Three.
Frances was amazed to discover her legs were propelling her in the usual fashion as she walked down the street toward her own house. Birds appeared to be singing, the sidewalk wasn’t opening underneath her, and her cat was still standing where he had been twenty seconds earlier, washing his tail. She herself felt light-headed and woozy, as if gravity wasn’t working so well, or she’d accidentally had four shots of Jägermeister.
“Hey, Frank!” Startled, Frances looked up to see her cousin Iris crossing the street toward her, glowy from the gym. “Drop-off go OK? Did Wyatt behave himself?”
“Of course.” Her voice worked, too. It was astounding. “He was the sweetheart he always is.” She was going to be able to have a conversation without blurting out what she’d just seen. Such casual perfidy.
“For you, he is. For us, he’s the spawn of Satan.”
“Maybe you should have looked more closely at the donor profile.”
“You think?” Iris grinned. “Maybe Nick O’Deamus wasn’t the six-foot Irish-American hottie and geologist he claimed to be?”
“Yeah . . . ‘My hobbies include collecting minerals like sulphur and brimstone, sharpening my scythe, and propelling souls into eternal damnation.’ It’s important to read the whole thing.”
Iris laughed. She was tall and blond, with strong features. She and Frances had grown up together, essentially, because their mothers were sisters who lived four blocks from each other on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. When Iris and Sara, then a struggling actress making the occasional TV commercial, moved to L.A. they’d encouraged Frances to come, too. When a house on the same block was about to come on the market, Iris had called Frances and told her to jump on it. She and Michael left everything behind and made the move, and had yet to regret it. Today might be the day, of course.
“Are you OK?” Iris looked at her cousin closely.
Frances thought about telling her, because it would feel so good to just blurt it out and split the headache, but then she realized she couldn’t. She had no idea why Anne was fucking around on Charlie, couldn’t understand why she would threaten her entire existence by doing so, but until she’d spoken to her she couldn’t tell anyone else what she’d seen. It was the omertà of friendship.
“I’m fine, just tired as usual.”
“How can you tell?” Iris hugged herself. “Aren’t you always a little bit tired?” Frances smiled tightly, and Iris added, “Why don’t you go home and grab a quick nap? Don’t you have a little time before you go back to pick up Lally?”
“Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.” Frances gave her cousin a hug and carried on to her house.
Iris stood and watched her go, wondering what was up. She shrugged inwardly—it would all come out in the end whatever it was. It always did.
When Frances opened the front door her house phone was ringing. The mechanical voice said, Call from Anne Purr-tah . . . Call from Anne Purr-tah . . .
I’ll bet it is, muttered Frances, suddenly furious. Fuck you.
She started unloading the dishwasher, letting the machine pick up.
“It’s Anne. Please come talk to me.” Click.
Fuck you again, I say, thought Frances, calmly placing mugs upside down in the glass-fronted cabinet. Fuck you very much for ruining my carefully constructed life in which all my friends are just as happy as I am. Where we are going to do it better than our parents did, are going to be happy and raise our kids without ambivalence and frustration. Fuck you for peeling the lid off the can of worms, you selfish, selfish bitch.
The phone rang again. Frances clicked her tongue and suddenly picked it up.
“It’s Anne.”
“Yes.”
“Can we talk?”
“Yes. You have to come here though. I’m cleaning up.”
“OK.”
“OK, see you soon.” After you shower the come off your legs, you whore.
“Bye.” Anne hung up.
Frances put the coffee machine on and checked for cream in the fridge. She pulled out cookies and put some on a plate. She swept crumbs into a pile in the center of the table and then onto her cupped palm, throwing them in the sink. She finished unloading the dishwasher and reloaded it. She put cereal boxes back in the cupboard from breakfast and wiped the counters. She straightened the chairs around the kitchen table. She checked again for cream in the fridge. She went to pee and when she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror she saw her mother’s face looking back at her.
Anne held the mug Frances always gave her, a souvenir Anne had brought back from Venice one year. The blue and white stripes and the red scarf of the gondolier always looked so cheerful. Anne looked at the plate of cookies. “Did you make these?”
Frances nodded.
Anne reached for one, out of habit. “Drop-off go OK?”
Frances nodded again. “Apart from the toilet roll tubes incident.” Yes, let’s talk about the toilet roll tubes.
“Yeah. I put them out, but I guess she forgot to grab them. Thanks for coming back for them.” Thanks for ruining my secret.
“No problem.” Of course, I didn’t take them to your kid, yet. I sort of got derailed. I haven’t decided yet whether she needs to suffer for your sins.
Silence. Another cookie.
They’d been friends for about five years, since Iris and Sara had introduced them. They’d always gotten on well, both having the same interests—their children, their houses, their marriages, their hopes and dreams, their Pinterest boards. They weren’t truly close, they were friends of proximity, friends because their kids were friends and because of the carpool. If they saw each other in the street they would stop and hug, check in, plan to have lunch, and maybe twice a year they would. They would describe each other as friends, do each other significant favors, but if one of them moved away they would promise to keep in touch, and not. But hey, look at them now—now they were bound together in a whole shiny new way.
Frances took a sip of coffee. “So, how long have you been sleeping with a total stranger?”
Anne shrugged. “Six months.” Her tone was even, as if Frances had just asked a follow-up question about the toilet roll tubes.
“I assume Charlie doesn’t know?”
“No.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“Charlie?”
“The stranger.”
“His name is Richard.”
“I don’t give a shit what his name is, Anne. Do you love him?”
“No.”
“Then why, if you don’t mind my asking, are you risking your children’s happiness in order to have sex with him?”
Frances’s face was flushed, her eyes bright with tears. Anne looked at her and felt irritated by her judgment, even though she genuinely liked the other woman, trusted her completely, and could see how much she was hurting.
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t you love your kids?”
“More than anything.”
“Well, you apparently don’t love them enough to not sleep with this person and run the risk that Charlie will find out, be devastated, divorce you, fight you for child custody, and make them choose between the two of you.” Frances stood up to go refill her mug, in order not to smash it into Anne’s calm, elegant, beautiful face. Anne’s serenity had been one of Frances’s favorite things about her; she’d always marveled at the other woman’s composure and wished for one-tenth the gravitas Anne had. Francis suddenly wondered if it was a mental deficiency or sociopathic disorder. Maybe Anne looked at everyone as if they were chairs or something, unable to feel any empathy at all.
Frances turned to face her friend. “Why am I so completely upset by this and you’re not? Are you having some kind of mental breakdown? I thought you and Charlie were happy together.”
“We are.”
Frances laughed.
The doorbell rang.
Sara Gillespie, the wife of Frances’s cousin Iris, was sufficiently famous that people would stop her in the street. Not so famous that she couldn’t walk down the street, but still, frequently recognized. She always played the slightly-ditsy-but-cute-as-a- button girl next door, doomed to romantic failure until the right knight came along, her optimism and openheartedness about to be lost forever when, poof, Mr. Charming realized he couldn’t live without her and asked her to marry him. She was smart, and alternated blockbuster rom-coms with sharp and sarcastic indie pictures that didn’t make money but won awards. She rarely gave interviews, and only went on TV to support charities or raise awareness of some atrocity somewhere. People knew she was gay, it had never been a big secret, but they were able to overlook it or something. Maybe the world accorded her the privacy and respect it wanted for itself; there was always hope. Sara just shrugged it off, and as she walked into Frances’s kitchen now she was laughing at the magazine she held in her hand.
“It says here—Oh, hi, Anne—that I’m leaving Iris for this guy, whoever the fuck he is, and that I’ve decided I’m straight after all.” She bent to kiss Anne on the cheek, and then snagged a cookie. “Am I interrupting something interesting? You both look very serious.”
“No, not at all.” Anne smiled at her. “We were just talking, you know.”
“Oh, good. I’m glad you’re here, because I came to get Frances’s advice and you can chime in, too. I want to throw a surprise party for Iris, for her birthday, and I wondered what you thought.” She sat on the edge of the table, one of her signature traits. She would leap onto a counter, or sit on the floor cross-legged, or flip a chair around and straddle it, but it was only under duress that she’d sit straight on a regular chair in a regular way.
Frances was making her a cup of coffee. “At the house?”
“Maybe, what do you think?” Sara rubbed a hand over her short, curly blond hair, expensively cut and tousled to look as if she’d just gotten out of bed. She spent time on her appearance, it was her job, after all, and it took a lot of money and effort to look as if she didn’t.
“Why not, I think it would be fun. What kind of party? Formal eveningy, or daytime kidsy?”
Sara took the coffee Frances was holding out to her, and another cookie. “These are awesome cookies, low fat, right?” She grinned, and then answered Frances’s question. “I was thinking it might be fun if it seemed sort of impromptu at first and then gradually revealed itself as a planned thing.” The other two were frowning, so she clarified. “Imagine, if you will, a simple lunch with Frances, Michael, and the kids. They come over, bearing a birthday cake that Frances has deliciously baked, and I have made a plate of sandwiches and salady stuff. Trader Joe’s, nothing fancy, right? Happens all the time.” She grinned. “But then the doorbell rings and it’s Anne, Charlie, and their kids, and hey, who knew, THEY brought some food, too, and somehow I find another plate of sandwiches from somewhere, or maybe a veggie platter, who knows, and then the doorbell rings AGAIN and it’s Maggie and Melanie and they brought wine, and then . . . You get my drift? Eventually everyone would be there, and after a bit she’ll realize that it was all a plot and that way I don’t need to do an elaborate ruse to get her out of the house.” She looked thrilled with herself.
Frances nodded. “I think it sounds great. I’m in, for sure.”
Anne frowned. “But then we won’t have that great ‘Surprise!’ moment.”
Sara shook her head. “Iris hates being surprised like that. Hates it. This way I can spring something on her without worrying that she’ll have a coronary or react badly. It’s her birthday, after all.”
“Yeah,” added Frances dryly, looking at Anne with no expression. “Not everyone likes the feeling that people have been plotting behind their back.”
“Right!” Sara giggled. “And I can hide food at your houses, right?”
“Sure, it will be easy.”
“And I thought I’d have a bouncy house arrive in the middle, so the kids will be entertained.”
“Nice.”
“Yay! Good, then that’s settled. Now all I have to do is prevent myself from spilling the beans in the next few weeks and we’ll be fine.” She slid off the table, grabbed another cookie, and hugged them both.
“How is it you eat so many cookies and stay thin? I kind of hate you.” Anne was smiling as she said this. And as Frances watched Anne pretend to be normal, to have normal friendships, and to care about people, while making chatty conversation, she suddenly felt exhausted. Like, week four of a new baby exhausted.
Sara looked surprised. “I’m going to go home and vomit up the whole lot. Isn’t that what everyone does?”
Frances laughed. “No, I hide them in special carrying cases I have on my upper thighs.”
“Ah. Well, that’s another way to go.” Frances walked Sara to the door and watched her make her way down the street, her energy causing her to essentially skip. No wonder she stayed thin; her whole life was a minor workout.
Frances propped the door open to bring in some air, and went back to the kitchen.