“You’ve just got to stay optimistic, Mom. We’ll win.”
Janice, with a knot in her stomach, takes a small bite of her chicken and quells the impulse to spit the greasy meat right back out onto the plate. Margaret’s use of the word “we” should be comforting, but it is not. She thinks of the horrifying information that Grosser conveyed, and feels terribly terribly alone. She looks up to see Lizzie staring at her with her Bambi eyes and forces a reassuring smile. “I
am
optimistic,” she says, already feeling guilty about her thoughts of just a moment before.
Remember,
she thinks,
your daughters are all you have. You love them.
It disturbs her that she even has to remind herself of this. What is
wrong
with her?
Mercifully, a car honks from the driveway, releasing her from the strain of conversation. Lizzie jumps up from her chair. “I gotta go,” she mumbles. Only now does Janice notice that Lizzie is wearing a skirt, one that actually reaches as far south as her knees, and shoes that don’t involve platforms, glitter, or cork.
“Where are you going?”
“Um,” Lizzie says, “church?”
“Church?” Janice is not quite sure she’s heard this correctly.
“Yeah.”
“What kind of church?”
“I dunno,” says Lizzie. “River of Life Church. Evangelical, I think?”
“Evangelical?” Margaret says. “You know, Lizzie, you might want to keep in mind that there’s some pretty backward thinking in that movement, especially when it comes to women’s roles in the family. Woman as subordinate to man and all that. We did a story about it in ‘The God Issue.’ Didn’t you read it?”
“Oh,” says Lizzie, pausing to consider this information. “I’m not sure?”
“Lizzie, don’t listen to your sister,” says Janice. “You can explore any religion you want. Within reason. Who are you going to church with?”
Lizzie edges toward the door. “Zeke Bint,” she says. “His mom is driving.”
“Barbara?” says Janice, spitting the name off her tongue as she abruptly recalls the tableau of the cocktail party and Barbara Bint at the bottom of the stairs; she would have had a direct view of James leaving Janice’s bedroom. She remembers Barbara’s curious eyes, scrutinizing Janice after James’s departure. Of course Barbara would have interpreted it in the ugliest way possible. And of course she would have talked.
“Stop!” she tells Lizzie. She pushes herself back from the table, folding her napkin over the congealed chicken. “I need to discuss something with Barbara first. You wait here.”
Janice marches past Lizzie and out to the Mercedes station wagon that idles in the driveway. She knocks on the driver’s window. Barbara rolls it down and smiles the priggish smile of the saved. Her skin, Janice notes, is sunburned and dry, the tiny veins in her cheeks bursting from heat. “Hello, Janice!” Barbara chirps. “I assume you don’t mind that we’re taking your daughter to church? Would you like to join us?”
“We need to talk,” says Janice.
“What about?”
Janice eyes Zeke, who sits in the back seat of the car. White headphone cords snake from his ears down to the iPod in his lap; even outside the car Janice can hear the thump of rock music that is blasting holes in the boy’s eardrums. Zeke gazes at Janice with as much interest as he would regard a lump of boiled liver, then looks away, out the window.
“I think,” whispers Janice, “that you may have gotten the wrong impression. About a young man in my employ. I think you know who I mean. And I have to tell you that I deeply, deeply resent you calling my husband, of all people, and filling his head with this…this
nonsense.
I’m shocked that someone who describes herself as a Christian would do such a deeply uncharitable thing.”
Barbara bites one lobstered cheek. “I’m sorry, Janice,” she says, looking confused. “But I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Janice again glances at Zeke, who has completely tuned out their presence, and drops her voice to a whisper. “You told Paul that I was having an
affair
! An affair with the pool boy!”
Barbara’s face contorts itself into obtuse angles, struggling to conjure up a memory. “An affair?!” she says. “No. That wasn’t me. I’ve never spoken to Paul. I wasn’t aware you
were
having an affair. I’m not sure how…. But wait, I
did
mention to Noreen Gossett that I saw James coming out of your bedroom at the cocktail party last week. Maybe she jumped to conclusions?” Janice, watching Barbara, can see the disingenuousness in her neighbor’s eyes—that sanctimonious hypocrite may pretend to be a Christian, but at heart she’s a lying gossip!—and Barbara clearly reads Janice’s suspicions in return because she stammers as she flounders on. “I just mentioned it to Noreen because she was wondering why you were so late coming down. Noreen wasn’t being very
nice
about it, so I thought, just to explain…” She wrinkles her nose with concern. “Why? Janice, are you really involved with your pool boy? I would never have said anything…. I’m sorry!”
“No!” Janice barks, but she backs off and straightens up as she does it, recognizing that Barbara may be a gossip but she’s not overtly cruel enough to go to Paul with her suspicions. Noreen Gossett. It must have been her. But why? What on earth could Noreen have against her? Janice has always been nothing but nice to her, even after Noreen’s daughter, Susan, invited everyone in her class
except
Lizzie to her ninth birthday party. And yet—Janice suddenly remembers Noreen’s snub in the parking lot the day of the IPO, and the pieces begin to fall into place. She sees Lizzie peering at them from the front door and waves her daughter out to the car, ready to escape this conversation.
“What’s going on?” Barbara repeats.
Janice moves back toward the house as Lizzie approaches. “Nothing,” she mutters. “Nothing at all. Forget I said anything. My mistake.”
Barbara fixes a smile back on her face as Lizzie climbs into the back seat of the Mercedes. “I’m sorry to hear that you’re having a hard time, Janice. I’m here for you if you need moral support. You know that, of course. Just a reminder!”
Next to Lizzie, Zeke turns up the volume on his iPod and hurls himself tightly against the car door, as if proximity to Lizzie might afflict him with a contagious disease. Janice feels a stab of remorse for her daughter, wondering what on earth could have driven her to go sit in church with these people. Janice can’t back away fast enough as the station wagon pulls slowly, maddeningly slowly, into the street and toward the arms of a pitiless God.
the gossetts’ house is five blocks away, and although Janice normally drives the distance between their homes when she visits Noreen, this evening she decides it will do her good to walk instead. Her body, replenished with one more
tiny
line of It, relishes the exercise. She moves with detached, stiff-legged purpose, her limbs propelling themselves forward and up and around and back again as if they are the cogs in a well-oiled engine. Fragments of long-forgotten pop tunes from her college years flicker through her subconscious—the hummed chorus from the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” which segues into a rolling bass line from Earth Wind & Fire and lands her at “Stayin’ Alive,” so popular at parties when she was younger. She is a disco queen, now if never before. Her ballet flats ricochet rhythmically off the asphalt, impossibly loud.
The lights blink on in the houses of her neighborhood. Picture windows illuminate idyllic tableaux: Ellen Fern at her kitchen sink, washing the dishes. The Brunschilds and their three children sitting around their living room table, glimpsed in slices through the lowered venetian blinds. The blue light of the television reflecting off the ceiling of the Franks’ den; four heads silhouetted by the screen. She wonders whether the Miller house still looks this placid and safe from the street or if its taint is detectable to passersby.
As she walks the few blocks to the Gossetts’, the stars begin to materialize in the evening sky. The temperature drops, and Janice wishes she had brought a cardigan to throw over her top. At the Gossetts’ ranch home every room is lit up, and Janice can hear the faint thrum of some teenybopper boy band from Susan’s room in the back. She pulls at the decorative lion’s-head knocker and lets it fall heavily on the door, waits a quarter second, and rings the bell. The tones echo off the Spanish tile of the hallway.
Inside, the Gossetts’ dog begins to yelp. “Yipyipyip,” it barks. There is a scrape and a thump, and a silence before the dog starts in again. “Yipyipyip.”
Scrape. Thump.
Janice peers through the window and sees Noreen’s geriatric schnauzer, Sadie, coming down the hallway toward the door. The dog’s front legs have been completely swathed in plaster, and its efforts to run to the door are being thwarted by the Gossetts’ tile floors, worn slick from use. “Yipyipyip,” barks the dog as it lunges forward. Its front legs skitter for purchase on the tile, scrape sideways, and collapse. The dog, momentarily stunned, struggles to get up, its front end fishtailing helplessly across the hall. As Janice watches, Noreen comes up behind the dog, swoops it under her arm, and traipses to the front door.
Noreen smiles thinly when she sees Janice. “Hello,” she says, snapping at the syllables like a turtle. Sadie, under Noreen’s arm, continues to yip at the intruder.
“What happened to Sadie?” blurts Janice.
Noreen scratches the fur at the back of Sadie’s neck. “Yipyipyip,” goes the dog. “Shhhh,” Noreen says, ineffectively, and looks up at Janice. “You don’t know?”
“Should I?”
“
Your
daughter nearly killed my dog,” Noreen says. “And she didn’t seem in the least bit concerned about it. Nor, for that matter, do you.”
“Lizzie hurt Sadie?” repeats Janice.
“Not Lizzie,
Margaret.
”
“Margaret? Really? How? Did Margaret run over your dog?”
“Everything but. She let Sadie run away and get hit by a car while she was walking her.”
“Why was Margaret walking your dog?” It’s all terribly confusing. Sadie starts to yip again, and the piercing noise makes Janice want to shake the dog until it shuts up. “Yipyipyipyip.”
Noreen looks at Janice with a wounded expression. “Maybe you should ask Margaret that question. I assumed that was why you were here. Honestly, Janice, considering all the years we’ve been neighbors, I was really hurt that you didn’t even bother to call. You know how much Sadie means to my family—she’s practically Susan’s sibling. We’ve had her thirteen years! And now you don’t even call when your daughter nearly kills my dog? Janice, I’m trying to be sympathetic because I know the last few weeks haven’t been easy on you, but I expected better.” Noreen pauses, as if she’s finished with her speech, then bursts out: “I mean, really. Your husband makes a billion dollars and now you can’t even pick up the phone to talk to your old friends anymore? Maybe Greg and I aren’t in your social bracket these days, maybe you’re off with your private-jet friends now and you wouldn’t deign to spend time with a plain old struggling orthodontist and his wife anymore—and God knows we’ve seen enough of that in recent years in this town—but really, I thought you’d still have common courtesy…”
Janice, flabbergasted by the outburst, shakes her head, hoping to shake off this digression and get back to her purpose. The movement makes her slightly dizzy. Her foot bumps forcefully against the Gossetts’ doorjamb. “Well, Noreen, I’m truly sorry. Really, I am. I’ve not been calling
anyone.
It’s not you. Or about dentists, or jets or anything like that. I mean, I
don’t
care.” As she talks, her mind meanders to the Gossetts’ finances, wondering for the first time how much an orthodontist
does
make and whether keeping Millard Fillmore High in braces would readily cover the cost of the BMW in their driveway and Susan’s private tutors and the roof that really needs new tiles. “And I’m sorry about Sadie. She’s a wonderful dog. I’ll talk to Margaret, really. This has nothing to do with braces. No…” She pauses, realizing It has grabbed hold of her tongue and is turning her into a blathering idiot. She tries vainly to focus herself. “No—but that has nothing to do with why I’m here. I need you to tell me, truthfully, Noreen, whether you said something to Paul about me having, having…this is hard to even say, it’s so ridiculous…about me having an affair with our pool caretaker?”
In Noreen’s narrowed eyes, Janice reads distaste. She wants to choke back her words, rewind the journey to this house, rewind the last few weeks to a time when she had never imagined humiliation like this. But it’s too late—she has no choice, at this point, but to grovel in front of her neighbor. Noreen, with whom she cohosts the neighborhood gift exchange every December, with whom she has attended PTA meetings for years, a woman whom, to be honest, she has had to tolerate for the airs that she puts on despite the fact that her own background (a mailman’s daughter, for goodness’ sake) is no better than Janice’s. She feels herself withering under Noreen’s contemptuous glare. Noreen edges back. She raises her chin. “I didn’t say anything to Paul. But I may have mentioned something to Beverly when we played bridge on Monday.”
“But why, Noreen? Surely you know that’s just not true. He is a twenty-six-year-old boy! Why? And to Beverly, of all people? I have to assume you know that my husband and she are…are…” She can’t even bring herself to finish this sentence. It doesn’t matter, she realizes. The dirty laundry is already hanging there, in her front yard, for everyone to see. They have been looking at it for weeks now. They have seen the streak marks and the grass stains and the yellowed armpits and have judged her accordingly. It is too late. “Why?”
Noreen doesn’t answer immediately but instead lifts Sadie up, dangling the furry schnauzer right in front of her face, and kisses it right on the nose. The dog shuts up for a second while it licks Noreen’s face with a frenzied tongue. Noreen lowers the dog. “Well, Janice, I’m sorry. I don’t really know what got into me.”
“Yip. Yipyipyip.”
Is that what this is all about? Her entire life and reputation and
family
put on the line as revenge for a nasty mutt’s broken leg? For financial jealousy? Janice finds herself wishing that Margaret had killed the damn dog. The next time she sees the yapping runt in the street, Janice plans to kick it.