Dear Debbie, page 11
“Why can’t you take it down yourself?” I ask impatiently.
“She changed the password! I’m locked out!”
As Garrett is talking, I navigate to the website for the newspaper on my own phone. No offense to Debbie, but the Hingham Household is the most boring newspaper I’ve ever seen. The website generally contains their logo and the top news story in Hingham, which is probably, I don’t know, a PTA meeting where they’re trying to decide what to watch on the middle school movie night. But instead of that, the only thing on the screen is a video that seems to be playing on a repeat loop.
It’s a video of two people having sex. And one of those people is Garrett Meers.
I don’t know who the other person is, but I met his wife, and it’s not her. The whole thing looks like it’s taking place in an office, on top of a desk. I’m guessing it’s the office at the newspaper.
Wow. He’s right. He really is screwed.
“We’ve already had half a dozen advertisers call to cancel their contracts with us.” His panicked voice has turned pleading. “And my wife… If she sees this…”
Even though it’s rude, I bark out a laugh. “You really think there’s any chance your wife isn’t going to see this?”
“Go to hell!” Garrett snaps back at me. “Debbie has gone too far this time!”
I frown at the phone, suddenly overtaken by a feeling of déjà vu. This is the exact same conversation I had with Brett yesterday morning, when he accused Debbie of messing with his fuse box.
She certainly has the technical skills to do this. And if she got fired yesterday, that’s a motive right there. She would have needed to obtain the footage of Garrett with that other woman, but she’s the one who installed the cameras outside our front door. She certainly knows how to plant a hidden camera.
And yet I still don’t believe it. I always tell Debbie to advocate for herself more, because she’s constantly letting herself get pushed around. She’s great at giving advice, but she never takes mine. I can’t envision her doing something this diabolical. It’s not her style.
“Look,” I say, “Debbie didn’t do this…”
“She did it!” he insists. “And I swear to God, she is going to pay for this. I’m going to make sure she pays.”
Okay, that’s enough. I understand he’s upset, but nobody threatens Debbie. “Watch what you say about my wife,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” Garrett seems unimpressed. “Or else what?”
“If you so much as breathe on her,” I growl into the phone in a voice that actually sounds fairly scary, “I’m going to drive over to your house and break your face.”
I can hear the sharp inhale of breath on the other line, and with that, Garrett finally goes quiet. I take the opportunity to end the call. A second later, the phone starts ringing again, but I put it on silent.
Could I actually break Garrett Meers’s face? I don’t know. I have been going to the gym a lot lately. I’ve never thrown a punch in my entire life, but if he did anything to hurt Debbie, I would definitely make him pay.
“Who was on the phone?”
I didn’t even notice that the shower had turned off, and Debbie has come out of the bathroom, wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe. Her hair is still wet and slicked back from her face with water. She looks so small and vulnerable. Innocent. Except…
Did you break into our neighbor’s house and wreck his fuse box?
Did you post a video of your former boss banging his secretary?
Where were you last night?
What are you hiding from me?
“That was Garrett,” I finally say. “He’s upset about something with the website. It looks like he…”
Instead of saying it, I show her my phone, where the video is still playing on repeat. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video pretty much says it all. Debbie’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Oh!” she says. “I guess Garrett really is sleeping with Sierra. So much for being a family man, huh?”
I keep my gaze trained on her face, watching for her reaction. “He thinks you’re the one who posted the video.”
“Does he?” She laughs. “What does he think? That I hid a camera in his office months ago to get something I could someday use to embarrass him?”
“Uh, not in so many words…”
“Well, that’s a little ridiculous.” She cocks her head at me. “Don’t you think?”
I don’t know what to say to that. “He wants you to take it down. He says they already lost a bunch of advertisers. And he’s worried his wife will see it.”
Debbie gives the video one last look, then hands my phone back to me. “I’m sure somebody already sent his wife an email letting her know about the video.”
“You…you think so?”
“Oh yes.” She bobs her head. “And as for getting it down, I’m sure that somebody from tech support can reset the password for him. That man spirals into a panic far too easily.”
“Debbie.” I swallow a hard lump that has formed in my throat. “You weren’t the one who… I mean, did you…”
For a moment, she just stares at me. My head is still pounding, but all I can do is stare back into my wife’s brown eyes. I’ve known her for nearly half my life, but I’m starting to wonder if I know her at all.
What have you done, Debbie?
Just when I can’t stand it another second, she pipes up, “Of course not! Where would I even get a video like that?” Then she smiles at me. “I’m starving. Do you feel like pancakes?”
“Uh, sure.”
She’s still humming to herself as she gets dressed and heads down to the kitchen to make us breakfast.
After Debbie is gone, my gaze drops to the small pad of paper by the bed. If I had any delusion that what happened last night was some sort of wild dream, the address scribbled in my handwriting indicates otherwise. I stare at my writing for a moment, not sure what to do. I was so tired when I wrote it, the street name is nearly impossible to make out. It seems to say “Main” but just as easily could say “Maple” or something completely different.
I rip the paper from the pad and stare at it for a moment. And then, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, I stuff the piece of paper into the top drawer of the nightstand before heading for the shower.
29
DEBBIE
I’m making pancakes for breakfast.
When I got out of the shower, I had over one hundred unread text messages from Garrett Meers as well as quite a few voice messages. I deleted all of them, then I blocked his number. He can deal with this on his own. After all, I’m not his tech person. I was just the advice columnist, and I was fired, so the way I see it, none of this is my problem.
Also, right now, I need to focus all my attention on making pancakes.
I don’t make them from scratch. I’m not freaking Betty Crocker. I have a box of powdered pancake mix, although I do have some tweaks to make them taste better. I use milk to mix the batter rather than water, and I also add a dash of cinnamon. And once you put it in the pan, you have to cook it just the right amount of time, flipping the pancakes halfway through. It’s not foolproof, but it’s considerably easier than programming a phone app to track your family members.
Izzy comes into the living room first this morning. She hears the sizzling pancakes in the frying pan, and her eyes widen in that same excited expression that Cooper gets when I make him a dinner he particularly enjoys.
“Want some pancakes?” I ask her.
She does. I can see it all over her face. She is torn apart by the inner turmoil of wanting to eat pancakes but also feeling like she needs to lose twenty pounds to get back on the soccer team. The urge to wrap my arms around her in a hug is almost overwhelming. I miss the days when a hug could fix everything and a well-placed kiss could heal any ouchie instantly. These days, I have to be a bit more creative.
“I’m not hungry,” she finally says.
Great. Coach Pike has given my daughter an eating disorder.
Fortunately, that won’t be a problem very soon.
Lexi is the next to enter the kitchen, clomping on the hardwood floor in her Doc Martens that she’s been breaking in for the last two years. She’s wearing a pair of oversize cargo pants, which I suppose are slightly better than pajamas. She’s also not wearing her giant headphones. She walks right up to me at the stove, and I stiffen, waiting for her critique of whatever I’m doing. Last week, she informed me that I was breathing too loudly.
“Mom?” she says.
“Yes?”
She chews on her right thumbnail. “Can I have a ride to school?”
My first instinct is to ask why Zane isn’t driving her like usual, but I’m pretty sure that won’t go well. So this time, I keep my fool mouth shut. “Of course. Would you like some pancakes, sweetheart?”
She hesitates for only a split second. “Okay.”
“I’ll maybe have one pancake too,” Izzy speaks up, and I’m so happy, I could cry.
I portion the pancakes out onto two plates, and I’m placing them on the kitchen table in front of my girls when a loud horn sounds from outside. I cringe. I assumed because Lexi asked for a ride, that punk wouldn’t be spreading his noise pollution through our neighborhood this morning.
“Is that Zane?” I ask cautiously.
Lexi drops her eyes to the plate in front of her. “Mom, can you tell him that I’m getting a ride with you today?”
“Sure, honey. Of course.”
I wipe my hands on my blue jeans and head over to the front door. Sure enough, Zane’s Kia is parked in my driveway at a strange angle. I slip on my flats and step onto the front porch, not bothering with a jacket. This won’t take long.
Even with the windows closed, I can hear his music blasting. I don’t know what he’s listening to. It’s definitely not anything I’ve heard on the radio. I know it’s hard for “old people” like me to enjoy new music, but this song genuinely sounds like a man hacking up phlegm repeatedly. He leans on his horn one more time, and I clench my teeth.
I walk down the steps of the front porch right up to Zane’s car. He is absently bobbing his head to the music, his shaggy hair in disarray. Once again, I fantasize about what I’d do to him with a pair of barber scissors. Then I tap on the car window.
I have to tap a second time, because he doesn’t notice me the first time. He’s probably half deaf from the music. (If one could call it music. I can only imagine that whoever recorded this did it as some sort of psychological experiment to see if anyone would listen to the sounds of bodily functions.) Finally, he swivels his head to look at me and rolls down the window.
“Hey, Mrs. Mullen.” As he looks up at me, I can’t help but notice how hollow his cheeks are, like he’s much older than he really is. “Where’s Lexi?”
“I’m bringing her to school today.”
“But I’m here.”
“Right. And now you can leave.”
Zane rolls his eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”
Without any warning, he backs the car out of my driveway, practically running over my foot. I watch him speed off, keeping my fingers crossed that this will be the last time Zane ever comes here to eat all the food in our kitchen and drink our alcohol.
But somehow, I have a bad feeling that it’s not.
30
FROM DEAR DEBBIE DRAFTS FILE
Dear Debbie,
I can’t stand my daughter’s so-called boyfriend. She thinks the sun rises and sets on that boy, but I see right through him. He drives much too fast, he is barely passing his classes in school, and he’s as lazy as the day is long. And don’t even get me started on his attitude problem. The mouth on that boy!
Every time I try to talk some sense into that little girl, she acts like I’m overstepping my bounds! She gets all huffy, like I’m just supposed to sit there twiddling my thumbs while she throws her life away on an asshole.
Please tell me how to open my daughter’s eyes before it’s too late! Do you know of any reverse love potion recipes? I’ll pay anything!
Sincerely,
Hates the Boyfriend
Dear Hates the Boyfriend,
Unfortunately, I don’t know any recipes for reverse love potions. Wish I did!
I’m sure you know that when it comes to teenagers, the more you try to convince your daughter to dump her boyfriend, the more she’ll stubbornly want to stay with him. You might do better by trying the opposite approach and getting to know him better. Perhaps you can invite him over to your house for a nice home-cooked dinner. After an hour of bonding over a pot roast, I bet you’ll find that he isn’t as bad as you thought he was!
And if after your family dinner is over, you still feel the same way, I would suggest that you sneak out to his car while he’s busy with your daughter after dinner. It’s a simple process to snip the brake line. You say he drives fast, but with no brakes in his car, I bet he’ll go even faster!
Debbie
31
DEBBIE
After leaving a plate of pancakes for Cooper on the kitchen counter, I drive the kids to school.
It’s about a ten-minute drive. There’s a brief fight over which of the girls gets to sit in the front, which reminds me of all the fights they used to have in the car when they were little. When I picked them up from school, they would argue over who got to tell me about their day first. We tried to divide it evenly, but since there were five days in the week, I told the girls that if the date was an even number, Lexi could talk first, and on odd days, it would be Izzy’s turn. It was an excellent opportunity to teach them about odd and even numbers.
Lexi wins out and climbs into the passenger seat beside me. She has brushed her dark brown hair back off her face into a ponytail, and she looks so much like me, it feels like I’m looking into a time machine taking me back to when I was seventeen years old.
I wish I had a time machine. I wish I could talk to seventeen-year-old Debbie and warn her about everything that was going to happen to her. The first thing I would have told her would be to stay home that night during the second semester of her sophomore year.
If I had, everything would’ve been different.
The drive to school is blessedly free of conflict, and Lexi only criticizes my driving twice. But when we pull up to the drop-off line for students, a police car with flashing lights is parked in front of the school.
“What’s going on?” Izzy pipes up from the back seat, craning her neck to get a better look.
“Maybe some kid got arrested!” Lexi says a bit too eagerly.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I murmur, waiting patiently for the drop-off line to creep forward. “It’s just one car.”
“But the lights are flashing, Mom!” Izzy points out.
Very true.
We finally pull up in front of the school, and both girls climb out of the car. Like all the other kids, they are ogling the police car, trying to figure out what’s going on. I remember how it used to be when I was a kid and there was something out of the ordinary going on at school. A burst of excitement in the otherwise monotonous day.
Oh, who am I kidding? I loved school. But it was still fun when there was drama.
After the girls are out of the car, I would ordinarily drive back home, but I too am curious about the parked police car. So I pull around the side of the school and park in the guest lot. There aren’t a lot of spaces, and I have to circle a few times to find a spot that would really be better suited to a compact car rather than my SUV. But I work my parking magic and squeeze into the spot.
After parking, I walk around to the front of the school again. The police car is still parked with the flashing lights, but there’s no other indication of what’s going on. It could be anything from a bomb threat to some drugs found in a locker. But I’m fairly sure I know why the police are here.
This is going to be interesting.
32
A group of parents are milling about close to the school. I recognize one of them—Tabitha, who still looks a little green after our book club meeting yesterday. I approach her, plastering a disarming smile on my face.
Tabitha looks less than thrilled to see me, but she manages a halfhearted smile. “Hello, Debbie.”
I touch her arm in a gesture of sympathy. “How are you feeling today? Still throwing up?”
At the question, several of the other women flash us an alarmed look.
Tabitha frowns at me. “I’m totally fine, thanks.”
“Are you sure? You look a bit peaked.”
“I’m not peaked,” Tabitha says through her teeth. “I’m fine.”
Several of the women are now staring at us, so I decide to let her off the hook. I nod at the police car. “Do you know what’s going on?”
Tabitha is not excited to talk to me, probably because she’s embarrassed that she vomited in my presence yesterday, but she’s also an incorrigible gossip. She battles her emotional turmoil for a moment, then finally says, “Somebody called the school and said they saw a camera in the showers of the girls’ locker room.”
“A camera?”
“A nanny cam—like for recording.” She clutches her chest, her eyes wide. “Can you imagine? Some sicko was recording high school girls taking a shower!”
Now the question of the day: “Do they know who?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “There are no security cameras that record outside the locker room and obviously none in the locker room. So I’m not sure if they have any suspects.”
Oh, come on. I’m pretty sure the anonymous tipster mentioned a name.
I endure another twenty minutes of speculation among the group of women, and I’m tempted to turn around and go home. I’m sure I’ll hear how it plays out on social media. But just as I’m about to give up and go back to my car, the doors of the school burst open. The police are leading a man out of the building in handcuffs.
