Dear Neighbor, Drop Dead Read online

“That’s ridiculous. Daddy helped his son get a job. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “No! You ruin everything when you call. My teachers all hate you.”

  “Oh, please. I happen to be very highly regarded at your school, but fine. If you don’t want my help, I won’t call. Just don’t come crying to me when you’re not picked to be the speaker.”

  “I DON’T CARE ABOUT BEING THE SPEAKER, OKAY?” Jessica ran out of the room screaming, “You’re the only one who cares so you can brag to all your little friends at the club. You’re the worst mother evah!”

  “Well excuse me if I happen to like being proud of you,” Beth hollered back, then pulled the covers over her head.

  So unbelievable! After devoting her life to these girls, the little ingrates were turning on her with their big mouths and bad attitudes. She did not deserve to be subjected to such snotty, obnoxious behavior. They were the worst daughters evah!

  And what of her demanding parents? Even from their condo in Palm Springs, they made it clear that in exchange for their generosity over the years, they expected frequent calls, visits, and annual travel plans that included them.

  On top of that, Richard was making life impossible. Blah, blah, blah, money was tight and they should let Marina go. But this business about letting the girls make their own decisions about their extracurricular activities was crazy. It was never too early to be thinking of college applications. If he didn’t let her handle this, they would both end up at one of those no-name New York State schools. Not happening. Her car would have a Brown or U.Penn decal if it killed her!

  But what was really getting to her was Richard’s constant harping about updating her résumé and meeting with headhunters. She had zero interest in returning to the work world, which would feel like a prison sentence, not to mention, what would the neighbors think?

  Fortunately, the opportunity with Downtown Greetings came along, and Beth was able to convince him she could submit the winning entry in her sleep. “I know what they’re looking for,” she’d said. “They’re like every other client. They want new and improved only exactly the same.”

  Richard laughed, relieved that Beth hadn’t lost her uncanny business intuition in spite of her long sabbatical from her days as an assistant art director. Sure enough, she received the letter informing her that she’d made it into the first round of the competition and handed it to Richard.

  “Read this. I think you’ll be quite impressed.”

  “Excellent.” He examined his receding hairline in the mirror. “Split a hundred g’s and get a one-year contract. Now all you have to do is win.”

  “Oh, I’ll win, because I’m sure as hell not getting a job. Everyone would think we were in trouble.”

  “We are.” He winced. Had his six-foot frame shrunk?

  “Oh, please. My parents are loaded.”

  “That’s right. They are.” He stretched to prevent further erosion. “We’re not.”

  “So? They just gave Brad fifty grand to open a business. Which if I know my brother, he dropped half of it in Vegas already. I’m sure if we’re in a jam, they’ll be happy to match that.”

  “We don’t need handouts, okay? We live better than ninety-five percent of the people in the world.”

  “Forgive me. I forgot you’re Jimmy Stewart, I’m Donna Reed and it’s a wonderful life.”

  “That’s right, it is! But we’ve got the girls’ bat mitzvahs coming up, college to save for, you keep talking about buying a place down in Boca, and now if Allstate says your car is totaled, who has to come up with the down payment for a new one? You? No me. So all I’m saying is be reasonable. You’ve got very marketable skills. Help me out here.”

  I do help him out, she thought as she flipped on the TV. I’m raising our children! God! This was not what she had bargained for at this stage of life. They should be comfortable by now, not needing her to return to a career she hadn’t pursued in fourteen years. Besides, what ad agency worth its billings would be interested in a forty-year-old mom whose greatest success of late was running the most profitable Scholastic Book Fair in the district?

  And now with her and Warren picking up speed, she worried about careening out of control on Crash and Burn Road. What was she thinking when she let herself get dragged into drinks with Jill and her cavalcade of bored/lonely/revenge-seeking housewives who frequented Bryant and Cooper and the other swank north shore steakhouses on Fat Wallet Thursday?

  Only on Long Island would there be a night designated for a gathering of those who were married but still shopping or divorced but still hoping. A night when even men with small change could score, as long as their wallets were well endowed.

  “I’ll take that to go,” a bald, fat man salivated on Beth as if she were a juicy thirty-two-ounce porterhouse.

  “We are so out of here,” she said as she grabbed Jill’s hand. “You said this would be fun.”

  “It is.” She let go. “Relax. Have another drink.”

  “Everyone here is married!”

  “Or was…Don’t look now but there’s a very hot guy eyeing you at the end of the bar.”

  That guy was Dr. Warren Ross, a top plastic surgeon with an office on Park Avenue, a home in Amagansett and an Upper East Side penthouse recently featured in Vogue. Twice divorced but currently unattached, he was checking out the Thursday night action on his way to the Hamptons in the hopes his takeout order would include a top sirloin and sex.

  Subtle was not Beth’s strong suit. She had to peek, but even in the dark-lit bar, the piercing Ralph Lauren eyes and tight gray curls stood out. She turned to Jill and fanned her face. He was hot! Taller than Richard and dashing in Armani in a way her husband would never be.

  He bought her apple martinis and between the liquid courage and tingling touches, her hair fused to her skin. And though she turned down his offer to be wooed for the weekend, she did take his card. Should she ever succumb to the knife, what better than to be in the hands of a surgeon who was offering a full examination?

  Two weeks later she went for an initial consult—at the Garden City Hotel.

  After two glasses of wine and some R-rated groping, she confessed to finding him utterly adorable, but still could not allow herself to be his next piece of meat. To which he replied, “I know you’re as hungry as me, and I’ll wait.”

  Now several steamy encounters later, the last one in the parking lot of the Roosevelt Field mall, Beth was tormented by indecision. Join the ranks of married people who kept lovers on call, or bail before she surrendered body and soul to a surgeon who could scar her for life?

  She hoped the vacation in Aruba would force her to come to her senses, as hooking up with a plastic surgeon was terribly cliché. Though admittedly her bigger fear was finding out how many patients BODYDOC had previously bedded, and if he disposed of them as quickly as he did his rubber gloves.

  And yet, was it so wrong to fantasize about how different her life would be if they had an affair? If she didn’t have to deal with Richard’s nagging, her daughters’ fighting, and Mindy, the next-door neighbor from hell, turning her already stressful life upside down?

  Oh God. Mindy. Beth had momentarily forgotten about their sighting at the mall and shuddered at the thought of her fat-ass neighbor wanting to get even after all their years of sparring. One call to her idiot friend Nadine, and word would travel as if the talk was about former Merrick bad girl, Lindsay Lohan.

  Maybe if she went online and chatted with Mindy, wished her a great trip, she would be so stunned by the friendly gesture, she would think twice before turning into gossip girl.

  Beth ran into the adjoining study to turn on the computer. First task after logging on was to unblock Mindy, much as she hated the idea of seeing her screen name on her handpicked buddy list. But hallelujah! She was online. Finally something was going her way!

  diamondgirl (8:06 p.m.): hey just wanted to wish you guys a good trip

  No response. Mindy must be downstairs and forgot to put up an away
message.

  diamondgirl (8:07 p.m.): richard mentioned something about wanting to book a cruise this summer…let us know how you like yours

  Still nothing.

  diamondgirl (8:07 p.m.): thanks for taking care of the post office. so hectic before a trip

  Finally a reply.

  mindymom3 (8:09 p.m.): yah

  Beth took a deep breath.

  diamondgirl (8:09 p.m.): wanted to talk to you about today…really no big deal

  mindymom3 (8:09 p.m.): k

  diamondgirl (8:10 p.m.): just ran into an old friend from Syracuse and ended up getting coffee

  mindymom3 (8:10 p.m.): w/e

  Beth paused. What the hell was “w/e.” Oh yeah. “Whatever.” Duh.

  diamondgirl (8:10 p.m.): you looked like you were in shock…just wanted to tell you it was nothing

  mindymom3 (8:10 p.m.):???

  diamondgirl (8:11 p.m.): old friends catching up…turns out he’s single…would be a good catch. Know anyone who wants to be fixed up with a rich plastic surgeon?

  mindymom3 (8:11 p.m.): no

  Strange, Beth thought. Normally you couldn’t shut Mindy up, so the curt replies had to mean one thing. For God knows what ridiculous reason, Mindy was pissed at her and maybe thinking it was payback time, in which case Beth had better set the record straight.

  Fingers flying, she shared some wild tales of her and Warren’s bawdy undergrad days at Syracuse, certain it would clear up any misunderstandings. “It would be pretty funny if you thought for even a minute that we were an item. God, no. Warren and I are just old friends.”

  But in her haste to cross the finish line, she blew right past the red flags, never stopping to think that someone other than Mindy might be at her computer; perhaps an easily distracted seventh grader who was supposed to be working on a report on the War of 1812.

  In fact, Stacie was on her parents’ computer, as the last laptop sighting was the backyard, and Jamie was on the one in the den and refused to budge until she checked out her gym teacher’s profile on MySpace. So when Beth started jabbering away, Stacie, quite bored of the Battle of New Orleans, was happy to take a commercial break and join the show in progress…until she realized Beth’s instant messages were getting a little too dicey for adolescent eyes.

  She is so whacked, Stacie thought as she copied and pasted the entire conversation, forwarding it in an IM to Jessica next door.

  MetsGoStacie (8:11 p.m.): btw…wat is up with yor mom????

  And then because Stacie was thirteen and accustomed to transmitting her every thought instantaneously to as many people as she liked, she also forwarded the convo to her best friend, Danielle Cooper, and nine other friends and wrote,

  *omg…Jessies rents mite b gettin devorct

  And then because she was thirteen and texting was the next best thing to being there, she popped this little grounder to her softball team:

  so not lookin good for jessies rents

  And then because she was thirteen trying to act sixteen, she went on Facebook and wrote on Jessie’s wall:

  sorry bout ur rents…. here if ya wanna talk xoxoxoxo lyl

  And then because today gossip traveled at laser speed with precision accuracy, within seconds of Beth’s signing off the computer and pouring herself a glass of wine, Jessica was in her room sobbing over the awful rumors.

  Beth heard the crying but assumed that her hormonal teen was still carrying on about her Juicy outfit being ruined. Jessica should only know what it was like to have real problems. Only to turn and find Jessica crying as if she’d just received devastating news. But as any parent of a middle school child knew, it just meant that she’d found out someone was having a party and, horror of horrors, she wasn’t invited. Cue up lecture number sixty-two. Life is not fair.

  “I hate you so much!” Jessica screamed, throwing a copy of her mother’s conversation in her face. “Why do you always have to be so mean to Daddy? And don’t think me and Emma are gonna live with you ’cause we’re not. We don’t wanna be like Corey Halpert. Oh, wow! He’s real lucky! He gets to see his dad on a Webcam…. great life, Mom! Thanks! Just what we always wanted. Virtual visits!”

  “What are you talking about?” Beth recognized the conversation and felt faint. “Oh my God…where did you get this?”

  “From Stacie and like sixteen other people. Isn’t that great? You’re such a lovely mother I had to find out from like the whole world my parents are getting a divorce. God I hate you so much. You are the worst mother evah!”

  “Would you stop saying that?” Beth shook. “Nobody’s getting a divorce. Oh my God, I can’t believe Mindy would do something so awful. Who does that, Jessica? Who gives a child a copy of a private conversation?”

  “Mommy!” Emma yelled from her room. “Everyone is saying bad things about you and Daddy. Amanda’s mom wants you to call her right away because her sister is the best lawyer. Why do you need a lawyer?”

  “Oh my God, ohmygod, OH MY GOD!” Beth handed her wineglass to Jessica and demanded her shoes so she could run next door. “Both of you turn off your computers and your cell phones this instant! You speak to no one the rest of the night!”

  What to call the boy? That was what Mindy had been pondering ever since seventeen-year-old Aaron replied to Artie’s e-mail and said yeah, he guessed he would go with them on the cruise to celebrate his grandparents’ anniversary, though he hadn’t seen them since he was three, he’d never met his half-siblings or cousins, and didn’t much care for big crowds or Calypso.

  What had prompted Artie to invite him Mindy didn’t know either, though her husband was prone to doing most things on impulse. Case in point, they were the owners of both a failing franchise and a Mini Cooper. (“At least we could say we drove a BMW.”)

  Not that Mindy blamed Artie for desperately wanting to repair the damage done by Davida, his bizarre ex-wife, who fourteen years earlier had taken their then toddler son to visit her childhood friend in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and decided, presumably on a whim, that it would be an awesome adventure if she and Aaron joined Ellie on a little jaunt to San Francisco by way of a used station wagon and enough dime bags of pot to make them rich by Cleveland.

  Ten days later they stopped in Portland, Oregon, to visit Ellie’s cousin, Walter, a biker/musician/name the stereotype, where a doped-up Davida fell in love over hash brownies and something called Starbucks, then called an already terrified Artie to say, “Queens sucks! We’re staying.”

  Thus began a prolonged and expensive custody battle for Aaron, resulting in Artie getting nothing more from the judge’s decree than holiday visitations and attorneys’ fees.

  Over the years he had begged Davida to let him have a real and meaningful relationship with the boy, only to hear a young Aaron say in a phone call that he didn’t remember who Artie was, his dad was Walter, but it would be okay if Artie sent him birthday and Christmas gifts.

  Christmas gifts? His son who had been blessed by two generations of rabbis at his bris wasn’t being raised Jewish? His heartbreak was incalculable, yet to his credit, he remained hopeful that one day he and Aaron would reunite. That day took fourteen years to arrive, yet Artie was prepared for active duty when the call came. “My mom’s in rehab again. Walter’s dead…an overdose…Would you maybe wanna hang out one day?”

  Artie flew out the next night, met his son at a Holiday Inn near the airport, and gave him his word that they would never lose contact again.

  Now as they waited at LaGuardia, a nervous Mindy fretted over how the kids would respond to him, how Artie’s family would treat him, how she would feel about him, and, mostly, what to call him. Technically she could refer to him as her stepson, but doubted that would roll off her tongue. Perhaps Artie’s boy? His Royal Highness, the Prince of Portland?

  Didn’t matter, for it was a sullen young man who got off the plane and said all of four words (“My suitcase is green”). En route to Long Island, he mumbled that he was tired and slept the entire ride, as if he
were still the sleepy toddler Artie used to strap into a car seat and take to the Bronx Zoo. Probably best, Mindy thought. For of all the things making her nervous about this night, the most perverse was that Aaron would judge them based on where and how they lived.

  Though lot sizes in south Merrick were so nominal that homeowners would be woken by the sounds of garbage pails being hauled down their neighbor’s driveway, and though the streets were so narrow, oncoming cars had to wait their turn to pass, the suburb was home to some of the most exclusive waterfront houses on Long Island’s south shore, particularly the gated estates, once headquarters to mob bosses who needed to be close to the rum-running action off Hempstead Bay.

  And though their block was not quite in that league, every home had undergone major renovations and was a shining example of what refinancing could buy. Save for one: 1359 Daffodil Drive, aka the Sherman house, the lone vestige of proof that these dwellings started as modest split-levels and high ranches. Number thirteen fifty-nine had no distinctive landscaping, no brick exterior or Belgian block walkways. Not even their cars were updated.

  But funny how the things you worried about never happened, while the stuff you never saw coming could completely blindside you. When at last they pulled into their driveway, there was a welcome committee to greet them. Only it wasn’t their kids who ran out of their house, it was Beth and Richard Diamond.