OLIVIA GOLDSMITH
YOUNG WIVES

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition 2000

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2000

First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000

Copyright © Olivia Goldsmith 2000

Olivia Goldsmith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780006510536

Ebook Edition © MAY 2015 ISBN: 9780007482030 Version: 2015-05-19

Dedication

In memory of the late Jane O’Connell, a dedicated reader

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Ring One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

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14

15

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17

18

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23

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25

26

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29

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31

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35

Ring Two

36

37

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41

Ring Three

42

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48

49

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51

52

53

54

55

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57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

RING ONE

For a woman, marriage is like a circus. There are three rings: the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.

Nan Delano

1

In which we meet the improbably named Angela Rachel Goldfarb-Romazzano Wakefield, on the occasion of her paper anniversary, and the strange outcome of that celebration

Angela Wakefield had arrived early, partly because she was a compulsively prompt person—law school had taught her the wisdom of that—but equally because she wanted to savor these moments before their little party began. So she sat, her legs neatly crossed at the ankle, her purse on the third chair, and stared out the window at the water. Marblehead, Massachusetts, was so beautiful that it was not a place she’d ever imagined making her home—her, a dago Jew mongrel from Queens, New York. Even now, though it was well into autumn, sailboats were tacking their way across the harbor, fishing boats were pulling into dock as the sunset turned to twilight. Distant lights had begun to twinkle in homes along the water.

Reid had picked the restaurant and, just like Reid, the club was perfectly groomed. The white cloths on the table glowed in the waning light; the glass and silverware gleamed. The starched napkins had been folded into complicated shapes, kind of like the newspaper soldier hats she used to make to play army, though these napkins were much prettier.

Angie looked around self-consciously. She was never so neat, so well-pressed as the napkins. Her hair was wild, black and curly, long and not really styled; her clothes were always wrinkled or losing a button. She was told often by Reid that it was part of her charm. Why else would Reid have married her?

Angie looked around the club dining room. She knew not to expect much from the food in places like this: go to a Brookline deli or Boston’s North End for good food. Here the martinis would be dry, the service impeccable. Angie never felt very comfortable alone in the club. She shifted in her chair. In just a little while—since he was usually late—Reid Wakefield III, her husband of one year today, would be sitting opposite her. Reid was comfortable anywhere. He belonged not only to this club but the birthright club welcomed by all.

When the waiter approached Angela inwardly groaned. He asked for her drink order, but she didn’t want to start without Reid, so she apologized and said she’d wait, if it was okay. “He should be here any minute,” she added, checking her watch. Reid was already twenty minutes late, but he was chronic that way, always overscheduling, always so involved with whatever he was doing that he forgot about whatever he was committed to do next. Well, not forget about, exactly. He just juggled a little and—because of his charm—everyone forgave him.

Angie used the time now to pull out her makeup kit and surreptitiously check her face. It was a pretty face—roundish, with round dark eyes, and a generous mouth. Okay, let’s face it—a big mouth in both senses of the word. Now her mouth needed more lipstick—why did it wear off her lips but not off her teeth? She ought to comb her hair, though she knew she shouldn’t do that at the table.

Angie sighed. She was what she was, and Reid had picked her, not one of these real blond, anemic poster girls for Miss Porter’s School. They all had names like Elizabeth and Emily and Sloane, but they—in their understated, unwrinkled clothes and untreated hair—hadn’t attracted the prince that she had. Take that, you Waspettes!

Reid represented sunshine, vitality, and the kind of life that did not have to acknowledge defeat. Cushioned by money and contacts, his family boated and played tennis and celebrated birthdays and weddings and even funerals in a dignified way that boasted of order and control.

Not that Angela was proud of her heritage. Anyway, all of them were new immigrants compared to Reid’s family. The Wakefields had come over after the Mayflower, but only just. Reid’s mother, on the other hand, was a Daughter of the American Revolution—and looked it. She didn’t color her hair or worry about fashion. She was a Barbara Bush type, but prouder. She’d never said that she was disappointed in Reid’s mate, but when Angie thought about it, she didn’t know what they had to be so proud of—they’d stolen their land from the Native Americans. Angela figured they got some credit for stealing it early. And they still owned plenty of it in and around Marblehead.

Angie put her lipstick away and pulled out the wrapped gift she had for her husband. It was their paper anniversary and she had racked her brain to come up with the right present. Here it was: an autographed first edition of Clarence Darrow’s autobiography. Reid—a newly minted lawyer working for Andover Putnam, the most old-line of Boston’s old-line law firms—worshipped Darrow. He’d plotz. Angie patted the package and grinned.

She didn’t allow herself to get too excited by the prospect of his gift to her, though. Men weren’t that good with gifts or romance. Especially WASP men from old money. She’d learned that already: for their first married Christmas, Reid had given her a pair of ski gloves—even though she didn’t ski. When she’d suggested they spend their first romantic weekend away, he’d opted for Springfield, to visit the Basketball Hall of Fame. As if. Worst, for her birthday he’d given her a coffee grinder. She shook her head now, remembering the scene when she’d opened the elaborately wrapped box. “But don’t you like fresh ground?” Reid had asked, shocked when in answer she’d thrown the thing at him. They’d had a huge fight. Later she’d called her mother. “A coffee grinder?” she’d asked. “Is it a Braun? Hey, he’s trainable. Your father once gave me an ironing board.”

Angela had neglected to point out to her mother that she and Angela’s father had divorced, and that she didn’t want that to happen to her and Reid. Instead, “What did you do,” Angie had wept, “when you got the ironing board?”

“I made him swallow it,” her mom admitted. Angie had begun laughing. “Look. Mixed marriages never work,” Natalie Goldfarb-Romazzano said in a comforting voice.

“Don’t tell me that now, after I married a Protestant,” Angela had replied.

“I don’t mean mixed religions. I mean mixed genders. Men and women. Mars and Venus. We’re not from other planets. We’re from other solar systems.”

Now Angie shook her head again at the memory. Her mother was, as her father put it, a real piece of work.

“What’s that about?” a voice asked. “We allow no ‘nos’ here. ‘Yeses’ exclusively. This is a very exclusive club.”

Angie looked up at Reid—her tall golden boy, a water skier, a rock climber, a Princeton grad. In the last reflected light of the sunset, she could swear he glowed. Reid, who had already taken his seat across from her, got up, came over to her chair and bent down and kissed her—a long, lingering one. A public display of affection! She could hardly believe it. And at the club, where no one ever had any feelings, much less showed them! His lips pressed hers. God! He’d been so sweet lately. Angie found his tongue with her own. She felt herself blushing. He took her breath away. Big deal about the coffee grinder. She was so lucky!

Eventually Reid moved back to his chair, untousled, unflushed. The waiter stood behind him. “So, what will you have, Angie?” Reid asked. Then he hesitated, moved her purse, and took the chair beside her. “Too far away from my girl,” he explained, his voice low. Then unexpectedly he put his right hand—the one closest to her under the tablecloth—high on the inside of her thigh. A wave of longing washed over her, so intense that she had to look away, out at the lapping tide. “I want you,” Reid whispered. Then he raised his voice to give their drink order to the hovering waiter. But that interruption didn’t stop him from stroking her thigh. She blushed again while the waiter nodded and left to fetch for the scion of the Wakefield family. Angie always apologized to “the help,” while Reid made them wait, yet they served him better.

“So, what’s this?” Reid asked, placing his other hand on the little package. “Who could it be for?” His voice was full of assurance and teasing.

“Oh, nothing,” Angie said innocently. “For no one. A little anniversary present, maybe, if anyone you know is having an anniversary.”

“Oddly enough, I am. And so is my wife. Could it be for her? Or for me?” He didn’t reach for his gift, though. Instead, to her delight, he pulled a little box from his inside jacket pocket. “Does this look like a Braun?” he asked.

Angela’s heart began to beat even faster. Jewelry? Real jewelry? Aside from her engagement ring and wedding band, he’d never given her jewelry. She tried to be calm as she reached out for the box. It was navy blue leather, unwrapped, and had SHREVE, CRUMP & LOWE stamped in silver letters across the top. Only the best jewelry store in Boston! And the most overpriced, but hey, this was a present. Angela still couldn’t get over the fact that Reid paid retail for things. But on this occasion she was glad. Maybe her mom was right. He was trainable.

Angie stared at the enchanting box and told herself to be calm. It was probably only a sterling key chain or thimble or something, but she’d treasure it forever. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” she asked, vamping for time.

“Well, I’m the animal, you’re the vegetable, and the gift is certainly from the mineral world,” he told her.

Yes! She took the little case in her hand. Mineral world. As in gems? Ready to faint, she flipped open the lid; a small but exquisite sapphire surrounded by seed pearls winked at her from the satin interior.

A ring! “Oh, God. It’s beautiful.” She stared at it. “Oh, God,” she repeated.

“It’s a funny thing,” Reid said dryly. “Is this a religious difference? I can’t tell if it’s a Jewish or a Catholic one. But only sex and jewelry get you to mention the Lord’s name.” He squeezed her thigh again and laughed. Angie vowed she’d get to the gym tomorrow after work for sure. She was so grateful to him that she’d keep those thighs thin and toned forever. She reminded herself that her father had started cheating on her mother after her mom had gotten a little—well, zaftig. I’ll eat nothing but fruit salad tomorrow, she thought. The kind packed in water. And I’ll drink four bottles of Evian—the big bottles—even though it means I’ll pee like a horse all day.

“You know what I’d like?” Reid asked her. “I’d like you to promise to do something for me.”

As if she wasn’t already starving and flooding herself for him! As if she wouldn’t give up breathing if he asked her to. “Anything except prostitution or getting my nose fixed,” Angela told him.

He laughed. That was one of the reasons she loved him: he was an easy laugh. Then his face took on a sort of choirboy earnestness that she rarely saw. “Let’s renew our vows,” Reid proposed as he took her hand. “I want to marry you all over again.”

Angela was so touched she felt herself flush. Reid had been unusually romantic lately—flowers, little gifts—but this was so … so very, very sweet. She felt she could either laugh or cry, so she went with the first option. After all, it was a Goldfarb-Romazzano family tradition, especially on her mother’s side. “Might as well laugh,” her mother always advised in crisis. “Then you don’t have to fix your mascara later.”

Angela put her hand out, covering Reid’s beautiful long fingers. “Oh, honey. It’s a wonderful thought. A lovely thought, but …” She paused. He watched her face, as attentive as a puppy, but a lot less mature. She didn’t, now or ever, want to hurt him. So how could she explain? “We only married a year ago, sweetie. It’s … it’s inappropriate to do it again so soon. If you want to say our vows privately I will, tonight or tomorrow or—”

“No!” Reid interrupted. “I want to say them publicly. I mean, with people there. People from work. My family. Yours. You know. A ceremony.”

“A renewal ceremony?” Angela tightened her hand around his. “I just got over the wedding! It took me this long to write and thank your family for all those cheese boards. Anyway, sweetie, people just don’t do it.” His family was usually the one that talked about what was “done.” She thought of the pain she’d caused her mother-in-law already with her social gaffes. They’d nearly fainted when she’d had both a rabbi and a lapsed—and married—former Catholic priest at their ceremony. “It’s … not done,” she repeated. “Not for at least ten years, anyway. Or twenty-five.”

“Why? I love you more now than I did when I married you,” Reid protested. “I want everyone to know that.”

Angie felt tears of total happiness rising. The hell with the mascara. “And I love you more, too,” she agreed. “It’s just that people might think that it’s … well, you know, greedy. Like we expect presents or something.”

“Angie, will you do this for me?” Reid asked earnestly. “Your eyes are so beautiful now, so warm and wet.” He lowered his voice. “I want you this minute. I want to kiss you on your eyelids and make love to you, right here on the floor. But instead, just say yes to the ceremony.”

She couldn’t, not ever, say no to that level of desire in him. She was ready to nod her assent when he continued. “Look. You know my parents didn’t want us to marry. And you didn’t like most of my friends. Plus, let’s face it, they didn’t like you. People said you wouldn’t fit in. Hey, even I had some doubts.”

Angie nodded, still smiling though he’d never mentioned his doubts before and the news surprised her. Of course, she’d had plenty of doubts—about him. His fear of commitment, his family’s coldness, his lack of … well, depth. She’d thought he might back out of the wedding right up until the moment when he turned to the rabbi and said, “I do.”

“Anyway,” Reid continued, “it wasn’t an easy year. I admit we’ve had to take some time to adjust. And then, five months ago, I started this affair. I thought things between you and me weren’t … well, I thought maybe my parents had been right.”

Back up! Angela wasn’t certain she’d heard him. “What! I mean, who …?”

Reid made a gesture with his hand, a sort of flutter that matched the one her heart was making in her chest. “An older woman. From work. But she meant nothing. The affair … I don’t know. It just showed me—after the first gloss of lust wore off—it showed me just how much I really love you.” He leaned forward. The setting sun gleamed behind him. “I want to show that I’d choose you over any woman in the world, Angela. It was a mistake, but my affair taught me something. And I just want to make that knowledge public. I want to—”

His affair? Angela couldn’t really hear anymore. She saw Reid’s lips moving, but she couldn’t hear him. Deafness wasn’t the issue. She was afraid she might die right there at the table. But her pride wouldn’t let her. Her heart was beating so loud that Reid must have heard the noise. She certainly couldn’t hear anything else. She sat, frozen in shock, and watched her husband’s lips move. Lips she’d just kissed. Lips that had lied to her and kissed another woman’s mouth, another woman’s….

“I have to go to the toilet,” Angie said. Then she stood up abruptly and almost ran across the dining room.

2

In which we meet Michelle Russo, Pookie the dog is walked

Michelle got Frankie into bed, which wasn’t easy now that he was six. She shrugged into her jacket and told Jenna she was going out to walk Pookie, their cocker spaniel. In the driveway she looked around guiltily. Frank always yelled at her when he caught her walking the dog. “It’s the kids’ job. You spoil ’em,” he said. It was just that it was easier for Michelle to do it herself than nagging at Jenna. And she could use the air.

As Michelle walked the dog through drifts of leaves she took a moment to look up at the stars. It was chilly and Michelle took her hair out of the scrunchie that bound it up. It fell down below her shoulders in an unmanageable cascade of blond curls that would keep her warm and make Frank hot. She shivered. Elm Street was dark, and despite the cold, this was a time Michelle really enjoyed. It was perhaps the only moment of the day that she spent alone—if you didn’t count Pookie as a companion. The dog pulled on the lead a little bit and Michelle stepped along the sidewalkless curb.

Pookie paused. Uh-oh. Her neighbors, the Shribers and the Joyces, went ballistic if Pookie even lifted a leg anywhere near their property, so she discreetly tried to tug him in the opposite direction. But then she noticed the Joyces’ windows were dark. Maybe they were traveling. Since Mr. Joyce had retired, they had been doing a lot of that. They had lived on this block longer than anybody else. They were pleasant, but never really warm.

Still, Michelle loved them, just the way she loved the entire street and every house on it. This was where she and Frank had chosen to live. The place she had brought both of her children home from the hospital. Frank had taught Jenna to ride without training wheels right here, and one winter afternoon Frankie Junior had gotten his tongue frozen stuck to the lamppost that Pookie was now sniffing. This street was filled with, if not friends exactly, then friendly acquaintances; it was the place they all called home, where their children and their cats and their dogs ran in the grass and fought and played.

Michelle hadn’t had a home growing up. Her mother usually worked as a waitress and came home with some take-out and a six-pack of beer. Her father was always involved in some scheme or other, none of which ever made any money, but did require hours spent in bars.

For a moment Michelle shivered, as if someone had walked on her grave. There was no reason for her to wind up so lucky, unless it was a payback for a really rocky start. Michelle had been born in the Bronx, which was only twenty or thirty miles south of here, but a whole other world. Her mother was Irish, straight from County Cork. Her father was Irish-American, the son of a fireman and a fireman himself—until he reported to work one night so drunk that he walked into a burning building and, feeling invincible, fell six stories when it collapsed.

Michelle hadn’t missed her loud, frightening father. But Michelle was that rare Irish entity, an only child, and she’d been left with her depressed, unreliable mother. And when her mom’s mom got sick “back home,” Sheila returned to Ireland to help. Michelle, only a little older than her own daughter was right now, had waited and waited for her mother’s return. A month seemed a long time to a child; half a year seemed a lifetime. The two years it took before Sheila came back had been enough to do a job on Michelle, dumped as she was with her paternal grandparents, lonely and suspecting that her mother stayed away because she couldn’t face coming back. Michelle had decided then that nothing was as important as loving your husband and your children. She would never be a Sheila.

If Michelle could do it all over again, every bit of her hard, sad early life, she would live through it all as long as she could be assured that she would wind up with Frank Russo, her two kids, and her dog in the safety of this clean suburban harbor in Westchester County; no crime, no grime, no horrors. Healthy food on the table. Clean sheets on the bed. Clothes folded in neat piles in dresser drawers. A yard full of flowers, and two nice cars which never broke down. In the first couple of years of their marriage, Michelle had watched every glass of dago red that her husband drank, expecting him to get drunk and for the picture to fall apart. But he never had. Not once.

Michelle walked the dog up and down the street and, as she did nearly every night, couldn’t help feeling grateful for the fact that her family, her marriage, and her friendships were going so well. She knew that just five houses down the street, Jada was having to deal with her unemployed husband sitting on his butt while Jada worked hers off all day at the bank. Michelle also couldn’t get over the fact that Clinton, Jada’s husband, was “acting up” again. How did Jada put up with it? Michelle was only a little sorry the partnership that Frank had tried to put together with Clinton had never worked out.

Michelle knew she was a survivor, the lucky one, satisfied with her life, stable in a time of instability. Up and down the block marriages had failed, families had split, and houses had gone up for sale. Not hers. The two things she knew for sure were that her friendship with Jada had survived during all of the upheaval, and that her own marriage was secure.

It hadn’t always been so perfect here. When she’d first moved in, she’d been a little lonely. Then she met Jada. Every morning for the last four years, since Jada moved in, the two of them had been walking what people in the neighborhood called “the circuit,” following the curving route of the old suburban streets at the fastest pace they possibly could with a dog in tow. They’d been religious about it, forty minutes of walking, no matter what, and Michelle believed that Jada found the habit as comforting a way to start the day—and lose some weight—as she did. It was the only time they gave to themselves, and it bolstered both of them. At first they’d only talked about the kids, their school, that sort of stuff. But then when Michelle’s mother died, they talked about that. And Jada had told stories about growing up. Finally, Michelle had opened up about her own lousy childhood. They’d been best friends since then. They gossiped about the neighborhood. And recipes. And clothes. And all the other girl stuff. Now, since this problem with Clinton had surfaced, they talked about that.

It was a luxury Michelle hadn’t had since her school days. Since her marriage she’d been so busy with Frank and the kids that she’d lost touch with the gang back in the Bronx. She stretched her long legs and walked down toward the Jackson house. She could see Clinton, but not Jada, moving around the kitchen. Michelle took a deep breath, enjoying the crisp air, and started back toward her house. She got to the edge of her property and waited while Pookie sniffed the leaves, admiring her house.

Michelle took pride in her home. She kept her house, her body, her children, and her life neat and clean and regular. She looked down at Pookie. The dog was a purebred cocker spaniel, not like one of the mutts that were always getting run over down home. “Right, Pookie?” she asked out loud. The dog looked up and cocked his silky head. “Let’s go in,” Michelle said, and the dog turned toward the front door light.

Jenna was out of her bath by the time Michelle got back inside and she went in to clean up the kids’ bathroom. “Hey. What’s this?” she asked Jenna, and pointed to the full bathtub, which was just starting to drain.

“Come on, Mom!” Jenna said. “I’m not going to drown. It’s too cold to wash in two inches of water.”

“You know the rule,” Michelle told her. “No baths higher than the tape.” She pointed to the red line she had affixed years ago to the inside of the tub, along with the nonskid rubber stick-ons she’d glued down to the ceramic bottom. It was hard to get the dirt out from their edges but it was worth it. Most fatal accidents occurred in the home.

“Mo-o-o-om.” Jenna stretched the single syllable out until it was an aria almost as long as Tony singing out Maria’s name in West Side Story.

“Most accidents happen in the home,” Michelle told her eleven-year-old daughter for what, conservatively, had to be the three-thousandth time. She followed her daughter into Jenna’s perfect bedroom—a room Michelle would have killed for when she was eleven. “I’ll give you ten minutes for VH1—no MTV—before you have to shut off the light,” she told Jenna.

“Won’t I get to see Daddy before I go to bed?” Jenna asked, ready to pout. Trying to be more like a teenager every second.

“No, sweetskin. He’s working,” Michelle told her, and watched the glower of disappointment bloom on Jenna’s perfect pink face. Michelle knew just how she felt. The Russo women—Jenna, Michelle, and Frank’s mother Camille—all adored their Frank.

“Daddy might be taking us all out to dinner on Friday. And then it’s the weekend.” Frank never worked on the weekend. He was a really attentive father, and both Frankie and Jenna worshipped him. “Look, Daddy’s been working very hard for us lately. Let’s bake him a cake for tomorrow. Okay?”

“Yes!” In a second, Jenna turned from sulky preteen to delighted child. “Can I frost it all myself? And can I lick the bowl?”

A sugar promise did wonders in attitude adjustment, Michelle knew, but she wasn’t a total pushover. “You can frost it alone, but you have to share the bowl with Frankie,” Michelle told Jenna for what also must have been the three-thousandth time. She looked at her watch. “Now just five minutes of VH1. Then lights out.” Jenna smiled, snuggled under her quilt, and sighed. Michelle knew she’d be sleeping in less than three minutes and made a mental note to come back in after straightening out the bathroom to shut off the TV.

She wiped up the splashes, put two washcloths up to soak, then picked up and refolded three bath towels (Two children and three towels? It didn’t add up.) She Soft-Scrubbed the sink and Windexed and wiped the mirror. Frankie, she noticed, had remembered to put his dirty clothes in the hamper (good) but he’d also thrown in one of his little Nike Airmax sneakers (bad—there would have been chaos before breakfast). Michelle left the bathroom, its towels hung, its tile gleaming, and looked in on Frankie, who had already tossed off his quilt. She put his sneakers beside the bed, covered him, and kissed his sweet, high forehead—just like his father’s. Then she shut off the TV in Jenna’s room. Jenna murmured something in mild protest from her bed, but the lure of sleep was too strong. Jenna held Pinkie, the toy rabbit she’d had since she was a baby, in a stranglehold that was her precursor to sleep. When she turned toward the wall, Michelle smiled.

Then she went into her bedroom. She got out her best silk nightgown, took the Joy perfume bottle from the bureau, and went into the bathroom she shared with Frank. She began to run a bath but first, carefully, hung the shimmering gown over the shower door so the folds would fall out. Then she looked into the mirror.

Michelle smiled. She was taller than average: she liked to say she was five-foot-eleven, though she was really only five-ten-and-a-half. Frank was her height, but he liked her tall. Way tall. So she always wore heels, except on her walks with Jada. Height helped her—it made her look much more attractive. But she admitted she was good-looking. She’d been lucky—she’d gotten the pert nose and strong jawline of her Irish heritage without the really narrow mouth. In fact, her mouth was so full that it made her self-conscious. In school girls had made fun of her—calling her “fish mouth” and “trout”—but the boys had flocked to her.

She shook her head and her hair gleamed, but the roots…. She’d have to make an appointment to touch up her blond color. Her complexion could carry off the lightness. The only disadvantage she had was her skin; it was so delicate it showed every change in her mood by flushing or paling, but also—if she wasn’t careful—wrinkling like the poppy petals she swept off the patio all summer. Michelle perpetually slathered on creams and potions. Even with them she knew she had less than a decade left before the lines, a tiny network of wrinkles, kicked in. Oh, well. She still looked good.

With the steam from the bath filling the room she could look into the reflective glass and see herself as she’d been at twenty-one, a decade ago, and it didn’t seem as if there had been a lot of change for the worse. Maybe her highlights were helped along just a little bit, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Okay, her waist had expanded from her pregnancies, but only by an inch or two. She peered at herself, her green eyes moving along her mirrored form. Her breasts … well, they had also expanded from the pregnancies, which was good—at least it made her waist look smaller. She pulled her sweater off and admired herself. Not bad. She allowed herself a smile. In an hour Frank would be home and admire her even more. She reached over her head to do up her hair—but just for now. Frank liked her hair down in bed. And she liked Frank to get what he wanted, as long as he wanted her.

3

In which Angela rings her father, rings the airport, and rings up a tab

“Five months. I don’t know. Uh-uh. Because he told me.”

Angela was crying, getting mucus and tears on the receiver of the phone in the vestibule of the Marblehead Yacht Club. Some man, leaving the restroom, gave her a look, then averted his eyes as if from an accident. Well, it was a wreck, or she was. She looked down at the Shreve box, still clutched in her right hand. She doubted she could open either of her fists again.

“He told you?” her father was asking. “The cold Wasp son-of-a-bitch rat-bastid told you he’d been sleeping with someone else? And on your anniversary?”

Angie couldn’t speak. She nodded—not that her father, four hundred miles south in Westchester County, could see her. But he heard her gurgle. “Brutal,” he said. “Where are you right this minute?” he snapped.

“At a pay phone. At the club.” Now a woman walked past Angie, glanced at her, then actually turned back to stare. Her cold eyes seemed to say, “Don’t behave that way here.” She was about Reid’s mother’s age. She probably knew both Reid’s parents. Fuck her! Angela defiantly wiped at her eyes, then her nose, with her hand. The woman shook her head in disgust. Angie looked down. Her fingers were a mess, covered with eye makeup, but she managed to flip the bird at the old bat, who stalked off.

“Angie, baby, didn’t I tell you never to trust a man with Roman numerals after his name?” her father asked. Oh God. Was she going to get a speech? Angie had tried to call her mother first, then her best friend Lisa, but had only gotten their machines.

“Please, Daddy. No lectures. Not from you.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe it. I want to kill him. What should I do?”

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” her father soothed.

He was using the voice she trusted, the one she always obeyed. He’d used that voice when he had told her not to worry, she’d ace her SATs, the one that promised her she’d get into law school. Her daddy, despite his flaws, did love her.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Here’s what you do. You hang up the phone. You walk out of that hellhole and get into a taxi. The last Delta shuttle to New York leaves from Logan in forty-five minutes. You can make it, easy. And I’ll be at the Marine Air Terminal to pick you up. Not one of my drivers. Me.”

“I don’t know if I can make the plane. When I tell Reid I—”

“You don’t have to tell that bastid a single fucking thing,” her father spat. “Don’t you go back to that table.”

“You mean just … leave? But … I don’t even have my purse with me,” Angie said. She felt naked, helpless. But the thought of crossing that room, looking at Reid—impossible! While just leaving at least had … dignity. “I have no money, no I.D….”

“I’ll have a prepaid ticket waiting at the counter,” her father told her. “They’ll ask you to tell them your mother’s maiden name and give your social security number.” Angie nodded.

“But security. I.D. I … I don’t have anything.” That wasn’t technically true. She still clutched the Shreve box in her hand.

“I’ll tell them how your grandma is dying and how close you were,” he said.

“Nana? Okay.” She began to cry again. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “God, I’m so ashamed.”

“Ashamed? What have you got to be ashamed of?”

“Being so fucking stupid,” Angie told him. “You never trusted him.”

“Well, there is that,” he admitted. “Forget it. Women are all blind or else there’d be no human race. Just leave the bum. Let him sit there and wonder if you fell into the shitter and drowned.” Anthony Romazzano waited for a laugh but didn’t get one. “Okay,” her father said. “You promise me you’ll hang up and walk right out the door?”

“Yes,” Angela agreed. She hung up the phone and turned herself around. She took a deep breath and pulled down on the cuffs of her sleeves as if the gesture built up enough courage for her to take the first step. She ought to go into the ladies room and clean up, but what difference would it make? She’d only cry some more. When she walked toward the exit door, she felt as if everyone was watching her and that they knew what had happened. She couldn’t believe she’d never see Reid again. But the fact was that she caught a last glimpse of her husband as she walked past the dining room door. He was calmly leaning back in his chair, looking out at the water. Why was it he always looked as if nothing bothered him? So pulled together?

With all her built-up rage, Angie pushed hard on the club door and was blasted in the face with cold salt air. She waved to the first taxi in line. “Logan Airport, please. Delta shuttle.” Then she again burst into noisy tears.

It wasn’t until they got to the Callahan Tunnel and its inevitable traffic that Angie realized she might miss the flight. But since she didn’t have a penny on her, she couldn’t even pay the driver. “Please hurry,” she said. He’d already looked at her once or twice in the rearview mirror.

“Did you say Delta or USAir?” he asked. He had a lilt in his voice. Irish. Just off the boat. Driving a cab the way her father had, back in New York; but her father had gotten into the limo business, gotten rich, and married a nice Jewish girl.

“Delta,” she told the driver, and then explained about Nana. What would he do when she tried to stiff him? Call the cops?

Well, if he did, she’d telephone her father. She thought of Tony, waiting at the other end of the trip. She was grateful to him for his help, but at the same time she couldn’t avoid remembering that he had done the same thing to her mother that Reid was doing to her now. The only difference was, her father did it after he and her mom had been married for twenty-something years, and he hadn’t told her mom until he’d been caught. He still swore that it shouldn’t have broken up the marriage.

“Oops. Sorry. I missed the Delta turn. I’ll have to go around again,” the cabbie said. Perfect, she thought. Now she’d probably miss the shuttle and wind up sleeping in the airport. As if she could sleep. Sleep! She wasn’t even sure she could go on breathing. She felt as if there were jagged pieces of bone or steel or glass in her chest. Every time she attempted a deep breath, or when a sob shook her, the pieces would meet and rub and tear. How had this happened to her? She’d been so careful.

She’d waited until she was finished with college and almost done with law school before she had allowed herself to become serious about a man. She’d always been smart, and independent. She’d wanted to do something with the law to help people. She’d dated, but had been wary of men, and she’d worked hard during her internships and summers, giving her time to Legal Aid instead of dinner dates. She still gave money to “Save the Children,” participated in AIDS walks, and worked for Meals-On-Wheels once a month. She was a good person, a strong person. She had judgment, intelligence, and persistence.

She’d listened to her mother’s advice, and absorbed the lessons—all bad—of her mother’s friends’ marriages. She’d avoided alcoholics, neurotics, and the generally misogynistic. And she’d finally picked the man who pursued her, not a man she’d pursued. He’d come from a family in which there seemed to be no history of womanizing: Reid’s father was cold, not hot. She’d worried that Reid might not marry her, that her family wasn’t up to his social standards, but never that he’d cheat on her. How had this happened to her?

The taxi was pulling up to the Delta terminal. Angie looked down at her hands. One held the crumpled mass of yellow pages, now all sodden, that she’d torn from the phone booth at the club. In the other she still clutched the Shreve box that contained the perfect sapphire ring.

The driver pulled up to the curb and braked. Then, in an act of courtesy usually unknown to North Shore cabbies, he actually got out of the cab and opened the door for her. “Sorry for your pain,” he said, his Irish accent thick. “I really loved my granny, rest her soul.” He looked at her, and Angie knew her hair must be wild, her face a swollen, streaked mess. “That’ll be forty-one dollars,” the driver added, almost reluctantly.

There was only one thing to do. She opened the Shreve, Crump & Lowe box and took out the ring. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “I forgot my purse. But you can have this. It’s worth a lot. I know my Nana would want you to have it.” Then, the empty box still clutched in her hand, she walked through the airport’s electronic eye doors, away from her marriage, and up to the Delta ticket desk.

4

Wherein we meet Jada R. Jackson, and we discover the cost of living in Republican Westchester, as well as the state of her union

Jada looked at her watch, realized it was too dark in the car to see the dial, and checked the clock on the dash. Damn! It was half past eight already. The kids would have eaten and—if she was lucky—be settled down to bed and homework. Her eyes flicked away from the dash but not before she noticed, with a start, that the gas gauge was almost on empty. Damn it! Now, when she was so late, she’d have to take the time to stop and fill up. Why was it that Clinton, who was unemployed and had the whole day to get errands done, had used her car yesterday but not bothered to fill it up?

She burned with indignation. She knew why. Clinton’s mind was on things other than her convenience.

Jada pulled into the island at the Shell station, turned off the ignition, and waited for full—or, for that matter, even partial—service. She’d had to learn from experience that her time was more valuable than money, but if they kept her waiting here for this long at the pump, what was the point of paying more? She beeped and reluctantly an older man came out of the glass enclosure to help her. “Fill it up” was all she told him and, to speed the process along, she flipped him her Shell card at the same time before she rolled up the window to keep out the October chill. The card slipped from the geezer’s fingers and she watched as it skittered across the oily macadam; he had to squat to pick it up. She sighed and turned up the heat setting, not that it would do any good with the motor off.

Jada shivered, and the movement was reflected in the rearview mirror. Her eyes looked very bright in the darkness. Her lips were chapped and there were already patches of dry skin under her eyes—a sign of winter. Jada sighed. Only in her early thirties, she was still a striking woman, but as she glanced into the rearview to check again on the attendant she wondered how much longer her looks would last in the harshness of these winters.

The old coot had finally picked up her card and gotten to the nozzle, but now seemed to be fumbling with the Volvo’s gas cap. Jesus H. Christ! It was what she called the RTSYD syndrome: Rush and They Slow You Down. She’d experienced it at the bank. Why was it that, when you were in a hurry, morons were invariably at their slowest?

Jada jerked opened the door, got out of the car, and moved to the back fender. In a single motion she threw back the gas cap, took the nozzle from the old man’s filthy hand, and inserted it into the gas tank opening herself.

He probably wasn’t grateful for her help, but she was paying three cents a gallon more for full service and she’d had to do it herself. Jada felt that was the story of her life—she had to do everything herself—and she was ready to burst into tears.

Sometimes she doubted her faith. Her parents, island people, still had a deep faith. But somehow it seemed easier to believe when you lived in a warm climate. Right now, shivering in the chill of a New York State wind, she wondered if her God loved her. God had created marriage, she figured, to see just how much two people could irritate one another. If her theory was right, she and Clinton had certainly done God’s work. The two of them were barely speaking at this point, and she was pained to realize that not speaking was an improvement in their relationship right now. Of course, they’d have to speak tonight. She’d have to force this issue that had come up between them.

Jada climbed back into the Volvo. The old man, after too long a pause, came back with her card and receipt. Shivering, she rolled down the window to take the little tray he held out in his greasy hand so she could sign. She grabbed it, scribbled her name, and tore off her copy, thrusting the tray back at him.

But instead of taking it and pulling back, the old man merely leaned forward. “Pretty car,” he said in a conversational voice. As if she needed to talk to him! Get a grip. It was almost eight-thirty! But he continued. “And a real pretty woman in it,” he said. She was about to say thank you and roll up the window when he added, “Pretty damn uppity.” She hit the window button, closing him off as best she could. Then, as if she couldn’t predict, didn’t know the next word that would come out of his mouth, the “N” word did, followed by his spit on the side of the car.

The stupid bigoted cracker! Jada gunned the motor and pulled out of the station and onto the Post Road without even checking the left lane. She cut off a tanker truck and was rewarded with a deafening hoot from the diesel’s whistle. Tears of rage rose in her eyes, and she almost missed the left turn she had to make on Weston.

In the darkness and comparative quiet of that winding road, she tried to calm herself. To be fair, the incident with the disgusting, ignorant old man was her fault: she knew that constant vigilance and never-failing politeness were the price she and Clinton paid—along with high property and school taxes—for living in this part of Westchester County. Being black in wealthy white suburbia wasn’t as hard as it had once been, but it still wasn’t easy. They were not the Huxtables. Despite everything she did, they were barely keeping their heads above the financial water line. But they were giving the children the kind of life that all Americans dreamed of. Still, there was a very real cost involved.

They lived under constant financial pressure. And they were cut off from their church, back in Yonkers. There were no black families in their neighborhood, and few kids of color at the school. Shavonne’s friends were white, and Kevon spent all his free time with Frankie next door. Sometimes Jada worried that they weren’t just fair-skinned, but also fair-weather friends. Even she had become best friends with her (white) neighbor Michelle and sometimes, though she loved Mich, she felt … well, alone. Worst of all, though, was Clinton’s alienation.

Sometimes Jada wasn’t sure if all the struggle was worth it. When Clinton had first begun as a carpenter, he and Jada had lived in Yonkers and rented a two-room apartment. Then he’d gotten a job that changed everything. A wealthy executive in Armonk noticed Clinton’s work on a commercial project in White Plains and hired him to convert a three-car garage into a guest house. Clinton had learned the ins and outs of contracting right on the job. He didn’t make a dime of profit on that first one, but he had used it as a springboard to other jobs. The boom times, and perhaps a little white liberal guilt, had gotten Clinton work at least as often as it had stood in his way.

But he was equipment crazy. He spent all the profits on a backhoe, a bucket loader, and a bulldozer. He had T-shirts made up that said, JACKSON CONSTRUCTION AND EXCAVATION, IF WE AIN’T BUILDIN’ WE’RE DOZIN’. Well, he was probably dozing right now—on the sofa. Because he had mismanaged everything.

At first they’d both thought Clinton’s touch had been golden. Both she and Clinton had been sure he would create their fortune. In the darkness, Jada shook her head. Maybe he’d gotten a little cocky, a little arrogant even. He felt like he was different than most of the other men back at their church. “They’re employees,” he used to say. “I’m an employer.” He didn’t go as far as turning Republican, but he did buy a set of golf clubs. And she had had total faith in him.

It was funny. When she’d seen Clinton working on a building site or directing his men, she’d gotten off on it. He was DDG—drop-dead gorgeous. He seemed so “take charge,” so full of authority. Now he was just full of it.

Blind faith, as it turned out. They didn’t know they were merely riding the fiscal tide of the times. When corporate downsizing began, all of Clinton’s business dried up and blew away, just the way so many white executives’ jobs and minds had. He couldn’t make payments on the equipment, couldn’t make salaries, had to let people go. The trickle-down effect took a little longer, but Clinton’s mind and pride were eventually blown, too. For almost four years he tried to hang on, giving detailed estimate after detailed estimate on houses that were never built, extensions that were never added.

Finally, all his pride, her faith, and their money were gone, but their mortgage payments still had to be paid. Jada begged Clinton to get a job, and when he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, she—who hadn’t worked since their first child was born—got the only job she could—as a teller for minimum wage. Even for that she had needed the help of her friend Michelle to get the position. There were a lot of job-hungry wives in Westchester. The money Jada had earned just barely covered groceries, but at least from that day on they were paying cash for their Cap’n Crunch instead of Mastercarding it.

Clinton, though, hadn’t been relieved. In fact, he’d been made even more miserable by her working. He moped and loafed and slept and ate and griped. He said he didn’t like her out of the home, that the job paid too little and was beneath her. She agreed, but knew they were in no position to negotiate. Somehow, Clinton just never accepted that. He lived a bitter, private life, waiting for “the climate to turn.” He’d gained at least forty pounds. He yelled at the kids and seemed to blame her for everything.

If it had been impossible to cope at home, Jada had found it surprisingly easy to persevere at work. The bank was a relief: what they expected of her was so much more doable than her task at home. To her own surprise, she’d been promoted almost immediately to head teller—a black woman with three other black women and a white girl reporting to her! She’d never supervised anyone but her children. Then, when she’d been made a loan officer, and later head of the whole loan department, she’d been as astonished as any of them. Mr. Feeney, the branch manager, had liked her—they got on real well and up to his retirement, she’d been his assistant branch manager. When he’d retired, well, she’d hadn’t been surprised at anything except her reluctance to tell Clinton the good news.

Only one woman, Mr. Feeney’s old secretary, Anne, seemed to resent her. Now she was branch manager, with two dozen people, including Anne and Michelle, reporting to her! She coped with Anne and depended on Michelle. Thank God it hadn’t changed their friendship: Michelle wasn’t the least bit jealous. Michelle liked being a loan officer and didn’t want to put in any hours after three o’clock. Not, of course, that Jada wanted to—she just had to. The bank was paying her about half what they had paid Mr. Feeney, but they still wanted blood. Two months ago they’d sent some management consultants through to see if there was some way they could “reduce overhead through more efficient paperwork flow-through and staff utilization.” What it really meant was finding a way to fire a couple more people, though Jada’s branch had larger deposits and transactions than any other branch of its size in the county.

Of course, everyone had been shaken up. They all needed their paychecks—except for maybe Michelle—as bad as Jada did. Sometimes Jada had to shake her head at the way men managed things. They gave lip service to the idea that human resources (never “people”) would perform better if their morale was high, but then the sons-of-bitches were always doing things that lowered morale.

The report had come back two weeks ago and—thank the Lord—the branch had been given what television movie critics might have called a big thumbs up. But Jada had been left with frightened, resentful employees. To combat that she instituted a weekly meeting to get and implement the staff’s suggestions for improvements. The problem was, there were very few real ways to improve, while everybody wanted to use the meeting to showboat. Well, at least the men did. They all had to repeat old ideas over and over as if they were new and their own. The women had to talk every single damn thing to death.

This evening’s meeting had been so stupid, a waste of time. Why was it that a person alone could make a decision in ten minutes, but an organization of ten people could take two hours to come to no decisions at all?

Jada sighed as she turned the Volvo into the driveway. She could see the unweeded dahlia bed by the streetlight. Her mother, a great gardener, would be ashamed. At the very last minute she saw Kevon’s bike lying on the blacktop near the garage door. She swerved and braked. God-double-damn it! Goddamn, Goddamn, Goddamn! So much for not taking the Lord’s name in vain. Jada stormed out of the car into the cold, jerked the bike up, and leaned it against the side of the garage. She opened the door (Why hadn’t Clinton fixed the automatic door opener? The man was useless as handles on a glove!) and then put the bike away, pulled the car into the garage, got out, closed the garage door, and stamped across the lawn.

It was bedlam inside. Clinton was lying on the great room sofa. He gave her a look that said “I do help around the house,” when all he’d managed to do in the last week was put a towel in the hamper once. Now he was talking on the phone while Shavonne was eating cookies and watching TV. Both were forbidden to her preteen daughter before homework and a chapter of reading. Meanwhile Kevon, Jada realized with a shock, wasn’t anywhere to be found. At least the baby was sleeping, unless Clinton had left her lying in the driveway, too.

“Where’s your brother?” she asked Shavonne.

“I don’t know,” Shavonne murmured, without taking her eyes off the screen. “Are we going to eat soon?”

“You haven’t had dinner yet?” Jada shot a murderous look at Clinton and went to the refrigerator. She took out the milk, grabbed a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, took out the last can of tuna, and decided to add the leftover string beans. There were plenty of’em—why did she bother with green vegetables at all?

In nineteen minutes the table was cleared and set, the television off, Shavonne washed, Kevon was found in his room, and the casserole was being dished out to the four of them. Life took on order and she could see even Clinton was marginally grateful. That sense of order, and the children, were the only reasons he hung around. But his lapses were getting worse and worse. She would have to talk to him.

Jada looked across the table at her husband. He averted his eyes. His skin gleamed and his hair, in a new cut, was in a handsome fade. For a month this new crisis had been hanging over her head. She should talk to him tonight. Confront him. But she was so tired. I’m the real casualty in this family, Jada thought. She knew that, despite her incredible fatigue tonight, she still had to put Shavonne and Kevon to bed, check in on Sherrilee, as well as confront her husband and demand his decision, a decision he didn’t want to make and she didn’t want to hear.

Jada began to spoon what was left of the casserole into a plastic refrigerator bowl. The limp, twice-cooked green beans—certainly a misnomer, because they were no longer anything even close to green—lay there before her. They looked worse than dead—used up and wasted.

Somehow the sight of them made her inexpressibly sad.

5

In which two people achieve orgasm and boots are made for walking

When Frank Russo walked into the master bedroom a little before eleven that night, Michelle, her hair down, lay across their bed in her satin nightgown, her breasts bursting out of the white foam of lace at the straps, reading. She looked up from the page as Frank caught sight of her. He grinned, then tried to play nonchalant. As if. She smiled to herself, then waited. She knew the scent of her perfume, the one she wore on nights like this and that he still bought her every Christmas, was wafting toward him. She didn’t say a word—she only smiled and glanced at the fabric of his trousers, right below his belt buckle. She wondered, not for the first time, if she’d trained him like one of those Russian dogs that salivated when a bell rang. Would her perfume give him an erection anytime he smelled it?

Frank sat down on the bed beside her, his eyes taking her in. “What you been up to?” he asked, his voice husky and intimate. “Painting the garage?”

For a moment Michelle opened her mouth to protest. Then she closed it again. She wouldn’t laugh. Instead she shook her head slowly, letting her hair cascade over her shoulders, lowering her eyes demurely back to her book. “Uh-uh,” she said, her voice slow. “But I did change the oil in the Lexus,” she drawled.

“Good girl,” he said, and casually began to unbuckle his belt. “While you’re at it, my truck could use a tune-up.” It was only then that she allowed herself to laugh and put the book down. Then she took Frank’s hand and held it to her soft, wide-open mouth. She licked his palm.

Frank couldn’t play cool any longer and groaned, then stripped off his shirt and undershirt, and lastly pulled off his jeans and boxers in a single movement. Michelle tried to keep his hand against her mouth the whole time, promising him everything with her eyes, but once in bed he pulled up the blanket as soon as he could and turned his back to her, curving his body into his sleep position. “God, I’m bushed,” he said, and lay there quietly, ready for sleep.

“Frank!” Michelle wailed, and then he had to laugh and turn to her, his arms open, his flesh hard.

Making love with Frank, after all this time together, was still great. Maybe, Michelle thought, it was because they knew each other so well but could still surprise each other. Their lovemaking ranged from very sweet to wildly athletic humping. From tiny, subtle movements, just the right word, the right tone of voice, to something wild that felt like sex with a stranger. Yet what Michelle loved was that it was always, in the end, safe with Frank.

There was the night he had come home with a Gap box. He wouldn’t let her touch it until the children were asleep. “Later,” he said raising his dark brows. From his leer she’d been afraid it might be a sex toy or a porno tape, but when she opened the box it was just a blue dress. She’d looked at him blankly. “Now,” he’d said, “go get me a tie.”

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Because we’re going to play Oval Office,” he told her. “I’m Mr. President and you’re Monica.” She’d laughed and laughed, until he convinced her to become his Secretary of the Interior.

Tonight, though, Frank was playing no more games. He was his most tender self. Without preliminaries, he rolled over and onto her, holding his weight off of her by placing his elbows on either side of her chest. Then he lifted her two hands with his and, holding her wrists, placed their hands on her hair. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked in a whisper.

She shook her head, though their hands held her hair so she couldn’t move it very much. “Tell me,” she whispered.

“Only if I can be inside you while I do,” he whispered back.

“You drive a hard bargain,” she told him, and shifted her weight to one hip. He still held her hands, but now with only one of his own. With the other he pulled up her nightgown, the satin bunching deliciously around their thighs. She was already wet as he pressed his flesh into her.

“You’re like silk,” he whispered. “All over. All over,” he repeated. “I look at you sometimes and I’m amazed. You’re so beautiful. And every place I touch you is so soft.” He was inside her—still and hard—but he moved his hips just once so she would remember where she ended and he began. He looked into her eyes. “Is that enough?” he asked.

She shook her head no.

“You want more?” he whispered. “More?”

She nodded.

“You’re greedy,” he told her, moving his eyes from hers. She watched him look at her. “Your mouth,” he murmured. “Men would kill just to touch your mouth, just once, with the tip of their fìnger.”

She smiled. A little shiver ran through her. “What do you want to touch it with?” she whispered.

“With my palm,” he said, covering her mouth, but only for a moment. “With my tongue,” he added, and he licked the very corner of her lips. “With my teeth,” he whispered, and pulled her bottom lip into his own mouth, biting her gently but firmly. He knew the line just between ultimate pleasure and the slightest bit of pain and judged it perfectly. Frank changed the balance of his hips then and pushed deeper inside her. He kissed her at the same time, his tongue aping the intrusive, wet slide of his penis.

“Your mouth is so beautiful,” he said, and it was almost a groan, “but it’s not the most beautiful part of you. Not even close.” And then he let go of her hands so she could pull him tightly to her. And she did.

Later, when Michelle lay in the dark, her nightgown a ruin, her body loved and relinquished, she savored her happiness. She reached her hand out to Frank’s back, so dark, so broad. He wasn’t big, but he was beautifully, compactly built. She rested her hand on his shoulder. He was already gone, spent, but she didn’t feel alone. Their union was a lasting one, and the thousand times that he’d entered her, the thousand times she’d given herself to her husband, had built up a kind of bank balance, a kind of bonus of connection between them, even when they weren’t joined as one flesh. Lying beside his sleeping form, she didn’t feel alone.

It was cold, and Frank shivered for a moment in his sleep. Michelle got up to close the window he insisted on leaving open. As she silently lowered it, she looked out at their quiet street. Then a limo, moving slowly, drove by. From her perch above, Michelle could see a face, white and drawn behind the glass. She could swear it looked up at her, that their eyes connected. She shivered and locked the window. Reflexively, for the first time in years, she crossed herself. Then she turned back to look at Frank, and almost ran to be beside him again in the haven of their bed.

Frank had spent himself on her and their children, Michelle thought. He had built this house with his own hands and skill and strength for them. He fed them and clothed them. He taught his son how to throw, his daughter to dance. He taught all of them how to feel loved, how to be safe.

I’m so very, very lucky, Michelle thought before she fell into another deep, deep dream.

The next morning when Michelle woke up she found the ground outside covered in a deep frost. For a moment she considered climbing right back into the warm bed beside Frank but Jada, like some dark, heat-seeking missile, would just come up the stairs and drag her out. Michelle dressed with an extra layer, pulled her long tAngie of hair into a ponytail, and tugged on her boots instead of her sneakers. She was down the stairs and almost out of the house in just minutes. Pookie was already waiting there at the door, his brown eyes almost as pleading as Frank’s had been.

“Okay,” she said, though she knew Pookie would slow them down. And Jada wouldn’t like that. Michelle loved Jada, but it had been odd at first to become friends with a black woman. There weren’t many in their neighborhood. And though Michelle prided herself on not being prejudiced, Frank and his family were … well, they certainly had special words and phrases that they used when they spoke about African-Americans. But they weren’t allowed to do it in front of Michelle, or her children.

It was a luxury to have a close friend. She and Jada got along really well, but sometimes small things stood out strongly and marked the boundaries between them. There was something about the way Jada both excused and blamed her husband that was weird to Michelle. And there were the foods Jada served her kids, unhealthy prepackaged American things. Plus, the different television programs she watched, the different reactions to movies that she had. There were a few things like that that they’d both learned to stay away from. Now Michelle clipped the leash to Pookie’s collar and was out the door. She’d learned that if she didn’t make it a quick getaway at 5:40 every morning, she wouldn’t get away at all.

The frost crunched under her boots and sent that little chill down her spine that everybody got when they heard certain noises. It wasn’t really cold, but the frost was a promise of things to come. Michelle loved cleanliness and she liked the freshness of the air in winter. It smelled clean. The dusting of snow, especially when it first fell, was also so clean-looking. Michelle walked down the street, almost reluctant to ruin its perfection with her boot prints and Pookie’s little paw spots. The tar of the street surface showed through starkly, black blots on the white sheet of road, as white and soft as confectioners’ sugar. Theirs were the only steps marring the perfection. That was the good thing about this time of the morning.

Michelle looked up from the frost and saw Jada coming out of her house. She’d be in a grim mood. Jada hated winter. Well, Michelle was prepared to hear her complain and also ready to hear what was going on in the Jackson marriage.

Jada pulled her hood tighter around her face. Gray flaky patches were already forming on the skin under her eyes. She wasn’t made to live in this climate, she thought, though she’d lived in the Northeast all her life. When she’d visit her parents in Barbados, her skin stayed moist. There her hair went into perfect jet ringlets and had bounce. She had what Clinton’s grandma called “good hair”—that meant it wasn’t nappy and didn’t need a perm to straighten it. Jada knew what it really meant was that it was closer to white people’s hair than it was to black people’s. She hated that kind of stuff, so she was disgusted with herself to find she was pleased that Shavonne had inherited her hair. It wasn’t as important that Kevon get it, and when he didn’t—his tight curls were a lot more like Clinton’s—Jada had accepted that. That made her a racist and a sexist, she figured. She’d decided she’d let God worry about Sherrilee’s hair.

Jada reached for her Blistex stick. In the Caribbean, her full lips never cracked and chapped. She stuck her hand into the pocket of her parka, pulled out a tube of Vaseline and smeared it on her face and hands before putting her gloves on. It was the only way to keep her face from peeling off in little dry flakes all winter. She’d look shiny, but what the hell, nobody saw her but Michelle and Pookie, and the one or two nutjobs who ran past them in shorts, tearing their middle-aged tendons and ruining their knees.

She was exhausted and probably looked it. She glanced at Michelle, who was approaching; she seemed wide awake, her face already glowing in the cold. Her long but perfect nose was merely a little pink at the tip. Otherwise, she looked gorgeous.

Jada liked to walk with Michelle because, among other things, Michelle had legs even longer than hers. They paced each other well. But that little dog slowed her down and Jada hated standing still in the cold. There, in the early morning darkness, Jada couldn’t help but get agitated at waiting for the dog. Start and stop, start and stop. Michelle needed that dog about as much as Jada needed more stretch marks.

“Make that dog move or I’ll have to strangle him and use him as a muff,” Jada threatened. Sometimes, though she felt very close to Michelle, in a lot of ways Jada believed there was an unbridgeable distance between them. Maybe it was because of the black/white thing, maybe because of Mich’s marriage, which was so happy. Jada knew how Michelle loved Frank, and Jada believed he loved Michelle in return. Most important, he loved his kids and brought home money each and every week.

So Jada kept her mouth shut and hoped that Michelle and Frank Russo would be the only damn couple in Westchester County to manage to stay together happily in this decade or the next. Jada loved Michelle and she wanted her happy. After all, if they both bitched all the time, what would happen to their friendship? Not only that, but she needed Michelle as a walking partner. Let’s face it, she thought. A black woman walking alone in the dark mornings in this light neighborhood would be a daily invitation for the cruiser to stop by.

“Come on, Pookie, honey,” Michelle said.

Jada just didn’t get the way white people treated their pets, as if they were children. And, in Jada’s opinion, Michelle certainly treated her kids as if they were pets. She let her kids get away with murder—they didn’t tidy up after themselves or remember to say “please” or “thank you.” Then there was that physical, personal boundary issue. In Michelle’s house, Jada would never even think to take down a glass from the cabinet or open the refrigerator. But Michelle would do it in her house without permission. Jada had never criticized Michelle for any of it. It was small stuff compared to the warmth of their friendship. And maybe there were just as many things that Michelle held back from Jada.

Now, though, Jada allowed herself to eye the undisciplined dog. Then she looked at Mich’s face. “Here,” she said, holding out her Blistex. “I swear you are the only white girl with lips fuller than mine. Sure we aren’t distantly related? Because I’d hate to kill my own cousin’s dog.”

Michelle laughed, took the Blistex and the hint, and called out to the dog. “Don’t be so down on him,” Michelle said, for what had to be the thousandth time.

“Well, he does have two advantages over men,” Jada sniffed. “He doesn’t brag about who he slept with and he never calls her ‘bitch.’”

Michelle laughed. Pookie stopped sniffing and started walking. Jada set a fast pace. Michelle smeared Blistex all over her wide mouth and handed it back to Jada. “Between the two of us this stick won’t last out the winter,” Michelle said.

“Hell, it won’t last out the walk if you use that much,” Jada retorted.

They walked for a moment in silence. “Do you think I’m getting fat?” Michelle asked, as she did almost every morning.

“Yeah. And I’m getting white,” Jada retorted. Michelle giggled. Then her face took on her serious look, the look that meant that soon the quiz would start, and Jada just wanted to put it off as long as possible.

It was early enough that the streetlights were still on, but as the two women passed under one it blinked off. “So where do things stand, Jada?” Michelle asked, predictable as an actuarial table.

“I don’t know. We never had time to talk.” Nevertheless, Jada raged about the condition of her kids and home the previous night as she and Michelle speed-walked past the quiet houses.

“You have to draw a line in the sand,” Michelle said. “You have to …” But Michelle caught herself.

Sometimes Jada thought her friend was afraid to give advice. “I don’t think I can stand it. I’m going to have to take an ax to his head, even though he is the father of my children.”

“Hey. When did that stop you before?” Michelle asked, and Jada had to grin.

Michelle definitely had a giving NUP—a term Jada had invented to categorize a person’s Natural Unit Preferences. Michelle was a generous friend, and generous to her husband and children. But somehow Jada just didn’t feel like taking pity from Michelle right at that moment.

“He’s gone crazy on you, Jada,” Michelle said. “If Frank ever …”

Jada tuned out because she loved Michelle—she was her best friend, even if she was from the south, white, had a stupid dog, and was sometimes thick as a plank.

It had been weird when Jada realized that she really didn’t have any close black friends anymore. She couldn’t hang with the African-American tellers at the bank and she didn’t relate to the few neighborhood strivers whose daddies and grand-daddies were professionals and who went to college—real sleep-away colleges. She certainly couldn’t relate to Clinton’s homies, who thought that double negatives were standard and career planning was marriage to a man with a job at the post office.

She and Michelle had a lot in common, but Michelle actually thought Frank was perfect and closed her eyes to all the funny stuff that went on in Frank’s business, not that any of it was funny. Jada knew there were county contracts, inside deals. Frank Russo thrived, even when the economy was at its darkest. There was no way that Frank hadn’t paid off officials, wasn’t connected to … Well, Jada didn’t like to think about it. It was none of her business. But a few years ago, when Frank had asked Clinton to join him in business, Jada had actually been relieved when, for once, Clinton had made the right decision. It wasn’t jealousy that made Jada believe that the Russos had a little too much cash. If Mich wanted to close her eyes to it, that was her business.

The Jacksons had bought Jada’s Volvo station wagon from the Russos. It had been Mich’s car. But Michelle got a new model every eighteen months or so. Since Jada had gotten the station wagon, Michelle had been through two—no, three—luxury cars, and she’d told Jada Frank paid cash for every one. Jada had to admit Frank Russo was a good man—for a man. Most importantly, he really adored Mich. But that didn’t fool Jada: when it came to his NUP, old Frank was a taker, too. In a way he was worse than Clinton. He had Michelle completely fooled. Jada doubted if Frank knew where the washer or dryer was in his house, much less the stove. If Michelle were to ever leave Frank home alone with the children for two days and Frank couldn’t call his mother over, the Russos would die of starvation, despite a refrigerator full of food. Frank, who could work with his shining dark hair to get just the right lift, was incapable of slapping a slice of Velveeta between two slices of bread, or sorting laundry, or making the bed. He made Clinton look like the black male Betty Crocker. And Michelle never complained.

Hey, girl, she told herself. Stop the comparisons. Try for a gratitude attitude. Drop the criticism. This daily walk, Jada thought, this friendship, and this safe and pretty neighborhood, were two of the good things in her life. She said a silent prayer, remembering to be grateful for her strong legs and lungs, her friendship and her home. She looked around at the houses, the gray trees glistening with the last of the frost. Pretty. “Look,” she said, pointing to new construction. “They’re putting a sunroom on.” She and Michelle checked every house improvement project and gave their approval—or not. Michelle looked at the hole knocked into the side of the brick colonial.

“Oh, I’d love that. It looks like it’ll be a real greenhouse. I wonder if Frank could build one for me?”

He should build a doghouse first, Jada thought, tripping over the leash as Pookie cut her off yet again. They turned to the right, Pookie pulling Michelle, who was almost slipping as the dog pulled her on the snowy street. As Jada looked away in annoyance, she saw the oddest thing—a face appeared in the window of a Tudor across the street for a moment. It was a face so pale that a trick of the light made it seem almost luminous, although the eyes were so shadowed that they seemed to recede into the darkness of the house. In the back of Jada’s mind something about the face seemed familiar, or … had she had a dream? She shivered and shook off the feeling. “I’d swear I just saw a ghost,” Jada told Michelle. “Otherwise there’s a scary-looking woman being held prison in there. Who lives in that house now?”

“Oh, that’s the new guy. You know. The middle-aged one who lives there alone. He’s Italian or something. Anthony. He has that—”

“The one with the nice cars?” Jada interrupted.

Michelle nodded. “The one with a limo service. And a very small mortgage.” Jada reflected that being a loan officer gave you insights others might not have. Michelle continued. “I don’t think he’s married.”

“Well, then he has a very unhappy girlfriend.”

“Maybe it’s an arranged marriage,” Michelle said. “You know, like they write away to Russia and order some young wife.”

“That’s not ar-ranged, it’s de-ranged,” Jada said. They walked on in silence for a while.

“So what are you going to do about Clinton? Will you force him to make a commitment?”

“Clinton? Commitment? The only thing those two words have in common is they both start with a ‘c.’ I mean, Clinton is the only guy in his ’hood who never got a tattoo. De Beers lies when it says it’s a diamond. A tattoo is forever.”

“I can’t imagine why he’d do something like this,” Michelle said. “You’re perfect.”

“Why he wouldn’t get a tattoo?” Jada asked, deflecting the discussion. Sometimes Mich just didn’t get it, Jada thought. Was it her kiss-me-I’m-Irish heritage? “That’s just it, Mich. I’m perfect, and that makes Clinton sick. I’m twice as strong as he is. He knows it and he hates it!”

“No! Jada, don’t say that! You’re going through a hard time—a really hard time—but that isn’t true. Clinton admires you. He doesn’t hate you.”

“I didn’t say he hates me. I said he hates my strength.” Jada sighed. “He could make it ten years ago when it was easy, but he can’t make it now when it’s hard. I could. I can. Shit, girl, I have to. And he resents me for it.” They came to the gate, where they turned around. Michelle, as always, patted the corner post. Jada, despite her mood, almost smiled. If Michelle couldn’t touch the post, she wouldn’t feel as if they had accomplished this bone-chilling, breathtaking three-quarters-of-an-hour of torture. She looked at her friend’s long legs, her skinny mane of perfect blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked like a young colt—all legs and eyes and tail. Meanwhile Pookie sniffed and snuffed at the post as if the damn dog had never seen it before.

“But I thought they wanted us perfect,” Michelle said as they got moving again. “Frank notices if I put on a pound or don’t shave my legs. I mean he loves me anyway, but—”

“Hey, it isn’t about whether your legs are shaved. And it isn’t even that your legs are twenty inches longer than mine. We’ve got the same thing between them. Men want that without a lot of trouble.”

“Jada! That’s awful. I work hard to keep myself looking good. It’s not just about looks, but it’s not just about sex, either. I mean, I know it’s impossible, but I used to try to be perfect for Frank.”

“They don’t want us perfect,” Jada snapped. “They want us dependent. Unless we’re too damn dependent. Then they feel smothered. And they want us to take care of them. Unless we do it too much. Then they feel controlled. And they want us sexy, unless it means we want to make love too much. Then we’re demanding. Because then they feel castrated.”

Michelle sighed. “That’s harsh. You just have to talk to him. He’s your kids’ father. Talk to him when you get home now. There’s no time like the present.”

Jada had to admit she was pumped up. Her adrenaline was flowing. “You’re right. Cover for me at the bank. I’ll probably only be an hour late. I’m serving Clinton a little extra something with his scrambled eggs this morning.”

“Just don’t be bitter, Jada,” Michelle begged. “In spite of this, don’t get bitter.”

“Too late,” Jada told her friend. “I already am.”

6

In which Angie compares her father’s taste in decor with her own in clothing, and in which she’s briefly—very briefly—reprieved

Angela opened her eyes as she did—pointlessly—every morning at a quarter to six. The first thing she saw was the smoked glass mirror of the wall opposite the black leather sofa she was sleeping on. She closed her eyes. She was already so depressed she knew she couldn’t get up, and the day wasn’t ten seconds old. Her eyes still closed, she collapsed from her side to her back. Well, that could count as her exercise for the day. She pulled the shamrock green afghan over her head. Good. More exercise. Now perhaps the day would go away.

Actually, she wasn’t sure what day this was: her anniversary had been on Tuesday, and it felt like she’d slept for days. Hopefully it was Sunday. If so, her mother would be home from her trip to some seminar or other. She’d once again watched TV till dawn and hadn’t the strength to leave the den to go upstairs. She was camped at her dad’s house, which was decorated in Middle-Aged Suburban Despair. But Angie had no place else to go. Her mother had recently moved into a new apartment and Angela hadn’t ever been there. She couldn’t even sit in her mother’s space and take comfort from her surroundings. So Angela had been holding on, waiting for Natalie Goldfarb, giver of comfort, speaker of wisecracks, to get back so she could pour all of this pain and disappointment into her mother’s ear.

But what good would that do? Angela asked herself now. Under the blanket—in the bra and panties she’d have to wear for two, or possibly three, days—Angela tried to avoid that thought. But she wasn’t a kid with a boo-boo. What good could her mother actually do? Sure, she’d hold Angela while she cried her lungs out, but that was about it. Somehow, till this minute, Angela had felt that her mother could fix things. Not just that she’d comfort her and sympathize, but that she’d actually give Angie the key, the way to stop the relentless pain she was in. No—more than that. She would make the pain disappear, fix the problem, and make it go away. “Oh. The first anniversary I-cheated-on-you announcement. Sure. Daddy did it, too. You just …”

But there was no just. Lying there, feeling as dead and lank as her own hair felt now, Angie realized that what she wanted, more than anything, was to be back with Reid. Back with him, lying in their bed in the bright clean bedroom they had furnished together. She wanted his muscled arm around her, not her mom’s. She wanted to open her eyes and see the Massachusetts light of early morning shining, but softened by the white net of the curtains, falling onto the bare bedroom floor. She felt such a tug of homesickness and longing for all she’d left up north that she actually opened her eyes and groaned. Now there was only the empty Shreve, Crump & Lowe box. She reached out for it and nestled it against her chest. Instead of her white bedroom pillows, she had a lumpy leather throw cushion under her head. Instead of her fluffy quilt, she had this old afghan. Instead of a skylight over her bed she had a ceiling repulsively spackled in figure eights, topped off by a light fixture from hell. Angie sat up, sick and dizzy. Who had done her father’s decorating? That chandelier had to have been bought from a bad Italian restaurant’s second-best dining room.

Angela had never lived her life with a man at the center of it. Since before high school she’d had a good group of girlfriends. In college they’d dispersed, but she’d made new friends and kept them, adding more in law school. She had always made time to see movies, and to Rollerblade, and to consistently volunteer for Meals-On-Wheels. She’d been delivering to some of the same people for years. It wasn’t as if she’d read The Rules and built her life around catching some man. She’d gone to Thailand with her girlfriend Samantha and walked part of the Appalachian Trail with pals from school. So she wasn’t just going to fall apart like some pathetic fool. Reid was not her entire life. At least that’s what she told herself. So how come she felt so bad?

Something moving past the window caught her eye. It was still fairly dark, but two women were trudging by together, both wrapped up against the cold. One had a knitted cap almost covering her blond hair, but the other turned toward her companion—and in the direction of Angie’s window—and Angela was surprised to see the woman was black. Now that was a sight you wouldn’t see in Marblehead. The two women were already past the window and making the turn following the curve of the street. As they disappeared from view, Angie felt a pang of loss. What had happened to all her friends? Scattered across the country, working, married. Out of touch. It was ridiculous, but she wished she could bring them all together, like in a movie. Reality Bites. Well, she’d call her friend Lisa. But it was so early. She’d give Lisa a break.

Of course, she had called Lisa already. Several times last night, for an hour at a time. Wait till her dad got the bill! Angie missed her cellie, but the phone was in her purse, along with everything else. Maybe Lisa could get her wallet for her.

Lisa was an attorney who worked with her up in Needham. When Angela had first met her she’d been repelled by Lisa’s tall, blond perfection and her Harvard Law background. Lisa was two years older, but acted as if it was two decades. Then, after working together, Angela had gotten over her prejudice because Lisa had been so friendly.

After a while, they had lunched together almost every day and Lisa regaled her with every horrible date she’d suffered through in the last eight months. Now it was payback time, and Lisa had been counseling her to keep away from the phone and to stick with her resolve not to speak to Reid. Angie had arranged for a leave of absence and Lisa was handling some of her work. She was a good friend.

She thought about taking a shower. Another day or two and her hair would go Rastafarian, but she didn’t care. God, she hadn’t just lost a husband, she’d lost her hairdresser! Who could do her unmanageable hair like Todd?

She was too tired to stand, and her body felt too limp to be safe in a bathtub. Then again, the idea of rolling under a tub full of water and dying was not an altogether unattractive one. Except for the part about breathing the water in. That would hurt like a bastard. She hated to get water up her nose. If only her father had sleeping pills—lots of them and the good kind, the kind that killed you. None of that over-the-counter Sominex stuff that gave you diarrhea. The only useful thing she’d found in Tony’s medicine cabinet was a half-empty bottle of Nyquil. Hey, Angie told herself, she should stop being so negative—the bottle was half full. Or had been till she got a hold of it.

Angela bent over and reached for her sweatpants—well, they were her father’s sweatpants—and slipped into them. As she pulled the waistband up over her legs and past her thighs she realized those were the thighs that Reid had just stroked the night before. A hot tear, and then another, escaped from under her right eyelid and immediately coursed down her cheek and into the crease beside her nose. She hated Reid. She hated him touching her thighs, and then she wondered who else’s thigh he had been touching. What had he said? An older woman? Someone at work. Could it be Jan Mullins, the only woman partner at Andover Putnam? No. She was a fifty-two-year-old wrinkle bunny. One of the drab paralegals? Unthinkable. Maybe a secretary? Oh, who had he touched, who had he kissed? Had he told her he loved her?

The thought made her so angry that she had enough energy to stand and pick up the Rangers sweatshirt from the floor beside the sofa and slip into it. Her dad, unlike most Italian-Americans, didn’t care about baseball but adored hockey. He’d taken her to dozens of games. This sweatshirt might be from one of those father-daughter trips.

Well, she’d make him important in her life again. She and Tony. And she’d get a pro bono job, something with kids or old people, not just the usually guilty scum at Legal Aid. She’d bust her butt, and she’d … Angela gave up. She’d pull herself together and join Mother Teresa’s order tomorrow.

She started to weave her way through the house to the bathroom. As she passed the living room she couldn’t help but wonder what frame of mind her father had been in when he furnished his house. The chairs were overstuffed and covered in blue velvet. The sofa was leather and one of those modern Italian shapes that looked like a surreal mountain range. Angie got a chill at the thought of having to continually sit on the leather furniture and touch it with her bare skin.

After his divorce from his second wife—a marriage that had been shorter than a normal menstrual cycle—her father had given up on the Park Avenue life he’d briefly attempted and moved to the suburbs. He’d dated a bunch of suburban women but complained that they bored him. So he worked compulsively, and watched a lot of sports on TV. It must be a work day, Angie realized, because if it was Saturday he’d be here, probably sitting on that cheesy sofa. What a life.

It was frightening to realize that it could become her life, too. She hadn’t been here long, but already she was feeling Middle-Aged Suburban Despair. And not just because of the horrible decor. Why was it, she wondered, that after a divorce men decorated so badly while women let their wardrobes go to hell? It was as if each gender blew off an area of good taste in a single legal instant. How long would it be before she was dressing in earth-tone stretch-waist pants and a leatherette jacket, coordinating perfectly with this room? Fuck joining Mother Teresa’s. Her life had ended.

Angela shivered, though the sweatshirt was warm. Yes, her life had ended. There had been the childhood phase, the preteen years, the high school and college coed period, law school, and the brief marriage. Now she would begin the Miss Haversham of Westchester segment, a segment that might—if she was as healthy as her Nana—last for fifty years. She looked down at the Ranger sweatshirt and wondered if it would also last that long. Not as dramatic as a wedding gown, but more practical, she thought. Now all she needed was a rosary.

She fell onto the couch and back asleep, woke long enough to catch the end of the Today show, and then fell asleep yet again. It was almost eleven when she next opened her eyes. It was odd: she had a morbid need to check the time. No place to go, nothing to do. Still, the idea that almost five hours had drifted by since she first woke up frightened her. When the phone rang, she jumped. Should she answer? It could be her dad, who checked in. She picked up and was relieved when Lisa’s voice greeted her.

“Hey, Angie,” she said. “How are you faring?”

Only Lisa would use the word faring. You had to be born in Back Bay Boston to get away with that. “Well, I’ll put it to you this way,” Angie told her friend. “If I were back in first grade right now, Mrs. Rickman would give me an ‘unsatisfactory’ for attitude.” Angie paused. “I really hurt. I miss Reid.”

“Let me tell you what your attitude should be,” Lisa said. “You should be furious and hurt and unforgiving. What Reid did means he doesn’t love you. He probably never did. You were his pet ethnic. Believe me, I know all about it. A little rebellion for the family. You don’t need that. You don’t need to do anything except move on.”

“I know, I know,” Angie agreed. “I’m such a fool. Of course I know it, but I have the weirdest feeling. I have the feeling I just want to hear his voice to ask him one more time whether he really meant to do it.”

“He meant it,” Lisa said, her voice full of certainty and controlled anger. “Look, it was unbelievable the way he did it, and unforgivable in the way he told you.”

Angie was about to agree when the doorbell rang. She started. “Hey, Lisa. Someone’s at the door. I gotta go.”

She hung up and glanced nervously at the front of the house. What was this? Nobody came to a suburban Westchester door—not in this section of Westchester—uninvited in the middle of a weekday morning. Who the hell could it be? Avon ladies? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Door-to-door electrologists? Whoever it was, Angie decided she wasn’t going to respond, until she peeked out the hall window and saw the florist’s truck. Then she flew to the door, threw it open, and had grabbed the two dozen white roses and snatched the note from the cellophane in less than thirty seconds.

It was from Reid! Obviously, it wasn’t in his handwriting, but he had dictated the words. I love you. Don’t punish me for telling the truth. Forgive me, Reid. The fragrance of the roses was faint but sweet. Oh God! He loved her. He’d fucked up—big time—but he loved her. One act of generosity on her part could free her and Reid from this pain. With one stroke, her conversations with her father and Lisa were stripped from her mind.

Yes. Yes! She would forgive Reid. What he had done was horrible, unforgivable, but she would forgive him. She was hot-tempered, like her father and mother. But she’d be big enough to do it. He had learned his lesson. Angie would look at this horror, this incident, as a last fling. Oh, she’d grant that most last flings came before the wedding, but Reid had always been a little slow emotionally. You couldn’t completely blame him. Look at his parents. He would promise to never do it again, he would shower her with more Shreve, Crump & Lowe boxes and they’d go back to their big white bed. She couldn’t restrain a shudder. Well, maybe they wouldn’t go right back to it, Angie realized. Maybe there would be some healing time necessary.

Then, in a single instant, the image of Reid alone, miserable, lying curled in a fetal position on their big white bed came to her. Guilty. Despairing. It had taken him this long to track her down. He had been frightened, then remorseful. She knew that without her he was lost. He needed her energy, her drive, her warmth.

Clutching his card to her Ranger sweatshirt, Angie ran to the phone and punched in their number. She heard the first ring and knew the stretch, the exact arc of his beautiful back as he reached for the phone. She could perfectly imagine that four hundred miles away in Marblehead, his hand was reaching across the sheets to the receiver. He was there, she knew it, too desolate, too sick, to go to work. He had been lying there in a painful pool of guilt and regret worse than her own misery. Because he did love her. Despite his cold parents, despite their disapproval, despite his own limitations, he loved her. The card in her hand said so, and Angie knew it deep in her gut.

When the phone was lifted from the receiver on the second ring Angie smiled in vindication and waited to hear his voice, a voice as deep and clear as the sea off the Marblehead coast.

“Hello,” a high-pitched woman’s voice said in a breathy exhalation. Angie nearly dropped the phone. “Hello?” the voice said again, this time in a questioning tone.

Angie pulled her hand from the receiver as if it were on fire. She dropped it into its cradle. “Oh my God,” she said aloud. “Oh my God.”

She’d called her house. Who had answered? Not a relative or an in-law. She didn’t have any sisters and neither did Reid. The voice certainly wasn’t his mother’s. What is going on? Angie looked down at the phone. She must have misdialed. She’d misdialed or, worse, Reid had already had the phone disconnected. Somebody new had their phone number. It must be one or the other. Angela snatched the receiver up and punched in their old number, but much more carefully this time. Had she remembered to dial the area code? Maybe she hadn’t and it had been a Westchester call.

The phone rang and Angie held her breath. She pictured Reid again, but this time the picture was a little … well, mistier. This time, again on the second ring, the phone was lifted and again the soprano voice said, “Hello.”

It wasn’t a wrong number. Reid had obviously changed numbers. But did they reassign phones so quickly? She should inquire. But her voice box was paralyzed. Maybe it was a cleaning lady. Yes. That was it. Or a stranger making a delivery or reading the meter. It could happen, she told herself. She looked down at the florist’s card she was still clutching to her chest.

“Hello?” the soprano said again. “Hello. Reid? Is that you?”

Since it wasn’t, Angela hung up the phone.

7

Wherein Clinton and Jada have their talk, we learn about the nature of man, and the difference between milk, water, and blood

“Clinton, we have to talk.”

“Again?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jada said. Once the kids were on the bus, she closed the kitchen door and turned away and started wiping down the stove top. She could still see his face in the reflection of the stainless steel. She wondered when he had last cleaned the stove. “I’m afraid so,” she repeated, but she wasn’t really afraid. She was outraged. He had finally gone too damn far bringing dirt into the house.

Jada had suspected for years during their marriage that Clinton may have occasionally strayed. It was something she preferred not to think about, though awareness had sometimes been thrust upon her. That rich, bored woman in Armonk who had installed the two-hundred-thousand-dollar pool had called a little too often. And so had that black record producer’s wife, the Pound Ridge one who wanted to sing. Jada had decided to ignore them. They had never interfered in her marriage, never stopped Clinton from bringing home his paycheck, playing with his children, or loving her. Since then she’d learned that, in sales parlance, overly attentive client handling was called “petting the goldfish,” and if Clinton’s work had sometimes gotten a little up close and personal, Jada had turned a blind eye. He was a man, after all. And a good-looking, virile one. When men were offered what she thought of as POP—pussy on a plate—it was hard for them to walk away. Especially in Pound Ridge.

Jada sighed. That was back then, when her marriage was good and the children were small and she stayed home with them. Now her life was made up of working all day and cleaning all evening. Of getting meals on the table, laundry folded, and then waking up to do it all again. Clinton’s life, as far as she could see, was made up of lying around watching television, having it off with this new girlfriend of his, and in his free moments making sure the kids didn’t burn down the house. Jada wasn’t complaining about her life; she was doing this for her family and she could keep on doing it as long as she had to. It was just that when she looked at Clinton’s life, if he would only make a few changes, everything could be so much easier for both of them. Easier and worthwhile. And she knew a part of him wanted a worthwhile existence. But a part of him was also willing to risk what they had by being lazy, taking her for granted, and tickling the fancy of some woman in Pound Ridge. “Well, I’m not in Pound Ridge,” Jada said aloud and strode into the dining room, snatching up a tray and a rag as she passed her husband.

“Say what?” he said and followed her into the messy dining room.

Jada began throwing empty cups, cereal bowls, and a couple of crumpled paper napkins onto the tray. I’m losing it, Jada thought. It wasn’t just the glassware that rattled; she was, too. She was speaking her thoughts out loud. It was a family trait—her mother did it when she was disturbed. “I was saying we have to talk,” Jada snapped.

“Don’t you have to go to work?” he asked nervously.

“No. Why? Are you expecting someone over here? Let me straighten up for your guest.” She wiped down the table. It amazed her, even after all these years, that Clinton could stand there watching her do for him without lifting even a fork. That’s what came of marrying a man who was DDG. Well, that was the least of it. Jada felt she had risen above the small stuff; long ago she and Clinton had promised each other that if they had children—and they obviously had—that unlike the two generations of Jacksons before Clinton, their kids would grow up with a father. That was the big stuff. Until now, despite whatever brief flirtations might or might not have arisen from his work, Jada had never doubted that Clinton’s NUP was taking. Like most men. But there was a limit.

Jada, even now, with Clinton standing hang-dog and useless behind her while she picked up the placemats, tried not to make a moral judgment about it. People just had their NUP, like the color of their hair. Jada had to admit that Shavonne’s NUP was taking, too. Kevon, at least at this age, was more like Jada; his natural preference was to give. When she and Clinton had first met, the truth was Jada had liked to give. It had made her feel important and useful. Clinton needed to be taken care of and Jada guessed she needed to be needed. She’d cut his hair, she’d bought his clothes, she’d cooked for him. All Clinton had to do to make her happy was to say, “Nobody makes cornbread like Jada’s. Can’t eat no one else’s cornbread,” and Jada excused the double negative, feeling happy and content and ready to bake another fifty pans of cornbread. Now Jada knew Clinton-speak. “Can I help with dinner” meant “Why isn’t it on the table yet?”

From the time Clinton’s business had begun to fail, it had been one long slide on his side. Bit by bit. First he stopped bringing home money, then he stopped looking for work, stopped coaching Little League, stopped doing carpentry around the house. He’d even stopped what, in her opinion, was a married man’s most primal task—taking out the garbage.

Her parents’ marriage hadn’t prepared her for this. Her mother and her father loved and respected each other. They’d been bitterly disappointed when Jada married an American black man. Though she’d been born in New York, Jada’s parents were Bajans and they still thought of Barbados as home. “Americans. Forget them. They have no drive,” her father had said. “They have no morals,” her mother had warned her. Jada felt they were old-fashioned and definitely prejudiced, even more so against blacks than whites. Most of all they were prejudiced against other Islanders: they despised Jamaicans, were competitive with Antiguans, and were suspicious and contemptuous of the French islanders. American blacks were beneath them all.

It was ridiculous. Jada had laughed at them. But now occasionally Jada wondered if her parents hadn’t been right, at least about Clinton. She hoped her marriage calmed down again, because she didn’t look forward to giving them bad news. She wasn’t certain about all American black men, but hers was undependable and lazy.

Maybe it wasn’t true, but it felt true now. Maybe there had once been some kind of equilibrium between her and Clinton, when her giving had been balanced by Clinton’s money-earning and the wonderful loving, but both had ended long ago. He hadn’t earned even a dime in almost five years and they hadn’t made love in almost three (except for the New Year’s Eve when both of them had been drunker than they should have been and Sherrilee was accidentally conceived). They hadn’t had sex in so long that her diaphragm must have been torn. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she’d gotten pregnant and—after what had happened once before—she couldn’t bear the thought of not bringing the baby into the world. She’d prayed over it, and God, or her heart, had spoken. Sherrilee was an adorable baby, good as gold, and though it had been difficult to work through her pregnancy and was difficult now to leave the baby behind when she went to work, Jada didn’t regret her decision. She had thought the baby might bring them closer, and Clinton had acted delighted and involved. But, as with most things, Clinton didn’t follow through and now she wondered if she had done the right thing.

“Jada. Please have patience. I need you,” Clinton said.

Need? Jada had been so damn needed that she’d run out—not out of giving, but out of feeling happy about doing it. The children had shown her that it was as natural as breathing to give to a nine-year-old, but definitely unnatural to have to give in the same way to a thirty-four-year-old man. Natural or not, Jada was damn tired of it.

“Yeah. You need me. But you say you love her.” Jada couldn’t believe he’d told her about this latest affair. She hadn’t wanted to hear a word, but he’d insisted. “Go need her,” she told Clinton, and turned her back

Jada stuck her head into Shavonne’s room looking for dirty laundry, Clinton behind her. She picked up the pile and moved down the hall. Tonya Green, the woman Clinton was seeing, claimed to love children, though Jada had heard that her two were living with her mother. What did she do all day? Jada wondered. She didn’t work. She had a reputation in their church for being very pious. She taught Bible school. Did she go to prayer meetings? Hang out in bars, hoping to meet a buff married man? Maybe she alternated. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, prayers. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, her prayers were answered.

Jada snorted. The oddest part of all this to Jada was that when it came to the sex—Clinton and Tonya together—she just didn’t care. Ten years ago she would have been filled with jealousy. She had thought that making love to Clinton was central to her life. Now she didn’t even miss it. Sleeping beside him was bad enough. Sex would be … well, she was too angry, too tired, and too disappointed in him to want it.

Jada didn’t think Clinton loved her. He just needed her, wanted her to love him. And she couldn’t. Clinton sometimes still wanted to make love to her. Clinton had wanted their baby. Clinton took good care of the baby now. But Jada didn’t feel like making love to him, and she didn’t feel like taking care of him. She wanted him to take care of her. She’d lost respect for Clinton and perhaps she had some responsibility for this pathetic affair with Tonya.

Jada had only been surprised that Clinton had bothered to tell her at all. He’d never bothered before. Surprisingly, she had merely thought, “One fewer thing I have to do. Let Tonya listen to his bullshit rap about the next useless, unrealistic scheme he’s going to fail at.” Jada realized then that she hadn’t really listened to him in years, after dozens of plans she had listened to, had critiqued and prayed for, had ended in nothing. Yet men had to be listened to by someone.

What she had to have, what she was working herself to the bone for, was a stable family. She wanted to live in their house, the house Clinton had begun but still hadn’t ever finished, and she wanted to see the kids do well in the community and really well in school. She wanted to see Shavonne win the local ice skating finals and go to the prom. She wanted Kevon to get his math scores straightened out and wind up with a scholarship to a really good college. She wanted the children to grow up with a father, as they’d both pledged before God. They all needed him there. He had to watch the baby while she worked. He’d promised to help raise the children. She didn’t think about the quality of her marriage—what was the point? But they had to have this Talk. Too bad she was so damn tired. She was always tired. Jada got to the door of their bedroom, and Clinton was right behind her. “I’m getting ready for work,” she said.

“I thought we were going to talk,” Clinton said.

Of course, he was right. She had begun this, but somehow between the kitchen clean-up, the dining room, the laundry check, and the assorted other things she had tried to get done, she had very little energy left. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I did say that.”

“I’m going to make up my mind,” Clinton said. “I promise you. I’ll get my life in order.”

He was making her crazy. “Déjà vu all over again,” Jada said without attempting irony or humor. She turned around and faced Clinton for the first time since they were in the kitchen and realized she still wanted to slap his face. “Do you realize that you said the exact same thing, in this exact spot, in the exact same tone of voice, one month ago?”

“What are you talking about?” Clinton asked, already defensive. The man was DAS—dumb and stupid—if he didn’t see what was coming.

“Let me refresh your memory.” Jada started straightening up the bed. She hated to lie down in a rat’s nest of messy bed clothes. It amazed her that Clinton couldn’t even pull up the sheets and blanket when he got out of their bed—hours later than she did—each morning.

“You explained about Tonya back then,” Jada said, keeping her voice neutral. “When you started drinking truth serum along with your Bud Lite in the afternoon.” It was unproductive to use sarcasm, she reminded herself. She stood on her side of the bed. But Clinton didn’t react. This man was oblivious to everything. “Clinton,” she said to him, “to tell you the truth, I don’t care what you do with your johnson. But I do care about this family. And I’m not letting your selfish-ass ways destroy it. I’ve given my blood for this family. I’ve given up my personal life, I’ve given up my outside interests. I get up in the dark and leave my babies sleeping in their beds to put food on the table. I don’t like my job. Never have. I never wanted a career. I never wanted to be successful, to be a boss. I only did it out of necessity—”

“Okay. Enough,” Clinton interrupted. “I remember. Don’t try to make me feel worse than you usually do.” Clinton looked down. “I try hard.”

For a moment Jada was filled with enough anger to really smack him up-side the head. As if she was saying any of this to make him feel bad! With Clinton, everything was always about Clinton. Try hard? The man didn’t make the damn bed! “Shut up, Clinton. Give your excuses, run your mouth to Tonya. What I’m saying is that you can move in with her and I can go on with the kids, or you can give her up and try to keep us together, as a family. What’s it going to be, Clinton?”

Jada thought of a proverb her mother had told her. It might have been from the Bible or it might have been an old Bajan expression. “A drink that is given when it isn’t asked for is like milk. The same drink given only when it’s asked for is like water. But a drink you have to beg for, that’s given resentfully, is like blood.” Jada had to ask and ask Clinton for even the smallest thing, and then half the time it remained undone. Her house still needed flooring in the kitchen and a dozen other finishing touches. Jada knew that Michelle didn’t have to ask for anything. A moment before she even knew she was thirsty, Frank would offer that girl milk. Jada tried not to resent her friend, but sometimes it was hard.

“Jada, I know you’re hurt. I know you’re frightened.” He climbed back into bed, under the blankets, as if he needed to be shielded from her. That enraged her. She needed protection from him, not vice versa.

Jada opened her eyes wide. “Clinton, I’m not hurt over this. I’m hurt that you won’t work to keep this family together.”

Clinton lifted his head from the pillow and started to say something, but Jada raised her hand and opened her mouth in time to stop him. “And I was afraid when I thought I couldn’t earn a living. But I’m not hurt and I’m not afraid now, Clinton. I’m just telling you again, straight and plain, that you have a choice to make.” She began to strip off her walking clothes but then, suddenly, felt that she didn’t want to be bare in front of him. He was still a good-looking man. His chest was flat and wide. His stomach was tight even with his weight gain. His skin never chapped or grayed, while she had stretch marks and wrinkles. It was a strange feeling—modesty in front of her husband of so many years. “It’s you that’s breaking a commandment, not me. I’m trying to live righteous.” Jada opened the closet door and stood behind it as she struggled into her work clothes.

“Jada, you don’t understand … this thing with Tonya and I isn’t just about the flesh. We have a spiritual connection.”

Jada put her head around the closet door and stared at him. Mercy! Sometimes she couldn’t believe the bullshit that came out of this man’s mouth. Sweet Jesus, you made this man, she thought. Now make him see the light. Or, alternatively, pluck out his eyes. She thought of her parents. On Barbados, a small island where everyone knew everything, people learned compromise as an art form. Not Clinton, though.

“I can forgive you,” she said. “I can live with you. And I can try, even harder than I have, to keep this family together. But not if you talk to me about that woman’s spiritual qualities. Everyone has to draw a line, Clinton. I don’t want to hear one damn thing about her. Don’t insult me with a comparison.”

“I wasn’t comparing,” Clinton began, his version of an apology, then saw her murderous expression and stopped. “My family means everything to me,” he added quickly. “You know that. Maybe we haven’t been getting on so good, but there have been times when it was smooth and times when it was rough.” He rubbed his long fingers through his hair, then held the back of his neck as if it ached. Too bad he was DDG, Jada thought. “It can be smooth again,” he said. “I know that. I hope for that. That is where my commitment comes from. But with Tonya … well, I feel like what happens there is for me. Not for my children, not for the family, not to keep the mortgage paid down. Just for me.” He paused. “And I feel like I deserve something.” He shook his head. “This is making me unhappy. And it’s making you unhappy. And Tonya, she’s a good woman. It’s making her—”

“Don’t tell me how she feels, Clinton. That is not a way to open my heart,” Jada snapped.

“It isn’t easy to be a black man in a white man’s world,” Clinton said.

“Oh, spare me. It isn’t easy to be a black woman. And I’m starting to think it isn’t easy to be a white woman, either. It isn’t easy to be anything in this world, Clinton. That’s why we have churches.”

“Jada, I have prayed over this. Tonya and I have prayed over this together.” Jada rolled her eyes, but Clinton ignored that. “All I want to do is try to explain how hard it—”

“Stop explaining, start deciding,” she said. “Look on the bright side, Clinton. You have the choice—your family or your mistress. That’s a lot more choices than most people get. But I’m telling you, you can’t have both. So if you don’t make a decision, I’m making it for you. And this time, Clinton, there is no flexibility. Next week I move all your stuff out of here and into the garage. I’ll tell the children and I’ll tell Reverend Grant. I’ll go to a lawyer. So by next Wednesday, your decision is made, either by you or by me.” She turned her back on him and tucked in her blouse. She did it so hard she broke a nail and caught it on the waistband of her pantyhose. Well, first her marriage, now her nail was broken. And it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Beside it was a photo of Shavonne holding Kevon when he was an infant.

Her babies. Her family. Jada knew the last few years had made her hard, and she didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Meanwhile, if she could only save her babies, give Shavonne and Kevon and Sherrilee something more to start their lives off with. She couldn’t let this decision be made for her as Clinton dithered and the clock ticked.

She found the strength to turn around and look at her husband. “Clinton, just think a moment. Your daddy ran out on you. His daddy ran out on him. You’re free to run out on your children, too. But that’s not what we promised them. They’re your babies, too. I think you want something better for them. I know I do, but I’ll take what you give me, Clinton. It’s just that I won’t put up with you and Tonya together, and have all of them at church talking. Plus allowing you here, takin’ up space in my house and my bed.”

“It’s my house, too,” Clinton protested. “For Christ sake’s woman, I built this bed.”

“Then take the damn bed over to Tonya’s,” Jada snapped. “And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in this house. Point is, you can live here with me and the children if you want to try again to be a family. Or you can live with Tonya. She’s got kids, don’t she? Two? Three? Four? By how many men? Well, you can have them or yours. You just can’t have both.”

“I don’t want both,” Clinton whined. “I just don’t know what I want.”

As if she cared, Jada thought. “Well, you have a week to figure it out,” she told him. Dressed now, she clicked across the floor in her high heels. She was in the hallway before she remembered, turned back, and put her head back into the bedroom. “Oh, and Clinton,” Jada told him. “You better begin to find your own gas money.” She slammed the door and went to say good-bye to Sherrilee before she left for work.

8

Economically containing both Michelle’s bustier and bust

Michelle squatted to the floor to pick up yet another Disney action figure, pushing the bones of the bustier she was wearing up into her ribs. Don’t do housework dressed like Nasty Spice, Michelle told herself. This is what you get.

Ah, the pull between passion and prudence. Of course, she could just leave the stuff lying around, but though she sometimes wanted to dress like a high-class hooker for Frank, Michelle knew beneath her uplifted cleavage beat the heart of a very tidy housewife. In fact, she was probably a little neurotic about it. Having grown up with filth around her, as an adult she was constantly cleaning. Maybe she should get a French maid’s costume. She smiled at the thought as she picked up the red plastic toy. Frankie had so many of the things Michelle couldn’t tell who they were anymore. Was it because he was a boy or the second child? Back in Jenna’s day, Michelle had known the difference between a Little Mermaid and a Belle, but now the Hercules/Aladdin/Moses continuum was too confusing. She sighed, and guiltily wished Frankie had stuck with the Lion King. Somehow he had more toys but less attention than Jenna had gotten.

Once down at carpet level, Michelle noticed half a dozen Legos under the ottoman—good thing she hadn’t vacuumed. She’d hoovered up more Micro Machine pieces than any Electrolux could be expected to eat. Pookie was chewing on his plastic bone and growled at her. Michelle shook her head at the dog, throwing back her hair, left down for Frank. Then she reached past Pookie for the Legos and gathered them in her right palm, balancing them with the action figure—she thought it was Jafar—in her left hand. She managed to straighten up in a single movement without using her hands from her squat on the floor. Not bad for a thirty-one-year-old woman.

She turned her head. Over the back of the sofa she could see Frank’s dark hair, and the very top of Jenna’s head, leaning on his shoulder. Jenna was clutching Pinkie with her right arm. Frankie must be lying across his dad’s lap by now, lulled to sleep long ago by the bleeps and yeeps of whatever Nintendo game his dad and sister were playing. Michelle smiled. They had all had a good night; Fridays were always good nights. She and Frank had split a porterhouse and pasta while the kids had had hamburgers, their favorite. Frank had played wiffleball with Frankie for almost half an hour, then he’d suffered through a Rug Rats video, followed up by a Nintendo marathon. Jenna had let her brother play with Daddy while she helped Michelle clean up the dinner things. Her reward was getting Frank all to herself for the last hour while Michelle policed the area. Mich’s reward would be her time alone with Frank in bed. Her smile, which created a parenthesis on either side of her wide mouth, deepened.

She moved to Frank and, very gently, touched his shoulder. She’d learned a long time ago not to come up behind him and touch him too hard—it really startled him. Now Frank bent his head back against the sofa cushions and looked up at her, though neither Jenna nor Frankie made a move. Nothing moved except the dancing Zelda image on the TV screen. The kids were both sleeping and Frank was playing the idiotic game alone!

“Time for bed,” Michelle said in a throaty whisper and Frank’s smile echoed her own. “You carry Frankie. I’ll walk Jenna up,” she told her husband. Frank nodded, then reached out and took a Lego from her right hand.

“Did you bake these just for me?” he asked, his voice low.

“You don’t bake plastic,” Michelle said. “You extrude it.”

“I thought we’d do that later, upstairs.” He waggled his eyebrows. Michelle shook her head and moved her hand to Jenna’s shoulder.

“Come on, big girl,” she murmured to Jenna who, very reluctantly, came out of her doze and, propelled by Michelle, got on her feet.

“Bed time for Bonzo,” Frank added as he placed his sleeping son across his shoulder, cupping the boy’s head gently in one hand.

“Be careful with him. Most accidents happen in the home,” Michelle reminded him.

Upstairs, Michelle got Frankie out of his clothes and into his pajama top while Jenna got herself into bed. Michelle took pity on her firstborn and didn’t insist that Jenna wash her face and brush her teeth. Just for one night it would do. She knew just how tired Jenna felt. She looked forward to lying down herself.

When she entered their bedroom, Frank was already stripped and under the sheets. As usual, he hadn’t folded down the bedspread, so Michelle did it for the three-thousandth time. He was a good man and a good father. They had had a lovely night, but she still couldn’t train him to take the bedspread off before he lay down. Oh well. There were a lot worse traits.

“Come here, gorgeous,” Frank said, his voice already thick with sleep. Michelle sat down on her side of the bed, pulled off her shoes, and wriggled out of her skirt, but left on her panties and bustier. She wanted Frank to notice how nice she looked in it. Frank took a curled tendril of her hair in his hand and gently pulled her face down to his. “Hey, hot stuff. How much for the whole night?” he asked.

“A lot,” she informed him before he kissed her.

“Worth every penny,” he said. He reached for her upthrust breast. “Take that thing off,” he said. Michelle followed his order in less than sixty seconds. “That’s more like it,” Frank murmured, wrapping his arm loosely around her, resting his hand on her hip and pulling her against him.

“Better than Nintendo?” Michelle teased.

“Well, not as exciting but …” he mumbled. She poked him between two ribs. “Okay, okay. Better than Nintendo,” he admitted and kissed her on the neck. She sighed deeply and she heard her sigh echoed by him. Fridays were always long, exhausting evenings, but good ones. She was happy and tired and so was Frank. “Baby, you know I want you, but …”

Michelle kissed him on his sexy, stubbled cheek. Later perhaps, some time in the middle of the night, he would wake her up with his arm tight around her and the rest of him insistent.

But it wasn’t Frank who woke Michelle. It was a horrible, rending sound and the noise—lots of noise—of feet on the stairs. From somewhere downstairs the usually quiet Pookie was barking ferociously. Michelle barely had time to sit up before she was aware of the red light flickering round the room. My God, she thought, the house must be on fire.

“Frank!” she screamed, but his eyes had already flown open, just as the bedroom door did. And then their bed was surrounded by men, some in uniform, some not, all with guns drawn.

“Police!”

“Police!”

“Police! Don’t move! Put your hands up over your heads!” The voices were shouts, harsh as punches. Michelle turned to look at Frank, but one of the voices brayed “Don’t move!” in her ear. “Hands up! Don’t move!”

Michelle wondered, for a brief instant, if this could be a dream—a very, very bad dream. But before she could find out, one of the uniformed cops leaned over and slapped handcuffs on her. She knew, from the cold reality of the metal on her wrists, that this nightmare was real. Pookie was now in the room barking; suddenly he was interrupted mid-bark and went silent. What had they done?

“Frank,” she cried out again.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch her!” Frank yelled, and the two men holding him at the shoulders began struggling with him. The struggle pulled the top sheet and blanket down, and Michelle, paralyzed with horror, felt her left breast exposed to the cool bedroom air in front of a dozen men.

“This must be a mistake. You have the wrong house!” Michelle cried. “We’re the Russos. The Frank Russos.”

“No fuckin’ shit,” one of the men said.

“Mommy?” Michelle heard Frankie’s bleat from down the hall and, despite her nakedness, sat up. “Mommy?” The bleat now sounded more certain of being terrified and Michelle called out to her son.

“It’s okay,” she shouted, though it wasn’t. “Leave my children alone,” she cried out hoarsely. “This is some kind of mistake. Leave my children alone.”

“Tell her what kind of mistake this is, Russo,” one of the cops holding Frank down said. Frank went into a diatribe of swear words, some of which Michelle had never heard come out of his mouth. “Get your hands off her, you cocksuckers!” he screamed. “Leave my kids alone, you stupid fuckin’ bastards.”

Two of the officers had gotten her up, standing between them. She hoped her hair covered most of her. She had to get to her children. That was all she knew.

When Frank swung to hit the guy on the left with his shackled wrists and called them cocksuckers for the second time, Michelle saw the cop throw a mean knee into Frank’s groin. Frank screamed as Pookie had, then crumpled at the side of the bed.

“Mommy? Mommy?” Frankie’s now ever-more-urgent voice was joined by his sister’s, and by the terrifying noise of crashing from below. Michelle began to shake. Pookie ran past her, past all the watching men, maybe to protect her children.

“For chrissakes, collar the dog and give this woman something to put on,” a plainclothesman said, entering the bedroom, and threw a blanket at her.

“Fuck the coke whore,” another one retorted, and then Frank was on his feet, naked and screaming, fighting first one, then three of the cops.

“Frank!” Michelle yelled out to her husband as the two officers beside her began to pull her out of the room.

“Get her outta here,” the man who had given her a blanket told the police. “Call McCourt in. Make sure she’s gotta woman officer with her all the time.”

“McCourt’s taking the kids.”

They were already in the upstairs hall. Behind her, Frank was bellowing. “Where are you taking my kids?” Michelle asked, frantic. “Stop! Please! Where are my children?”

They paid no attention to her. It was as if her voice was unhearable. “Get McCourt, goddamn it!” the plainclothes policeman yelled. “We should have two women officers. And what the hell are the state guys doing here? This is our jurisdiction.”

“It’s RICO, baby. Everyone wants in. Even the county’s here.”

“Frankie? Jenna?” Michelle called. “Where are you?”

Someone grabbed Michelle roughly by the shoulder and propelled her down the hallway. No! She wouldn’t. Where were her children? What was happening? She heard another howl from Frank. Trying to hold the blanket around her despite the handcuffs, she also clutched at the banister outside Frankie’s room. There were two cops in there and, as Michelle looked, they began to throw action figures, blocks, and Legos off the counter to the floor, pulling the mattress off the bed, throwing open cabinets. Frankie was being ushered out of the room by a woman police officer.

“Mommy!” he yelled, the tears and snot already mingling on his face. “The bad man let Pookie out.”

“Let’s go,” the officer behind Michelle said, and gave her shoulder a push. “McCourt, stick with her. Johnson can take the kid.”

“No!” Michelle said. She held on to the banister but bent forward to her son. “I take care of the kid,” she said, her voice harsh.

“Not now you won’t,” the voice behind her answered and gave her another, harsher push. Her long hair fell into her face. She lost her hold on the railing and fell to her knees. Her son began to wail. “Frankie, it’s all right,” Michelle said, though it had never been less all right, not ever.

“Johnson!” The woman officer—McCourt, or whoever she was—yelled out in a tough voice down the hall stairs. The sound of glass smashing obscured the response. “Johnson!” McCourt yelled again. Behind McCourt, Jenna was being pushed out of her bedroom, still almost sleepwalking.

“They have Pinkie,” she said. The whole group at Michelle’s back was blocked from moving forward because of her. She couldn’t hold the blanket on, conceal the handcuffs from her children, and grab them all at the same time. She didn’t know what to do. She was still on her knees. She had no idea what was going on. It took all of her willpower not to break into sobs louder than Frankie’s.

“They have Pinkie!” Jenna cried again and as Michelle was pushed past Jenna’s door, she saw a policeman tearing off the back of the stuffed animal, pulling out the kapok, and scattering it. “No! No!” Jenna shrieked, lunging for her rabbit. Someone behind him was beginning the destruction of Jenna’s room.

“Get up,” someone behind Michelle commanded, and she felt herself lifted by her hair. Just then another uniformed woman ran up the stairs, took Michelle’s daughter by the shoulder, and moved her around the banister and onto the stairwell.

“Let’s go,” she said. The policewoman looked up at the screaming Frankie, struggling against McCourt. “I’ll take him, too,” she said, and flashed a look at Michelle. It was a look of compassionate concern, the only human thing about this nightmare. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “It’ll be all right. Tell them to go downstairs,” she told Michelle. “We’ll all come downstairs.”

Michelle, on her feet now but still panicked, nodded automatically. “It’s okay,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if Frankie could hear her—or anything. “It’s okay,” she said to Jenna. “Let’s all go downstairs.”

But it wasn’t okay. Not downstairs or outside, not now or anytime soon. The Russo living room had been transformed in moments from a showplace to a scene from hell. There were more than a dozen men tearing books from the bookshelves, pulling the sofa cushions apart, tearing up the carpet. The desecration was so shocking that Michelle herself shrieked.

Somebody put her into a coat, taking the handcuffs off her to do so, but recuffing her afterward. “Frank!” she yelled. “Frank!” Her Lalique vase was smashed, Frank’s flowers tracked across the floor. “Watch out for the glass,” she called out. “Be careful of the children. They’re barefoot.”

“Get some shoes on them,” someone yelled.

“Pookie! Here Pookie!” Frankie was calling out.

“Frank! Frank!” Michelle screamed again. There was a lot of noise going on overhead and then, faster than she could believe possible, Frank’s bloody face moved past her down the stairs and out the door, surrounded by a coven of police.

“It’ll be okay, Michelle. It’s okay,” Frank called. Behind him the cop who had given her the blanket was again issuing orders.

“Get the kids into a car,” he barked to Johnson. “Get them some warm clothes. We’ll take them over to Child Welfare.”

Michelle’s eyes opened wider. “No! Please!” she said. “Please. I don’t know what this is. But please, can’t I leave the children with my neighbor?”

“Sorry. No.” He turned away. “Get her clothes. Put her in my car. Keep her away from Russo.”

“What is going on?” she managed to scream to him as her children were hustled out the door. “This is against the law. What is going on?” A line from some television show came to her. “I demand my rights!” she screamed.

“Oh Christ.” In a tired voice someone began a drone. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right …”

This was like a bad television show, Michelle thought, as if she were at the movies, or in some kind of daze, watching the news. It couldn’t be real. But Michelle was read her rights, forced into shoes, and walked out into the cold night air. The children were already gone, but other people, neighbors, were standing staring at her. Her neighbors! The Joyces. The Shribers. And strangers! What was happening?

Flashes went off. Who the hell could be taking pictures? She turned her head toward the garage only to see the lawn furniture strewn around. The driveway was filled with unmarked vans and men dressed in black wearing headsets. Six, maybe more, cruisers and troopers cars were pulled up around the house, their lights flashing. Lights were being turned on in houses farther down the street, and more people were gathering. Michelle even thought she saw Jada. She put her hand up to block the lights and get a better view. But before she could call out to her friend, she felt a hand press on the top of her head and force her into the police car waiting at the side of the curb.

9

Wherein Jada increases her already heavy workload

Jada sat at her desk, the office door closed. That was unusual: when she had to work Saturday mornings, Jada liked to keep an eye on what was happening on the bank floor. But today her own state of mind was unusual. Last night—well, at 2:10 this morning, to be precise—she had opened her eyes and gone to the window to see her friend’s life being destroyed: police two-tones, unmarked cars, ominous gray vans, all with lights flashing and gun racks, had surrounded Michelle’s house. Jada, shocked, had roughly shook Clinton awake and flung on her coat. She was at the Russos’ gate in time to see both Jenna and Frankie being dragged off by a uniformed woman. When she had shouted out to them, Jenna had managed to look up, but Frankie was way beyond noticing a friendly face.

Jada had turned back to the crowd when the car drove the children away. The other faces around her were anything but friendly. Neighbors from the block and even one street over had assembled. If the night was colder, Jada wondered whether they would have rushed out into it so quickly to share Michelle’s tragedy. Such alacrity, when with advance notice you couldn’t get them out for recycling.

But what the hell was going on? Jada overheard a few nasty murmurs and then some even more unpleasant rumors. “A kiddie porn ring,” Mr. Shriber said, and his wife, a pleasant plump woman whom Jada had always liked before, nodded her head knowingly. “There were always a lot of kids around,” she intoned.

“That was because their children were popular,” Jada snapped. “And because Michelle let the whole neighborhood play in her yard.” The Shribers were notorious for the perfection of their lawn and flowerbeds. No one was allowed on their property, ever. They had once put in a formal complaint about the mailman when he stepped off the walk. “You better watch out you don’t get sued for slander and lose your landscaping.”

Jada had then struggled through the rest of the crowd, wondering what the hell could be so wrong. What really had worried her was that there wasn’t an ambulance in sight. The irony that seeing an ambulance would be good news was not lost on Jada. At least there wasn’t a van from the morgue. She had stood there helpless a few more minutes. Finally, after she—and all the damned locals—had seen a handcuffed Michelle put into a police car and driven away, she had asked one of the black cops, one of only two she’d seen among the dozens there, what the hell was going on.

“Drug bust,” he had said. “Big dealer. We’ll get a couple of new cruisers out of this.” Jada’s mouth had fallen open.

It was still open. She sat at her desk, the memo that needed correction unmarked in front of her. She could barely take it in. A drug bust—a big one—on her safe street, and happening to her friends. Not that she believed Michelle was involved or guilty. Just that it could happen, that wealthy, working white people who owned their home could have their lives—and their furniture—wrecked and left on public display.

This morning, as she drove past the house, roped off with yellow crime scene tape, she’d seen two of Michelle’s dining chairs, the upholstery torn, the filling ripped out of them, sitting forlornly on the drifts of leaves in front of her house. All sorts of other household goods were strewn over and among the leaves: throw pillows, Frank’s footstool, the lamp filled with shells that Michelle loved and Jada had always thought was a little tacky.

Seeing Michelle’s things strewn like garbage in an abandoned lot had given her such a pang, such a sense of doom and the inevitability of death, that it was almost as bad as seeing corpses out there. Jada knew just how often Michelle polished the wood of those dining room chairs. She’d even been with her when she picked out the rose and ivy fabric they’d been reupholstered in, fabric that was now slashed and flapping like torn eyelids in half a dozen places.

Her elbow on the desk, Jada put her forehead against her hand and rested it there, closing her eyes for a moment. She could feel her long fingers pressed against her skull through the thin skin at the top of her head.

When she’d come home last night, Clinton had been standing in the front doorway holding the baby. He hadn’t asked her a single question. He’d only admonished her.

“You shouldn’t be out there,” he’d said as she walked up the steps.

“Why the hell not?” Jada had asked, thinking he was criticizing her for rubbernecking like the others. “I was trying to see if I could help. She’s my best friend.”

“You shouldn’t be out there because we don’t want to be attached to this thing.” She had walked inside and Clinton had closed the door behind her. “Frank Russo has always dealt from the bottom of the deck. How do you think he got those county contracts?” For years Clinton had been anti-Frank. Jada had never been able to figure out if it was because Frank was so successful and Clinton was jealous, or if there really was something to Clinton’s concerns.

Last night, Jada had snapped at him. “It’s not about a damn contracting dispute,” she told him bitterly. “It’s about drugs.”

“That motherfucker’s been dealing drugs?” Clinton had exploded. “Unbelievable.” The baby started, woke, and began to cry. Clinton began to pace and handed Sherrilee off to Jada. “I told you not to mess with them. Cops will be all over us, questioning us tomorrow. They see drugs, they see niggers. Jesus! How dare he? That greasy little fuck puts our whole family in jeopardy.”

“Not quite as much as he jeopardized his own family,” Jada had said coldly and had begun to stomp upstairs, soothing the baby but not knowing how to soothe herself. “If it was a black man, you wouldn’t think he was dealing. You would think he was framed,” she flung at Clinton from the stairs. “We don’t know what the story is.”

Of course, Michelle hadn’t come in to work and Jada had said nothing about last night to anyone. She’d made more than a dozen calls to police stations and to the courthouse. She’d also checked her answering machine twice to see if Michelle had, by any chance, called. But there was no message.

When Anne, Jada’s secretary, gave her little double knock on the door, Jada quickly lifted her head from her hands and picked up a pen. “Yes?” she asked and Anne came in, her eyes so big they seemed to precede her.

She carried a newspaper, not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, which Jada had learned to look through for business news every day, but the local county rag. “Look,” Anne said and flapped the newspaper onto Jada’s obsessively neat desk. Jada didn’t want to, but Anne was going to make her look at the scene of the crime. Trust jealous Anne to gloat at someone’s misery. Jada sighed. This woman needed a lot of churching.

She looked at the paper. There, spread out in two pages of tabloid pictures, was Michelle’s house, a close-up of Frank’s bloody, obviously beaten face, and—oh dear Lord—Michelle herself in her blue winter coat and handcuffs. Jada put her hand up to her mouth. SUSPECTED DRUG KINGPIN BUSTED, the headline read. She could hardly believe it.

“Isn’t that something?” Anne asked. There was something in the sound of her voice that gave Jada the feeling Anne was enjoying the excitement of this.

Jada grabbed the newspaper and crumpled it. “That headline is outrageous. Why don’t they just write ‘guilty’? This man has only been accused, not convicted,” she reminded Anne. “The press has already gone too far.” She looked up at Anne as she flung the newspaper into the garbage. “When Michelle comes back to work, I hope you will all remember that she hasn’t even been accused of anything. Now, don’t you have something better to do?”

After Anne left, Jada walked out onto the floor, spoke to a few of her staff as naturally as possible, and greeted an important customer. She returned to her office, trying to look casual, closed the door, and retrieved the newspaper from the trash. Smoothing it out as best she could, she gobbled up the dearth of information. Despite the bad underwriting, it didn’t seem as if any drugs had been discovered, thank God, and it did seem as if the police had been incredibly harsh both to Frank’s face and to the house. Jada knew that since the RICO Act had been passed, police had been gung-ho about busting for profit. She also knew that success bred resentment, and Frank, cocky as he was, probably had a lot of envious enemies in the county.

The intercom rang. “It’s Michelle,” Anne announced in a breathless voice, as if Al Capone were back from the dead and calling bankers. Jada picked up the phone, watching to make sure that Anne hung up.

“Have you heard?” Michelle’s voice asked.

Jada wondered if Anne, not visible now, was still listening on some other extension. “Honey, everybody’s heard,” Jada said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” Michelle managed and then she gasped, making an awful sound that Jada didn’t like to hear and hoped that Anne wasn’t hearing. She lifted the phone base off her desk and pulled it as far as she could. Then, setting it on the floor next to the credenza, she stretched the handset as far as she could and just managed to get to the door and look out. Anne and several of the other women had their heads turned toward her but immediately telescoped around, avoiding her. None of them was on the phone.

“Oh God, Jada this is terrible. This place … it’s …” Michelle began to cry. “I have to go. I have to go pick up the kids. They were fostered out last night. Can you imagine?” She started to choke up; Jada could barely understand what she was saying. Something about Frank and making a list and the mirror and something else.

“Be cool, Michelle,” Jada said. “All the shit you’re looking at, all the broken stuff, isn’t important. The babies are important and they’re all right. You can come to my house tonight. We can clean up your place tomorrow.” The poor girl. Kneeling there in the wreckage, she probably did look like Cinderella but it wasn’t the time for Jada to make a “Cindy” joke.

“Oh, Jada.” Michelle made another horrible noise and then said something else about Frank.

“Is he home?” Jada said. She didn’t want to be too inquisitive. She’d known a lot of people who’d been in trouble and now wasn’t the time for twenty questions. “Is he there with you?” she asked.

“No,” Michelle answered, sobbing. “They wouldn’t let me talk to him, but a lawyer came and said he would be home tonight or tomorrow. Jada,” Michelle whispered, “it’s a nightmare. Frank didn’t do anything. How could the police do this to us?” She lost it then, and tears rose in Jada’s own eyes.

“Michelle? Michelle? You cry, but then wash your face and fix your hair and pull yourself together for Jenna and Frankie. You want me to come with you to pick them up? I know how Child Welfare can be.”

“I can do it,” Michelle whispered, pulling herself together. “I can do it,” she repeated, as if she were giving herself a pep talk, which Jada figured she was doing.

Jada used an old joke they’d run through together during the trials of raising suburban kids. “Are you calm?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“If you’re calm, I’m the Dalai Lama,” Jada said.

“If you’re the Dalai Lama, I’m Richard Gere,” Michelle answered weakly.

“If you’re Richard Gere, I’m outta here,” Jada finished. “I’ll leave work real soon, pick up some pizzas, and we’ll have a pizza party at my house. If you want to sleep over with the kids, that’s just fine.”

“Sleep?” Michelle asked. “Oh God, Jada. I’m never going to be able to sleep again.”

“Just as well,” Jada said. “It’s overrated. A big time-waster, generally. And you got a lot of cleaning to do. You okay?” she asked, just to be sure.

“Under the circumstances, yeah,” Michelle said. “Under the circumstances. And Jada?”

“Yes,” Jada said.

“Thank you. I won’t forget this.”

“I hope you do. I hope you forget the whole thing once it all gets straightened out. Meanwhile, tell me what’s really important. I forget if the kids eat sausage on their pizza or not.”

10

During which Angela sleeps through a riot and is subsequently read the riot act twice

“You’re going to have to do something, Angela,” Tony, her father, was saying from the doorway of the study. “It’s not healthy to just lie here. You don’t even look healthy.” He craned his neck forward. “You’re not taking an interest in anything. You didn’t even get up last night during that riot.”

“What riot?” Angie asked dully.

“You didn’t even hear the cop cars and the commotion down at the end of the street?” Angela just shook her head. She’d found the number of a pharmacy that delivered, and a combination of Nyquil and Tylenol PM had put her in something close to a coma. “Well, you saw the police tape around the house today, didn’t you?” her father was asking. “The bastids wrecked the joint.”

Angie shook her head again. She didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about, and she didn’t care.

“Angie, there was a huge drug bust round the corner, about ten houses down.” He looked at her appraisingly. “Hey, when’s the last time you went out?” he asked, suspicion in his deep voice.

“I’m going out later,” Angie told him, avoiding the question. It had been a few days. She was still in the Rangers sweatshirt, still on the sofa.

“Great! You gotta date?” He approached her and sat on the arm of the couch.

“Yeah. With my mother,” Angie said grimly. He better not get too close. She hadn’t washed, brushed her teeth, or been out of her father’s house since she arrived, and even she was willing to admit she was getting a little strange.

“Oh, she’s back?” her father asked. Angie couldn’t help but notice how he pretended to be totally casual, but she could sense his very real curiosity behind it. Desperation knew desperation. Angela was almost certain that her dad regretted the divorce. As far as she knew, her parents didn’t speak. Her father had simply disappeared from her mother’s conversation. But somehow Anthony Romazzano always knew Natalie Goldfarb’s whereabouts.

“You’re not going to get involved working for those schnorers?” he asked. “I didn’t pay for law school so that you could help out a bunch of freeloaders.”

“You didn’t pay for my law school,” Angie reminded him. Her father was very odd about money; he’d been poor and then he’d been very rich. He tried never to let the women in his family know where he’d stood. But they’d ignored him, and he’d always been disturbed that neither Natalie nor Angie seemed influenced by his money. Though he’d suffered a few business reverses recently, he was still well off.

“Please, Angie. You could get a job with a Park Avenue firm in a minute. I could help you.”

“I’m not interested in Park Avenue. And you’re helping me right now,” Angie said. “You’ve been great.” She kissed him on the cheek.

Tony awkwardly shifted his weight, reached into his back pocket, and took out his wallet. He pulled a wad of bills from it and handed them to her, without getting too close. “Look, you’re a beautiful girl. Go out. Get your hair done. Get a manicure.”

She sat up, kissed him again, and let him hand her the money. She didn’t want it, but she knew it was his way of being kind. “Next you’ll be telling me to buy a hat.”

“You want a hat?” Tony asked, pulling open the wallet again. “I’ll buy you as many hats as you want.”

Angie couldn’t even smile at his cluelessness. “No, Dad. It was a figure of speech. Men used to think that when women were unhappy, they could just buy a hat to cheer themselves up.”

“When?”

“Back in the fifties, I think.”

“No, they didn’t. I was alive then. Your grandfather never told Nana to buy a hat. I never told your mother to buy a hat.”

“Just as well,” Angie said darkly. “It saved your life, no doubt.” She flopped back down on her back, already used to the warm but unpleasantly sticky leather waiting for her. Probably that dead cow hide was the only skin that would ever touch hers again, she thought morosely and stared overhead at the hideous figure eights in the ceiling.

Her mother was arriving home tonight and Angela knew she should be showering. Since she hadn’t brought any clothes with her, and since she’d rather die than get into that stupid dress she’d worn to the club, it wouldn’t hurt if she stopped off at the Cross County Mall and bought a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts. But the idea of doing either of those things tired her to the point of exhaustion. The thought of getting vertical, getting into the car, getting to Poughkeepsie, parking, and finding her mother’s apartment was daunting enough. Angie felt as if all energy had been drained from her. She had no “gets” left in her. But she had to go: her mother was her only hope. Natalie Goldfarb would tell her what to do. Her mother had to because otherwise, Angie figured, she was doomed.

Her friend Lisa was still telling her to just stay away, to try not to think about Reid, to remember how unforgivable his action had been. It was good advice, and Angie was almost embarrassed when she thought of how often she’d cried talking to Lisa.

She couldn’t cry with her dad. It would upset him too much. He would either cry, too, or threaten to kill Reid. Angie looked over at Anthony. His fingers were pulling uselessly at the corduroy of his trousers. He got up and moved to the end of the couch and motioned with his head for her to retract her feet. She did so, curling up into a semi-fetal position, her back now pressed against the stupid leather sofa. The hide was cool on her back, since it hadn’t been leaned on. Angie shivered. Yes, that was what she should get used to. She would spend her life untouched by real skin. She would spend her life pushing herself against coldness, hoping for a tiny bit of warmth.

Angie looked over at the flowers her son-of-a-bitch husband had sent. She hadn’t put them in water and the heads were already drooping, the edges of the petals already brown. The bouquet was a metaphor for her life—she would wither long before her time because of a tragic lack of caring. She hadn’t taken all those comparative lit courses for nothing. When her father put his hand on her ankle, she turned away from her dead flowers to look at him.

He’d done this to her mother, she thought as he began to speak. “Angie, listen to me. You can’t just lie here. Reid was a spoiled bastid. He always was. You can get over this. What he did was wrong, but the fact that he told you was unforgivable. You—”

“What do you mean?” Angie asked, but she knew about her father’s double standard. It was an Italian thing. “You mean it would have been okay if he was screwing some other woman as long as I didn’t know about it?” She pulled her knees the rest of the way into her chest, away from her dad, and shook her head. “Thank God he was guilty—or idiotic—enough to tell me. Otherwise I might still be there, a marble-head in Marblehead, living a lie.”

At that moment, Angie hated her father and all men. Clueless, rotten, selfish, insensitive bastards. But Reid was the worst. As she lay on her back all these days—what, five? a week?—Angie had played scene after scene from her courtship, wedding, and marriage in her mind. The week she and Reid went to Vail and never got onto the slopes. The fight they had once in a Boston supermarket over mayonnaise. The way he had looked at her the first time she wore that taffeta dress. All gone. All useless, stupid memories of a stupid girl.

But a part of Angie couldn’t believe that the good times were over forever. If Reid had died, she thought, she would be able to cope because she would have known that he wanted the good times to continue as much as she did. Knowing that their lives could continue, were continuing, but with Reid having the good times with someone else, just tore her apart. The idea that she alone had experienced some of their most touching moments together, while he was merely waiting to go meet the Soprano, was unbearable to her. Her stupidity, her lack of insight, her bad choices … all of it was unbearable. Angie knew that many, maybe even most, people had to compromise and adjust their view of marriage once they were actually married. But she hadn’t had a marriage, though she’d thought she had. He’d been cheating on her, not married to her, except perhaps for the month or so after their wedding. She had had a one-sided fantasy.

Her father, at the foot of the sofa, began moving one of his meaty hands up and down the sole of her foot. Hot tears rushed to her eyes. Being touched was excruciating. She wanted to kick him away and then crawl into a ball of shame and fear and rage, but instead she smiled and accepted the massage. He meant to be comforting. He loved her. But Angie stared at him and could only think that he, too, had betrayed a woman—her own mother. Well, at least Anthony hadn’t snuck around behind Natalie’s back. He had just gotten tired of Natalie, dumped her for another woman, and at the same time tried to hold on to every nickel he had ever made. He was her father, but he was also a man. She pulled her feet away from him.

The only one now who could help her was her mother. Suddenly all Angie wanted was to be away from Anthony, to be next to Natalie and listen to Natalie tell her how she could fix her life. Her revulsion was the only thing that gave her enough energy to pull herself up from the sofa. “I’m going to go and see Mom,” Angie told him.

“Angie, enough with the poor personal hygiene and the self-pity,” Natalie Goldfarb said to her daughter as she leaned across the table. “You lie down with dogs, you get up with low self-esteem.” Natalie reached out and stroked her daughter’s hair, but then pulled her hand away. “Wow,” she said wiping her hand with the napkin. “I need some of that in my Buick’s crankcase.” She opened her purse and took out a lip balm, handing it silently to Angie, who had been furiously chewing on her lower lip all week.

As Angie applied the lip balm, her mother watched, then heaved a sigh. “I love you, honey, but a part of you always knew what a spoiled little bastard Reid was. Maybe you’re shocked, but you can’t tell me you’re really surprised.”

Mother and daughter were sitting at the tiny table in the minuscule kitchenette of the small studio that Natalie sublet. It didn’t seem like a home—it was more of a big storage room, with cartons, books, and papers everywhere. Two chairs sat one on top of the other, rolled-up rugs leaned against the wall, and no paintings or pictures or photographs were displayed anywhere. Angie thought of the cozy home Natalie had made for her family, as well as the domestic way Natalie used to live with her law partner, Laura. She looked around with fear and distaste at this. Had her mother given up? Could she only make a home for other people? This was not a comfortable place to live and certainly not one that would give her shelter.

“You should work in a shelter,” Natalie said. “You should see how bad some of our sisters have it. I was just in India, and let me tell you, when a husband is tired of a wife over there, he and his mother douse her with kerosene and set her on fire. They have a name for it. ‘Stove accidents.’”

Angie shuddered. “Very nice. So am I supposed to be grateful that Reid didn’t use me as a luau torch?” she asked. Natalie got up, took the untouched sprout and sunflower seed salad away from Angie, and bustled over to the sink.

“Do you want something else?” she asked Angie. “I think I have sardines, but I’m not sure about crackers.”

Angie shook her head. She hadn’t eaten anything real in days, but if she did it wouldn’t be something as disgusting as that. All at once she felt very sorry for herself. Didn’t her mother even remember that she hated sardines? She’d always hated them, since she was little. Her mother and father had been such an odd mix: her mother was so domestic but not a physical person, while her father craved being taken care of. They’d battled over who should take care of whom for almost twenty years. Meanwhile, who’d taken care of her?

Suddenly Angie felt as if she were very, very young. Five years old, or maybe four. And lost, like the time she’d been lost at the zoo and had wandered into the park only to realize she couldn’t find her way home. At the time, she’d decided she’d just sit down on a rock and wait until she grew up, because she knew she couldn’t make a home for herself until she was older. When her mother had found her, she hadn’t cried. She’d just felt very, very lucky.

Her luck, though, had changed. If she had sat on the rock all those years until she was grown up, the way she was today, she still wouldn’t be able to make a home for herself. She thought of all the care and attention she’d poured into the apartment in Marblehead. Picking out the sheer curtains, buying the sofa, and carefully stacking their wedding china—it had all been exciting but exhausting. She couldn’t do it again.

She looked around her. Was this what she was doomed to, then? A room like a warehouse with nothing but a few cans in the larder? Her mother had once run a household and served warm nourishing dinners and put starched linen pillow cases on all the beds. Angie remembered the comfort of that. What had happened? Was her mother falling apart, Angie wondered? She seemed cheerful, though distracted, and now concerned for Angie. Was this the way every woman lived when they weren’t living for somebody else? Or was her mother in more pain than she was showing? The break-up with Laura could not have been easy for her.

Whatever it was, however her mother felt, it was clear to Angie that there was no place for her here. Angie might as well go out and find a rock to sit on.

With that knowledge, all of her loss seemed to tumble in on her. She began to cry and then not to cry, but to sob. Her shoulders began to heave in spasmodic jerks and the noise she was making was almost obscene.

Natalie’s arms were around her in a moment. “Oh, baby. Oh, sweetheart,” Natalie said, stroking Angie’s greasy hair lovingly. “Oh, my little baby. You loved him that much? You loved that idiot so much? Mourn as long as you have to. But I think it couldn’t hurt you to start doing something for yourself. You definitely need your hair touched up. You want me to ask my guy to do it?”

“Mom, my problems won’t be solved by highlights.”

“No, but it’s a start.” Natalie took a deep breath. “You never really liked that job up in Needham. You just took it to be close to Reid.”

Angie couldn’t remember now why she had taken the job, but she knew she was lucky to get it. It hadn’t been easy to get the month’s leave of absence, either. But Angie wasn’t ready to go back or to quit. She put her head down and hunched her shoulders, knowing what was coming.

“Why don’t you give up those rich people’s wills and trust funds?” her mother asked her. “Why don’t you join our practice?”

Angie looked up from the Formica tabletop and stared at her mother. Natalie ran a women’s legal services clinic where the clientele was primarily women so down and out, so pathetic, that they didn’t have a few thousand to ante up to an attorney.

“I can’t work there,” Angie said, frightened of both the idea and her snobby repulsion. Her mother’s practice served mostly poor or embattled women coping with everything from a disastrous divorce to immigration problems to harassment. Angie wasn’t ready to spend her time helping other depressed women. She was too depressed herself. “I’m not registered with the bar here.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t drink I can swear you in until you get the bar,” Natalie said, and with a flourish brought a bottle of burgundy over to the table. She poured herself a glass—a jelly glass with blue dinosaurs on it—and then one for Angie. “Listen to me,” Natalie said, leaning forward and holding her glass of wine. “What the hell is the point of going back to the scene of the crime? What’s the point in going back to a selfish life where you’re thinking of nothing but your own pleasure—or your own pain? Believe me, one is worse than the other. Join us. We’ll get you through the bar in no time and we have a hundred women with problems so pressing, they’ll make your adventure with Reid look like a day at the circus. Did I tell you about the eighty-two-year-old woman evicted from—”

“Mom, I don’t want to hear about her pain,” Angie interrupted, and took a swig of her wine. “I have my own.” This wasn’t what she had craved, what she had expected and needed. She wanted her mother to fix her old life for her, not offer her a new one … a boring, awful new one with a house like a garage and a job worse than social work.

“You think I don’t understand?” Natalie asked, raising her brows. “Of course I understand. All you can do is think of him. How maybe it didn’t happen, how you are looking for excuses, or, if there is no excuse, how maybe it was your fault and then you can forgive him anyway. How just because it happened once before, doesn’t mean it’ll happen again. Yup, I know what you’re thinking. But those are all the desperate configurations of a rat trapped in a maze, looking for the little bar to press to get the cocaine that the scientist administers at the end of every test. You’re obsessed with your future former husband because you’re still hoping somehow you can get that hit of affection. That hit of sex.”

Angie turned her head away. Her mother might be accurate, but accuracy didn’t feel like what she needed right now. Natalie leaned across the table, trying to get closer, but Angie kept her face averted. Natalie’s voice softened. “You feel like without it you can’t go on, that you’re trapped. But I’m here to tell you that being ‘in love’ is only an addiction. It keeps delusions going. It separates you from your real life, from real love, which you can feel for a friend, God, an animal, even a man. ‘In love’ sets you up to worship Prince Reid, some false idol you’ve erected within your temple. You were only with him for a year, Angie. You’re young—only twenty-eight. Oh, there can be a man, later, if you want one. A good man, one who could be there for you.” Natalie’s voice toughened up then. “One who doesn’t look like Brad Pitt in any way.”

Angie stood up and reached for her purse. Somehow she felt more depressed but less hysterical then she’d been. Her mother hugged her. “You look beat,” Natalie said, patting her on the shoulder. She hugged her again and Angie, too weak to hug back, let herself melt against her mother. That was what she wanted: to melt, to disappear, to lose herself forever.

“Do you want to sleep over?” Natalie asked. “I can unfold a cot I use when we get full at the crisis center.”

Angie restrained herself from shivering. The idea of sleeping on a bed of misery here in this warehouse made her father’s sofa and the plaster infinity signs overhead seem almost heavenly. “No,” Angie said. “I’m just fine.”

“Yeah,” her mother said. “You’re fine and I’m skinny.”

Angie managed to give her mother a watery smile before she shrugged into her coat and left.

11

In which dinner and an ultimatum are both served

Jada and Michelle had planned to rendezvous at Post Road Pizza, but Michelle had called back to say she had to go down and pick up Frank. Jada pulled the car into the driveway, got out, and opened the rear door for Jenna. Jenna got out, moving slowly, as if overnight her eleven-year-old body had been transformed into an old woman’s. But at least she was moving. Frankie seemed to have become paralyzed, turned into a block of stone, or maybe ice, by the trauma of the last twenty-four hours. When Jada lifted him from the backseat, she was surprised by his heaviness. The kid couldn’t weigh more than forty pounds, but as dead weight he felt like the huge bags of Sacrete that Clinton used to throw so easily across his shoulder in the old days. Jada hugged the little boy to her, freed up a hand, and put it on Jenna’s shoulder as she led them into the house.

When Clinton looked up from the kitchen table, Jada knew immediately that there would be trouble. She decided to ignore him for as long as she could. Normalization was the goal here, and since she normally ignored Clinton anyway, that was the route to take.

“Hey, Kevon! Hey, Shavonne! Guess who’s here?” she called out. Shavonne wasn’t crazy about Jenna lately—sometimes they got along and sometimes they fought—but Kevon adored Frankie. Kevon ran into the kitchen, but skidded to a stop when she put Frankie down on the linoleum. Kevon stood almost as still as his friend, then his eyes flicked from Frankie’s face to his mom’s.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked her in a hoarse kid’s whisper, as if he could already tell that Frankie wasn’t talking and maybe couldn’t hear.

Jada felt Clinton’s disapproval from all the way across the room. He was such a hypocrite! He’d hung with some neighborhood brothers who’d gotten in plenty of trouble, and once or twice had even brought the kids along until she’d put her foot down.

“He had a bad sleepover,” she said. “Remember when you had that sleepover at Billy’s?” Kevon nodded. It wasn’t easy for her son to be the only African-American in his grade. “Well, it was scarier than that. But he’s okay now. He’s with us.” She tightened her arm around Frankie, really talking to him. Kevon, bless his heart, reached his hand out to Frankie, who still stood immobile.

“Come on, Frankie,” Kevon said. “We hate Billy.” Jada realized that Kevon thought Frankie had spent the night with Kevon’s little enemy. But she wasn’t going to bother to correct the picture because, thank the Lord, Frankie allowed Kevon to pull him out of the room. She turned to Jenna, who was chewing the end of her hair.

“Is my mother coming back now?” Jenna asked.

“She’s having dinner with your dad. He wanted pizza. We’ll be eating in a little while,” Jada said. Then she raised her voice and called her daughter again. Shavonne came into the kitchen clutching the baby.

“Oh, hi,” she said, overly casual. She looked at Jenna. “I can’t really play with you now,” she told her self-importantly, “I’m baby-sitting my little sister.”

“Jenna’s going to help you baby-sit,” Jada said. She felt like strangling her daughter, and the girl wasn’t even a teen yet. “If you both do a good job, I’m going to pay you both.” She could actually feel Clinton’s stare, though he was behind her. “Don’t go up the stairs with the baby,” she admonished more gently than she felt disposed to be. “Play with her in the living room,” she told them. Reluctantly, it seemed, Jenna moved with Shavonne through the living room, Jada right behind them. Be nice to her, Shavonne, Jada thought. Now’s not the time to stand off. The baby gurgled and then spit up on Shavonne’s shoulder.

“Oh, yuck! Gross,” Jenna said. She’d inherited her mother’s clean gene.

“That’s nothing,” Shavonne told her. “When she had a cold, you should have seen her snots.”

Normality—such as it was—had been achieved. Jada felt relieved and left them. Graphic descriptions of bodily functions would bind them. She closed the dining room door, then entered the kitchen, but avoided even looking at Clinton. Jenna had refused pizza, so Jada pulled out two bags of frozen french fries and a cookie sheet, sprayed the pan with vegetable oil, opened the oven door, and threw the tray in. She filled a pot with water to boil hotdogs. At least they were turkey dogs, not the other junk. Guiltily she looked for something green to serve with them. Nothing but very old strawberry yogurt (which ought not be green). She hadn’t had time and Clinton hadn’t had the ambition to clean out the refrigerator in the last two or three weeks. Well, she told herself, she’d just give them green Jell-O and pretend it was a balanced meal. They deserved better and so did she, but she was working under a lot of adversity here.

Even more adversity than she thought, however. Clinton rose from the kitchen chair he’d been sprawled in and came up beside her. It wasn’t to help with the damn dinner, but to take the refrigerator door out of her hands and close it behind her. He leaned on it. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Making the dinner that you should have made?” she responded. He was worse than DAS. The man was dead and stupid.

“Don’t try to get smart. You’ve already been dumb,” he told her. “What are those kids doing over here?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Those kids?” she asked. “You mean Frankie and Jenna? Those kids are always over here, or our kids are always at their house.”

“Not anymore,” Clinton said.

“Oh, Clinton, don’t start with me.” She did not have the patience for this kind of bullshit. Not today. Not now. Not from this bastard, who was spending his days with his dick in some other woman and his nights taking his kids for granted.

“Those children shouldn’t be over here.”

“Shouldn’t? Why shouldn’t they?”

“Because I don’t want them influencing my children.”

“Oh, today they’re your children?” she glared at him. “When did they become your children? They weren’t yours the other night, when Shavonne had her book report to write or the day before, when Kevon had diarrhea. You think Jenna is a danger to Shavonne, who bullies that girl shamelessly? And do you think that Frankie could influence anything right now?” She crossed the kitchen, her steps fast and angry, not that they made much noise against the plywood of the unfinished floor. She started to set the table.

“Are you through running your mouth?” Clinton asked. “Because you’re just missing the point. Number one, they’re the children of a drug dealer. Number two, if you don’t think the police are watching them and everything they do right now—”

“The police are watching everything that Frankie does? Well, that’s an easy job. Even you could do it. ’Cause Frankie isn’t doing dick.”

“Don’t show a smart mouth to me,” Clinton said, narrowing his eyes. “I’m telling you that a black man in Westchester don’t need a connection with a drug lord.”

“Drug lord? Goddamn it, Clinton. I know you don’t like Frank and I know you’re envious of him. But maybe, just maybe, he’s not guilty.” She threw the napkins on the table. “Every time one of your damn useless White Plains home boys gets busted, you’re telling me about police conspiracies and frame-ups all night long. Now they’re just? Clinton, they didn’t find any drugs next door. I don’t think the man’s involved with drugs. Maybe some bribes, maybe some crooked contracts, but not drugs.”

Jada walked closer to him, but not within arm’s reach. She had let her voice rise. She didn’t want the children to hear this, and she didn’t even want to be having this conversation with Clinton. But she wondered if she should be jeopardizing her marriage and her family for her friendship with a white woman. It occurred to her that Mich probably wouldn’t do it for her.

“You know Michelle,” Jada continued anyway. “You know these children. And you know how much Frank loves them, so just stop it, Clinton. Have some compassion. Would you want to have to bring your children home to this house after uniformed vandals tore it apart? Michelle is over there crying her heart out and cleaning up, and after dinner I’m going over to help her.”

“You are not going over there,” Clinton said, and came around the table and took her hand. He held it hard.

She snapped it out of his grip and held it up in front of her face. “Talk to the palm, Clinton. Because the ears aren’t hearing.” She turned away. “Didn’t you ever hear of due process? Let’s try to be Christians about this, Clinton. Don’t be so holier than thou. You only go to church to meet your lover.”

“Come on, Jada. Frank Russo is the kind of white man who—”

“This has nothing to do with race, Clinton,” Jada snapped. “I don’t know what Frank Russo did or didn’t do. But I know he’s not sleeping around, tearing his family apart. I know he’s not using his church as a singles bar.” All at once her rage rose within her and she felt it pushing words out of her mouth. “You’ve had plenty of time to make your damned decision and I’m tired of waiting for you to make it. I have waited and I hoped that you would make a decision—any decision. But you haven’t. So I have to. If you go down to Tonya’s again, don’t come back Clinton. I mean it. The deadline has long expired.”

“Don’t you threaten me,” Clinton warned her. “You can’t take my children away. You didn’t even want the baby.”

Jada snapped her head back as if she’d been slapped. “Don’t go there,” she said. “I’m not making you give up anything. You’re choosing to leave it, to leave us.”

Clinton moved very close to her, and for a moment his size and the anger she could feel in him frightened her. She didn’t—wouldn’t—let herself take a step backward, away from him, but she was scared, though she hoped it didn’t show. “Don’t you dare go over there tonight,” Clinton said to her.

“Don’t you dare give me orders,” Jada spat right back at him. “Why don’t you give the children their dinner instead? Something useful, instead of stupid threats.” She leaned toward him, just to show him he didn’t scare her. “I listen to God and my conscience before I listen to you. Michelle’s my friend. She would do it for me.” And with that Jada spun around, away from him and out the kitchen door into the relief of the cool darkness.

12

Wherein Angela stops playing hooky and instead gets hooked

Angela was dressed, for the first time in almost a week, in real clothes. She was wearing what she thought of as “a cheap legal suit”—one of those rayon-and-wool blend, navy blue jacket and skirt jobs that was a knock-off of what all the women at her ex-law firm used to wear. This one, though, was a real cheap one. And big. She’d gone up to double digits. You didn’t want your size or your IQ to be there.

Yesterday she had forced herself up and out of the house, and had dragged herself over to Hit or Miss. Now she looked down at herself, sitting behind the wheel of her father’s Dodge Dart, the one he referred to as “the spare.” This outfit certainly couldn’t be called a hit, so it must be a miss. She was a miss now, too. Or on her way to becoming one. An unmarried miss.

She needed the suit, because today she was showing up at the White Plains Women’s Legal Crisis Center. Her mother, definitely for Angela’s own good, had insisted that Angie show up today. She didn’t feel like it, but she didn’t feel like doing anything. She was even tired of lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She hadn’t seen anything good on television, not even on A&E, in the last four or five days. There also wasn’t anything good to eat left at her father’s—she was down to no-fat Snackwell cookies and she’d just as soon eat cardboard, or nothing. She was still miserably unhappy but, she had to admit, she was also bored.

“You have to do something,” her mother had insisted. “Just visit us.” So Angie agreed. It might as well be the Women’s Center, though now, squeezed into the cheesy size ten (she’d been an easy six when she’d boarded the Boston shuttle), and driving this car in this disembodied place she’d never lived in, she longed for the black sofa again.

Angie pulled up to the building off the Post Road, where the WLCC was located. She pulled into the lot. Parking here, she noticed, was a lot different than at her suburban Boston firm, where every car that wasn’t a Lexus was a Volvo. Or a Jaguar or a Mercedes or a BMW, when you talked about the partners. Here the cars looked like automobiles from another culture altogether—people who had to make payments on used cars they couldn’t quite afford. The Dart fit right in. Angie got out of the car and walked past the dented Chevys, the late-model Buicks, the rusted Ford Escorts.

When she got to the lobby, there was no sign, so she had to ask for legal services offices, then walked the stairs to the second floor instead of taking the elevator. What the hell. It would be the first exercise of her new life. She was breathless by the time she got to the top, even though it was only one flight. She, who used to do the Stairmaster for forty-five minutes! Well, she reminded herself, she had just spent several days horizontal.

Now to face Natalie. Angie waited for her breathing to even out. She’d need it to face Natalie. After her divorce, her mother had become all fired up about a whole bunch of things. Angie guessed it was a good thing. Her mom had gone to law school, gotten her degree, and since then had only practiced law for women who were in need. Angie had been inspired, and she was sure one of the reasons she’d gone on to law school was because of her mother. On the other hand, it wasn’t always convenient to have a mother whose priorities were so political.

Hesitantly, suddenly feeling shy, Angie walked into the WLCC office. A black receptionist looked up, but behind her Laura Hampton was looking over some papers.

Laura saw her and smiled. “Oh. Hi, Angela. Good to see you.” Laura walked around the side of the reception counter and kissed her cheek.

Angie liked Laura, the woman who had handled her mom’s divorce and then who had … well, handled her mother. The two women had lived together for almost five years, but had split last Christmas. Angie had never asked why.

Now Laura took Angie’s left hand in both of hers and held it. “I heard from your mother about Reid,” she said, her voice low. “I’m so sorry.”

Angie nodded, then took a quick glance around the waiting room they were standing in. There were two heavy middle-aged women sitting at either end of a battered sofa like a pair of bookends, and a painfully thin Indian woman in a sari sitting at attention in one of the straight-backed chairs on the other side of the room, jingling her bracelets nervously along her arm. Angie’s heart sank. It was as bad as she had pictured it, maybe worse. All three looked drowned in their own misery, but Angie figured at least she didn’t have to share her own. She merely nodded at Laura, who took the hint.

“Where’s my mother?” Angie asked, and felt panic rising.

“Your mother had to show up at court, but just for a little while. She’ll be back in the next hour.” Angie tried to smile, but only managed to nod.

She hung up her coat and followed Laura down a short hallway to a tiny room with only one window high up in the wall. The rest of the room was jammed with metal file cabinets, a battered desk, and two chairs. Papers and files were stacked on every surface. “Karen Levin-Thomas is the attorney who usually works here,” Laura told her. “But she’s in the hospital right now and she’ll be out for a few months. Why don’t you sit here?”

“Take a look at these while you’re waiting for your mom,” Laura had suggested, pleasant and cool and oblivious to Angie’s total emotional collapse. Angie did, and once she’d begun to read through the first fat file she forgot about her surroundings.

Angie wiped the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. But, for the first time in days, they weren’t tears of self-pity. They were tears of pity for others, as well as something else … something frightening that she couldn’t exactly define. It seemed as if the hour or so she’d been in this messy room had stretched into days—or as if she’d been in the room long enough to experience other people’s lifetimes. Angie had looked at file after file. Every one had shocked her; the stories were horrible. They weren’t all betrayals by husbands, though there was a lot of that. There were other betrayals, but almost all of them were betrayals of women by men—men who held power because the women loved them, or men who held power because they were a woman’s boss, or because the court had given them power.

The files raised a lot of questions that Angie couldn’t answer. Except perhaps for one—why she was there. So many of the cases had shocked her with the disservice the legal system had done and the horrors that the women clients were going through: a woman with restraining orders but being stalked by her violent ex-husband nonetheless, another who had lost her house and was living with her children in a shelter while her husband had taken all of their assets and was living in Canada. Deadbeat dads. Several older women bilked by “investment advisors.” Oh, the lists went on and on. Every one of these women couldn’t have had a shoddy lawyer—although there were certainly enough of them to go around.

The women who came here needed help, and Angie realized she could help them. But she’d been avoiding the knowledge for a long, long time. In law school, after graduation, while she looked for a job, when she got engaged to Reid. She’d always known about her mother’s grim work. She just hadn’t wanted to cope with this kind of unfairness. She wanted to have her perfect selfish life, preferably with Reid.

So, now that she wasn’t going to have Needham and Reid, why didn’t she want this? She did feel the injustice, and feel it deeply. But there was something in the way. Difficult as it was, Angie sat with the feeling. And then she recognized that under her pity and compassion, it was a kind of nausea, and she knew it for fear. These grim files, these grim lives, could have been her own. She could wind up as alone and unloved as these women seemed to be. The fear that had been building in her stomach almost rose to her throat. For days and days she had been fighting off the impulse to call Reid again.

She’d tried to think of a million reasons why the Soprano would answer the phone: he could have hired a maid, he could be staying at his parents and a neighbor could be checking on the plants, he could have found a sister who had been missing for thirty years, he could have taken a eunuch as a roommate. More realistically, Angie admitted to herself she could be in denial. Because however far-fetched the reasons, she actually wanted to believe one of them. So far she had resisted the phone and refused the two other deliveries that Reid had sent—another bouquet and something from a bookstore. So far she’d held out.

But now, here, surrounded by lives encased in manila folders, lives that seemed as empty and loveless as hers did, Angie reached for the phone. She dialed her husband’s office number. As the phone rang at the other end she knew she should hang up. She should call Lisa and get talked down, like from a bad acid trip. But the feeling, the compulsion, was so strong she couldn’t control herself.

“Andover Putnam,” the switchboard operator said.

“Reid Wakefield,” Angie requested, and just saying his name aloud sent a shiver all the way down the back of her neck.

Just then the door to the overcrowded little office swung open and her mother walked in. Angie put the phone down quickly, as if she’d been caught with a vibrator instead of a receiver in her hand. She felt her face flush and hoped her mother didn’t notice.

“Having fun?” Natalie asked.

“Fun? I’m so upset I can’t see straight,” Angie admitted. She didn’t have to admit all the reasons she was upset. She took a breath or two and looked down at a couple of the folders. “I mean this Carolyn Stoyers custody case, and the things immigration did to that Vietnamese woman …”

“That’s nothin’,” Natalie said and threw a fat file down on the desk in front of Angie. “Take a look at this one. You want injustice, see what they tried to do to JoAnn Bloom. Too bad Karen got sick,” Natalie said. “But she’s a tough bird. She’ll be back. At least until she’s through chemotherapy.” Angie sat and looked at the folder.

“What happens in the meantime?” Angie asked, finally looking at her mother’s blank face. She knew that her mother was holding out the hook and hoping that it stuck, and she was afraid that maybe it might.

“You know,” Angie said, before her mother could answer, “ever since you and Daddy divorced, I thought you were, well, a little adamant. I know he tried to give you a raw deal, but I just didn’t believe that all women were being given raw deals. I thought that maybe you were … paranoid.”

“You know what William Burroughs used to say, don’t you?” Angie shook her head. ‘“Paranoia is having all the facts.’” Natalie’s gaze swept the room. “Nice office space, huh?” she asked.

Angie looked up at her. “What are you asking?”

“Whether you want to give a few hours of your time to help out.”

“A few hours?” Angie laughed. “It would take my whole life time to fix this.”

“Oh, a lot more than that,” Natalie said. “But you could take a small bite. Just something to chew on while you find your feet.”

Angie knew her mother, knew her strategy, but nodded anyway. She wouldn’t get sucked in forever. Still, she could do this now. She couldn’t go back to Needham.

“Okay,” she said. “But it’s just temporary. It’s just for right now.”

13

In which Michelle cleans up the debris with a little help from her friend

Michelle was on her hands and knees trying to pick the bigger pieces of broken glass out of the carpet. She’d stopped crying a long time ago—sometime after she’d quit looking for Pookie out in the dark, and before she’d tried to put some order into the wreckage of her children’s rooms upstairs. She’d had to settle for eliminating, filling six big garbage bags with all of the torn pillows, smashed toys, broken knickknacks, shredded posters, and other mangled bits and pieces of her two children’s material lives. Frank had helped her put their son’s bunk beds upright but, battered himself and with at least one rib broken, he had at last gone to lay down. Neither she nor Frank wanted the children to see their father’s face tonight, and maybe not tomorrow. It even frightened Michelle. She had put ice on it, but it was really too late for that. He would look frightening for the next week at least.

Michelle knelt there. She thought of the joke Jada always made. She was like Cinderella now, but there was no fairy godmother. She was about to get up from her knees when she saw yet more glass, these shards glinting from under the ottoman. As she reached to extract them she realized she’d used the exact same motion only twenty-four hours ago, though her house had been perfect then and she was only reaching for innocent Legos. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and with both hands now full of broken glass, she couldn’t wipe them away. What was the use, anyhow? she asked herself hopelessly. She’d probably be crying for years. She felt like a car crash victim. How right she’d been. Most accidents did happen in the home.

After the horror of last night, Frank had called a lawyer. The lawyer had gotten her and—after a considerable delay—Frank himself out of jail. The guy, named Rick Bruzeman, was a small very well-dressed man who seemed effective but far from sympathetic. Michelle wanted to tell him how outrageous, how awful the police had been, how she and Frank were innocent, and how this outrage, this unjust invasion should be on the front page of the newspaper. “Don’t worry. It will,” he said, “but not with that spin.” He didn’t seem to want to listen to her. Perhaps he’d heard it all before, and from people who weren’t innocent. What he’d done had been effective and efficient—he’d picked her up, he’d gotten the children released into her care, and he’d gotten Frank’s bail reduced and had him sprung—if that was the word you used for a legal exit from the Westchester Detention Center—but he seemed worse than cold. He seemed professional. He made Michelle feel more like a criminal than the police had.

Now Michelle stood up, the glass still in her hands, the tears still on her cheeks, and looked around again at the destruction. It was incredible, unbelievable. If the police had to search for drugs or whatever they suspected was hidden, did they also have to break, tear, and rip apart everything in their search? She started walking to the garbage bin she had placed in the center of the room and, as she did, her foot crunched against something spread in the carpet.

She looked down. What the hell was this? She crouched and looked more closely. At first she thought that it was potting soil from her corn plant, but then she recognized it was coffee. Coffee? Someone had opened—well, it looked like two or three of her sealed fresh cans of ground coffee, and had not only pawed through the stuff, but then thrown it onto the floor here. It had already sunk down into the weft of the carpet, but in some places it was thick enough to form little hills. Ironically she wondered if maybe Frankie would like to use the setting for his action figures—it would make a realistic battleground diorama.

She rose again, threw the glass into the garbage, and looked around. Framed pictures had been pulled off the walls, the canvases torn, the frames broken. The big mirror beside the credenza had been cracked. The contents of every drawer and cabinet had been pulled out and were lying now in mounds on the floor. There wasn’t an upholstered piece of furniture that hadn’t had its guts pulled apart, its cushions torn. Empty, the cushion covers now lay on the floor like giant crumpled condoms.

It was a nasty image, but there was something almost brutally sexual about all this, Michelle thought as she went for the Dustbuster. Her home had been rent apart. She felt almost as if she’d been invaded or raped. And look what it had done to Frank and her children. She’d pull it together as best she could, but the cracks and tears and dirt couldn’t be erased.

She looked past the dining room table into the hallway. She knew she should go outside and bring in her chairs, the chairs that were sitting in her front yard like drunken relatives advertising her family’s tragedy. She should also go out again and look for Pookie. But the fact was, she didn’t have the courage to do it. She had felt the neighbors’ eyes on her when she was outside. Anyway, she had to get this place decently cleaned up before the children could come in, but the task was so overwhelming that she didn’t know exactly what to do next.

So, instead of pulling out a new box of trash bags, she turned around and walked back up the stairs, passed the children’s emptied and scarred rooms, and into the master bedroom. Frank, one eye blackened, both cheeks bruised, was lying on the bed, perhaps lightly dozing. She should let him try to recuperate, but she couldn’t. As she got onto the bed, he opened his eyes. That was all she needed—to see his dark, pained eyes staring into hers—to start her crying again. “Oh, Frank, it’s so horrible. They’ve destroyed us, Frank.”

“No, they haven’t,” he told her and put his right arm out and around her. He winced with the pain of moving, but his arm felt so good on her shoulder and back. He soothed her while she wept against his side. “Michelle, babe, they attacked us. But they didn’t destroy us,” he said in his deepest, most serious voice. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know who decided to pull this horrible bullshit on us, but I’ll find out and I’ll take care of it, babe. I swear I will. We got the best lawyer. They busted us and there was nothing here. Nothing.” She nodded, her head now against his chest. “Thank God they didn’t plant something here.” Michelle shuddered at the thought. “We’ll sue the town, we’ll sue the county, we’ll sue the state. Keep a list of everything torn or broken. They’ll pay.” He looked at her. “They didn’t hurt you? They didn’t touch you?”

“No. No,” she answered him.

“They’ll pay. A few people will pay in other ways, too. I swear it, Michelle.”

“But why, Frank? How could they—”

“I don’t know, babe. But I’ll find out. Bruzeman is connected. He’s expensive but he’s worth it.” Michelle didn’t want to tell him how she felt about Bruzeman. “Maybe it was because of that shopping center deal,” Frank mused. “I don’t know. But they didn’t destroy us. They didn’t touch you, did they? Nobody at the police station touched you?”

She shook her head. “But look at what they did to you, Frank. And the children. They—”

Frank’s hand tightened on her back. “Fuck those corrupt bastards.”

“They’ve ruined the furniture, Frank. My chairs. The sofa. They wrecked the carpet and … Pookie’s gone. He doesn’t come when I call him. And the neighbors …”

“He’ll come back, don’t you worry. And tomorrow you go out and buy new furniture,” Frank told her. “You hear me? Get what you want, what they can deliver immediately. Furniture doesn’t make a family. And keep that list, Mich. Write down everything that’s been spoiled. We’ll get it all back. We all stick together, nothing can hurt us.” He moved his hand to her cheek and cupped it gently. “You know I would never do anything like drug dealing, Michelle. You know that, don’t you?”

Michelle looked at his bruised face and nodded. “We stick together and nobody can hurt us,” Frank repeated. He leaned forward and kissed her. Then he put her head against his shoulder and gingerly leaned his cheek against her hair, as if its cool glow could comfort his throbbing cheek.

Michelle rested there, against his strength, until his breaths deepened and evened out. Then, much comforted, she went back downstairs to again deal with the wreckage.

“Oh my God!” Jada felt like bursting into tears, but looking at Mich’s face she knew she had to keep it light. “Have you been decorating again?” She asked and shook her head. “Um, um, um. Martha Stewart doesn’t live here, Cindy. How could they have done this to a white girl’s house?” Jada looked around the room. “Sweet Jesus, help us.”

Michelle was tugging out yet another bag of garbage. “If Jesus decides to help, tell him to bring more trash bags,” she said.

Jada shook her head at the irreverence and put down one of the dining room chairs she had carried in. “I’ll go get the others,” she said.

“Have you seen Pookie around your house?” Michelle asked, though she didn’t have much hope.

“He’s gone? I saw him running up the street the night the police were here.” Jada touched Michelle’s arm. “God, I’m sorry. The kids must be …” She shook her head. “Man, this does look like an accident scene.”

“Well, you know what I always say …” Michelle began to make a joke, but she couldn’t finish. She was moved that her girlfriend had crossed that horrible line of tattered yellow police tape and was here beside her, that she understood her. Michelle wasn’t stupid, even if she didn’t have a college education. She knew that on their quiet, deserted-looking block there were eyes from every house surveying hers. Everyone was constantly assessing and reassessing property values. Would the pocket park refurbishment upgrade the value of their lot? Would the rise in school tax lower the selling price of their house? What, she wondered, did a drug bust next door do? Probably it depressed house values almost as much as it depressed her.

Michelle didn’t know if she’d ever be able to stand in her yard again, waving at Mr. Shriber when he slowly jogged by or saluting passing neighbors’ cars. And for Jada, a woman who had worked so hard to find acceptance for her family here, to ignore all those invisible but watching eyes and step over the line, well … Michelle felt herself choke up. It was more than what she should expect, but she didn’t want to collapse and show Jada just how bad she felt, how bad it was. She supposed she didn’t have to. Jada’s eyes, open wide, showed that she knew.

“I’m so sorry to drag you into this,” Michelle began. “I know you have your own problems.”

“There’s sure enough to go around,” Jada agreed, beginning to pick up debris.

Michelle felt suddenly guilty. She hadn’t even asked Jada what was going on with Clinton. God. There were enough troubles to go around.

“Did you finally talk to Clinton?”

Jada nodded as she began to pick up torn paper. “I told him he had to make his mind up by the end of the week or I was going to get an attorney.”

“Oh, Jada. I can’t get over it. How could he?” Michelle tied a twist wire around her trash and shook her head. “He’s gone crazy on you.”

“Crazy? Forget Clinton! You should see Tonya. She thinks Clinton’s a catch! Is she going to support him? The ridiculous way she likes to dress up, she can’t support herself. She’s a fool from Martinique, who gets herself confused with the Empress Josephine.” Jada opened the last trash bag and began to throw stuff into it, including the box it had come in. Garbage made garbage. Kind of like Tonya having children.

“You mean she’s the one I met at your church pageant?” Michelle asked in disbelief. “The one with the hat, and the awful hennaed hair? No!”

“Uh huh.” Jada snorted again, bent over, and threw some sofa stuffing into her trash bag. “I want you to believe me when I tell you I’m not jealous. I don’t want to sleep with him. But he’s my husband and he is committed to the family or he’s out the door. I just can’t get over his bad taste. You’d think fifteen years with a man would improve that. I weaned him off Colt 45 and got him drinking Budweiser. I threw out that Peach Glow hair dressing and taught him Paul Mitchell gels. But the man’s heading right back to funky Yonkers.”

“Forget him. How did the kids seem to you?” Michelle asked.

“A little shaken up,” Jada admitted. “But who wouldn’t be? This wasn’t a search, it was a vendetta.” She surveyed the visible damage as she swiveled her head around.

“It was worse,” Michelle said. “You should have seen it before I picked up the first eleven bags of garbage.”

Jada shook her head. “These men were out to find something,” she said. “And you mean to tell me they didn’t? Hell, you tear my house apart like this, you’re gonna find a marijuana seed left over from the sixties.” She shook her head again and bit her lips. “Um-um,” she said. “I didn’t know police ever did a job like this on white people.”

“Frank says they were out to get him.”

“Looks like they did get him, from the picture,” Jada said.

“What picture?” Michelle asked.

Jada shook her head and held up both her hands. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said. She got real close to Michelle and took her by the shoulders. “I know you’re not a church-goer, Michelle, but this is a time when everybody needs to fall back on God, because it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“I fell back on Frank,” Michelle said. “And it can’t get worse than this,” she added, looking at the ransacked rooms.

Jada sighed. “Please God, I hope so. But people can be really, really cruel. And the courts can be worse than the cops. Believe me, I know plenty of people in White Plains who’ve been through it. Innocent people. And some guilty ones who still didn’t deserve to be treated like dog shit.” She let go of Michelle’s shoulders but patted her gently on the back for a moment. “Okay, honey, that was my version of a pep talk. Now let’s clean this place up the best we can before the kids have to get in here.”

Michelle looked at her friend. “Should I keep them home from school tomorrow?” she asked. “Let them recover for a day, or would it be worse to do that?”

Jada thought of Anne at the bank and her morbid curiosity, even pleasure, at Michelle’s bad luck. “Kids can be cruel,” Jada said. “Real mean. But you figure, if they have to face it, they might as well face it on Monday.”

14

In which Jada clears up and goes home to find Clinton’s cleared out

When Jada got back to her own house it was well past three A.M. She was dead beat. She and Michelle had filled more than twenty bags of trash, vacuumed the entire downstairs, put away the still-operational appliances, pots, and pans, thrown out all the broken china and other smashed bits from the kitchen, then swept and washed its floor. The house hadn’t looked really good, but it had lost some of its nightmare quality.

Jada, home at last, took her shoes off and put them on the mat by the door. The little area there was supposed to be a mud room, but Clinton had not finished the job. The floor was plywood and the slate for it lay where the bench and cabinet to hold boots and shoes should be. Jada, way too exhausted to be annoyed, took her coat off and put it across the back of a kitchen chair. Although she yelled at Clinton and the kids for doing the same thing, she was too tired to hang it up now. All she wanted was some sleep.

Cleaning up the wreckage next door had not only been physically exhausting but also emotionally draining. And it had frightened Jada. Somehow, despite her own massive problems, it had seemed that most other people’s lives were more secure. Ha! She knew that everything was in God’s hands, but to see Michelle’s home destroyed, her husband beaten, and her children paralyzed with fear frightened Jada, too.

She thought of Anne and the other girls at the bank. Two of them were single mothers and she knew that, like her, they lived from paycheck to paycheck She looked around her unfinished mud room and plywood kitchen floor. At one time she’d been proud of Clinton. She’d seen him as a builder, as a man who took action and made people and things come together. But now he was tearing them down and apart. Well, she had to try and be grateful. She said a short thanksgiving prayer. Things could always be so much worse.

She walked up the stairs as quietly as she could and passed the door of the baby’s room. That was one job Clinton had finished. He’d painted the room and built a changing table for Sherrilee. He’d even put her name on the door. Now Jada pushed it open and poked her head into the room for just a minute, only to check. But Sherrilee wasn’t there. She hoped that Clinton hadn’t let Jenna and Shavonne sleep with her. Walking more quickly to Shavonne’s door, she looked in. Jenna lay curled on one side of Shavonne’s double bed, but neither Shavonne nor Sherrilee was there.

That was strange, Jada thought, but perhaps they’d both crawled into bed with their daddy, though Shavonne didn’t do that much anymore. Of course, Shavonne could have had one of her frequent fights with Jenna and wanted to get away. Jada walked down the hall. Somehow this didn’t feel right. Not at all. But, she told herself, she was probably just spooked by the problems next door. Still, she couldn’t stop herself using unusual force.

She got to the door of their bedroom and threw it open. Nothing’s wrong, she told herself, but something was. No baby, no Shavonne, no Clinton. Only a note, lying in the middle of the unmade bed. Frightened, Jada strode over to it and snatched it up.

Jada,

I have made my decision. I have taken the children and I am leaving you. Your work schedule, your attitudes, and now your friendship with undesirables has led me to believe that you are not only a bad wife but also a bad mother. You will hear from my attorney, George Creskin and Associates. My children told me they didn’t want to stay with those drug kids.

Clinton

Jada’s eyes ran over the page a second time. Then a third. Clinton didn’t write like this. What was this? Was he insane? Her heart began to beat so fast that it felt like a thumping on the outside of her chest. She didn’t care. She didn’t matter. She ran to Kevon’s room and pulled the door ajar, but only Frankie was sleeping on the bottom bunk. She turned and ran back out into the hallway. She threw open the door of the linen closet where they kept their suitcases and backpacks. All the bags were gone. Like some kind of mad thing, she ran back into Shavonne’s room and slid open the closet door. Many empty hangers greeted her. She turned and pulled open the drawers of Shavonne’s bureau: underwear, socks, and T-shirts were gone. Gone. And her children gone, too.

Now, crazy with fear, she ran back down the hall to her own room. All of Clinton’s shoes were missing, along with his two good suits and his leather jacket. He was a madman! A madman! He had taken her children. Did he think that she would stand for this? Did he think that she had scrambled and worked the way she had so that he could take their family and walk out of the house? And what the hell would he do with them, with her children, now that he had them? He didn’t even take care of them here. Clinton had nowhere to go. How would he pay for a hotel, a baby-sitter? He had no job, no money, no help. He wasn’t even on good terms with his mother—hadn’t been since they married.

She began to run down the bedroom hall, but at the top of the stairs it all hit her. She stopped and stood statue-still. A fear deeper than any she had ever known hit Jada in the chest so hard that she had to sit down on the top step, one long leg tucked under her. Who should she call? What should she do? She put a hand up to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream out loud. There were two children still sleeping in the house, though they weren’t hers.

She couldn’t call the police—this wasn’t a police matter, was it? She couldn’t call a lawyer at this time of night. Anyway, she didn’t know a lawyer. Her mother and father were in Barbados, and neither was young anymore. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, shock them with this.

Jada’s right hand clutched the railing of the banister as she sat at the top of the stairs, frozen. Clinton couldn’t do this to her. Surely he didn’t hate her this much. And the children: would they willingly leave her? Had he forced the kids to go? Had he lied to them? Jada shook her head back and forth as if trying to shake the reality out. But it wouldn’t go.

Her marriage was over. That was clear. Her family was broken, but Jada knew she would find her babies, bring them home, and save them. This house and those children were what she had sacrificed her life to and no one was going to take them away. She was still strong enough to make sure of that.

But now, in the darkness at the top of the staircase, Jada lowered her head to her knees and quietly began to sob.

15

Containing a visit to Marblehead by a marble-head

“You want, I’ll come with you,” Tony offered again as he dropped Angela at the shuttle. “You don’t have to do this. And you sure don’t have to do it alone. I can postpone my business trip, and I’d love to come.”

“I need to go alone, Daddy,” Angela told him, and patted his arm. “Mom offered to come with me, and I could have made a big deal out of it, but I’d rather just get in and get out. For my stuff. Reid can keep the stereo and the blender. I’m just getting some of my clothes, my pictures … you know.”

“He going to be there?” Tony growled. “Because that son-of-a—”

“He doesn’t even know I’m coming,” Angela assured her father. “I’m not going up there to see him. Don’t worry. He’s a sick puppy and he’s out of my life. I just want my own clothes.” She looked down at her cheap lawyer’s suit.

“Okay. So you got the movers all set up like I told you?”

“Yeah,” she said, and gathered up her purse and her scarf. “Just two guys with some boxes and a van. They go back and forth between Boston and New York all the time and they’ll bring the stuff down to your house next week.”

Anthony Romazzano nodded and bent awkwardly across the bucket seat to hug her. “Okay, baby,” he said. As Angie started to get out of the car, he added, “You sure you don’t want a limo to take you?” She shook her head. “Do you need any cash?”

Angela nodded. She hated accepting his offer, but she was really pretty strapped. Tony handed her a few hundred dollar bills and a credit card with her name on it.

“Just in case,” he said. Her eyes teared up. She bent her head to look into the front seat of the car. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

“No problem,” he answered. “And you’ll be home tonight?”

“Absolutely,” she told him. “I might see Lisa for a drink before I leave, but I’ll call your machine if I do.”

Angela was early, so when the plane started to board she got one of the bulkhead seats near the window. At eleven A.M., the shuttle wasn’t packed, though the flights at seven, eight, and nine must have been jammed. When the doors closed the seat beside her was still empty. She crossed her legs.

She wasn’t one hundred percent sure why she was going to do this thing—a sort of cat burglary cum/slash-and-burn operation. She hadn’t told Lisa, nor Reid. She didn’t have to tell him. She was determined not to touch his stuff. Anything that was his or theirs was repugnant to her, but she wanted to remove any trace of her that had existed there, to be sure he knew she was gone forever.

Angie had always felt that a space took on the attributes of the person or people who lived there—even if they didn’t want it to. Her father’s new house seemed as desolate and lost as he did. It was the house of a family man who’d lost his family. Her mother’s place seemed worse in a way. But Angela remembered the apartment they had all lived in back when they’d been a family. It had been crowded with warmth—well-used pots in the kitchen, throw pillows on all the stuffed furniture, family pictures and drawings and report cards and mementos everywhere. It had been a comfortable place. She’d begun to make a place like that for Reid. But now she’d never finish the job.

This was going to be harder than she’d realized. The more Angie thought about it, the more she was convinced she needed help. The only person she knew of who could help her was Lisa. Angie lifted up the handset in the seat and slid through her credit card, then punched in the number. She hoped Lisa wasn’t out of the office. Lisa’s voice mail picked up. Shit. Well, she’d just leave a message and hope that Lisa wasn’t spending the day at a deposition or something.

Angie guessed it was better than having a secretary answer the phone, though if one had, she could go looking for Lisa. But the secretaries were all gossips. God knows what they were saying about her disappearance. They had always eyed Reid when he picked her up at work, and she’d bet that they were talking about this now, if they knew. Did they take Lisa’s voice mail messages or did Lisa do it herself? Angie decided to be very discreet.

“Lisa,” Angie said to the machine. “I don’t know when you’ll get this, but I have a favor to ask of you for today. I’ll call you in about an hour.” She hung up, pressed END to finish the call, then wondered if Lisa would recognize her voice because she hadn’t mentioned her name. She slid the phone back into its casing and slumped against the wall of the plane, staring out the window at the clouds.

All at once her energy had deserted her. This was going to be harder than she’d expected. Going back there, seeing their home, their hopes, their bed. Well, she’d have two strong Irish lads to help her, she’d do it as quickly as she could, and maybe, maybe Lisa would be able to show up. But it occurred to her that if she could just see Reid one more time, she might have closure. If she could speak to him and tell him how he’d ruined a part of her forever, she might feel better. She might get the weight of this shock off her back, even if it wasn’t dignified.

Somehow the idea of seeing Reid gave her a nervous energy despite her exhaustion. She pulled the phone out of the handset again, fumbled for her credit card, and called him. God, she hoped it wouldn’t list this number when her dad got the bill. He’d wig out. Definitely.

Reid’s secretary, an older woman named Shirley, answered. When Angie asked for him, Shirley asked who was calling, please. Angie noticed, for the first time, how high-pitched her voice was. For a moment she wondered if Shirley was the Soprano. But she’d seen Shirley. Shirley was really old. Angie had to mouth the words ‘his wife’ as coldly as she could just to get through it.

“Oh,” Shirley said, obviously startled, but she was wise enough not to say anything else.

Angie heard the tiny click as she was put on hold, but she was only on hold for a moment. Then Reid’s voice was in her ear.

“Angie? Is it really you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh God, Angela. I thought I’d never get to speak to you again. I thought that—where are you calling from?”

“I’m on a plane,” Angela said and, oddly, that made her feel a lot more confident. It sounded so glamorous, calling him from a plane in her busy life. For a moment she wished she could say she was on a plane on her way to Rio, or some place even more exotic.

“Angie,” he said. “Thank you for calling me.” He paused and she could actually hear him swallow. “I know what I did was inexcusable …”

What he did? How about what he was still doing? When Angie heard the past tense, she wondered about her calls to the Soprano. Was it possible that it was past tense? Angie, get a grip, she told herself. God, what was she thinking about? What did it matter? She looked across the aisle of the plane to see if anyone could overhear her. It was crazy to have this conversation in such a public place.

“Yes, it was,” she said. “It was inexcusable because it hurt me in a way nothing ever will again. I let myself be open to that and you never, ever should have taken advantage of my trust.”

“Angie,” he said again.

He said it in a way that nobody else did. His voice had the sound of his desire in it. He was the only one, the only man who had ever made her feel beautiful and loved. The idea that she would never feel that way again was unbearable, and Angela closed her eyes against it.

“Angie, listen. This may be the most important talk we’ll ever have. I see now how stupid I was, telling you what I did. How I did. But Angie, Ange …” He paused. “I did it to clean the slate. I did it to tell the truth and make things right between us for the rest of our lives. I promise, Angie.”

She was silent; her eyes were closed but a hot tear escaped from the corner of one of them.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

“Yes,” she managed to say.

“Thank God. Listen, I love you. I’ll always love you. And nothing like this will ever happen again. I give you my word.” He paused. “Don’t punish me for telling the truth.”

She told herself she should ask him about the Soprano. That she should curse him and hang up. That she should …

“Ange, don’t move out. Move back in. Please,” he said.

“The flight is landing now,” she told him. “I have to hang up.”

“Landing where?” he asked and she heard the desperation in his voice. She had hurt him by walking out, by not speaking to him until now, and she was glad. “Where are you?”

“I’ll be in Boston,” she admitted. “But just for a few hours. I am going to stop by and pick up a few of my things.”

“Boston! Angie, I—”

“I hope you have no objection,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. Then she hung up.

In the taxi on the way to Marblehead, Angela put on her makeup. Her face looked good. Her round blue eyes, with just a little mascara, perked right up. The sleeping she’d done had actually improved her face and her excitement had given her color—she didn’t need any blusher. She took out a dark lipstick, then decided on a pinker color.

Her hair was a total loss. She should have made an appointment with Shear Madness before she’d left New York. She fluffed her hair as best she could, hoping it would do.

She had called the movers from Logan, confirmed they were on their way, and had left another message on Lisa’s voice mail telling her that she was going to the apartment. In a way, she hoped that Lisa didn’t show, because she was hoping that Reid would.

Angie nervously palmed the key to their condo. It had become hot in her damp hand. She looked out at the grim November landscape. What was she doing? This was insanity.

Was there still a chance, the smallest chance that Reid might somehow make it all right? She knew it was possible to live without him, hurt and empty, but going on. Was it still possible that there might yet be a way for her to live with him?

She wasn’t thinking anymore. She had her plan. Just get her stuff. If Reid appeared, she’d simply see what happened next.

“Wait a minute,” Angie said as she pushed at the door. “I think I accidentally double-locked it.” The key was slick with her sweat. She turned to Sean and Thomas, the two handsome, young Irish immigrants who were helping with the move.

“Want some help?” Sean asked, his eyes open wide with the question, his lilt delightful.

Angle’s fingers slipped again on the key. It had occurred to her that Reid might have changed the locks, but she didn’t like to think about that. And he hadn’t said anything over the phone. She tried the door again.

Her heart pounded. She was an attorney, she reminded herself. What she was doing was not illegal. Until the divorce action was filed and a settlement was drawn up, this place and its contents were as much hers as Reid’s. She told herself that, but her hands and now her armpits were sweating. Her stomach flip-flopped. Suddenly she felt so sick that she thought she might vomit. She tried to take some deep breaths but the nausea didn’t go away.

Why wasn’t the door opening? At last she remembered that the door was a little warped and had to be pulled in as the lock was disengaged. She did it, and the welcome sound of the spring opening allowed her to push the door in. “Here we are,” she said and hoped that the panic she’d felt wasn’t showing on her face.

She stepped into her own living room as a stranger, but very little had changed. Well, she’d only been gone a week. She looked at the denim sofa they’d bought at Pottery Barn, the long table near the window that she’d ordered through a Crate & Barrel catalog sale. She’d leave all of that, even if she’d paid for part of it. Don’t think about Reid, she told herself. All she was interested in were her really personal possessions.

“Open some of the book boxes,” she told the movers. She went over to the shelves, pointing. “All of these and all of these,” she told them. “I’ll come back and look at that shelf later. And if one of you could make a couple of wardrobe boxes up, I’ll need them in the bedroom.”

Sean nodded and passed a glance to Thomas. Were they realizing now what kind of an operation this was? Did they have a lot of divorced-women break-up scenes as a part of their ongoing business? Without wondering anymore, Angie left them and went into her bedroom.

It surprised her that the bed was unmade. Of course, she had always been the one to make it, but she thought that Reid needed things neat. The whole room, in fact, looked disheveled. Not dirty, but messy, with clothes on the floor, newspapers and piles of magazines strewn randomly.

Then something about the room hit Angie almost like a force field. For a moment she felt as if she were trying to move underwater, or as if the air had solidified and was heavy on her shoulders, her arms, her chest. Her stomach tightened and she felt her nausea return. This room, where she had been so happy, felt very, very threatening. It made her somehow feel deeply sorrowful—sorry in a way that sapped her anger. She knew that both of them had been happy here. How wasteful that that happiness had been destroyed.

Angie did a quick visual inventory; she would only take the things around the room that were hers. She began to collect them, cradling them in her arms like groceries off the shelf in a convenience store. Her perfume, the two stone turtles Reid had bought her in Mexico, the Rosenthal bud vase she kept by the side of the bed. She didn’t like to actually touch the bedclothes, but as she snatched up the throw pillow she’d had since college—the one with the beaded flowers—she nearly dropped everything else.

She called for Sean to bring in a box. He did, and she filled it with the knickknacks. Then she went into the bathroom and filled another box with her deodorant, makeup, hair dryer, brushes, and her other nonsense. She didn’t want any of the stuff, but she certainly wasn’t going to leave her tampons or spray gel for the Soprano—or any other strange woman Reid might march through here.

She stopped for a moment and looked at herself in the mirror. Her mascara had smudged on one side of her lashes, and she stopped to fix it and brush her hair. While she was at it, she might as well put on fresh lipstick. She studied herself in the mirror. “You’re hoping he’ll come,” she said, and the face there nodded at her. “You’re disgusting,” she said aloud, just as Sean came back into the bedroom. He heard her.

“Excuse me?” he said.

Embarrassed, she told him it was nothing. He smiled, and gave her an appreciative once-over. She must look better than she thought. “I need that wardrobe box over here,” she added, and slid open the closet. She began stuffing dresses, suits, and jackets into the wardrobe box, pushing them against each other to pack them tightly. But it seemed that there were more clothes than she remembered. She noticed a blue silk dress because it stood out from the usual brown and beige and red that she wore. She took it out and held it away from her, her other arm weighted down with a load of clothes on hangers. Angie looked it over and dropped her own clothes on the floor.

“Here, let me help,” Sean said, thinking her action had been accidental and picking up the dumped outfits.

Angie, as if from a long distance away, murmured her thanks. Then, with the blue dress over her arm, she walked back into the bathroom. She closed the door behind her, locked it, and hung the dress on the hook beside the tub. She sat down on the closed toilet seat and stared at the dress. It wasn’t hers. It had never been hers. And even if Reid was a transvestite, the dress wasn’t his, either. It must have been a size four. Angie stared at the evil little dress.

It must be the Soprano’s. Had Reid already invited her to live with him? Angie and Reid had been separated for less than a month. Could it be that?

Angie left the dress there and walked back into the bedroom. Sure enough, there in the closet was a jacket, a couple of pairs of unfamiliar jeans, two blouses—one white, one blue—and a gray business suit. Below them there were four pairs of shoes, neatly lined up: two pairs of pumps, one black, one navy; a pair of Reeboks, and another pair of flats. Angie crouched down. They were size seven-and-a-half. She picked up one of the black pumps and caressed the suede. Suddenly, squatting there on the floor, Angie felt as if her heart might break.

“I’ll take this one out to the hall,” Sean said, holding the full wardrobe box. “Shall I bring in the other?”

Angie turned her face to him and nodded.

“You know, I’d wondered if … well, before we start up the truck, you’d like to have a beer with me?” Sean asked. “That is, if you drink with the help.”

Angie smiled. He was cute, with Irish dimples. But she had other things to think about right now, though she appreciated the compliment.

“I’m married,” she said. Sean raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He left her alone and she got up, still holding the pump, and sat on the little chair in the corner, the one she had taken from her old room. She gripped it with both hands, as if she might be thrown out of it. The shoe lay like a dead thing on her lap. She was taking this chair, she thought. It and everything and getting out.

She couldn’t understand what Reid was. She could, perhaps, understand how he might have cheated on her, and even changed his mind and wanted her back. Maybe giving her the ring had been a sincere gesture. But what she couldn’t understand was how he could have told her he wanted her, that he wanted to renew their vows, and go on immediately to start living with another woman in just a few weeks’ time. Had he ever loved her? Would any partner do? Had she merely been a Reid Wakefield accessory, like his golf clubs, his squash rackets, his navy blazers?

The realization that she had called him, opening a door, horrified her. How embarrassing, how weak. Her face flushed deeply. He might yet show up. It was the last thing she wanted. God, she had better get out of here fast.

Angie stood up and called out to Sean. “I’m taking this,” she said, meaning the chair, when Reid walked into the bedroom.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Thank God you’re home.”

“I’m not home,” Angie said. “I’m packing to go back there.”

She couldn’t help but be stunned by how tall, how really beautiful he was. The too-long bones and the too-broad shoulders should have made him hulking, but there was some innate grace, some trick of movement he’d been given, that made him seem graceful. She pulled her thoughts away from his looks, or her attraction to them, although it was difficult to do. Her stomach tightened yet again. She thought she might actually be sick

Reid took only one step into the room. “Please, Angie,” he said. “Tell me you want to stay here.”

“Like hell I will,” Angie said and pointed into the closet. “Why would I? So she and I could both share the bathroom with you? Just tell me if she’s the one you’ve been sleeping with all year, or if she’s some new one.”

Angie hated how she sounded—shrewish and, underneath it, so obviously hurt. But what else could she do except try to be a true Wakefield and keep her mouth shut? Forget about that. Reid moved toward her and she took a step backward, stumbling against the chair. Just then Sean stuck his head in.

“We finished with the books,” he said. “What’s next?”

“The coffee table and the two blue lamps,” she told him, her eyes never leaving her husband’s face. Sean quickly looked from her to Reid and didn’t say a word. Once he had disappeared, Reid took another step toward her.

“Angie, please. Pay absolutely no attention to that. I know it was wrong, and stupid. It’s just that I was so lonely without you.” He sat down at the edge of their bed.

The thing about Reid, she realized, was there was a certain attractive childishness about him. Perhaps if he wasn’t so good looking, he wouldn’t seem as sweet and vulnerable. But to see a sexy, handsome, tall man admit to his weaknesses, to fess up to his fears as Reid had always done, was, in a way, deeply moving to Angie. Like a child, Reid was controlled by his feelings. Maybe that had made her feel powerful. Or maybe it had given her the false feeling that she alone had pierced the shell of his perfection.

“You don’t know what it’s been like. Just when I realized how empty, how shallow I was, and that your love was the only thing that mattered, you left me.” He had his head in his hands, but then cocked it toward the closet. “I’ve only been trying to hold it together,” he said. “I can’t concentrate. I can’t eat. I’m drinking half a bottle of Scotch each night. I feel like shit. I mean, I know I am a shit, but I also feel like shit all the time.” He looked at her and his lashes were wet. “Nothing works for me, except you. And you took yourself away.”

Yes. His naiveté was attractive. The thing was, Reid probably meant what he said. But he had probably meant what he had said to whomever the Soprano was. Somehow his simplicity was duplicity. He was so vulnerable.

“So you asked your girlfriend to move in—even though you don’t want her,” Angie said, and took the suede pump in her hand and chucked it at him as hard as she could. It hit his chest, but he’d got his hands up fast enough to ward off most of the impact. That was Reid—never really without some protection. Angie couldn’t help shaking her head. What a stupid, ineffectual woman weapon—throwing a size seven-and-a-half black suede pump at your soon-to-be-ex’s heart. Why not a .38-caliber bullet, one of the kind that was scored on top so it would explode once it hit its target?

Reid rose from the bed, dropped the shoe, and moved across the room to her. All at once, it felt to Angie as if everything went in slow motion—as Reid walked closer, he seemed to get farther away. She didn’t know if she wanted him beside her or out of the room, out of the building, out of her life. She couldn’t move. She felt as if minutes, maybe hours, were going by as he took one step, then another, toward her. At last he was in front of her, so close that she could smell the laundry scent coming from his shirt. He stood silently before her, but even if they didn’t speak in words, she felt every cell in her body drawn to him. Was this, she wondered irrelevantly, what they called animal magnetism?

Finally he spoke. “I love you, Ange. I swear I do. If you forgive me, you’ll never regret it.”

Angie leaned her head against his shoulder, and his arm gently, so gently, tightened around her. “I gave away the ring you gave me,” Angie said.

“I’ll get you another one,” Reid assured her.

“I told my parents what you did,” Angie told him.

“I’ll spend the rest of my life living with the shame.” Gently, tenderly, he stroked her hair. She couldn’t help but shiver. Her face was fine, her hair was fine, all of her was fine. Her mind went blank and that was a relief. Any guilt, any doubt she had, she ignored.

It felt so good to be sheltered in his arms. Angie wanted to rub first one cheek and then the other against his chest, the way cats did to mark their territory.

The Soprano meant nothing to him. Maybe this whole bizarre time could be written off, forgotten. Maybe it was just a lapse and Reid had learned a lesson. But at the moment Angie couldn’t think. This wasn’t about thinking.

There was some noise out in the living room, the sound of something toppling over, but thudding, not crashing. One of the men yelled something, and then a woman’s voice answered him. Angie froze. It couldn’t be. It was. The voice. The Soprano.

The door swung open and Lisa stood there. Angie, feeling caught out and guilty, took a step back from her husband. Reid took a step back from her as well. “What the hell is going on?” Lisa asked, clearly furious as she looked from Angie to Reid.

Angie felt ashamed. After all, she’d burned up hours of Lisa’s time talking about how she hated this man. She stared at Lisa, who looked very, very good; her hair was blonder, and she seemed taller and thinner than ever. “You got my message,” Angie began, but at the same time Reid said, “How did you—”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Lisa said to Reid.

“It’s my house,” he answered, defensive as a child.

“Lisa, it’s okay,” Angie said. “We’ve started to talk things over.”

“The hell you are,” Lisa said, still looking at Reid. “I ought to report you to the department of narcissism. They’d come right in here and shut you two down.”

“What are you talking about?” Angie asked.

“Oh, shut up,” Lisa said, violently. “Do you know how sick I am of listening to you whine?” She looked at Reid. “What do you think you’re doing to me?” she asked.

It took that long for Angie to get it. But then she did—big time. She looked from Reid, who averted his eyes, to Lisa, who stared insolently at her. The blue dress, the shoes, the advice to stay away—now it all made sense. Size four. The Soprano. Why, in all those hours of talking, of complaining and bitching, had she never noticed Lisa’s voice? Angie shook her head, pushed past Lisa, and walked out into the living room. “That’s it,” she told Sean and Thomas. “Wrap it up. I’m out of here.”

16

In which Michelle, Brownie Queen, has to let them eat cake

Michelle hadn’t been able to sleep since the bust. She was exhausted, but every time she started to drift off, she’d start awake, a cold sweat covering her. She couldn’t stop her mind from racing. She didn’t want to wake up Frank, so she shuffled down to the kitchen and decided to straighten up the cubicles that held mail, magazines, and Frankie’s school papers. There she found a neon green paper with the reminder of the bake sale that was being held today during all lunch periods. Bake sales were always the best fund-raiser, she decided she’d bake. Making brownies at three-thirty in the morning wasn’t exactly a normal thing to do, but she needed to do something.

Michelle had to admit to herself as she measured out the dry ingredients—flour, sugar, walnuts—and the eight eggs for the four pans she would make, that baking had a soothing effect on her. As the aroma of chocolate filled the kitchen, she was grateful for the roteness and optimism of the task.

Now Michelle walked up to the front door of the Eleanor S. Windham Middle School with one hand tightly clutching Frankie’s and the other hand holding a huge box of her homemade brownies. Frankie was beside her, but Jenna had run ahead to make it less clear that she’d been driven here by her mom; she was already old enough to be humiliated by being seen at any time with her mother at school, and this was a much more abnormal situation.

Michelle was doing her best to recover and help her kids recover from the horror of the arrest, but she wasn’t even sure that driving Jenna over was the thing to do; she and Frank were part of the problem for Jenna, so perhaps she shouldn’t expect that she could be part of the solution. Normally she thought kids should learn to stand up for themselves. But this wasn’t a normal situation. She couldn’t let her daughter be picked on by the bus bullies because of her parents’ legal problem. It was too much.

Michelle knew how cruel kids could be from her own experience—once or twice her mother had shown up to pick her up at school and Michelle, horrified by the sight of her, drunk and slovenly, had prayed that she would live it down. Afterward there had been taunts and Michelle had simply braved it out, pretending that she didn’t hear them. But she was altogether tougher than Jenna—she’d had to be. Michelle didn’t ever want her daughter to have to be as tough as she had been. It wasn’t good for a child. Now, as she watched Jenna duck into the crowd and join the bunch of little backs that were presented to Michelle as she entered the slate-floored school foyer, Michelle made herself loosen the hold she had on Frankie. She didn’t want him to feel just how frightened and desolate she was. She wasn’t sure how she could face Mrs. Spencer, the principal, or even Mrs. Spencer’s nosy, daunting secretary.

The bust had been bad enough, but Michelle hadn’t known the worst—that her private agony had been spread all over the pages of the newspaper. For two days, as bad as it was, Michelle had been an ostrich, silly enough to think that her humiliation had been a private one—or as private as a police raid with twenty cop cars in the middle of the night could be. She didn’t realize the whole humiliation had been spread out on breakfast tables all over Westchester County until Rick Bruzeman had mentioned over the phone that the press coverage wouldn’t help the grand jury.

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