Grand Avenue (7 page)

“Hi,” Amy said to Barbara’s reflection.

“You’re in my husband’s class,” Barbara said, straining to sound casual.

The girl shrugged. “Hmm.”

“He’s a good teacher,” Barbara continued, although the girl was clearly not interested in pursuing a conversation.

Amy returned her brush to her floppy black leather bag. “The best,” she said, her eyes connecting briefly with Barbara’s in the mirror, lingering a beat too long, as if issuing a silent challenge. And then she was gone, out the door with her long brown hair flying after her, her bag slapping at her side.

Barbara remained in front of the row of sinks for several more minutes, trying not to think of what her unexpected arrival might have interrupted, trying not
to think at all. Sometimes it was better not to think. Thinking only got you in trouble. The dumber you were, the happier you were, she decided, applying blush to newly ashen cheeks. Once again, she adjusted her blouse and straightened her skirt. Then she waited until her breathing returned to normal, took one last look in the mirror, and stepped out into the hall to find her husband.

C
hris heard the doorbell ring, thought about answering it, decided it was better just to let it ring. Tony would answer it, tell her friends she was busy, that she’d call them later. Except that when later came around, she’d probably be busy with something else, and then it would be too late to call them back, and another day would pass, and then another. Lately a whole week could go by without her seeing or even speaking to her friends. She’d missed Susan’s birthday lunch, begged off shopping with Barbara, turned down Vicki’s latest invitation to dinner. Here it was halfway through September, and they’d gotten together what … three times since June? They used to speak every day. Nothing important. (“Hi, just checking in. I’m going to the store. You need anything?”) Stuff like that. (“Wait till you hear what Ariel did yesterday.” “You should have seen how cute Tracey looked in her new outfit.” “Kirsten says day camp sucks.”) The stuff of everyday life. (“Talk to you later.” “Wait till you
hear this.” “Call me tomorrow.”) The stuff that kept you sane.

(“I love you.”)

I love you too.

When had she stopped returning their calls? When had she become too busy to see her friends?

She heard Tony at the front door. “Well, hello, girls. This is a pleasant surprise.”

And then three voices speaking at once. “Where is she?” “We won’t take no for an answer.” “Chris, get your ass down here.”

“I’ll be right there,” Chris called down the stairs, her heart thumping as she hurried into her bedroom and checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “I look okay,” she assured herself, pulling a comb through her shoulder-length hair, securing it into a ponytail with a purple scrunchy. She exchanged the stained gray sweats she’d been wearing the last two days for a pair of white cotton slacks, replaced the faded yellow T-shirt she had on with a pale lavender clone. Why the fuss? she wondered. Where was she going? Just downstairs to say hello.

“Chris, what the hell are you doing up there?” Vicki yelled up the stairs.

“Be right down.” Chris didn’t move. Maybe if enough time elapsed, they’d get tired of waiting and go away.

“I’m counting to ten, then I’m coming upstairs,” Barbara warned.

Chris took one last glance in the mirror, then rushed into the hall. She appeared at the top of the steps just as Barbara was starting her climb.

“There she is!” Barbara announced with delight. “She’s real. She exists. We didn’t just make her up.”

In the next instant Chris was in Barbara’s arms, the warmth of the other woman’s embrace like cashmere against her skin, the subtle musk of Barbara’s perfume dancing around her head like fairy dust. Chris closed her eyes, buried her head against Barbara’s neck, inhaled the wondrous scent.

“Is everything okay?” Barbara whispered, squeezing Chris tightly.

An involuntary cry, half-squeal, half-sigh, escaped Chris’s lips, and she pulled back, away from Barbara’s arms.

“What’s the matter?”

“Apparently you don’t know your own strength, Barbie doll,” Tony said, laughing, joining the two women on the stairs, putting his arm around his wife, leading her gingerly down the stairs and into the front hall where Susan and Vicki were waiting. “Chris is a little bruised up. She told you about falling down the stairs last week, didn’t she?”

“What?” Susan.

“You fell down the stairs?” Vicki.

“My God, are you okay?” Barbara.

“It was just the last two steps,” Chris assured them. “And, yes, I’m fine. Can’t say the same for Wyatt’s train, I’m afraid, which I pretty much destroyed when I landed.” She tried to laugh, but the painful throbbing at her ribs cut the laugh short.

“Let’s see.” Barbara was instantly at Chris’s side, lifting up the bottom of her T-shirt, her fingers gently
grazing the large, round, mustard-colored stain on Chris’s left side.

“Whoa, girl,” Tony said. “Anything going on with you two I should know about?”

“That’s a pretty nasty-looking bruise,” Vicki said.

“Maybe Owen should have a look at it,” Susan offered.

“I’m fine,” Chris protested. “Really. It’s nothing.”

“Mommy fell down the stairs and squished Wyatt’s train,” Montana announced, entering the hall from the kitchen.

“So we hear,” said Vicki. “That wasn’t very smart of her, was it?”

“She’s always falling down,” Montana said matter-of-factly.

“Maybe if you and your brother would pick up your toys occasionally …” Tony said.

Montana frowned, grabbed her mother’s fingers, started tugging on her arm. “Come on, Mommy. You said we’d make cookies.”

“Why don’t you get your daddy to help you make cookies?” Susan suggested.

“Yeah, we’re gonna take your mommy out with us for a little while,” Vicki said.

“No!” Montana protested.

“Don’t frown,” Barbara warned. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

“I can’t go,” Chris said, as Montana continued pulling on her fingers. “Wyatt’ll be up any minute, and I promised Montana …”

“I can look after the kids,” Tony offered. “Go on,
hon. You haven’t been out of the house in weeks.”

“No!” Montana said again, her delicate features crowding together in the middle of her tiny face as her long blond hair whipped from cheek to cheek with each stubborn shake of her head. “She said we’d make cookies.”

Tony immediately scooped his daughter into his arms. “What’s the matter, kiddo? You don’t think your daddy knows how to make chocolate chip cookies? I’ll have you know I’m an expert on chocolate chip cookies. In fact, I make much better cookies than your mommy. Didn’t you know that the best chefs in the world are men?”

Montana wiggled out of her father’s arms, glared at her mother. “I don’t like you anymore. You’re not a good mommy.”

“Montana …”

“It’s okay, Chris,” Tony said, as Montana ran back into the kitchen. “She’ll get over it. You go with your friends.”

“You’ll be a good mommy later.” Vicki quickly guided Chris toward the front door.

“Really, I shouldn’t …”

“We’ll have her back in time for dinner.” Susan opened the door, pushed Chris outside.

“Where are we going?” Chris asked, taking a deep breath, sucking in the warm September air. She raised her face to the sun, closed her eyes, felt the sun sear into her cheek like a hot iron. Had it left a mark? she wondered, lowering her head, looking back to the house, catching Tony’s shadow watching her from behind the sheer curtains of her living room.

“We’re kidnapping you,” Vicki announced, leading the women toward the pearlized-beige-colored Jaguar parked halfway down the street.

“Really,” Chris said, coming to an abrupt halt. “I can’t do this. I have to get back.”

Vicki unlocked the car doors as the women surrounded Chris, blocked her escape. “Get in the car,” someone said.

Chris peered out the rear window of the large luxury car, watching one winding road disappear into another. They’d only been driving for ten minutes, and already it seemed as if they were in another world, a magical world untouched by the mundane concerns of harsh reality. A world where large estates sat well back from the road, and traffic signs announced horse trails and crossings. A world where peaceful, rolling green hills created the calming illusion of country life, although it was situated less than half an hour from downtown Cincinnati. Lots of money, both new and old, Chris thought, in the twenty square miles that comprised the tony suburb of Indian Hill. Had these people been affected by the recession at all? Did they even know about it? “What are we doing here?” she asked.

“Just looking,” Vicki said. “See anything you like?”

“Only everything,” Barbara said from the seat beside Chris.

Chris felt Barbara’s hand resting on top of hers, wondered if Barbara was keeping it there to prevent her from bolting from the car. She’s so beautiful, Chris thought absently, fighting the urge to run her free hand across Barbara’s soft cheek. She doesn’t need all that
makeup and hairspray. She doesn’t need anything at all.

“Did I tell you what Whitney said the other day?” Susan asked from the front passenger seat, her voice resonating quiet maternal pride. “We were getting ready to take a walk when it started raining, so I told her we’d have to go later, and she said, ‘That’s okay, Mommy. We take
open
umbrella.’ ” Susan laughed. “I thought that was pretty good for two years old, that kind of deductive reasoning.”

“Amazing,” Barbara said.

“Puts Einstein to shame.” Vicki laughed.

“Well, I thought it was pretty smart for two years old.”

“I remember when Tracey was two,” Barbara said, “and I’d been playing with her all afternoon, and I was just exhausted, so I told her I had to go lie down for a while, and of course, she wasn’t tired, because she was one of those kids who never slept, so I went into my room and lay down on the bed, and a few minutes later, I heard these little feet come padding into the room, and I opened one eye and saw her struggling with this big blanket, which she finally managed to throw over me, and then she climbed into the chair on the other side of the room and just sat there, watching me. Next thing I knew I’m sound asleep. I woke up an hour later and she’s still sitting there, she hasn’t moved, she’s just sitting there staring at me.”

“Josh is a bit like that,” Vicki said of her four-year-old son. “Kind of creepy.”

“I didn’t mean to imply Tracey was creepy,” Barbara protested.

“Josh is definitely creepy,” Vicki said matter-of-factly.
“I mean, I love him and everything, it’s just that he’s a little weird. You know what he asked me for the other day? Tampax!”

“Tampax! Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“He said he heard you swim better with it.”

The women hooted with laughter. Even Chris found herself laughing out loud. Immediately she felt the tug at her ribs.

“And Kirsten,” Vicki continued. “She’s a hard one to figure out. I never know what she’s thinking.”

“It’s better that way,” Susan said. “Ariel tells me every thought in her head. Most of them have to do with hating her sister. I don’t think she’s ever going to forgive me.”

The women chuckled, fell silent, stared out the windows at the magnificent expanse of rolling hills.

“So, when are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Barbara asked Chris, managing to make the question sound casual, although the stiffening of her fingers on Chris’s hand gave her away.

Chris felt her breath catch in her lungs. Even though she’d been expecting the question ever since climbing into the backseat of Vicki’s car, still its directness startled her. She’d been lulled into a false sense of security by the women’s laughter, by the easy familiarity of their shared confidences. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said, the words sounding unconvincing even to herself. Barbara sat back, raised one eyebrow; Susan twisted around from the front passenger seat; Vicki’s eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror. All looked skeptical, concerned, even vaguely frightened. “What are you looking at?” Chris asked. “What’s the
matter with everyone? There’s nothing going on. Honestly.”

“We hardly see you anymore, you never return phone calls, you’re always busy—”

“You know how it is,” Chris protested.

“We don’t know.”

“Tell us.”

“There’s just a lot going on,” Chris said.

“You just said there was nothing going on,” Vicki reminded her. “What?”

“Which is it, Chris? You can’t have it both ways.”

“Careful. You’re starting to sound like a lawyer.”

“I’m your friend,” Vicki said simply.

“Sorry,” Chris apologized. “It’s just that you’re all making a big deal over nothing.”

“Are we?” Susan asked.

“Are you angry at us?” Barbara asked. “Did we say anything, do anything to offend you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why don’t we see you anymore?”

“It’s just that things have been a little hectic lately, that’s all,” Chris insisted. “Wyatt’s sick all the time, he seems to pick up every bug out there. Well, you know how kids are—they’re these little incubators for disease. So first he gets sick, and then I get sick. Except it takes me longer to recover. And then I have all this catching up to do around the house.”

“So why’d you fire the cleaning lady?” Barbara asked.

“You fired Marsha?” Susan asked, referring to the woman whose services they all shared.

“Tony wasn’t happy with the job she was doing,” Chris tried to explain, “and I’m home all day. There’s no reason I can’t do it.”

“Do you
like
doing it?” Vicki asked, as if this thought were beyond her comprehension.

“I don’t mind,” Chris said. “Really. I don’t.”

“You’re not getting agoraphobic, are you?” Susan’s voice was low, her eyes wide.

“What’s
agoraphobic?”
Barbara asked.

“Technically, it’s a fear of the marketplace,” Susan explained.

“I hate the marketplace,” Vicki interjected.

“It means being afraid to leave your house.”

“I’m not afraid to leave the house.”

“You seemed afraid this afternoon.”