Okay. Gotta go. You and Bamby enjoy your stratospheric success.”

  With a hard shove, she pushed her husband Mitch away from her for the last time, stepping over the smashed carton of organic eggs so she wouldn’t slip and break an ankle, and made her way out of the studio.

  She gave nary a glance to the crew and their wide-eyed stares when she sauntered down the long hallway leading to the exit.

  When passing Bamby With A “Y,” she held up Kiki, sticking the dog under Bamby’s nose. Kiki hung there, her little legs dangling, wide-eyed with nary a blink. “Grrrrrrrrrrrr!” Frankie mimicked a much bigger dog than Kiki, giggling when Bamby squealed in terror.

  Bamby hated dogs, probably as much as she hated the letters “I” and “E.” Her leggy, tight body; her shiny, chocolate brown hair; her quivering with fear at Kiki didn’t even make Frankie pause.

  Frankie realized she should probably want to beat the bitch to within an inch of her life with a rolling pin—maybe a meat tenderizer, that’d definitely leave marks—but there was simply no fight left in her.

  Stumbling into the warm night air, she dug around in her jeans to find the keys for her car.

  Mitch might own everything. The brownstone was in his name. True dat. Every investment, vacation home, stitch of clothing in their walk-in closet, checking and savings account might be his, too. That’s what prenups were for. Mitch had made sure she’d signed one when they’d married eighteen years ago. She’d done so willingly to prove her undying devotion to the head chef at Reynard’s. Back then Mitch was just financially sound, but he’d clenched every penny as though it were his last.

  Eighteen years later, he was now insanely rich and still clenching every penny between his tight ass cheeks.

  Smart. He must’ve had some kind of crystal ball that told him he was going to be worth millions someday.

  Yes, Mitch owned it all, Frankie mused ruefully.

  But by God, her little Nissan Versa was hers.

  Six months later

  “She’s asleep? It’s almost three in the afternoon!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Maxine. I think it’s depression,” Frankie’s Aunt Gail said. In fact, if she were willing to open her eyes and get out of bed, Frankie’d bet Gail was nodding her head full of shortly cropped white hair, while her finger rested under her bottom lip.

  “Has she been diagnosed with depression?” whoever Maxine was asked.

  “Are you kidding? She hasn’t been anywhere in months to be diagnosed with anything. All she does is sleep.”

  “Gail Lumley, why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  “Because you’re so busy with the new business and school. Not to mention your new husband. You have so little time alone with Campbell. I didn’t want to intrude.”

  Maxine chuckled all warm and squishy, making Frankie clench her eyes tighter. “My new business is exactly the cure for this kind of depression.”

  “But she’s so cranky
when you wake her. Like a hibernating bear.”

  “Really? Well, that’s too damned bad.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Gail warned.

  “Yeah? Well, I would,” Maxine said. “Now give me the cookie.”

  The door to her Aunt Gail’s small second bedroom cracked open, shedding a slant of light across the floor, forcing Frankie to burrow farther under the knitted afghan and tuck Kiki closer to her. A slight shift, and the bed sagged with someone’s weight, and her faithful little Chi was suddenly up and away. The faint sound of pig noises drifted to Frankie’s ears.

  “Frankie Bennett?”

  No.

  The someone in question made a rash move by dragging the covers off her in a whoosh of cold air. “I said, Frankie Bennett?”

  “Who are you?” she moaned in response to losing her knitted cocoon.

  A hand, slender and finely boned with neatly trimmed nails, was under her nose in a flash. “Maxine Barker. Get up.”

  Dragging a pillow over her face, Frankie ignored the hand and muttered, “What for?”

  “So we can stop this farting around and get to the business of living. Bills don’t get paid if you sleep until three in the afternoon. Now get up.”

  No, no, and no. She was never getting up. “Aunt Gail?”

  “Yep, sassafras?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Maxine Barker, but she already said that. She’s my best friend Mona’s girl. Now get up, Frankie, and stop steepin’ in your stink like some human tea bag.”

  Her nose slid surreptitiously to her armpit. She did not stink. She’d showered like . . . four days ago or something. “Please, Aunt Gail, I just want to be left alone.” She really, really did. Forever and ever.

  Maxine clucked her tongue with what sounded like disgust. “Frankie? I’m here to help you help yourself. It’s time to get out of this bed and join the land of the living. I’ll take drastic measures if I have to.”

  Drastic this. “Go away.” Frankie tacked on a “please” on the off chance this Maxine meant something to her aunt. Aunt Gail was good to her. She didn’t want to offend her—probably as much as she didn’t want to get out of bed.

  “Gail?” Maxine said. “Out in the hall, please? And bring her little dog, too.”

  Soft footsteps shuffled back out of the bedroom, her traitorous dog in tow, giving Frankie enough time to locate the afghan and burrow herself back into it. Jesus. Broad daylight hurt your eyes. Why would anyone choose to get up and endure it?

  But then the footsteps returned.

  Damn.

  “Frankie—I’ll count to three, but if you don’t get up, you’ll be sorry,” Maxine warned.

  How much sorrier could she get than she already was? This woman Maxine was a novice if she thought there was any sorry left in Francis Bennett.

  “Last chance . . .”

  Hah. Let the counting begin.

  “One, two, threee!”

  Icy rivulets of water sloshed between the holes in the afghan and over the top of her head, plastering her hair to her scalp while dripping down to glue her torn T-shirt to her breasts. Frankie tore at the blanket, hurling it at Maxine, who caught it like a Yankees shortstop nabbing a line drive. Her berry-glossed lips curved into a smile of victory when Frankie jolted upward out of the bed.

  “What the hell?” Frankie sputtered, water dripping into her mouth.

  “I did warn you,” Maxine countered, smoothing her hands over her crisp, white, fitted shirt with the smartly upturned collar. “The longer you lie around in bed, the easier it is for your limbs to atrophy. Now come with me.”

  The. Hell.

  Frankie cocked her head questioningly in her aunt’s direction as she used her forearm to wipe the droplets of water from her forehead.

  Gail tightened her sweater with the small white buttons around her chest, curling a wide-eyed, typically silent Kiki against her. “Something had to be done, honey. You can’t stay in bed for the rest of your life.”

  Said who? Was there a law written somewhere, declaring you had to participate? In anything? Ever?

  Gail came to her side, using a tender hand to smooth the moisture from her niece’s face. “Honey, I love you, just like my own, but this has to stop. By giving up, you’re letting that dirty bird, Mitch, with the wayward wanker, have all the control. I won’t have it. I can’t stand to see you like this.” She held up Kiki, her little dog’s legs swinging in the air. “Little Kiki can’t stand it either. Now Maxine here, well, she’s had some tough times a lot like yours, but she came out of it in a blaze of glory. You can, too. Please, Frankie. Please do this for me.”

  Frankie’s glazed eyes cleared momentarily, giving her a glimpse of her aunt, so worried, so intent, she crumbled. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for Gail, and if it would make this woman go away, she’d do it. “I’m not sure what you want me to do,” she muttered, ashamed she was the reason Gail was so clearly upset.

  Maxine put a hand on Gail’s shoulder and squeezed. “Follow me, Frankie,” she ordered, yet her tone was soft, her green eyes warm. She made her way around the edge of the bed and down along the short corridor to her aunt’s guest bathroom.

  Aha, Frankie thought when Maxine flipped on the light. The bathroom was pink and blue and sported a matching hand-crocheted doily doll with a flowing skirt to decoratively cover the box of tissues. She’d mostly only stumbled around here in the dark late at night after her aunt was long in bed.

  The twin lights above the long mirror glared, making her eyes water painfully. Maxine came to stand behind her, placing her hands on Frankie’s shoulders. “Do you see yourself?”

  Yep. Frankie nodded, realizing that was what would make Aunt Gail happy.

  And now she really didn’t want to see any more.

  Okay. Acknowledged. Were they done now?

  Maxine’s lips took on a thin line. “Do you remember what you looked like before you were divorced, Frankie?”

  A snort almost escaped her lips. Yes. She remembered. She hated that she remembered, but she did.

  “Do you see what you look like now?” Maxine lifted a long lock of her thick, pin-straight auburn hair and held it up to the light. “You’re a greasy, pale, washed-out, shaky, undernourished mess, Frankie. Don’t you agree?”

  And she needed a dye job, too. Point made.

  Maxine, shorter, even in heels, peered around her slumped shoulder. “So I have a couple of questions. Okay, maybe more than two, but they’re compelling,” she joked with an easy smile. “Why would you allow a man like your ex-husband, who’s a mean, cheap, lying, philandering sonofabitch, have all this power? Did he define who Frankie was? Did you get up every morning just for him? Did you shower, put on makeup, and dress up only because he existed? Is it because he’s no longer in your life that you’ve sunk so low you don’t even want to get out of bed?”

  Yes. Yes. Yessss. “Is this like some weird kind of intervention? Do they have those here in little old Riverbend, New Jersey?” she asked with dry tones, fighting to keep the crack of watery tears out of her voice.

  Maxine smiled again, pretty, gentle, understanding. “You didn’t answer the question, Frankie.”

  Her head sunk to her chest. For all her bravado the night she’d walked out on Mitch and Bamby With A “Y,” for all her venomous, arrogant words, yes. The end of her marriage to a man she hadn’t, if ever, seen clearly, hurt like hell, but adultery was the one and only thing short of murder she knew deep down she’d never be able to live with.

  Realization, in all its ugly blatancy, was what had made her snap the night she’d found out about Mitch’s affair.

  Eighteen solid years and she’d finally seen the real Mitch. Self-centered, egotistical, bossy, and a cheat. He’d always been there. He’d simply done a bang-up job of lurking just below the line of decent, but she’d brushed those warning niggles aside, granting them excuses because she’d loved Mitch with all her heart.

  Hearing about his infidelity in such a callo
us way had been a crass wake-up call—like being clunked over the head with a two-by-four.

  It was as though all of a sudden she’d hit this brick wall she’d once always found a reason, even if it was flimsy, to climb over. But on that night, there was just no more rope for her to grab on to to help her scale that seemingly towering hurdle.

  Not being able to live with Mitch’s infidelity didn’t mean it hurt less. Having divorce papers served to you two weeks after you made your big marital exit on national television didn’t sting less because the man you’d devoted your life to was a prick.

  “Frankie?” Maxine prodded.

  Her breath was a long shudder. “Yes. Everything I did revolved around Mitch. I didn’t realize the gaping hole not having to chase after him would . . . would leave.” Her heart, quiet and unresponsive for six months, shifted with a painful jolt in her chest.

  Maxine’s ash brown head nodded in understanding. She gave Frankie’s shoulders a squeeze. “It’s like a big, black void of nothingness. Even if the tasks you performed as Mitch’s wife were tedious, they gave you what you thought was purpose. Your lot in life, so to speak. You don’t have to explain, Frankie. No one, and I really mean no one, gets that better than I do.”

  A tear seeped out of one eye. God damn it. She’d had the market cornered on numb. When and if she was awake long enough to think, she’d amused herself with inconsequential musings like how many drips it took before a ketchup bottle was empty. Anything much deeper and she shut it down, closing her eyes to seek solace in dreamless sleep.

  Maxine turned Frankie to face her. “Listen to me, Frankie. I was a stay-at-home mom. A trophy wife just like you. I married my ex-husband Finley when I was twenty and he was forty. He was the first man in my life, and for twenty years, he was the only man in my life. Unfortunately, the same thing couldn’t be said for Finley. He married me because I was a hot number back then, and he liked ’em young and hot. I married him because he swept me off my feet. We didn’t see a movie and grab a burger like you’d do on a typical first date with someone your own age. We flew to Paris and had escargot.”