Big Little Lies (36 page)

A
t first his face was completely neutral: friendly, this-is-of-no-relevance-to-me polite. He didn’t recognize her.
I wouldn’t know her from a bar of soap!
The cheery phrase popped inappropriately into her head. Something her mum would say.

But when she said “Saxon Banks” there was a flicker, not because he recognized her, he still had no idea, couldn’t even be bothered to go to the effort of dredging up the appropriate memory, but because he understood who she must be, what she represented. She was one of many.

He’d lied about his name. It had never occurred to her that he would do that. As if your name could not be fabricated, even though you could fabricate your personality, fabricate your attention.

“I kept thinking I might run into you,” she said to him.

•   •   •

P
erry?” said Celeste.

Perry turned to her.

His face was naked again, like in the car, as though something had been ripped away. Ever since Madeline had first mentioned Saxon’s name on the night of the book club, there had been something niggling at Celeste, a memory from before the children were born, before Perry hit her for the first time.

That memory slid into place now. Fully intact. As though it had just been waiting for her to retrieve it.

It was Perry’s cousin’s wedding. The one where Saxon and Perry had driven all the way back to the church to collect Eleni’s mobile phone. They were sitting at a round table. White starched tablecloth. Giant bows tied around the chairs. Light hitting the wineglasses. Saxon and Perry were telling stories. Stories of a shared suburban childhood: homemade billy carts and the time Saxon saved Perry from the bullies at school and what about the time when Perry brazenly stole a banana paddle pop from the freezer at the fish and chip shop and the big scary Greek man grabbed him by the scruff of his neck in one big beefy hand and said, “What’s your name?” and Perry said, “Saxon Banks.” The fish and chip shop owner called Saxon’s mother and said, “Your son stole from me,” and Saxon’s mother said, “My son is right here,” and hung up on him.

So funny. So cheeky. How they’d laughed while they drank their champagne.

“It didn’t mean anything,” said Perry to Celeste.

There was a hollow roaring sensation in her ears, as though she were deep underwater.

•   •   •

J
ane watched Perry turn away from her to look at his wife, instantly dismissing her without even bothering to remember or acknowledge her. She’d never really existed to him. She was of no consequence in his life. He was married to a beautiful woman. Jane was pornography. Jane was the adult movie that didn’t appear on his
hotel bill. Jane was Internet porn, where every fetish can be fulfilled. You have a fetish for humiliating fat girls? Enter your credit card number and click right here.

“That’s why I moved to Pirriwee,” said Jane. “Just in case you were here.”

The glass bubble elevator. The muffled, dimly lit hotel room.

She remembered how she’d looked around the room—casually, pleasurably—for more evidence of the sort of man he was, more evidence of his money and style, more evidence to indicate that this would be a delightfully lavish one-night stand. There wasn’t much to see. A closed laptop. An upright overnight bag standing neatly in the corner. Next to the laptop there was a real estate leaflet.
FOR SALE.
A picture of an ocean view.
LUXURY FAMILY HOME OVERLOOKING THE GLORIOUS PIRRIWEE PENINSULA.

“Are you buying this house?” she’d said.

“Probably,” he answered. He was pouring her champagne.

“Do you have kids?” she asked, recklessly, stupidly. “It seems like a good house for children.” She never asked about a wife. No ring. There was no ring.

“No kids,” he said. “One day, I’d like kids.”

She’d seen something on his face: a sadness, a desperate sort of yearning, and she had thought, in all her idiotic naivety, that she knew exactly what that sadness indicated. He’d just been through a break-up! Of course he had.
He was just like her
, nursing a broken heart. He was desperate to find the right woman and start a family, and maybe she was even moronic enough to think, as he smiled his devastatingly attractive smile and handed her the champagne glass, that
she
might turn out to be that woman. Stranger things had happened!

And then stranger things did happen.

Over the years that followed, she reacted viscerally to the words “Pirriwee Peninsula” in conversation or in print. She changed the subject. She turned the page.

Then one day, without warning, she did the exact opposite. She told Ziggy they were going to the beach and they drove to the glorious Pirriwee Peninsula, and all the way there she tried to pretend that she didn’t even remember that real estate leaflet, even as she remembered it, over and over.

They played on the beach and she looked over his shoulder for a man coming out of the surf with a white-toothed smile. She listened for the sound of a wife calling out the name “Saxon.”

What did she want?

Revenge? Recognition? To show him she was skinny now? To hit him, to hurt him, to report him? To say all the things she should have said instead of her bovine “bye”? To somehow let him know that he hadn’t gotten away with it, even though of course he had?

She wanted him to see Ziggy.

She wanted him to marvel at his beautiful, serious, intense little boy.

It made no sense. It was such a stupid, strange, weird and wrong desire, she refused to properly acknowledge it and sometimes she flatly denied it.

Because how would this moment of magical fatherly marveling possibly work? “Oh, hi there! Remember me? I had a son! Here he is! No, no, of
course
I don’t want a relationship with you, but I do just want you to stand for a moment and marvel over your son. He loves pumpkin. He’s always loved pumpkin! Isn’t that incredible? What kid loves pumpkin? He’s shy and brave and he has excellent balance. So there you go. You’re a bastard and a prick and I hate you, but just look for a moment at your son, because isn’t it the strangest thing? Ten minutes of depravity created something perfect.”

She told herself she’d taken Ziggy to Pirriwee for the day and seen a flat for lease and “on a whim” she decided to move here. She pretended it so fiercely she almost believed it, and as the months
went by and it seemed less and less likely that Saxon Banks lived here at all, it had become the truth. She stopped looking for him.

When she told Madeline the story about the night at the hotel with Saxon, it hadn’t even occurred to her to tell her that he was part of the reason she’d moved to Pirriwee. It was preposterous and embarrassing. “You
wanted
to run into him?” Madeline would have said, trying her best to understand. “You
wanted
to see that man?” How could Jane explain that she did and she didn’t want to see him? Anyway, she’d forgotten all about that real estate brochure! She
had
moved to Pirriwee on a whim.

And Saxon clearly wasn’t here.

But now here he was. Celeste’s husband. He must have been married to Celeste at the time he met Jane.

“We had a really hard time getting pregnant with the boys,” Celeste had told Jane once on one of their walks.
That
was why he’d looked sad when she had mentioned children.

Jane felt her face flush warm with humiliation in the cool night air.

•   •   •

I
t meant nothing,” Perry said again to Celeste.

“It meant something to
her
,” said Celeste.

It was his shrug that did it. The almost imperceptible shrug that said
Who cares about her?
He thought this was about infidelity. He thought he’d been caught out in a garden-variety business-executive-goes-on-an-interstate-trip one-night stand. He thought it was nothing to do with Jane.

“I thought you were . . .”

She couldn’t speak.

She thought he was kind. She thought he was a good person with a bad temper. She thought that his violence was something private
and personal
between them
. She thought he wasn’t capable of casual cruelty. He always spoke so nicely to waitresses, even the incompetent ones. She thought she knew him.

“Let’s talk about this at home,” said Perry. “Let’s not make a spectacle of ourselves.”

“You’re not looking at her,” whispered Celeste. “You’re not even looking at her.”

She threw the contents of her half-full glass of champagne cocktail straight in his face.

The champagne splashed across his face.

Perry’s right hand rose instantly, instinctively, gracefully. It was as though he were an athlete catching a ball, except he didn’t catch anything.

He hit Celeste with the back of his hand.

His hand curved in a perfect, practiced, brutal arc that flung back her head and sent her body flying across the balcony where she fell, clumsily and hard on her side.

•   •   •

T
he air rushed from Madeline’s lungs.

Ed sprang to his feet so fast, his bar stool tipped over. “Whoa! Whoa there!”

Madeline rushed to Celeste’s side and dropped to her knees. “My God, my God, are you—”

“I’m fine,” said Celeste. She pressed her hand to her face and half sat up. “I’m perfectly fine.”

Madeline looked back at the little circle of people on the balcony. Ed stood with his arms held wide, one hand up like a stop sign directed at Perry, the other held protectively in front of Celeste.

Jane’s glass had slipped from her fingers and shattered at her feet.

Renata rummaged through her handbag. “I’m calling the police,”
she said. “I’m calling the police right now. That’s assault. I just witnessed you assaulting your wife.”

Nathan had his hand on Bonnie’s elbow. As Madeline watched, she shook his hand free. She was blazing with passion as though lit from within.

“You’ve done that before,” she said to Perry.

Perry ignored Bonnie. His eyes were on Renata, who had her phone to her ear. “OK, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said.

“That’s why your son has been hurting little girls,” said Bonnie. It was that same rough-edged voice Madeline had heard her use earlier in the night, except it was even more pronounced now. She sounded so . . . well, she sounded like she came from the “wrong side of town,” as Madeline’s mother would say.

She sounded like a drinker. A smoker. A fighter. She sounded real. It was strangely exhilarating to hear that guttural, angry voice coming out of Bonnie’s mouth. “Because he’s seen what you do. Your little boy has seen you do that, hasn’t he?”

Perry exhaled. “Look, I don’t know what you’re implying. My children haven’t ‘seen’ anything.”

“Your children see!” screamed Bonnie. Her face was ugly with rage. “We see! We fucking
see
!”

She shoved him, both her small hands flat on his chest.

He fell.

I
f Perry had been just a few inches shorter.

If the balcony railing had been just a few inches higher.

If the bar stool had been at a slightly different angle.

If it hadn’t been raining.

If he hadn’t been drinking.

Afterward Madeline could not stop thinking of all the ways it could have happened differently.

But it happened the way that it happened.

Celeste saw the expression on Perry’s face when Bonnie screamed at him. It was the same mildly amused face as when Celeste lost her temper with him. He liked it when women got angry with him. He liked getting a reaction. He thought it was cute.

She saw his hand grab for the railing and slip.

She saw him flip back, his legs high, like he was romping on the bed with the boys.

And then he was gone without making a sound.

An empty space where he’d been.

It all happened too fast. Jane’s mind was dull with shock. As she groped for comprehension she became aware that there was a commotion going on inside the hall: yells, bangs, thuds.

“Jesus Christ Almighty!” said Ed. He leaned over the balcony railing, both hands gripping the edge as he peered over, his gold Elvis cape stretched out behind him like foolish little wings.

Bonnie had sunk down on to her haunches, her body curved into a ball, her hands clasped tightly over the back of her head as though she were waiting for a bomb to explode.

“No, no, no, no.” Nathan took little agitated steps, dancing around his wife, bending to touch her back and then straightening up and pressing his hands to his temples.

Ed spun around. “I’ll go see if he’s—”

“Ed!” said Renata. She’d dropped the hand holding her mobile phone to her side. The balcony light reflected off her glasses.

“Call an ambulance!” barked Ed.

“Yes,” said Renata. “I am. I will. But um . . . I didn’t see what happened. I didn’t see him fall.”

“What?”
said Ed.

Madeline was still on her knees next to Celeste. Jane saw Madeline look straight past Ed at her ex-husband. Nathan’s hair was all sweaty from the wig and stuck to his forehead. He looked at Madeline with distraught, pleading eyes. Madeline looked back at Celeste, who was staring catatonically at the place where Perry had been sitting.

“I don’t think I saw either,” said Madeline.

“Madeline,” said Ed. He pulled angrily at his costume, as if he longed to tear it off. The glitter was coming off onto his hands, turning his palms gold. “Do not—”

“I was looking the other way,” said Madeline. Her voice was stronger. She got to her feet, holding her tiny clutch bag in front of her, her back straight and her chin high, as if she were about to walk into a ballroom. “I was looking inside. I didn’t see.”

Jane cleared her throat.

She thought of the way Saxon—Perry—had said, “It didn’t mean anything.” She looked at Bonnie, cowering near an upturned bar stool. She felt hot liquid anger suddenly cool and harden into something powerful and immovable.

“So was I,” she said. “I didn’t see anything either.”

“Stop this.” Ed glanced at her and back at Madeline. “All of you stop it.”

Celeste reached for Madeline’s hand and pulled herself gracefully to her feet. She straightened her dress and pressed one hand to her face, where Perry had hit her. She looked for a moment at the curled-up form of Bonnie.

“I didn’t see a thing,” she said, and her voice sounded almost conversational.

“Celeste.” Ed’s face crumpled as though in terror. He pressed his hands hard against his temples, and then dropped them. His forehead sparkled gold.

Celeste walked to the edge of the balcony and put her hands on the railing. She looked back at Renata and said, “Call the ambulance now.”

Then she began to scream.

It was easy after all those years of pretending. Celeste was a fine actress.

But then she thought of her children and she didn’t need to pretend anymore.

Stu:
All hell had broken loose by this stage. Two blokes were fighting over some French chick, and next thing this four-foot weasel is laying into me because I’d said his wife couldn’t organize a root in a brothel and I’d offended her honor or something. I mean, jeez Louise, it’s just an expression.

Thea:
It’s true the argument over standardized testing got a little heated. I have four children, so I do lay claim to some expertise in the matter.

Harper:
Thea was shouting like a fishwife.

Jonathan:
I was with some Year 4 parents and we got into an argument over the legality and morality of that damned petition. There were some raised voices. Maybe some shoving. Look, I’m not proud of any of this.

Jackie:
Give me a vicious corporate takeover any day.

Gabrielle:
I was considering cannibalism by this time. Carol looked delicious.

Carol:
I was cleaning the kitchen when I heard the most terrible bloodcurdling scream.

Samantha:
Ed came running for the stairs and he was shouting something about Perry White falling off the balcony and would someone for the love of God call an ambulance. I looked over at the balcony and saw two Year 5 dads go crashing out through the open door.

“There’s been an accident,” Renata was saying into her mobile phone. She had one finger plugged into her ear so she could hear the person on the other end over the sound of Celeste’s screams. “A man has fallen. From a balcony.”

“It was him?” Madeline took Jane’s arm and pulled her close. “It was
Perry
who—”

Jane stared at the perfect pink cupid’s bow of Madeline’s lipstick. Two perfect peaks. “Do you think he’s—”

She never got to finish her sentence because that’s when the two grappling white-satin Elvises, their arms wrapped tightly around
each other’s backs as if in a passionate embrace, slammed violently into Jane and Madeline, sending them flying in opposite directions.

As Jane fell, she put one hand to save herself and felt something snap with sickening wrongness near her shoulder as she landed hard on her side.

The tiles of the balcony were wet against Jane’s cheek. Celeste’s screams mingled with the far-off sounds of ambulances and the soft sound of Bonnie sobbing. Jane could taste blood in her mouth. She closed her eyes.

Oh, calamity.

Bonnie:
The fighting spilled out onto the balcony, and that’s when poor Madeline and Jane got so badly injured. I didn’t see Perry White fall. I . . . Would you excuse me for just a moment, Sarah? Wait, it is Sarah, isn’t it? Not Susan. My mind went blank. Sorry, Sarah. Sarah. A lovely name. It means “princess,” I think. Listen, Sarah, I need to pick up my daughter now.