“WAIT—WAS SHE JUST looking at it, or was she actually . . . you know . . .?”
“I think so.”
“But she’s fourteen!”
“I know. It’s tragic. Scary. How’s Rosalyn doing?”
As Jacks Halstead stood in line for a drink at the Wee Ones benefit, she was surrounded by chatter that had now morphed into an annoying buzz. At five-nine, she towered over the others, but this proved to be no match for the gossip. And yet her mind was far too saturated with worry to absorb any more talk about the Barlow family. Was it really that interesting? Tuning in again, she thought about the words that had been spoken over and over throughout an evening that was still unbearably young. Fourteen. Blow job. Barlow. The last held the greatest significance. Rosalyn Barlow was Wilshire’s version of royalty, which meant that this dark incident would not go away on its own. It would have to be managed, finessed, and despite Jacks’s own brewing troubles, her friendship with Rosalyn necessitated her involvement. She was resigned to this and fully prepared to perform her duties. Still, at the moment, the investigation into her husband seemed more than enough to have to bear, and she felt an intense desire to scream, though she swallowed it down, concerning herself instead with the scene that surrounded her.
Staying true to form, the special-events committee for the nursery school had outdone itself. The theme was “back to summer,” though the early chill in the air was lending itself more to cashmere wraps than to sleeveless silk. Despite the fashion dilemma that the theme had inadvertently created, the small uninteresting space had been transformed into an exquisite beachside resort. With giant heat lamps shining a soft orange glow onto a sand-covered floor, a wall-to-wall mural of ocean surf, and canvas beach umbrellas sheltering the auction tables, the mood had certainly been achieved. Swarms of peroxide-white smiles, hoisted breasts, and jewels drifted effortlessly around her as she waited for the only thing in the room that she truly cared about at the moment.
“Gin and tonic,” she said after seizing the bartender’s attention.
But she was not off the hook.
“Jacks?” It was Eva Ridley, official town gossip and, ironically, one of her closest friends.
Watching with anticipation as the young bartender poured the gin, Jacks reluctantly entered the conversation. “I’m sorry—what did you ask?”
“How is Rosalyn?” Eva repeated herself, her eyes shifting between Jacks and the other women. Eva was teeing her up for the perfect response, which Jacks was now forcing herself to consider. Too much information, and she would betray their friend to the small group of women that now surrounded them. Too little, and this conversation (and that was a generous description) would never end. Either way, she supposed, it would eventually get done. Rosalyn Barlow was fully capable of defusing the situation and maintaining her position as Wilshire’s most envied woman. Still, there was an unprecedented glee in the air over what had happened in that stark gray hallway of the Wilshire Academy. With music from the dance playing in the background and nothing but cold metal and fluorescent lights surrounding them, the blond-haired, doe-eyed Barlow beauty had dropped to her knees as a “favor to a friend.” It was salacious and humiliating and worst (or best) of all, evidence that the Barlows’ perfect life might not be so perfect as it seemed. That it took a hallway blow job for them to arrive at this most obvious conclusion was in itself perplexing to Jacks.
“Rosalyn is concerned, of course, for Caitlin,” she said finally. “She’s concerned for all the girls at the Academy.”
As her words took flight on the winds of the gossip storm, Jacks felt a hint of relief. One hurdle cleared. Three of the four women flittering about her had girls at the Academy, and their minds were now racing with fear.
“Has it happened before?” one of the women asked.
Jacks shrugged with the nonchalance of feigned ignorance. “All I know is that the school is planning a big investigation.”
Silence. And just in time. Jacks grabbed her drink from the bartender and smiled at Eva, who gave her a discreet wink.
“Enjoy the evening, ladies.” Wiggling her way back through the line, Jacks held the gin firmly in hand. When she was safely out of the fray, she exhaled deeply. Then she took a long sip and watched her husband, who was casually socializing in the far corner by the auction items. He was with the new family, the Livingstons. David knew Nick from college, and Jacks had orders to make nice with his much younger wife. Susan? Sandy? She couldn’t keep a damn thing in her head anymore. Nor could she imagine enduring the small talk that would be required of her.
She’d known the people in this room for years. The club. The Wilshire Academy. Young Women’s League. Her library of knowledge was seventeen years deep, stacked to the ceiling with files upon files of information. Someone’s breast cancer, another’s autistic son. An affair with the tennis pro. A plot to steal a nanny. Sexual preferences, disease, plastic surgery. She knew what each woman was feeling as she stood beside her husband at this very moment, what passed through her thoughts while his hand brushed the side of her breast or the flesh of her ass. Hope—he still wants me. Hatred—I’m not his whore. Either way, the woman would smile. These were the things she had always noticed, the subtle exchanges that were so benign to the untrained eye. They were the hidden codes that were embedded within each social interaction, and she dissected them with the internal tools inherited from her childhood—tools that had been necessary to adjust to the madness. Perception. Analysis. Understanding. Everything said to her, whether in passing or the deepest confidence, was fed into the processor, brushed onto the canvas that revealed their darkest thoughts and fears, their very humanity. They were, at their core, just that. Human.
And yet, if she squinted her eyes, the giant pool of deception morphed into a different picture altogether. A lovely cocktail party with rich, carefree people. She felt her face quiver as she forced a pleasant smile. Was she as transparent to them as they were to her? Would they notice the change in her demeanor? There was only so much of the panic she would be able to subdue, even with the gin.
A voice came from behind her, pulling her out of the spiraling anxiety.
“Here.” It was Barlow with two drinks in his hand. Keeping the scotch for himself, he handed the gin and tonic to her. “You look like you could use another.”
Jacks smiled and glanced into her glass, which was now bare down to the ice.
“Thanks.”
She took the fresh drink and clicked it against his. “Cheers,” she said, raising an eyebrow. No one could lift a person’s spirits like Ernest Barlow. Handsome, rich, funny, and, most of all, intent on having a good time under even the worst of circumstances.
Barlow took a step back and conspicuously scrutinized Mrs. Halstead.
“Mmmm. Nice!”
Nearly his height, Jacks looked him dead in the eye and swatted him playfully on the arm. “I think you’re in enough trouble already. Now be a good boy and drink your scotch.”
Barlow raised his glass, then took a drink. “Yes, ma’am.”
They stood there for a moment, silently watching, drinking, and enjoying the comfort of each other’s company. Within the boundaries of married couples, they were as close to being friends as was possible for men and women in such a tight-knit community. Their daughters were in the same grade at the Academy. The Barlows and Halsteads had for years been thrown together at school functions, playdates, birthday parties, and the like. Then came the formal dinner invitations to the Barlow estate, swim parties, long weekends on the yacht. Despite their vastly divergent personalities, they worked well as a foursome and after fifteen years were far beyond the formalities of the other acquaintances they had cultivated.
“What’s with all the sundresses?” Barlow asked after a while.
“It’s a summer theme: Surf’s Up. Didn’t you read the invitation?”
Barlow looked himself over. Dark blue suit. Red tie. Standard business attire. “Clearly not.”
Jacks smiled and shrugged. “Only you, my dear Barlow, could get away with it.”
“Not according to my wife.”
Jacks took another sip of gin and nodded silently as she turned her eyes to Rosalyn, who was stationed across the room. Also dismissing festive attire, Rosalyn was incredibly subdued. And it wasn’t just her beige suit, subtle hair, and restrained makeup. It was everything about her, the way she nursed a glass of white wine, holding her other hand around her stomach as though she were protecting the injury this incident had caused. It was in her facial expressions, the slight cheerless smile and exaggerated interest in the conversation of others. As Jacks watched the woman work the audience, she found herself surprisingly impressed. She was a tiny thing, but every inch of her was fully engaged tonight. This was a command performance, even for Rosalyn.
“Wow,” Jacks said.
“Yes. Incredible, isn’t she?” Barlow’s tone was sarcastic. “But tell me, Jacks. Honestly. Do you think all of this is really necessary? Do people really care that much?”
Jacks shrugged, thinking that this was precisely why she and Barlow were such good friends. They were both, in their own vastly divergent ways, former outsiders.
“Some of it is. Some of it is probably just . . .”
Barlow watched her face as she struggled for the right way to say what they both were thinking.
“Just my wife’s imagination?”
“No,” Jacks muttered, turning her eyes back to Rosalyn. “Not imagination so much as anticipation. She’s been burned before, and she has the scars to prove it.”
Barlow drank some scotch. “Ah, but her most fearsome foe is dead and buried. It’s been almost two years.”
“And sometimes a ghost can be more powerful than anything that walks among us. Especially the ghost of one’s own mother.”
Barlow looked at Jacks carefully as he took in this bit of wisdom.
Smiling warmly now, Jacks changed the subject. “So, all of this bullshit aside, how is Cait doing?”
Barlow shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t have a clue. She won’t talk about it. Not that I really want to—believe me. But I know she’s talking to her new friends and I’m afraid they’re the ones who dragged her into all this.”
“At least it’s not just Cait. Hailey said there’s a lot of talk about it.”
Barlow turned to face her. “Is Hailey doing it?”
Jacks thought about her oldest daughter. She was overweight for her age, and a bit of a geek. Two things Jacks was grateful for. “No—though I guess I should say I don’t know, because we don’t ever. Do we?”
“That’s the damned truth of it. I just never thought my little Caitie would be vulnerable. And now her mother is making it into a national crisis. Global warming, the shitty economy, and hallway blow jobs. Somehow I don’t think that’s exactly what Caitie needs right now, to be the poster child for teenagers gone wild.”
Even in the midst of his deepest worries, Barlow managed to find humor. It was his way, his defense against the pain that was floating through his body, looking for a place to anchor.
“I don’t know. I doubt she’ll even notice it. It’s really for them, isn’t it?” Jacks said, drawing her arm across the room.
As Barlow peered out into the crowd, Jacks studied his face. They should be nothing to him now. He no longer needed them, having made his fortune, and his contempt for the very world he still envied in spite of his every effort to stop was now crawling beneath his skin.
“Does it help to know that most of the women here performed similar favors before leaving high school?”
Barlow laughed. “And look how well they turned out.”
“Oh, come now. These are some of the finest ladies in Wilshire.”
“And not exactly the life plan I had in mind for my daughters.”
Jacks looked at him wryly. “And yet, here you are.”
“Here we are.” He turned then, to meet her eyes. The irony had never occurred to him, but it struck him now, hard and cold. He drained the glass of scotch, then did what he always did when too many adult thoughts entered his brain. “So getting back to hallway blow jobs . . .”
Jacks laughed out loud and shook her head, though she was far from being embarrassed. “Oh, no. Not a chance. You’ll just have to use your imagination.”
Barlow grinned flirtatiously, lowering his eyes then raising them again to meet hers. It was the look that came as close as any ever did to crossing the invisible line, and it was now, at the line, that one of them always stepped away in search of a spouse. Or another drink.
“I think I’ll need more scotch to do that.”
“Actually, it looks like we need to sit for dinner.”
Barlow slid his arm around her waist as she moved in front of him. “After you, Mrs. Halstead.”
Their table was in the front of the room, of course, the unofficial head table that was always reserved for the school’s chairwoman at these events. And what a lovely table it was, with white linens, bright colorful peonies and roses in a round vase, and little menus shaped like surfboards. Cheery, cute. Perfect.
Jacks found Rosalyn standing by her chair, engaged in conversation with the school director.
“Lovely party,” she said casually.
Oblivious of, or perhaps merely indifferent to, her husband, who had dashed off to the bar, Rosalyn reached out and kissed Jacks on the cheek. “Hello, there. Where have you been hiding?”
Jacks smiled. “Nowhere. What a fabulous setup!”
The director smiled. “Thank you. I hope you enjoy it. And don’t forget to bid—the tables close at ten.”
Rosalyn and Jacks nodded in agreement. “Of course!”
“Well, I’d better mingle. Nice to see you both.”
The two women smiled as they watched the director move on to the next potential deep pocket. Then they turned to face each other.
“So,” Jacks said, her expression one of genuine concern.
Rosalyn continued to smile, though Jacks detected the traces of weariness she knew must be lurking inside the woman. This just wasn’t in Rosalyn, this contrite, apologetic tour de force. It was effective, to be sure. And necessary in Rosalyn’s mind. But there was no doubt Wilshire’s reigning matriarch was growing tired of it in a hurry.
“So,” Rosalyn replied.
Jacks smiled reassuringly. “This won’t be just about Caitlin much longer.”
Rosalyn was slightly relieved. “The natives are worried, are they? Now I have to follow through.”
Jacks touched her arm. “You will. I know you will.”
“I had other plans for the fall. And the winter, and the spring.” Her voice sounded irritated, as though that was all this was to her, an annoyance. An inconvenience. Jacks played along, though she knew her friend was using her social concerns as a distraction from what was really eating at her from the inside out. Cait would always be her little girl.
“Well, who knows? Maybe it really is an epidemic and you’ll be doing all of us a favor.”
Rosalyn waved her hand in the air as though she could somehow magically erase the whole incident. “Let’s sit down. Do we know who else is at the table? I’m hardly in the mood for surprises.”
“Just us, the Ridleys, and the new family.”
“New family?”
“They’re friends of David’s. And they’re new.”
Jacks studied Rosalyn as she pulled out her chair and gracefully placed herself in it, obviously contemplating the situation. Yes, she was most definitely thinking. New could be good. They wouldn’t know a thing about anything, and the rest of the room would see how generous Rosalyn Barlow could be. Inviting the new family to her table would go beautifully with her theme for the evening. She had that look, the intensity of obsession, that Jacks understood well. The ghost of Rosalyn’s mother might as well be sitting right there beside her.
“What are their names?” Rosalyn asked, now fully committed to the idea.
Jacks sat down, leaving one chair between herself and Rosalyn. Boy-girl-boy-girl. That was the rule.
“Nick Livingston and his wife. Susan, I think.”
Rosalyn was not satisfied. “Is it Susan?”
Jacks shook her head. The gin had calmed her nerves but had done nothing to improve her memory. “I have no clue, to be honest. But she’s young. Late twenties. Princeton, then Columbia for some journalism degree. Met Nick at a bar in New York.”
“Christ. You know all that but not her name?”
Jacks shrugged. “What’s more important?”
Barlow appeared with a fresh drink in hand. He pulled out the chair next to his wife, but was stopped when she grabbed his arm, nearly causing him to spill the scotch.
“Shit,” Barlow said under his breath, steadying the drink. “What now?”
“You can’t sit there.” Rosalyn looked at him incredulously. How drunk was he? Spouses never sat beside one another. That was also the rule.
“Oh, fuck it.” Barlow walked around the table and planted himself next to Jacks, who patted his knee—briefly—beneath the table.
They sat in silence, Jacks and the Barlows, sipping their drinks and waiting for David Halstead and the Livingstons to make their way through the crowd. And as they sat there, pleasant expressions pasted on their faces from a powerful force of habit, their sheer beauty cast an invisible shield against a reality that was discernible solely in the air that surrounded them, air that was thick with worry. When the others appeared, still engaged in the amusement of shared stories from years past, they were stopped in their tracks by the unsettling sense of contradiction they had stumbled into.
“Hello, David,” Barlow said first, standing to greet his friend.
“Barlow.” David reached out and shook his hand. “Good to see you, man.”
“And you.”
Then, turning to the table where the ladies had remained seated, David made the introductions. The Barlows to the Livingstons. The Livingstons to Jacks and the Barlows. And after this seemingly harmless interaction, they all took their places at the table.