Twelve.
Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins . . .
Frances had a Beatles song stuck in her head and sang it under her breath as she blundered into the bathroom, everyone else still sleeping. The dogs followed her, wondering if this morning they would get fed in the bathroom; it paid to keep an open mind.
She looked at herself in the mirror, naked and sheet-marked. Not too bad, she thought, turning. Yeah, OK, there were definitely thirty extra pounds, but first thing in the morning it all tended to hold together, and not . . . fold so much. By the end of the day, having been squeezed into jeans and a bra and sitting and standing and driving, she looked like a transit map, lines intersecting pinkly in hubs and spokes. She’d been very slender as a young woman, and clearly remembered looking at herself in a mirror at the age of twenty-four, not an ounce of fat, not a hint that gravity operated on her the same as everyone else, and pledging that if she ever saw even the first hint of cellulite she wouldn’t ignore it, but would work that shit off right away.
Frances made a face, remembering the idiocy of her younger self. She’d stayed slender until she had kids, then she’d gained with each pregnancy and not completely lost, and now she was overweight in her midforties, with a muffin top that rivaled any artisanal bakery in town. And did she give a fuck? No, zero fucks given. Except for every thirty or forty minutes, when she would catch sight of herself in a store window or mirror and scowl inwardly, scolding herself for being lazy, fat, unattractive, old, past-it, unsexy, uninteresting, invisible yet glaringly, obesely obvious as she lumbered around the world, an insult to the media and good women everywhere. Yeah, apart from those punctuating moments of vicious self-criticism, zero fucks given.
But so far this morning, she felt fine. She had the opposite of body dysphoria, maybe. She looked at herself and basically thought she looked good. Body euphoria? It didn’t feel that good . . . The dogs loved her regardless, as they told her continuously, pressing their heads under her hands, gazing up at her . . . You’re fantastic, said their liquid eyes, their waving tails, we just can’t get over how terrific you are in every way, we’re so glad to have chosen you as our leader.
She pulled on her jeans, looked at her mom-butt in the mirror—seriously, how did she suddenly have such a wide ass, what was wrong with her—then pulled on a sweatshirt which covered it. See? No mom-butt here. Just a cool hoodie. Suck it, internal critic. Suck it all the way.
She headed down the stairs, the dogs apparently attempting to kill her at every step, pushing behind her in a clattering fall of fur and claws. She saw the cat sitting on the sofa, waiting. Ah, his smooth outline said, I see the servants are awake.
Frances put on the coffee, humming, then pulled the dogs’ dishes from the dishwasher, having let them both out the back door to take a shit she could step in later. Carlton the cat sauntered in, timing his arrival perfectly with Frances putting fresh kibble in his bowl, up on a counter where the dogs couldn’t get it. She loved this cat. He was old and predated everyone in the house except Michael. His purr was rusty and only for her, his fur slightly thicker and more matted than it had been when she’d brought him home from the shelter sixteen years earlier. The dogs were scared of him, his orange tiger stripes conveying danger just as they should, and he sauntered around the house unmolested.
The dogs came back in, the coffee dripped into the pot, the lights were on, she could hear Ava moving around upstairs, facing her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Frances hoped her daughter saw how beautiful she was, but doubted it. She herself, like every woman she knew, only recognized her own youthful perfection in retrospect, with deep regret not for losing it but for not seeing it at the time. Frances tried to remember this every time she criticized herself—one day she would be eighty, God willing, and she was ready to bet she’d look at herself then and long for the strength and bone density of forty-six.
Frances thought of Anne. A few houses away she was also wandering around her kitchen, packing lunches (although she could be that mom, the one who assembled them the night before and only did the sandwich at the last minute, to prevent sogginess), drinking coffee, singing Beatles songs under her breath. Or maybe she was doing a light yoga workout, from memory, wearing strappy bamboo yoga wear that didn’t leave a mark on her flesh because she didn’t have any fat, because she worked it all off fucking a teenager and darting around like the cheating cow she was. Frances chided herself for being a bitch, and Ava came in.
“Morning, lovely,” said Frances.
“Yello,” replied her daughter, which was a neutral to medium-friendly response. Frances looked sideways at her, trying to gauge her mood. She’d left her alone the previous night, falling asleep herself before Ava had, which was a pretty common occurrence these days. Had she gotten over her bad mood, or was Frances still on her shit list?
Ava had the fridge door open. “Are you going to the store later?”
“Does the day have a Y in it?”
Ava smiled. “Can you get some more string cheese with the stuff wrapped around it?”
“Prosciutto?”
“Yeah.” She pulled out from the fridge, shutting the door. “I’m about to eat the last one.”
“Sure.” Frances made a mental note. Those particular snacks came from a different market from the usual one; she’d have to make a special trip. None of her family noticed the various efforts she made on their behalf, hunting for new foods for them to try, picking up their favorite flavors of this and that, pouncing on the rarities they favored, the Japanese candy, the artisanal brand of root beer, the slightly nicer-than-usual wine she picked out for Michael, though she didn’t like red wine herself.
Before there was Pinterest there were magazines that showed happy women providing beautiful things for their families to enjoy, and despite her intelligence she was just as much a sucker as anyone else. She wanted a bright yellow pitcher of wooden spoons on her white marble counter, she wanted tall French windows that looked out over green valleys, she wanted a pair of strappy ballet flats that ribboned up her slender calves as she romped about town in artfully shabby dungarees that somehow took twenty pounds off her. Instead she had a jar of dog-chewed wooden spoons, windows that hadn’t been washed since the first Obama administration, and if she’d put on a pair of dungarees she would have been mistaken for a plumber. A male plumber. However, she did maintain a world-class snack cupboard.
Ava came close, leaned over to be kissed, and went back upstairs. Frances listened to her footsteps as long as she could hear them.
Stepping outside she is free . . .
Anne’s kids were younger, so maybe she didn’t think about losing them as frequently as Frances thought about life after Ava was gone. As her eldest had turned into a teenager Frances and Michael could feel her getting ready to leave, all her energy pivoting toward the exit. It was palpable, the change in attitude. Sometimes it hurt to think of Ava picking a college, picking a boyfriend, picking a city to move to, and other times it filled them both with pride to think of the young woman she was turning into. Mind you, Frances thought, as she heard Lally calling her from upstairs, a stick of cheese for breakfast wasn’t going to cut it out in the real world.
Actually, Anne wasn’t doing yoga, she was throwing up and trying not to let anyone hear. She’d filled the toilet with toilet paper and draped a towel over her head to muffle the retching. She’d woken at 4:00 a.m., the universal hour of regret and recrimination. She knew she’d come dangerously close to being caught, to losing trust she didn’t deserve to have, and she knew she had to break it off once and for all. She’d tried before, and failed, but that was when she was only fighting her own willpower. Now she knew she was fighting Karma, and that bitch carried a big stick and forgot nothing.
Light was starting to come through the skylight above her head as she lay on the floor, the cold tiles flecked with bile. In a moment her morning alarm would go off, and she needed to get her ass off the bathroom floor and go prevent it from waking Charlie. She had to gather herself, wake the children, make the lunches (she’d been too freaked out to do it the night before as usual), put on the kettle for her morning coffee, check the backpacks for things she was supposed to sign, hunt for shoes. She must pretend it was all OK, that there was no possibility at all that her heart would burst and kill her where she stood. What if she died? What if Richard showed up at her funeral and the children turned to Charlie and asked who the tall crying guy was? This thought propelled her to her feet, and as she shuddered one last time over the toilet, a cold sweat spreading the smell of burning metal through the room, she prayed this was the last day of this part of her life.
Lucas wanted to know what made Fruity Pebbles change the milk all rainbowy. Bill said, “Chemicals,” but Lucas wasn’t satisfied.
“Which ones?”
Bill picked up the cereal box and read the label. “I spoke too soon, it does say natural colors here, so it’s just colors from fruit juices and stuff.”
“It does have fruity in the name.” Lucas was nothing if not fair minded.
His father nodded.
“Is Mom coming home today?” Lucas carried his bowl carefully to the sink, spilling it only at the last minute. He looked at his dad, but Bill just smiled. He didn’t give a shit about the floor.
“No, honey. But we can Skype her later, maybe. Do you know where your shoes are?”
Lucas nodded and went to get them. He came back with two almost identical shoes, but both were the left foot. Bill sent him to find another pair just like it, and then sat on the bottom of the stairs and leaned his head against the wall. He closed his eyes and thought of his wife, of the year she’d done this morning routine without him knowing any of it. She’d never told him footwear was such an issue. No wonder she’d left; the shoes were just too much.
“I’ll text your mom,” said Bill, as Lucas stomped down the stairs, carrying two more shoes, neither of which matched. “We’ll set a time, OK?” He got up and looked under the sofa, rewarded by a shoe that matched one of the four Lucas had harvested. He crouched down in front of his little boy who leaned his head forward until it touched his dad’s head, and kept it there. Bill felt tears well up in his throat, the sweetness of the gesture surprising him. It should be Julie’s head that felt this little touch, it should be Julie’s hands stretching the Velcro straps. But it wasn’t, and that was how it was. He straightened up and stood, towering over Lucas, who looked up at him trustingly.
“Promise?”
Bill smiled at him. “I promise I’ll text her. I can’t promise she will be able to talk. Sometimes she’s too busy, remember?”
“This work is taking a very long time, Daddy.”
Bill picked him up. “Yeah, baby. It really is.”
Ten minutes later, with Lally, Lucas, Wyatt, and Milo already in their spots, Ava with earbuds in, backpacks kicking about on the car’s messy floor, Frances pulled up outside Anne’s house to get Kate and Theo. Anne stood there, her arms folded across her celadon T-shirt and smiled a small smile at Frances.
“Thanks for taking them,” she said, her eyes expressing a different gratitude. “I took your advice,” she added, “and stopped doing that thing we talked about the other day.”
Frances paused for a moment, listening for the clunk of the sliding door finishing its slow groove, and looked wide-eyed at her friend. “You did?”
“Yes.” Anne nodded. “I decided you were right and it wasn’t a good idea.”
“Uh, great,” said Frances. “We can talk about it later.” Later when I don’t have seven bat-eared children in the car, children who ask questions as they occur to them, context notwithstanding.
“OK.” Anne smiled, her face calm.
Frances pulled away, strangely uncomforted by this exchange. She looked at Anne standing there in the rearview, still with her arms folded, unmoving. There was no outward sign of her recklessness; she just looked normal. Frances pulled her eyebrows together, and flicked the indicator.
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years. Bye, Bye.