Big Little Lies (6 page)

Five Months Before the Trivia Night

T
he reindeers ate the carrots!”

Madeline opened her eyes in the early morning light to see a half-eaten carrot shoved in front of her eyes by Chloe. Ed, who was snoring gently next to her, had taken a lot of time and care last night, gnawing on the carrots to make the most authentic-looking reindeer bites. Chloe was sitting comfortably astride Madeline’s stomach in her pajamas, hair like a mop, big grin, wide-awake shiny eyes.

Madeline rubbed her own eyes and looked at the clock. Six a.m. Probably the best they could hope for.

“Do you think Santa Claus left Fred a potato?” said Chloe hopefully. “Because he’s been pretty naughty this year!”

Madeline had told her children that if they were naughty, Santa Claus might leave them a wrapped-up potato, and they would always wonder what the wonderful gift was that the potato replaced. It was Chloe’s dearest wish for Christmas that her brother would receive a potato. It would probably please her more than the dollhouse under the tree. Madeline had seriously considered wrapping up potatoes
for both of them. It would be such an incentive for good behavior throughout the next year. “Remember the potato,” she could say. But Ed wouldn’t let her. He was too damned nice.

“Is your brother up yet?” she said to Chloe.

“I’ll wake him!” shouted Chloe, and before Madeline could stop her she was gone, pounding down the hallway.

Ed stirred. “It’s not morning time, is it? It couldn’t be morning time.”

“Deck the halls with something and holly!” sang Madeline. “Tra la la la la, la la la la!”

“I’ll pay you a thousand dollars if you stop that sound right now,” said Ed. He put his pillow over his face. For a very nice man, he was surprisingly cruel about her singing.

“You don’t have a thousand dollars,” said Madeline, and she launched into “Silent Night.”

Her mobile phone beeped with a text message, and Madeline picked it up from the bedside table while still singing.

It was Abigail. It was Abigail’s year to spend Christmas Eve and morning with her father, Bonnie and her half sister. Skye, who was born three months after Chloe, was a fair-haired, fey little girl who followed Abigail around like an adoring puppy. She also looked a lot like Abigail had when she was a child, which made Madeline feel uneasy, and sometimes teary, as though something precious had been stolen from her. It was clear that Abigail preferred Skye to Chloe and Fred, who refused to idolize her, and Madeline often found herself thinking,
But, Abigail, Chloe and Fred are your
real
brother and sister, you should love them more!
which was not technically true. Madeline could not quite believe that all three had equal footing as Abigail’s half siblings.

She read the text:
Merry Christmas, Mum. Dad, Bonnie, Skye and me all here at the shelter from 5:30 a.m.! I’ve already peeled forty potatoes! It’s
a beautiful experience being able to contribute like this. Feel so blessed. Love, Abigail.

“She’s never peeled a freaking potato in her life,” muttered Madeline as she texted back:
That’s wonderful, darling. Merry XMAS to you too, see you soon, xxx!

She put the phone down on the bedside table with a bang, suddenly exhausted, and tried her best to restrain the little eruption of fury behind her eyes.

Feel so blessed . . . A beautiful experience.

This from a fourteen-year-old who whined if she was asked to set the table. Her daughter was starting to sound just like Bonnie.

“Bleh,” she said out loud.

Bonnie had arranged for the whole family to volunteer at a homeless shelter on Christmas morning. “I just hate all that crass
commercialism
of Christmas, don’t you?” she’d told Madeline last week, when they’d run into each other in the shops. Madeline had been doing Christmas shopping, and her wrists were looped with dozens of plastic shopping bags. Fred and Chloe were both eating lollipops, their lips a garish red. Meanwhile Bonnie was carrying a tiny bonsai tree in a pot, and Skye was walking along next to her eating a
pear
. (“A fucking pear,” Madeline had told Celeste later. For some reason she couldn’t get over the pear.)

How in the world had Bonnie managed to get Madeline’s ex-husband out of bed at that time of morning to go to work in a homeless shelter? Nathan wouldn’t get up before eight a.m. in the ten years they’d been together. Bonnie must give him organic blow jobs.

“Abigail is having a ‘beautiful experience’ with Bonnie at the homeless shelter,” Madeline said to Ed.

Ed took his pillow off his face.

“That’s revolting,” he said.

“I know,” said Madeline. This is why she loved him.

“Coffee,” he said sympathetically. “I’ll get you coffee.”

“PRESENTS!” shouted Chloe and Fred from down the hallway.

Chloe and Fred couldn’t get enough of the crass commercialism of Christmas.

Harper:
Can you imagine how strange it must have been for Madeline to have her ex-husband’s child in the same kindergarten class as her own child? I remember Renata and I talked about it over brunch. We were quite concerned how it would affect the classroom dynamics. Of course, Bonnie loved to pretend it was all so nice and amicable. “Oh, we all have Christmas lunch together.” Spare me. I
saw
them at the trivia night. I saw Bonnie
throw
her drink all over Madeline!

I
t was just becoming light when Celeste woke up on Christmas morning. Perry was sound asleep, and there was no sound from the adjoining room where the boys were sleeping. They’d been almost demented with excitement about Santa Claus finding them in Canada (letters had been sent to Santa informing him of the change of address), and with their body clocks all confused, she and Perry had had terrible trouble getting them off to sleep. The boys were sharing a king-size bed, and they’d kept wrestling in that hysterical way they sometimes did, where laughter skidded into tears and then back again into laughter, and Perry had shouted from the next room, “Go to sleep, boys!” and all of a sudden there was silence, and when Celeste had checked in a few seconds later they were both lying flat on their backs, arms and legs spread, as if exhaustion had simultaneously knocked them out cold.

“Come and look at this,” she’d said to Perry, and he’d come in and stood next to her, and they’d watched them sleep for a few
minutes before grinning at each other and tiptoeing out to have a drink to celebrate Christmas Eve.

Now Celeste slid out from underneath the feathery quilt and walked to the window overlooking the frozen lake. She put her hand flat against the glass. It felt cold, but the room was warm. There was a giant Christmas tree in the center of the lake, glowing with red and green lights. Snowflakes fell softly. It was all so beautiful she felt like she could taste it. When she looked back on this holiday, she’d remember its flavor: full and fruity, like the mulled wine they’d had earlier.

Today, after the boys had opened their presents and they’d eaten a room service breakfast (pancakes with maple syrup!), they’d go out to play in the snow. They’d build a snowman. Perry had booked them a sleigh ride. Perry would post pictures of them all frolicking in the snow on Facebook. He’d write something like:
The boys have their first white Christmas!
He loved Facebook. Everyone teased him about it. Big, successful banker posting photos on Facebook, writing cheery comments about his wife’s friends’ recipe posts.

Celeste looked back at the bed where Perry was sleeping. He always slept with a tiny perplexed frown, as if his dreams puzzled him.

As soon as he woke he’d be desperate to give Celeste his gift. He loved giving presents. The first time she knew she wanted to marry him was when she saw the anticipation on his face, watching his mother open a birthday present he’d bought for her. “Do you like it?” he’d burst out as soon she tore the paper, and his family had all laughed at him for sounding like a big kid.

She wouldn’t need to fake her pleasure. Whatever he chose would be perfect. She’d always prided herself on her ability to choose thoughtful gifts, but Perry outdid her. On his last overseas trip he’d found the most ridiculously tizzy pink crystal champagne stopper. “I took one look and thought
Madeline
,” he’d said. Madeline had loved it of course.

Today would be perfect in every way. The Facebook photos wouldn’t lie. So much joy. Her life had so much joy. That was an actual verifiable fact.

There really was no need to leave him until the boys finished high school.

That would be the right time to leave. On the day they finished their last exams. “Put down your pens,” the exam supervisors would say. That’s when Celeste would put down her marriage.

Perry opened his eyes.

“Merry Christmas!” smiled Celeste.

Gabrielle:
Everyone thinks Celeste and Perry have the perfect marriage, but I’m not sure about that. I walked by them, sitting in their car parked on the side of the road on the trivia night. Celeste looked gorgeous, of course. I’ve personally witnessed her eating carbs like there’s no tomorrow, so don’t tell me there’s any justice in this world. They were both staring straight ahead, not looking at each other, all dressed up in their costumes, not saying a word.

J
ane woke to the sound of people shouting “Happy Christmas!” from the street below her apartment window. She sat up in bed and tugged at her T-shirt; it was damp with sweat. She’d been dreaming. A bad one. She’d been lying flat on her back while Ziggy stood next to her, in his shortie pajamas, smiling down at her, one foot on her throat.

“Get off, Ziggy, I can’t breathe!” she’d been trying to say, but he’d stopped smiling and was studying her with benign interest, as if he were performing a scientific experiment.

She put her hand to her neck and took big gulps of air.

It was just a dream. Dreams mean nothing.

Ziggy was in bed with her. His warm back pressed against her. She turned around to face him and put a fingertip to the soft, fragile skin just above his cheekbone.

He went to bed each night in his own bed and woke up each morning in with her. Neither of them ever remembered how he got there. Maybe it’s magic, they decided. “Maybe a good witch carries
me in each night,” Ziggy said, wide-eyed but with a bit of a grin, because he only half believed in all that kind of stuff.

“He’ll just stop one day,” Jane’s mother said whenever Jane mentioned that Ziggy still came into her bed each night. “He won’t be still doing it when he’s fifteen.”

There was a new freckle on Ziggy’s nose Jane hadn’t noticed before. He had three freckles on his nose now. They formed the shape of a sail.

One day a woman would lie in bed next to Ziggy and study his sleeping face. There would be tiny black dots of whiskers across his upper lip. Instead of those skinny little boy shoulders, he’d have a broad chest. What sort of man would he be?

“He’s going to be a gentle,
lovely
man, just like Poppy,” her mother would say adamantly, as if she knew this for an absolute fact.

Jane’s mother believed Ziggy was her own beloved father, reincarnated. Or she pretended to believe this, anyway. Nobody could really tell how serious she was. Poppy had died six months before Ziggy was born, right when Jane’s mother had been halfway through reading a book about a little boy who was supposedly a reincarnated World War II fighter pilot. The idea that her grandson might actually be her dad had gotten stuck in her head. It had helped with her grieving.

And of course, there was no son-in-law to offend with talk that his son was actually his wife’s grandfather.

Jane didn’t exactly encourage the reincarnation talk, but she didn’t discourage it either. Maybe Ziggy
was
Poppy. Sometimes she could discern a faint hint of Poppy in Ziggy’s face, especially when he was concentrating. He got the same puckered forehead.

Her mother had been furious when Jane called to tell her what had happened at the orientation day.

“That’s outrageous! Ziggy would
never
choke another child! That child has never harmed a fly. He’s just like Poppy. Remember how
Poppy couldn’t bear to swat a fly? Your grandma would be dancing about, yelling, ‘Kill it, Stan! Kill the damned thing!’”

There had been silence then, which meant that Jane’s mother had been felled by an attack of the giggles. She was a silent giggler.

Jane had waited it out, until her mother finally got back on the phone and said shakily, “Oh, that did me good! Laughter is wonderful for the digestion. Now, where were we? Oh yes! Ziggy! That little
brat
! Not Ziggy, of course, the little girl. Why would she accuse our darling Ziggy?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane. “But the thing is, she didn’t seem like a brat. The mother was sort of awful, but her daughter seemed nice. Not a brat.”

She could hear the uncertainty in her voice, and her mother heard it too.

“But darling, you can’t possibly think Ziggy really tried to
choke
another child?”

“Of course not,” Jane had said, and changed the subject.

She readjusted her pillow and wriggled into a more comfortable position. Maybe she could go back to sleep. “Ziggy will have you up at the crack of dawn,” her mother had said, but Ziggy didn’t seem overly excited about Christmas this year, and Jane wondered if she’d failed him in some way. She often experienced an uneasy sense that she was somehow faking a life for him, giving him a pretend childhood. She tried her best to create little rituals and family traditions for birthdays and holidays. “Let’s put your stocking out now!” But where? They’d moved too often for there to be a regular spot. The end of his bed? The door handle? She floundered about, and her voice became high and strained. There was something fraudulent about it. The rituals weren’t real like they were in other families where there was a mum and a dad and at least one sibling. Sometimes she felt like Ziggy might be just going along with it for her sake, and that he could see right through her, and he knew he was being shortchanged.

She watched the rise and fall of his chest.

He was so beautiful. There was no way he hurt that little girl and lied about it.

But all sleeping children were beautiful. Even really horrible children probably looked beautiful when they slept. How could she know for sure that he hadn’t done it? Did anyone really know their child? Your child was a little stranger, constantly changing, disappearing and reintroducing himself to you. New personality traits could appear overnight.

And then there was . . .

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

The memory fluttered like a trapped moth in her mind.

It had been trying so hard to escape ever since the little girl had pointed at Ziggy. The pressure on Jane’s chest. Terror rising, flooding her mind. A scream trapped in her throat.

The bruises were black, purple and red.

“She’s going to have bruises!” the child’s mother had said.

No, no, no.

Ziggy was Ziggy. He could not. He would not. She knew her child.

He stirred. His blue-veined eyelids twitched.

“Guess what day it is,” said Jane.

“Christmas!” shouted Ziggy.

He sat up so fast, the side of his head slammed violently against Jane’s nose and she fell back against the pillow, tears streaming.

Thea:
I always thought there was something not quite right about that child. That Ziggy. Something funny about his eyes. Boys need a male role model. I’m sorry, but it’s a fact.

Stu:
Bloody hell, there was a lot of fuss about that Ziggy kid. I didn’t know what to believe.