Mood Swing. Jane Graves
pale complexion turned as white as Elmer’s glue. Gradually he moved behind the lectern, as if he felt the need to have something substantial between Susan and his privates.
“I see,” he said. “We’ll…uh…be doing some cognitive restructuring exercises aimed at preventing that kind of behavior.”
Tonya turned to Danforth. “So you actually think if she doesn’t have all her cognitive whatever restructured, someday she’s actually going to tear the guy’s balls off?”
Danforth cleared his throat. “I’m merely saying that if one can control one’s verbiage, one can frequently control one’s behavior.”
“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” Susan said. “Really. I swear it wasn’t.”
“So you have no remorse for the act,” Danforth said. “You’re merely sorry you were arrested for it?”
“Well, no, I didn’t mean—”
“We’ll be working on that.”
Susan glanced at Monica, then Tonya. They matched her subtle eye roll with ones of their own, bringing them into conspiracy together with a single common thought: No matter what this idiot says, sometimes when people get out of line, you just gotta let ’em have it.
Danforth launched into a lecture about the difference between assertion and aggression, and, for the next hour and a half, Tonya interrupted him every few minutes to ask him to define the terms he was using, such as cognitive distortion and neuroanatomy of anger. Susan got the feeling Tonya didn’t give a damn about the definitions, but she sure liked messing with Danforth. Monica spent most of the class wearing a distinctly bored expression as if all of this was so not worth her time.
Susan occupied herself by going over her mental to-do list, which she had to kick into action when she got home: check to make sure Lani had done her homework; do a load of laundry so she’d have something to wear to work tomorrow; pay the overdue electric bill; call Don and remind him about Lani’s basketball game. Then take a shower, climb into bed and dream of a world where money was plentiful, conflict was scarce and she had at least a few hours a day when she wasn’t somebody’s mother, somebody’s nurse, somebody’s ex-wife, or, in Dennis’s case, somebody’s worst nightmare.
Finally, at ten till nine, Tonya asked Danforth if he thought there was any difference between being angry, being livid and being pissed off. He looked at her dumbly for a moment. Then he took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose and dismissed class.
Susan left the classroom and headed for the bathroom. Tonya and Monica followed. They each went into a stall, and a few minutes later they were standing at the sink.
“Could you believe that guy?” Tonya said, swiping on enough lipstick to send Maybelline stock soaring. “I’ve never seen such a self-important little creep in my life.”
“He’s definitely on my top-ten list,” Monica said, touching up her makeup with the precision of a micro-surgeon. The compact she held looked unfamiliar to Susan, which meant it had come from somewhere besides Walgreens.
“Cognitive restructuring,” Tonya muttered. “Please.” She held up a middle finger. “Wonder how he’d like to restructure this?”
Monica raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a particularly subtle person, are you, Tonya?”
“As if you are? I noticed you made a pretty obvious statement with that flowerpot.”
“Yes. Well.”
“Not that I don’t admire you for it. A boss who promises you a job and then gives it to somebody else had better expect a faceful of broken glass.” Tonya leaned into the mirror to wipe a stray bit of lipstick from the corner of her mouth, which made her too-short denim skirt hike even farther up her thighs. “And the little geek you went off on deserved it, too,” she said to Susan. “So what if you threatened to castrate him? You were in a hospital, weren’t you? They’re doing wonders these days with all kinds of reattachment surgeries.”
Susan smiled. After her ex-husband, her daughter, her coworkers and a certain Dallas County judge had acted as if she were criminally insane, she liked having somebody’s stamp of approval, even if that somebody was just as criminally insane as she was.
“And if your husband cheats,” Susan said, “I think he should expect a few flying dishes.”
“I agree,” Monica said.
So they’d reached a consensus. They’d all been railroaded. Susan suddenly felt a weird kind of camaraderie she hadn’t expected, as if it were the three of them against Dr. Pompous.
She said goodbye to the other women and left the bathroom, thinking about the hundred other ways she could productively spend this one evening a week. Then again, the women’s magazines always said that a working mother needed a hobby or activity away from her family and coworkers that was uniquely her own. Courtesy of the criminal justice system of Dallas County, it looked as if Susan had found one.
CHAPTER 3
Later that night, Tonya pulled her Ford Fiesta to the curb in front of her house, half expecting to see Kendra Willis’s car in the driveway getting cozy with Dale’s 4 x 4, while Kendra was in the house getting cozy with Dale. But the only other car she saw was Cliff’s old Buick with the bad transmission, which was undoubtedly leaking fluid all over the driveway.
The living room blinds were open. The two men sat sprawled on the sofa with their feet on the coffee table, which meant they were probably watching Monday night football, and that irritated the hell out of Tonya. Her husband was in there drinking beer and watching the game with one of his firefighter buddies, while she sat out there with her hands clenching the steering wheel and her heart tied up in knots.
Two weeks ago, after the court proceedings, she’d given him the cold shoulder—no talk, no sex, no nothing—just so he’d never forget how pissed she was. When he hadn’t seemed to care about that, she’d gotten progressively more frustrated, until one day she lost it a little and gave him an ultimatum. She told him that if he didn’t apologize for everything he’d done and swear he’d never look at another woman again, she was going to leave. He told her he wasn’t apologizing for anything. Then he went into the kitchen, grabbed a beer and a sack of pretzels and headed for the living room, where he sat down on the sofa and flipped on a NASCAR race.
It stunned her so much that she said fine, packed some clothes, her toothbrush and her makeup and told him she’d be in the apartment over her hair salon whenever he came to his senses.
A week later, she was still there.
Go, she told herself. Drive away. Go back to your apartment and stay there until you get that apology you’ve got coming.
But deep inside she had the most horrible feeling that the week she’d already waited would turn into two weeks, then three, and then Dale would realize he didn’t need her after all and she’d go to the mailbox one day and the divorce papers would be there.
Tonya lit a cigarette and took a hard drag, forcing herself to think. Finally she decided that the house was hers, too, so of course she had a right to walk in anytime she wanted to. And she looked just hot enough tonight that she was sure to get Dale’s attention. He’d always told her he didn’t like her wearing this particular skirt around other men because they couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Maybe if she strutted through the living room, Cliff’s gaze would wander a little, and then Dale’s possessive streak would take over and he’d want her to come home. Men weren’t like women. Sometimes you had to get right in their faces to remind them of what was important.
She took a last drag on her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray, before popping a few Tic Tacs. After checking her makeup and putting on more lipstick, she took a deep breath and got out of the car. On the way to the door, she made up a reason why she’d dropped by just in case Dale didn’t jump right up and beg her to stay. But she hoped he would, if for no other reason than that he hadn’t had sex