THE BUNKO BUNNY

I have no luck. Glynn remembered this snippet of movie dialogue, but not the actress who said it or the name of the movie. She did recall a histrionic mass of corkscrew curls, a chewy New York accent, a tragedy: The husband she loved had been hit by a bus before they could have a baby. No baby. No husband. No luck.

Glynn figured it was better to have no luck than bad luck; even inertia was preferable to chaos. Glynn herself knew a lot about chaos because she had plenty of luck: a little good, some bad, all of it adding up to insanity. She had thermodynamic luck; the odds for explosion were high. Who cared that you shouldn’t apply the laws of thermodynamics to human relations? She had atoms, she had energy. There must be, she decided, a scientific explanation, an underlying, imperceptible flame beneath her feet.

An example: Glynn wanted to play super couples bunko, but George would have none of it. Here she was, ten minutes before everyone was supposed to show up, cross, sweaty, trying to convince him. Not that she could gather up all those husbands at the last minute, but still, there was the principle of the thing. One had to have principles. And anyway, he’d gone and devoured the box of spinach tarts that she thought she’d hidden underneath the frozen pizzas, and she’d been forced to run—literally—to get more.

“I’m not playing anything called ‘super’ or ‘bunko,’” he said, his face washed out in the glare of the TV.

“But they’re your friends,” she said.

“They’re your friends. They’re my friends’ wives.”

That was the point, but Glynn didn’t say it. Glynn was the new wife. The young one. But she wasn’t so young. And George was her second husband. She was between jobs and, she hoped, between children. Anyway, she had to make a good showing, and she hadn’t gotten remarried to go it alone.

And speaking of showing. “Will you please turn that horrible stuff off? You know how I hate it.”

George tugged on his bottom lip. “Did you know that it only takes five pounds of pressure to rip a person’s cheek away from the gums?”

“Ugh, George. I don’t know why you feel the need to share these things with me.”

George tore his eyes away from his new favorite program: Autopsy! “I love you.”

She wiped the back of her hand across her brow. “We shouldn’t have moved,” she said, though the move was due to her own faulty logic, her luck. Their future seemed so ripe with possibility, why not move to a nice neighborhood in the suburbs, send Joey to a decent school for once, settle in, settle down? But that was before the budget cutbacks that cost Glynn her job, the strain to make the mortgage. Before she discovered that her new neighbor was a mortician and that her husband had never lost his little-boy obsession with all things torn and bloody. “We shouldn’t have bought a house near those people.”

“Who?”

Though she was irrationally fond of him—from his Muppet-oboe voice to his feline fits of ecstasy—she sometimes wondered if George was breathing through both nostrils. “You know who. The Addams Family.”

“He said that if he gets a call for a body tonight, I can go.”

“You’re not serious.”

“It’s a necessary profession.” George turned back to the screen. “You can’t just leave a lot of dead people lying around. It’s unsanitary.”

The first time she’d brought George home to her mother’s for dinner, his nerves had gotten the better of him and he’d ended up berating her mom and stepdad about their injudicious use of water. “You’re watering the lawn and using the dishwasher. And the pool! Do you know how many gallons it takes to fill a pool?”

Her mother’s verdict: “He’ll need some encouragement, that one.”

The bunko box waited on the dining room table. This was the box that jumped from hostess to hostess, a box that her ex-sister-in-law, Moira, had solemnly handed off to Glynn the week before. “This is it,” she’d said in a tone that meant, to Glynn, Don’t fuck this up.

Inside the box: dice, three for each table; scorecards; tiny little pencils; a large brass bell; and the bunko bunny, floppy eared and absurd in its polka-dotted boxer shorts. Joey would have gone nuts over the bunny, would have grabbed it and tortured it and then refused to give it up on pain of . . . well, on pain of pain. She supposed it was lucky—in the good and not thermodynamic way—that he was at his shithead father’s for the night.

At his father’s, she corrected herself. Do not even think shithead. Thinking led to speaking, and speaking led to parroting, and then there would be another infuriating letter from the shithead’s attorney, from his father’s attorney, about therapy and respect and the positive impact fathers have on the lives of their children. She’d said one little thing—one thing!—after the shithead had started dating that bitch. Woman. After Joey had come home from a visit and informed Glynn that his father, the positive influence, and the woman, the positive influence’s influence, thought it was okeydokey to sleep in the same bed on a kid weekend and leave boxes of rubbers inadequately concealed for children to find. And bring home. And show to their still-prone-to-outbursts mothers. “Mommy? What’s ‘pleasure’?”

Glynn placed three dice on each table along with a scorecard and some pencils. She ripped open bags of M&M’s and Reese’s Pieces and poured them into the matching candy bowls they’d gotten as wedding presents, one per table, and then into some larger bowls at the bar. Indulging her librarian’s lust, her secret craving for order, she arranged the liquor bottles alphabetically, lining them up in neat rows. Martinis. Check. Mimosas. Check. Manhattans. Check. Beer, wine, even a nasty bottle of candy-cane-flavored grain that some alcoholic neighbor had given her for Christmas. She could make any drink the wives could think to think of and a whole bunch they couldn’t.

Bring them on, she thought. She was a wife, a wifey-wife, the wifey-est. Look at these M&M’s, will you?

Of course, none of this was what she wanted to be doing on a shithead weekend. No, these weekends were their “young marrieds” weekends, where she and George could eat four-course breakfasts, see R-rated movies, or grope in the living room—things she hadn’t been able to do freely for more than seven years. It was a pleasant—and unsettling—side effect of the shithead’s visitation schedule. It hadn’t started out that way. Those first sonless days after the separation, she had lurked and moped, a thin haunt in her own house, unmoored and outraged. After a while, though it seemed impossible, she got used to the days without her son, got used to herself without him. Now, when he was home, she began to crave the days he wasn’t, that lazy sweep of hours in which she was relieved of monitoring the appetite, bladder, and emotional development of another human. And then he was gone again, and just folding his little underpants could make her weep. Split custody split her down the middle, until one day she was both mother and not-mother, two-faced like some goddess, but a crazy one, always turned the wrong way. And it made her despise her ex-husband that much more.

The doorbell rang. Glynn ran a finger across her teeth to ensure no lipstick had strayed there and watched George trundle upstairs, where he had promised to stay all evening. Then she opened the door.

“Is your doorbell broken or something?” said Moira, her hair blown straight enough to shear her blouse. “I’ve been standing here for ten minutes.”

“Really?” said Glynn. “I’ll have George look at it tomorrow.”

“Sure, sure,” Moira said, and threw her coat over the banister. “I need a drink. You wouldn’t believe the week I’ve had.” She marched into the living room, where Glynn had set up her bar, and sifted through the bottles. “Ryan is driving me crazy. I don’t think he’s spoken a civil word to me since he got back from that stupid fishing trip that Ben took him on. Now, he fishes. Since when does that rotten bastard fish? Do you have any Campari? I’m feeling Mediterranean today.”

Campari. “I have everything else,” Glynn said, surreptitiously pushing some bottles back in line.

Moira heaved one of her theatrical sighs. “What the hell. I’ll have a Scotch and soda. The effect’s the same.” The doorbell rang, and Moira looked up, frowning. “Your bell works fine.”

“I’ll get that,” Glynn said.

One by one, eleven women arrived, threw coats over the banister, and ran for the bar. As they plunged into the bowls of candy and poured themselves an assortment of drinks, Glynn collected the $10 ante from everyone. She knew them all by name, except for one, a woman so dull that her name refused to stick in the mind. This woman did not mix a drink or dive into the candies, she skulked around tugging on her crispy hair, doing something weird with her lips, sucking them in and out like gills. Glynn found it difficult not to stare. Joey would never have let her get away with a habit like that. As a mimic, he was merciless.

Moira sidled up to Glynn as she struggled to hang the coats on the lone coat tree in the foyer. “What’s Lu doing here?”

“She’s taking Rosemary’s place tonight,” Glynn said.

“Lu is.”

“Yes.” A coat, gray and shiny like sealskin, slithered to the floor. “What’s the matter?”

“Lu’s married to Ward.”

Apparently, Glynn was supposed to understand the significance of this. “So?”

“So? Roxie’s here. Roxie’s ex is married to Ward’s ex, Beatrix.”

“Oh,” Glynn said. She felt the prickle of sweat underneath her arms—the creep of chaos—as she tried to work out the relational tangle. “Is that a problem?”

Moira blinked at her. “What do you think?”

“Lu isn’t married to Roxie’s ex. She’s married to the ex of an ex. What do they care? They probably don’t even know each other, right?” she said, hoping that this once Moira might humor her. After Moira had divorced Tate, Glynn’s brother, Moira had declared them the only extended family to have ever survived a divorce intact.

“Of course they know each other,” Moira said. “The knee bone’s connected to the hip bone by the thigh bone, you know?”

Campari and now anatomy. Glynn reminded herself that Ben, Moira’s second husband, had walked out on her recently, and one had to be compassionate at times like these. “Sorry,” Glynn said. “What?”

Moira pinched the bridge of her nose, like a teacher with a particularly dense student. “When Little Miss Hot Pants finally moves in with your ex, Joey will find out all about her and tell you. You’ll hear about her parents, her hobbies, the fact that she calls your ex ‘Motor Hips’ when she thinks Joey’s not listening. And she’ll know all about you, too, down to your bra size. That’s what sucks about divorce. You can’t keep a damn thing secret from anyone anymore. You know what I mean.”

No more coats would fit on the rack. Glynn was left holding the slippery gray one, which she hugged as if it were a diary. “Well, I don’t know what I can do about it.”

“Nothing,” Moira said, shrugging. “Now,” she added. She threw back the dregs of her Scotch. Then she flexed a bicep and tested it with a finger.

Glynn wondered what kind of drink she should have, besides big.

Glynn had arranged three card tables in her family room, labeled “High,” “Middle,” and “Low.” Glynn drew the head table and found herself sitting across from Roxie, while Moira took the “Middle” table with some of the other girls. Lu, Glynn noticed with relief, sat with the losers at the “Low” table.

Roxie declared herself the scorekeeper and rang the bell for the first round to begin. Even though Glynn had played before, even though the game was supposed to be mind-numbingly simple, she had to work to remember the few rules. In each round, players take the three dice and try to roll the same number as the round, called the target number. So in round one, you try to roll ones. Round two, twos. You get one point for each target number you roll. Three of a kind of any number except the target gets five points. Bunko is called when you roll three of the target number. Rolling bunko gets twenty-one points, but you have to yell it out to get credit. The round ends when the “High” table reaches twenty-one points.

“Rats,” Roxie said after rolling, “not even one one.” She slid the three dice over to Glynn.

Apart from the cartoon characters Joey liked to watch, Glynn didn’t know anyone who could say “rats” and make it sound organic. Glynn rolled two ones, one one, and then bust. She watched Roxie scribble a “3” next to her name and tried to think of a topic that didn’t have anything to do with Lu or the fact that Lu was married to the ex of an ex and might be privy to Roxie’s personal information. Kids were safe. Except when they were on drugs. But Moira hadn’t said anything about Roxie’s daughter, Liv, being on drugs, just that she was a bitch. And that was all teenage girls, wasn’t it?

“How’s your daughter?” Glynn asked.

Roxie sighed, scratching her head with the end of her pencil. “Very skinny.”

“In a good way?”

“In every way. Her body. Her outlook. Her worldview. I like to imagine she’ll spend less time disappointed because of it.”

Glynn handed the dice to a large, pie-faced woman named Sharon, who yelled, “Come on, baby!” before rolling three ones. “Bunko! Hey! I said bunko! Where’s my bunny?”

Moira, who had been holding the bunko bunny, tossed it to Sharon, hitting her in her big head. “You’re not supposed to get a bunko so fast!” Moira said. “I haven’t even gotten a chance to roll yet.”

“Me neither,” said Rita, who was Sharon’s partner but wouldn’t get any credit for the bunko. Bunkos were an individual thing.

Sharon hugged the bunko bunny. “That’s tough luck, ladies, this bunny’s mine. And so’s the pot tonight. I can feel it. It’s my lucky night!”

“You always say that,” said Rita, whose luck with bunko, a game that required absolutely no skill whatsoever, was as poor as her luck with men. Rita’s bizarro husband, Mike, the Pyramid Scheme King, still fancied himself a jock, though his bandy legs had gone thick and his pectorals were as soft as breasts. At the last Super Bowl party, he’d tried to leap over one of the couches but caught his foot, fell, and knocked out his front teeth.

Glynn sipped her vodka-tonic, the lime juice stinging her lips. George might be a bit obsessed with death and dismemberment, but at least he had dignity; he had never injured himself trying to hurdle the furniture.

They played until the “High” table had twenty-one points. Roxie rang the bell to signal the beginning of round two and tucked the pencil behind her ear. “So, Glynn. How old’s your son now? Five?”

“He’s seven,” said Glynn. “But sometimes he’s two. And twenty.”

Sharon threw the dice again. “My girl was born thirty, so I guess that she’s now about forty-two. She’s currently having her midlife crisis. She’s not actually playing with her Barbies anymore, she just makes them have sex.”

“I did that,” Rita said.

“You had sex?” said Sharon. “That is news. What was it like?”

“Oh. I meant about the Barbies,” Rita said.

“What about the sex?”

Rita pulled at the neck of her sweater. “We’re trying to have another baby.”

Sharon grunted. “Oh, that kind of sex.”

Roxie turned back to Glynn. “Is your son with your ex-husband tonight?”

“Yes,” Glynn said. “It’s working out well.” Do not say shithead do not think shithead. “Joey loves his father.” A little sliver of lime had worked its way between her front teeth, and she worried it with her tongue. “Sometimes it’s a little weird for me,” she ventured. “To be without him. Joey, I mean.” She wanted to say that it was also hard with him, harder than it had ever been before, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“You girls better stop yapping and roll,” said Sharon. “Put down two for me, Roxie. I rolled a two and two.”

Roxie wrote a “2” next to Sharon’s name and grabbed the dice. One two. She passed the dice to Glynn, who got one two in each of eight rolls—eight points—before coming up empty.

“Isn’t he living with someone now?” Roxie wanted to know.

“Who?” said Glynn.

“Your ex-husband.”

Bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch. “He has a girlfriend, but they’re not living together.”

“Yet,” said Moira, who had tipped her chair back and was listening in.

“Um . . . bunko?” called a voice from the back, from the losers’ table.

“Jesus!” Moira said. “Can’t a girl get a chance to roll before someone else gets a bunko?”

Sharon tossed the bunko bunny over the “Middle” table to Lu, who promptly dropped it.

Roxie touched Glynn’s hand. “Sorry,” she said. “But you know, she could turn out to be a nice person.”

Glynn felt suddenly sarcastic, and she didn’t like it. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Is your ex’s wife nice?”

Roxie tapped the pencil against the table. “Well, we’re not exactly typical. You wouldn’t want to use us as an example.”

Glynn wondered about the word us. Roxie and her ex? Roxie and her ex and his wife? The wife’s ex? How big did “us” get?

There was a thud from upstairs, and everybody looked at the ceiling. Glynn closed her eyes, imagined her new husband leapfrogging over the furniture.

“What the hell was that?” Moira said.

“The cat,” said Glynn. “Just the cat.”

“You don’t have a cat,” Moira said.

Glynn swallowed the rest of her drink. “The dog, then.”

They were on round six of the third game when someone rapped on the front door with the knocker. Moira, brandishing her third or fourth Scotch, said, “It’s the cat!”

“Why don’t you guys go to the kitchen and have some food? I’ve got spinach tarts keeping warm in the oven.”

“Spinach,” said Moira. “Who serves vegetables at a bunko bash? We’re here to get drunk and fat, aren’t we? We want hypertension! Clogged arteries and dead brain cells!”

“The tarts have lots of cheese,” Glynn said as she walked to the door. Because of her luck, she expected anyone and everyone—the cops, the firemen, the physics department of the local high school—everyone except her ex-husband’s girlfriend, that is. But it was her ex’s girlfriend, Stacey. So-proper-except-for-liking-to-leave-rubbers-around-to-advertise-her-sexual-peak Stacey, standing there in her skinny jeans, holding Glynn’s son’s hand.

“Glynn,” Stacey said. She was as tall as a model, with perfect, even teeth. “I’m happy you’re home.”

“What?” Glynn said, looking toward the street for her ex-husband. “Where’s Derek?”

“Out of town,” Stacey said. “He was called away this afternoon. They had some sort of problem with the plant in North Carolina or South Carolina. One of the Carolinas.” Stacey made spacey comments when she was uncomfortable; that’s what Derek, Glynn’s ex-husband, had said. “He took a two o’clock flight.”

When Glynn was uncomfortable, she got anal and aggressive, which Derek had also pointed out. “Derek left this afternoon?” She looked at Joey, who was glaring at no one or nothing in particular. “What about Joey?”

“Yeah,” said Joey. “What about me?”

Stacey’s absurdly full lips quivered. “Derek said it was all right if I took Joey to dinner before dropping him off here.”

“But why didn’t he call me?” Why didn’t he warn me? Glynn thought. But of course, that was ridiculous. Since when do you need to be warned that you have a son? You always have a son, don’t you? When do you suddenly not have a son?

“He did call. He talked to your husband.”

At this, Joey looked at his mother. “Dumb George.”

Glynn closed her eyes and leaned against the doorjamb.

Stacey pulled herself up to her full height, her Armani glasses sliding down her nose. “Look, if you’re busy, I can take Joey for the night—”

“No. No,” Glynn said, horrified at the turn this conversation was taking. “Of course not.”

“It’s just that I have to work in the morning. New client. You know the drill.”

If Glynn had had access to a drill . . . Do not think about drills. She took Joey by the shoulder and peeled him away from Stacey’s side. “I can care for my own son.”

Stacey’s hands tightened around her shoulder bag. “I know,” she said. “I was just saying . . .” She brushed away a lock of her hair, which was thick and wavy and perpetually windblown, like that of an actress at a photo shoot. Glynn could see that she was trying to be civil, and she felt a teeny bit sorry for her, an ass-impaired woman in her skinny pants. Yes, this was the person who had told Joey that his mother had “issues.” Yes, this was the person who had told Joey that perhaps his mother was “a little too afraid of being replaced.” Yes, this was the person who was ten years younger than Glynn, with better skin, better hair, and a better job. Glynn hated her guts, but she liked her feelings pure and unadulterated by pity. She wished Stacey would say something incendiary so that Glynn would have a good excuse to smack the fancy eyewear off her face and then keep smacking. Heat, entropy.

But Stacey, Glynn knew, was from somewhere out east where they jumped horses in their spare time, where they did not say incendiary things to their lover’s ex-wives, except behind their backs.

“I guess that’s all, then,” Stacey said. “Derek should be back in time for Joey’s Wednesday visit.”

Glynn nodded. Stacey gazed down at the top of Joey’s head. With her eyes, Glynn dared Stacey to try to touch him. But she didn’t. She just turned around and walked away, her bony turkey back straight and tall.

After she had gotten into her car and driven off, Joey looked up at Glynn. “She says it’s about time you got a job.”

“Well, she’s right about that,” Glynn said, sitting on the stoop.

“I told her that you were my mom. That’s your job.”

Glynn smiled up at him. “And you’re right about that.”

Joey reached out to pluck some bright red berries off the bush crouching next to the door. “Are we going to be outside for a while?”

“For a while.”

“It’s kinda cold.”

“Yeah, but you’re a tough guy.”

The tough guy nodded, shaking the berries like dice in his hands. “I’m going to smash these on the sidewalk.”

Her question was pure reflex: “Why would you want to do that?”

“It will look like blood.”

Sigh. “Of course it will.”

It appeared that the girls had devoured the tarts and moved on to the contents of the freezer. The smell of tomato sauce spiced the air, and Glynn could see the frozen pizza boxes littering the countertop.

Moira staggered into view, framed by the decorative arch separating the front hallway from the kitchen. “Ho!” she said thickly, swaying as if she were a sailor just finding her sea legs. “What’s the kid doing here?”

“He’s just saying hi.”

Glynn steered Joey into the living room and promised to give him a slice if he went upstairs and hung out with George. Quietly.

“I don’t want to be quiet,” Joey said. He spied the bunko bunny, which lay on its face on the floor by the losers’ table. “What’s that?”

“It’s Moira’s, and she’ll be really mad if something bad happens to it, okay? Please go upstairs and be quiet. Mommy has some friends over.”

“So?” he said loudly, thickly, swaying on his feet, like Moira in male, and in miniature. The woman whose name Glynn always forgot skipped into the living room, a bouquet of gnawed pizza crusts in her hand, stopping abruptly when she saw Glynn and Joey standing there.

Joey snickered. “What’s that lady doing with her face?”

Glynn took him by the arm before he had the chance to either get a chokehold on the bunko bunny or do another of his wicked impressions and brought him upstairs to the bedroom, where George was playing video games. When she’d married him—her George, lover of nonlinear foreign films and discordant, arty jazz—she hadn’t figured on the video games. The explosions and the blood and the bodies bursting like firecrackers.

“Hi, Joey,” George said. To Glynn, he said, “I thought he was at his dad’s.”

“He was. What’s-her-face dropped him off because Derek got called out of town. She said he spoke to you about it.”

“Derek did call, I forgot to tell you. But I’m sure he didn’t say anything about anyone going out of town.”

Glynn was equally sure that he had, but she didn’t want to get into an argument about it. George did the best he could, she knew he did, but he still hadn’t quite grasped the fact that Joey wasn’t a housecat with his own kitty door to the yard.

Joey staggered around drunkenly, rolling his eyes back in his head. “What are you doing?” George said.

“Moira,” said Glynn. “Look, the girls are still here, so could you keep an eye on him for a while?”

“Sure,” he said. “How long’s a while?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Can I play Mortal Kombat, Mom?” Joey said.

George put the console on the bed. “Can I take him with me if I go out?”

“Go out where?”

“You know,” said George. “The Addams Family?”

“Who’s that?” Joey said.

“No! You guys just stay up here. You’re not even supposed to be home, remember?”

“Phone home,” Joey said, and held up his finger. “Can I call Dad?”

“What?” Glynn said, more sharply than she wanted to. “Why?”

“Because he’s my dad. Children should always be able to call their fathers whenever they need to,” Joey said, his voice prim, sounding much like a certain assless person.

Do not say shithead do not think shithead. “I didn’t say you couldn’t call your dad. Of course you can. But he’s out of town right now.”

“So I’ll call the town he’s in.”

“You know, I think I am in the mood for a little Mortal Kombat,” said George, relenting. “You can be that chick with all the arms, if you want.”

Glynn gazed out the window, watching the trees buckle under a sudden wind. Joey had always been a somewhat moody and stubborn child, but all the changes in his life had turned him cranky and mulish. Glynn had read all the books, knew the stats, understood that in the long run, boys fared much better in remarried families, in the company of other boys. Joey seemed to tolerate George well enough, and vice versa. But their common interests were the bloody sort—the war games, the crime dramas, the nature specials that began with some sweet animal baby sticking its innocent nose out into the world and ended with some bedraggled-looking predator making a snack out of said baby. When she protested, they called her a girl, which made her furious, because she was beginning to suspect that gender had something to do with it all. Why couldn’t she just get along with Stacey? her ex wanted to know. He certainly didn’t have any problems with George.

Ha. That was because her ex was more successful than George, or thought he was. And because, while Joey thought George was okay, he clung to his father like a kinkajou to a banana. These things vindicated the ex in every mind but Glynn’s.

Besides, she “got along” with Stacey just fine. They managed. Glynn didn’t appreciate the snide little comments and judgments delivered via her son, that’s all. She didn’t care for the preferences and desires and observations of this strange woman creeping into her life, this spacey-Stacey-seepage.

And she didn’t like the woman’s stupid, beautiful face.

When you got right down to it, this was all her ex’s fault for trying to turn his girlfriend into his son’s mother, for assuming that if there was a lunch to be made, then his woman would make it; a nose to be wiped, then his woman would wipe it. Glynn knew her ex would be content with a little hero worship and the ability to retreat to the drawing room when there was some child-made mess to clean up—part of the reason she’d left the bloodless asshole in the first place. It wouldn’t be long before Stacey or some other Stepford Girlfriend was helping with homework, taking an afternoon off to cart Joey to the dentist, or staying home with him if he was sick. When would Stacey start believing that she had a right to an opinion? When would she tell Joey to call her Momma-Two or Stacey-Mommy or some other such horror? What if he wanted to? What if he could sense his own mother’s distraction and sought comfort from the other woman trying to win his favor? What if he turned into one of those wretched men who were always seeking comfort from some other woman?

Glynn shuddered, suddenly frantic. She’d have to draw the line somewhere, but where to draw it? The Little League games, the parent-teacher conferences, something.

The ringing phone banished thoughts of pelting Stacey with baseballs and chalk-choked erasers. George snapped up the receiver with one hand while still punching buttons on the game console with the other.

“Yeah, speaking,” he said. “Yeah.” He glanced at Glynn, then at Joey. “No, we’re not doing anything, either. I’ll be by in five minutes. I’ll bring Joey.”

“George,” Glynn said, her voice a warning.

“Relax,” George said after he’d hung up. “Stiller’s wife left him with the kids. We’re just going out for a little ice cream.”

“Ice cream?”

“Ice cream,” George said firmly.

“Hey!” yelled someone from downstairs, Moira. “Someone die up there or what?”

Entropy measures the tendency of energy to disperse, to diffuse, to become less concentrated in one place or one energetic state. But entropy, sometimes called time’s arrow, moves, comfortingly, in a logical direction, something that could be anticipated, something that could be understood. Rocks don’t roll uphill of their own volition. Water doesn’t freeze without impetus. Kettles don’t suddenly heat up by themselves.

Glynn watched her husband and her son slip out the front door, tearing off one of her fingernails with her teeth, considering the physical laws that governed her personal universe: people shooting every which way, bouncing off one another, and spinning out on unknown trajectories. Ice cream, she told herself. He said they were just going out for ice cream. She had to start trusting them sometime, hadn’t she? Otherwise, where would her husband and son end up launching themselves?

The girls had rearranged themselves in her absence, the winners moving to the head table and the losers to the losers’ table. They’d played several rounds, someone rolling for Glynn, and Glynn and Moira had come up winners. Now Roxie and Lu sat across from each other at the winners’ table. Both blanched with embarrassment when Moira said: “Hey, you guys are practically related! It’s like some sick game of six degrees of separation or something!” After that, they played a few more games in relative silence, until Moira got bored and grabbed the dice.

“Come on, fours!” Moira yelled, the word fours sounding like force. One four. One four. Two fours. She rolled three sixes—five points there—then nothing. “Damn it,” she grumbled. She tossed the dice to Roxie, who tried to catch them with one hand and missed.

As Roxie plucked the dice out of the carpet, Lu said, “I meant to tell you, Glynn. There are some openings at my agency. That is, if you’re still looking for a job.”

Roxie rolled a four. “I thought you worked for a real estate agency.”

“I do,” Lu said.

“Oh,” Glynn said, looking from one woman to another. “I didn’t know real estate agencies need librarians.”

Moira slapped a palm on the table. “Everybody needs librarians.”

“They don’t need a librarian. They need an office manager.” Lu took the dice from Roxie. “I’m sorry. I thought you just wanted something to do during the day, when your son’s at school.”

“She needs a job, not a little something to do,” said Moira, slurring. “Some of us have to work for our bunko antes, you know?”

“Sorry,” Lu said. “I just thought . . . sorry.”

“No,” said Glynn. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Lu shook the dice in her hand. As there had been a bunko drought since she’d gotten hers, she’d brought the bunko bunny with her, propping the thing on the table. Before each roll, she eyed it warily, as if it might suddenly begin leaping about.

Roxie swallowed visibly. “So, Lu. What’s your husband up to these days?”

“He’s in Virginia,” Lu said, blowing her bangs off her forehead. “Then Tennessee, then Georgia.”

“Does he have to go?”

Lu frowned. “Sure he has to go; it’s for work. . . . Crap. I’m busted. Here—” She thrust the dice at Glynn.

“So you’re a single girl this month?” Roxie asked.

Lu snorted. “I’ve got Devin full-time. I’ll have the other boys this weekend, because their mom is going out of town.”

“It must not be easy for you, Lu,” Roxie said. “With the boys. Stepfamilies can be so complicated.”

“You think?” said Lu. She was pretty, but in a hard way. She had a U-shaped line forming underneath her nose, possibly from sneering too much.

“I don’t know. Joey’s doing all right with George,” Glynn offered.

“Ward’s kids are okay. Mostly, anyway,” Lu said. She met Roxie’s eyes. “Their mother’s another story.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s trying,” Glynn said.

“Yeah, well, she could try a little harder.”

Glynn threw the dice, sending one careening off the table. “Heh,” she said. “I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

Roxie leaned back in her chair. “Kids aren’t easy whether they’re your own or someone else’s. Believe me, I know.”

“Yes,” Lu said, her face softening, the little U-shaped line smoothing out. “Of course you’re right.”

“We all just have to do our best,” Roxie added.

Lu put her elbows on the table, her expression suddenly open. “But then, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Everyone is doing something different, and everyone thinks whatever they’re doing is best.”

Another loud bang, the front door flying open, whacking against the wall. The girls swung their heads toward the noise in unison, like a herd of prey animals at the crack of a branch.

“Mom! Mom!” Joey shouted, running into the living room. “I saw a dead guy!”

“Was it my ex-husband? Please say it was my ex-husband!” Moira said, nearly tumbling out of her seat. Her eyes found Roxie. “You date Tate. You date my ex! How could you?”

Roxie laughed, got up, and helped Moira back into her chair. “You were the one who set me up with your ex. How could you?”

Glynn looked at George, who was standing in the hallway, half-sheepish, half-irritated. He’d probably told Joey to keep it a secret, not knowing, not understanding that Joey would be too excited to keep his mouth shut, that children don’t have the willpower for mystery.

“He was hit by a bus! But he wasn’t all smushed up or anything.”

Glynn sighed. Really, after all the death they’d witnessed on TV, was it so bad that her husband and son had gone out to see an actual dead person? Death was an inevitable part of life, wasn’t it? Part of the cycle of things.

Then again, maybe the vodka-tonic had addled her brains. She should have fought harder, that was her problem. So many things seemed inevitable to her, had the hypnotic perfume of fate about them, that she was beaten before she even began, like the one lame antelope on the plain.

“Why didn’t he look smushed, Mom?”

“I don’t know, Joey. Sometimes people don’t look smushed even when they should look smushed.”

“Mr. Stiller is going to drain all his blood into a bucket. That’s what George said. Right, George? They hang the guy from hooks.”

The woman whose name Glynn always forgot gasped in horror and sucked on her lips so hard that they disappeared into her face.

With her son and husband and all the girls watching, Glynn rested her forehead against the cool table. There was no controlling this, her luck. She would have to let Joey go a little; she was already doing it. Through her, Joey and George were united in all their gross and glorious boyness; through Joey, she and her ex-husband were locked together forever in their awkward, stupid dance. And if Derek married Stacey . . . well, her stupid-beautiful face would be everywhere. And they’d all expect Glynn to make room at the parent-teacher conferences. The Communions. The weddings. The baby showers. Joey’s relationships would become something else, something outside of Glynn’s reach, as prodigious as that reach—the reach of mothers—was. And wasn’t she herself moving out of her own reach? Becoming some other woman, married to some other man, possibly, soon, mother to some other person. Dispersing. Spiraling outward into the world, both more and less than before.

Fine. Fine, she thought. But not now, not yet. Didn’t she deserve some stillness? Some silky vacuum into which she might slip, secure in the fact that no rocks would ever roll uphill and nothing would ever change?

With the girls still watching—gaping—Glynn lifted her head and scooped up the dice, rolling idly at first and then with more purpose. She rolled again and again, until she got what she wanted. Three fours. Bunko. “Take the box,” she said, telling them, telling them all. “Take the booze. Take the candy. Take whatever you want. The bunny’s mine.”