Larissa didn’t know what to do. Why hadn’t she put the phone on silent! Well, she couldn’t remember everything, could she? The web of Kai spun the sticky treacly poisonous thread of sham through every detail of her life, so that even something as simple as turning off the “You Got a Message” alert became a source of danger. Like hiding her pill wheel in Lillypond. What to do now?
“Aren’t you going to see who it is? What if it’s Jared and he wants more beer?”
She couldn’t pull her prepaid phone out. Maggie knew Larissa’s regular black phone, and this one was silver and red. She should’ve bought a phone that matched her regular phone. Damn. So many things she just couldn’t think of.
“It’s Evelyn,” said Larissa, pulling out her regular phone, glancing at it quickly and then snapping it shut. “She says hi.”
When Maggie turned to get a plastic bag, Larissa read the text on her prepaid. I CAN’T LIVE, the screen read.
Slightly trembling, she pressed several buttons in a row with her thumb, to delete all messages, even that one, the one she wanted to engrave and hang on a plaque nailed to her heart.
“Evelyn, huh?” said Maggie, squeezing the peach too hard, pulsing the juice out, and then gingerly putting it broken and oozing into a plastic bag so she could pay for it. “I thought you told me they went to Montana to visit her family?”
“They did. She is texting me from Montana.”
They moved on. “I didn’t know you and Evelyn were on such intimate texting terms.”
“Well, you don’t know everything, do you?”
“Clearly.”
6
Miami
A
fter the DeSwanns left the following Saturday, the Starks packed up and left too. They said goodbye to the woods and the frogs and drove back, past Split Rock, past Lake Harmony. Jared drove the Escalade with Michelangelo and Emily, Larissa drove the Jaguar with Asher in the passenger seat.
“Mom, isn’t that the place you were telling us about?” asked Asher, pointing to the billboard off the Interstate. “The place with the indoor waterpark and the sing-alongs?”
“Yeah, maybe. I think so, son.” But Larissa got stuck on the billboard next to it, peeking out from behind, where a single question blared at her in bold black caps: “
Where on earth are you going
?”
“It looked really fun in the brochure. Sad we didn’t get to go. Maybe next summer?”
“Yeah, maybe.” What was that even an advertisement for?
Where on earth are you going?
What a strange question.
“Or, you know, it’s open year round,” Asher continued. “The indoor waterpark in January might be fun for a weekend. We never go anywhere in January. Maybe we can go in the wintertime.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
The following day, which happened to be a Monday, Larissa told Jared she had to go to the mall. They were scheduled to fly out to Miami and she had deliberately booked their flight for Tuesday morning, knowing that Mondays Kai was off. “I guess I have no choice but to go buy me some bathing suits,” she said to Jared. “I can’t be in Miami without appropriate attire.”
“Absolutely. Don’t come back without something extremely sexy. Maybe a two-piece?”
“You’re crazy. I’m forty years old. I’m not buying a two-piece.”
“Okay. Maybe we can find you a nice topless beach, then.” Jared grabbed her to fondle her. “One of those European-style beaches, where you and your teenage boobs are lying out in the sun, burning up, browning.”
Lightly she wrestled out of his arms. “Hardly teenage. And is that a topless beach
with
the children, Jared, or without? You’re thinking of a different sort of vacation.”
“Clearly, but interestingly, I’m suddenly not thinking of vacation at all.”
And after they had sex, in the middle of the afternoon with all the children awake, in the house, and downstairs, Jared announced he was going with her! He was going with her to the mall. He said, I might as well come. I have to buy some shorts.
“To the mall, Jared? I can buy those for you.”
“I know, but I want to try them on, plus, we can have lunch at your little Neiman’s Cafe.” He nuzzled her. “It’ll be my way of saying thank you for some rare love in the afternoon.” He was humming happily. “Emily! Come here. She’ll be thrilled to watch Michelangelo, won’t she? Emily! Did you hear me? Get your butt over here!”
“Dad! No!”
What was Larissa going to do? What excuse could she make?
Her husband, in a rare display of spousal affinity, was coming shopping with her! For bathing suits. Shopping. Normally you couldn’t catch him
driving
past a mall. Wasn’t there a ball game on or something? Apparently Monday was the Yankees’ traveling day. Larissa was out of excuses. She couldn’t even pick a fight. She couldn’t even call Kai to tell him she wasn’t coming.
And then Miami, a two-bedroom ocean front suite at the Alexander Resort, the sun, the green warm ocean, the Spanish guitar playing nylon string melancholy all day and night, Black Orpheus day and night with seafood and salsa, and beautiful sun dresses and burns on their faces. The kids all went to tennis camp, though Larissa wished they hadn’t. Kai had stopped texting her, never responded to her message apologizing for skipping out on him on Monday.
In a cover-up tied around her waist, Larissa took walks by herself around the hotel grounds in the simmering heat. Miami in August was not the smartest of vacations; it felt as if they were wading through the steam from a boiling pot of water underneath them while above them the ruthless sun beat down. Oh, but how brown she got, how perspiring and tan with white crisscross lines on the tops of her feet from the flip flops. She took a picture of herself and sent it to Kai when the signal was strong. What a dream. What a fantasy. How hot, how unbearable it was.
How unbearable.
While Jared golfed with his new buddy Mark, Larissa lay out by the pool, near the ocean, near the beach, big black sunglasses on, in a Christian Lacroix black bikini; she was slim and long legged, graceful and burned, and she dreamed of Kai, wished only for Kai to see her like this, tanned like in high school, or maybe like an Island girl in a peach tube top around her brown breasts, a floral bandana and pink flip flops. He could kneel between her legs, pull down the tube top and suck
her nipples in full view of the admiring public by the shimmering blue pool, near the warm ocean. And then he would take her non-stop right on the chaise longue, under the blistering afternoon sun while the nearby flamenco singer strummed Albeniz’s
Malaguena
to drown out her desperate moaning, her desperate coming, her legs splayed, quivering.
And then one afternoon, when they were both out by the pool, she in reverie, Larissa opened her eyes and saw Jared reaching into her purse to find some singles to tip the man who brought the Mojitos, because all Jared had were twenties. Larissa watched in horror as he opened her purse, rummaged around to find her wallet, underneath which, in full view, next to the pink gum, the Kleenex, the lipstick, and the Band-Aids was her silver and red prepaid cell phone.
“Here we are,” he said, giving the patiently waiting boy four dollars.
“
Gracias, senor
.”
“
De nada
.” Jared turned to Larissa. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve turned positively white.”
“I think too much time in the sun,” she said in a weak voice, her heart down in her stomach. “Can I have my bag, please? Must put some more gloss on.”
“Yes, we like you nice and glossy. Drink up. Nice and glossy, and tipsy.” He leaned over, smiling. “And naked.”
She gave him a pasty smile, clutching her bag to her knees. “I’m going to go use the restroom,” she said, struggling up from the chaise, “but start thinking where you’d like to go for dinner. I heard that Creek 28 at the Indian Creek Hotel serves one of the best skirt steaks in Miami.”
“Sounds good. Do they take children?”
“Yes. And credit cards.” She smiled, standing in front of him appraising her in her bathing suit. “I’ll be right back.” And as soon as she walked inside the ladies room, with shaking hands she fished out the phone from her purse, turned it off
and threw it in the garbage. How many narrow escapes like that would she have, how many freebies before the entire jig was up? How dumb of her. Did she
want
to get caught? Try explaining to a happy husband on vacation with his wife and family in Miami, why his perspiring and panting wife, while lying by the pool almost nude, keeps a prepaid phone turned on by her side, vibrating messages into her trembling legs as she tans with her eyes closed and her parched mouth slightly parted.
7
Dracula
T
hey returned to Summit Labor Day weekend. The children were about to start another year of school, Michelangelo second grade, Asher eighth, and Emily ninth at the high school. Kai might have been off Mondays but Labor Day Monday, as always, the Starks had a big bash at their house. Fifty people came. Caterers. Booze. Clear and jazzy music, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ben E. King crooning over the grass to Larissa, that he who had nothing loved and adored her and wanted her so.
The pool lights were on, guests in bathing suits, colored floods on the trees at night, intoxicated animated adults dancing, laughing, and Larissa getting compliments left and right.
“God, Larissa, look at you, you’ve never looked better.”
“Jared, look at your wife! She is stunning.”
“Lar, what have you done with yourself?”
“Lar, did you drink from the fountain of youth?”
Even Ezra noticed. “Larissa, they’re right, you’re glowing from within. You look twenty.”
“Twenty years younger or twenty?” countered Larissa, and Maggie, standing close, pinched Larissa’s brown tricep and cooed, “What’s the difference?”
Monday, Monday, Monday. She hadn’t spoken to him in over two weeks, not since she blew him off and never called him. What must he think?
Soon this will be over, Larissa thought, smiling for her guests, carrying the drinks and the strawberries, dancing with Evelyn, with Jared. Tuesday will be here, the children will be on the bus, gone, Jared will be in the car, gone, and I, too, will be gone.
On Tuesday morning, after she got all the children successfully off to school and was getting herself ready, Ernestina came too early with her crew. Larissa’s anticipated first morning alone in months turned into ducking four non-English-speaking girls. She closed her bedroom door to shine herself up like a slick apple in the produce aisle, and then had to walk past Ernestina with her vacuum cleaner.
“Oh, Miss Larissa, you look so beautiful. Where you going?”
“Nowhere, just shopping.”
“Oh, no, you look too beautiful for shopping!” The girls giggled. “Maybe Miss Larissa has a hot date.”
She stormed out of her house without looking back. She must do something about their banter.
She called Kai on his cell from a phone booth near the Summit train station, hoping no one who knew her would see her standing in the middle of town at a
phone booth
. What good reason did Larissa have to use a public telephone?
“Hey, It’s me.”
“Ah. It’s
you
,” he said. His voice was cold.
“Kai…oh damn.” She was lost for words. “Did you get the picture I sent?”
“Picture? Of yourself having a blast in Miami? Yeah, I got that.”
“Why didn’t you text back?”
“Didn’t see the point. Why didn’t you text me back after I sent you twenty messages in Lillypond?”
He was upset.
“I’m sorry about Monday.”
“Which Monday would this be?”
“Kai…”
“What happened to your phone?”
“I had to throw it out,” she said. “Jared nearly found it in Miami. It was a miracle he didn’t.”
“Yes, uh-huh, a miracle.”
“What could I do? Don’t worry, I’ll buy another one.”
“Oh, I’m not worried. And what makes you think he won’t find the next one?”
“I’m not going to be with him twenty-four hours a day, am I?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t you?”
“Kai…when are you getting off?”
“One, probably. I’m at a job now. I have to work Jag at two.”
“I know.”
“I was off yesterday,” he said pointedly.
“I know. But we had a party.”
“How nice for you.”
“Listen…” she lowered her voice, so it wouldn’t break, “I’ll come and see you at one, okay?”
“I don’t know, will you? You said you were going to come and see me two weeks ago, and yet I don’t recall running into you. So I’m not optimistic.”
Cold and damp inside, Larissa hung up and drove to Pingry for her eleven o’clock with Ezra and the Gang of Six Naysayers, the play committee. Denise, as it turned out, was not coming back. She was staying home with her baby. Larissa remained the director. The eight of them suffered over what play to put on for the fall.
“I suppose I can’t talk you into
Godot
?” Leroy asked.
Larissa was hardly listening. To conduct her outer life when her inner life was screaming took all the resources she had; the power of speech fell by the wayside. She let them bicker and discuss for a while, but when she noticed Ezra’s curious, slightly puzzled eyes on her, she blinked and came to it.
“Okay, this is how it is,” Larissa said. “It’s fall. We need a big production, lots of pizzazz. I’ll give you a choice. You can have
Dracula
, or you can have
The Wizard of Oz
. What will it be?”
“Why does it have to be those two?” said Leroy.
“Yeah,” said Fred. “Maybe it’s a false choice.”
Here it starts again. “No,” Larissa said slowly. “It’s not a false choice. You know how you know? Because it’s the choice you’ve been given. I know you might like a different choice, but that’s not one of the choices. Out of these two no good, awful choices, pick the one that’s least objectionable.”
“But
why
does it have to be one of these two?”
“Because I said so.” They were like children.
This time it was Ezra who put his foot down. “Let’s do
Dracula
,” he said. “The kids will love it. It’s a real crowd-pleaser.”