No one says anything. The only sound is a rapid tapping; it takes a minute for Janice to realize that this staccato sound is coming from her own shoe, her bobbing foot having apparently become the one outlet for her body’s pent-up energy. Margaret is still wearing that ridiculous dress, Janice notes. Her apparent inability to change outfits has gone beyond the merely unpleasant to the pathological. Is it a pointed message intended for Janice? Some kind of rebellion against her mother’s standards of hygiene? A vengeful response to their fight? Probably all of the above.
Margaret glances at Janice, then shakes her head. “Hey, Mark, can you give us a minute? Family stuff,” says Margaret, as Janice intently examines the texture of the Spanish tile floor. As she watches, it bows alarmingly, then flattens itself out again. She shakes her head slightly to clear her vision.
Mark nods and slides sideways toward the door. “I’ll get the bikes, Lizzie,” he says, vanishing into the front drive.
Margaret waits until the door has clicked shut before she speaks. “Jesus, Lizzie. If Mom’s not going to say it, I will. Are you
insane
?”
“What?” Lizzie says, wide-eyed.
“Don’t you realize there is a lawsuit going on here? That he is the son of”—she glances at Janice and lowers her voice—“
the woman our father left us for?
Didn’t you think how it would make Mom feel?” She looks over at Janice and furrows her brow. “Are you okay, Mom?”
“I’m fine, Margaret,” Janice demurs, vaguely annoyed by her daughter’s infantalization but also surprised by her protectiveness. “It’s fine.”
In the meantime, Lizzie’s face has turned purple. “Oh,” she says. She looks at Janice, and the kicked-puppy expression in her eyes makes Janice wince.
Poor Lizzie,
she thinks reflexively, forgetting that just a minute ago she, too, had wanted to throw Mark out. “I didn’t think it was an issue.”
“Not an issue?” says Margaret. “Wow, Lizzie, you are just incredibly naïve.”
Lizzie is on the verge of tears, and Janice can stand it no longer. “It’s okay, Lizzie, we know you didn’t do it intentionally,” she begins.
“I didn’t think he really cared about all that,” says Lizzie. “I just wanted to make a new friend.”
Margaret shakes her head. “Whatever you say, but don’t you think the timing is a bit odd? I mean, what if Mark is taking information back? There’s a lot of money at stake here, Lizzie. You have to consider how that affects people.”
Janice is stunned by this validation of her own concerns and feels a moment of unexpected closeness with Margaret—is there a reconciliation on the horizon?—which is broken when Lizzie explodes from her chair in a tantrum.
“He’s
not
doing that,” she shrieks. “He
likes
me. God, Margaret, you’re so mean. Not everyone in the world is out to get you. Don’t you even want me to have, like, one friend? Or do you just want everyone to be as miserable as
you
are?” She trips as she gets up, sending the stool bouncing across the floor, and bolts out the kitchen door. It slams shut behind her. The wedding silver, lined up along the velvet cloth on the kitchen counter, shivers.
“Someone clearly hasn’t experienced the ugly side of human nature yet,” Margaret observes. “Oh well. Whatever.” She shrugs, a blasé gesture that seems intended for no one but herself, and turns around to go back upstairs.
Janice is left standing in the echoing kitchen by herself, and despite everything she longs to call after Margaret. They can examine the collusions against Janice, parse this web of suspicious entanglements, discuss solutions to her daughter’s financial problems. Perhaps Janice was too harsh with Margaret about the dog mishap; she’ll gladly apologize, so that Margaret will stay with her a minute longer…but Margaret is gone.
What does it all mean? Alone, her children scattered, she feels like she has lost her grasp on what, just a few minutes earlier, seemed perfectly aligned. It feels like too much, far too much, to even consider walking out to her car now, let alone drive it all the way across town and then spend three hours in the company of two hundred friends and acquaintances. Only now does it occur to her that Paul might attend this party too. With Beverly, even, judging by Mark’s green face. But surely they wouldn’t dare be so public, not so soon? She looks at the granite countertop, the silver stacked along its edge, and reaches out to straighten a few forks than have gone askew. She can see her face, reflected upside down, in a serving spoon. It looks like a Halloween mask, ghoulishly stretched, her mouth a gaping gash, her eyes smears of black. Shaken, she drops the spoon back to the counter. And then, quickly (before Margaret comes back downstairs) and furtively (ducking low, just in case Lizzie and Mark are loitering in the driveway), Janice snapes open her clutch. She extracts the baggie, taps a pile of powder down on her clean kitchen countertop, and uses a butter knife from the good silver to cut it up into a neat little line. As she sniffs it up, she can smell the Pledge she used earlier that morning to buff the granite to a shine.
She closes her eyes and visualizes the crystals floating through her bloodstream, tiny chemical hexagons of strength and vitality. She breathes deeply, a breath so clear and enriched that she can picture it filling her lungs, and then she opens her eyes, straightens her dress, and clicks firmly on Ferragamo’d heels out to the Porsche.
by the time she arrives there is already a parade of cars making their way down the oak-lined driveway that leads to the club. The club parking lot looks like a luxury automotive dealer: Mercedeses, BMWs, Audis, Escalades, and Navigators lined up in neat rows—even a Bentley, parked in the corner far from the other cars lest someone dent it with an errant door. She hands off her SUV to the valet.
Tonight, the old granite staircase leading to the front doors of the club has been decorated with floral arrangements of cabbage leaves and carrots in big woven baskets. The party’s theme is “Peter Rabbit,” and the recipient of the money raised by the auction will be a rabbit rescue organization. Janice pauses by the door to read the placard: “Each year, millions of bunnies are abandoned not long after Easter when families discover that their new pets require as much work as dogs or cats and don’t lick or purr. Tonight, we raise money to help rescue animals like Munchkin, a six-month-old French Lop who was found in the trash, and Binky, an English Spot with one eye who was recently mauled by a pit bull.”
In the gardens behind the clubhouse, the adoption agency has set up a white picket fence. Rabbits hop freely inside the enclosure, tended by an elderly man dressed as Mr. McGregor; he wears overalls and carries a pitchfork. A hand-painted sign hangs from the gate: “Adopt us!”
The party is already in full swing. Janice accepts a Garden Shower—a green martini, tasting of kiwi—from a passing waiter. She walks to the windows to look out at the display on the lawn, smiling and nodding and exchanging pleasantries with assorted club members along the way. No one seems disturbed by her presence—in fact, quite the opposite. Noreen Gossett courteously waggles her fingers at Janice from across the room, where she’s holding court with the Groupers, and Janice manages a congenial nod in return. Joannie Cientela, from her school fund-raising committee, waves at her from the grand piano. It’s as if the events of the last six weeks had never happened, and for a moment, Janice wonders if maybe this summer has all been a fever dream.
She recognizes club members from golf foursomes, PTA meetings, tennis tournaments, the swimming pool. The room is thick with grace and manners, and Janice, relaxing, feels the synchronicity deep in her bones. To the manor born—she thinks of this phrase and is conscious that none of those around her were, and yet they all inhabit this room as comfortably as if they had been birthed in the back row of a Gulfstream. How quickly it becomes normal to own a house with a special room just for wrapping presents. How easy it is. And she’s earned it as much as anyone.
The crowd seems to dance before her as she wanders through the room, each person in her path waltzing out of the way to allow her through. It is like flying through a cloud. The club president, Jim Rittenberg, grasps her elbow as she walks by and whispers in her ear, “You look fantastic, Janice. So glad you came. Hope you don’t mind that we gave Noreen a shot at hosting this year. She’s been begging to do it for years, and I thought you’d appreciate the break.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” says Janice, as she is borne away by the crowd. There is so much stimulation she barely knows where to look. She has been away for so long, too long. Why has she been hiding away at home? She sails through conversations, words sliding easily from her mouth as if she had never stopped socializing in the first place. The crystal seems to speed everything up, making her tongue capricious and spry; sometimes It speaks without stopping to confer with her brain first, and yet nothing inappropriate falls from her lips. She can turn her mind off completely.
She drains the last of her cocktail and takes another from a passing waiter as she chats with Steven Bellstrom about the new gym nasium planned for Millard Fillmore High. Partway through the second Garden Shower, though, she begins to feel flushed, perhaps a little too high, her voice a little too loud. She grows acutely aware of the glass in her hand. Every nerve in her fingers is conscious of the heft of the crystal, the moist condensation on the crown, the cramped position of her hand holding the narrow stem.
Janice excuses herself and goes to stand by the open balcony door, swallowing down the evening air. Her crystal clarity is vanishing, she realizes, replaced by an alcohol muddle. She breathes with an open mouth, hoping to get more oxygen into her cottony head. The evening air is balmy, not refreshing at all. Her ankle itches horribly, and she reaches down to scratch it, but that just seems to make it worse. The thought of another conversation about tennis camp or the last city council meeting or property values on the east side of town is suddenly unbearable. It hits her that she could leave right now—just walk out into the warm night without even telling anyone she’s going—and she is shocked when this thought fills her with relief.
But she stays anyway, unable to take that leap. As she steadies herself against the doorjamb, she spots Barbara Bint making a beeline for her from across the room and braces herself.
Barbara arrives at her side in a nimbus of Trésor-scented poppy silk and swoops in for an air kiss, accidentally making contact and leaving a smear of her lipstick on Janice’s cheekbone. Janice removes it with the palm of her hand.
“So good to see you here, Janice,” says Barbara, leaning in to touch Janice’s wrist. “I feel like I’ve been seeing more of your daughter lately than I’ve seen of you!”
The feeling of Barbara’s hand on Janice’s wrist is unbearable, like pins and needles. Janice takes a sip of her cocktail, dislodging Barbara’s hand. “Right,” she says. “The church. Well, she seems to find it interesting.”
“You should be very proud. She’s really devoted herself to the youth group and so quickly!” Barbara leans in conspiratorially. “I think it’s so important for our children to have spiritual lives. Kids these days are so…lost on their own, don’t you think? What with all the terrible influences in contemporary culture. You know, I’m thinking of homeschooling Zeke next year. He needs to learn his morals along with his algebra. And maybe this is none of my business, but if we’re going to be honest, so does your Lizzie.”
“Lizzie’s morals are just fine,” says Janice. She glances out to the golf course and sees that the rabbits have somehow escaped their hutch. Dozens of bunnies are dispersing across the manicured green, hopping straight through the sand trap and toward the third hole. Mr. McGregor has thrown his useless pitchfork aside and is trying to herd the stray rabbits back into the enclosure. Noreen Gossett and a handful of women in cocktail dresses trip along after him, trying to help, but their heels sink into the grass. Noreen, her hair coming loose from its elaborate coiffure, lurches after a small gray bunny and falls on her knee in the grass, muddying her dress. Janice lifts her glass to her lips to conceal the smile at the thought of Noreen hosting the auction in a grass-stained frock. The bunnies vanish into the bushes.
“Well, I think you should consider it, at least. Have a talk with your daughter,” Barbara says and straightens her shoulders. A queer expression slides across Barbara’s face. Janice sees that Barbara is staring over her shoulder and, as black premonition prickles across her back, resists the urge to turn around. Barbara quaffs the rest of her mineral water.
“Hi, Beverly,” Barbara says, her voice an octave too high.
The gracious smile on Beverly’s face has frozen into a rictus of horror by the time Janice turns around. The two women are face-to-face, inches away from each other. Barbara has managed to melt away.
“Oh,” says Beverly. “I didn’t realize that was you, Janice. What a surprise.”
“Hello, Beverly.” Janice speaks before she is even aware what’s coming out of her mouth, and wishes she had spent more time preparing for the inevitability of this moment. She doesn’t have a clue what she might say.
Beverly recovers quickly, readjusting her face with a series of twitches until it settles back into a cordial mien. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d come,” she says, infuriatingly casual. “Considering.”
The two women shift in their stilettos. Beverly looks devastating. Janice takes in, with dismay, Beverly’s new hair color—a flattering golden brown—and fresh pageboy cut, the trim periwinkle cocktail suit that shows that Beverly has managed to lose a bit of weight, the blush of a tan, as if she just returned from a relaxing Mediterranean vacation. But something about Beverly feels foreign, as if she’s just a caricature of the woman Janice used to know so well, not the real thing at all. She wonders if the Beverly who was her good friend—the person who brought Janice home-brined olives for her birthday, who watered her herb garden when they went on vacation, who was Janice’s confidante about her distress when Margaret abruptly moved to L.A.—was ever a real person at all or just a serious mis-perception on Janice’s part. And then, all at once, Janice is furious. It is marvelously freeing.