Chapter 2
The rest of the shopping takes longer than usual.
Claire forgets things she normally wouldn’t, having to double back once or even twice to each aisle as ‘Don’t bother with the background’ echoes in her mind.
She fumbles her groceries into paper bags at the checkout, and, as the cashier takes her cash, all Claire can think is ‘Some people belong at the front’.
By the time she makes it all the way home, it’s almost noon.
She’s lost in thought and midway through unloading the groceries when the kitchen phone rings.
“Davis residence,” Claire says distractedly, tucking the receiver against her ear as she stacks cans into the cupboard.
“Hi, honey,” Pete says across the crackling phone line.
Claire’s hand stops mid-air, a can of peas clutched in her fingers. Her husband calling from the office is quite out of the ordinary. “Pete? Is everything all right?”
“Just wanted to warn you I’m going to be home a little late tonight. We’ve got a big sale coming up, and they want a presentation at six. Expect me at seven-thirty.”
“Oh. All right,” Claire says, mentally adjusting her cooking schedule. “Is that all?”
“And Mom wants to come over for dinner tonight, so I’d like you to make something nice,” Pete continues, crushing Claire’s shifting plans into dust with just a sentence. “She’ll be by around the same time.”
Claire’s stomach drops, and the can of peas along with it. It almost hits her foot, and she twists and dances out of the way as it rolls across the floor, gripping the phone tightly. “Your mother is coming? You didn’t tell me that this morning. And your father, too?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t plan for that,” Claire says. She picks the dented can up, already running through a mental checklist of the ingredients in her cupboards.
She has nothing suitable for a dinner party for four, especially to the standards of Rita Davis.
“I already did the shopping, and I don’t have any budget left. ”
“I’m sure you’ll whip something up,” Pete says easily. “You always do.”
“Does she like pea soup?” Claire says, growing desperate now. With some fresh bread, it could be a nice last-minute supper.
“You’re not making soup,” Pete says. There are voices in the background of the call. “We don’t want to drink our dinner. I have to go, honey. I’ll see you tonight.”
Claire digs her fingernails into the soft skin of her palm again, finding the same scabbed grooves from earlier in the day. The pain grounds her. She swallows down the frustration, and nods.
“Yes, dear.”
The phone cord is stretched across the kitchen, and in her tizzy Claire has apparently gotten herself tangled in it. For a few moments after Pete hangs up, Claire simply stands in the jumble she’s made.
There’s no chance that she’s going to get something on the table that Rita won’t turn up her nose at.
If she had more than eight cents left in her budget she could walk to the store again and get something up to her mother-in-law’s standards, but that wouldn’t leave her much time to cook, and the pennies sitting on the countertop won’t get her far.
She never should have gotten the Ovaltine, or dallied in the park.
After quietly untangling herself, Claire puts a record in the player.
She turns the volume up enough to be heard in the kitchen, and she turns the faucet to get a start on the dishes left over from breakfast. While the sink fills, she leans forward onto the countertop, letting her breath out slowly until her lungs start to burn.
Rather than cheering her up, the upbeat, familiar pop song playing from the den grinds against her nerves. She wonders, in some idle part of her brain, how long she could actually go without air. A minute? Two? How long before the world goes black?
Three sharp knocks on the front door startle Claire enough to inhale again.
She waits a beat. She turns off the faucet, and tangles her fingers in her necklace—the pearls are cool and smooth under her worried touch. She doesn’t feel up to entertaining this afternoon. Perhaps if she’s quiet enough, they’ll think she’s out.
She stays stock-still, straining her ears, until the knocks sound again.
“Are you going to leave me waiting on the doorstep like a vacuum salesman?”
Claire relaxes somewhat.
Martha Robinson from across the street is maybe the only person in the neighborhood that Claire would consider a friend.
She’s always had a penchant for midday visits, but lately she’s been coming over more frequently.
Martha and her husband Walter announced her pregnancy a few months ago, and Pete has been effusive ever since about how wonderful it all is.
How well Martha is doing as a wife. How perfect a mother she’ll be.
There’s no way that Martha doesn’t know Claire is home. She knows everything in this neighborhood. Luckily for Claire, Martha could just be the solution to her dinner woes.
Claire re-affixes her smile, and heads to the door to let her in.
“Martha! Good afternoon,” Claire says.
“We have new neighbors,” Martha says before she’s even crossed the threshold.
She’s on the stoop poised to come inside, framed by the yellow acacia tree that gives their street its name.
It towers in the center of their cul-de-sac, taking up most of the grassy circle there.
It’s just starting to explode into its golden spring flowers.
The moment Claire moves aside, Martha heads straight to the kitchen table to make herself comfortable. Her hand sits perpetually over her belly, framing the baby bump under her dress—she’s only barely started to show recently, and, ever since, she’s made sure to emphasize it.
“New neighbors?” Claire says, setting the kettle on to boil for some tea. “Whereabouts?”
“Look outside.”
A quick glance out the kitchen window reveals that Martha is right. There’s a moving truck parked in the driveway of the bungalow next door. It must have pulled in right after Claire got home. The movers are just opening the back of the trailer.
She hadn’t even been aware that the house was for sale.
She certainly hasn’t seen the original owner in some time, a quiet elderly widower that Claire used to have pleasant conversations with at the mailbox.
It’s been under renovation through the winter, and Pete complained endlessly about the painters’ trucks parking on the street all through Christmas.
Claire hasn’t seen a For Sale sign on the lawn, though.
“We should be hospitable. Go over and say hello,” Claire says, craning her neck to get a better view. She can’t see anyone in the front yard.
“I’m making cookies. I’ll bring them by once they’ve settled. Who do you think is moving in?” Martha asks. Her foot bops gently in the air to the beat of the song from the den. “That house can’t have been cheap. It’s the only one on the street with a pool.”
“Another retired couple?” Claire suggests.
Martha scoffs. “With three bedrooms? Too much space for that. I’ll bet it’s a family. Some richy-rich lawyer from the city and his pretty little wife. Everyone who’s anyone is leaving San Francisco for the suburbs. I’ll need to make sure Walter’s eye doesn’t wander.”
Claire hums. She isn’t concerned in the least about Pete’s eye wandering.
“Neighbors aside, it’s a stroke of luck that you came along today,” Claire says, turning her attention away from the window as the kettle starts to whistle. “Pete’s parents are coming for dinner tonight, and he’s only just told me.”
Martha makes a sympathetic noise. “Oh, you poor thing. And I’ll bet you don’t have anything ready?”
“You know how critical my mother-in-law is,” Claire admits.
For Martha a change in dinner plans would only mean a quick jaunt to the store in her station wagon with her husband’s checkbook in hand, so she’s always been helpful when Claire needs to borrow something.
She’s even given Claire a lift to the big box store further into town a few times, on account of Claire not having a driver’s license.
Pete has always insisted she doesn’t need one, but on a day like today it’d sure be nice.
“These husbands of ours—Walter did the same to me just last week. We just have to grin and bear it, don’t we?” Martha says, standing up and abandoning her untouched tea. “Come on, you’ll shop in my pantry. I’ve got enough to feed an army.”
“You’re a peach,” Claire says, breathing a sigh of relief. “What would I do without your help?”
“Struggle endlessly, I’m sure,” Martha says, with a light laugh.
It’s meant as a silly joke, of course, but Claire can’t help but feel the sting of truth in it.
She really would struggle without Martha.
Pete’s expectations are high. They should be, of course, as the breadwinner of the household, but Martha’s help is sometimes the only reason Claire can meet them.
Martha has one of the nicest houses on the block, and a happy husband.
She’s younger than Claire by four years, though Walter is a bit older than Pete.
She has a lovely figure, where Claire has always been long-limbed and thin with no curves to speak of.
Martha’s red hair is always in a tidy beehive.
If there were a class somewhere on how to be the ideal wife, Claire would be the cautionary tale; Martha would be the exemplar.
As she follows Martha across the street, Claire’s mind drifts again to the grocery store.
Why would you want to blend in?
An easy thing to say, coming from someone as pretty as that cereal-aisle woman.
Standing out has never gone well for Claire.
Standing out meant scoldings, and judgement.
It meant rocking the boat for no reason.
Ordinary people aren’t destined for the spotlight.
Martha, maybe, with her effortless perfection, or someone like that glamorous woman from the store.
Claire needs to keep her head down.
~ ~ ~
A chicken is in the oven and the table is set by the time Rita arrives. The house is perfumed with cleaning products, Claire’s hair and makeup have been fixed after her stressful and sweaty afternoon, and she’s wearing the newest dress Rita sewed for her a few months ago when the doorbell rings.
“You must have lost weight again,” Rita says, before Claire can even get out a greeting.
She steps past Claire and into the foyer, handing over her coat and plucking at the places where the fabric of Claire’s dress is loose over her chest. “I tailored this perfectly, and now it’s hanging off you, dear.
Send it over later this week and I’ll make some alterations. ”
Claire frowns. Rita says this kind of thing often, but Claire has been the exact same size for the last ten years. Rita’s dresses just never quite fit. It’s as if she makes them for curves that she’s hoping Claire will magically grow, and then clucks with disappointment when they don’t appear.
“Thank you, Rita,” Claire says, stifling a sigh. “Pete should be home any minute, and dinner will be ready in a jiffy. Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable in the den?”
“What’s for supper?” Pete’s father says, following Rita to the den while Claire hangs their coats. He hardly looks Claire in the eye.
“Something substantial? I hope you’re not feeding my son some kind of rabbit food,” Rita says. While Pete’s father sits heavily on the couch, Rita doesn’t join him—she walks towards the nearest shelf, swiping her finger across it.
Claire lets out a small breath of relief when the finger comes away without a speck of dust.
“Only if rabbits eat roast chicken,” Claire says.
Pete’s father is already absorbed by the television and pays her joke no mind, but Rita’s lips purse.
“Make sure you eat plenty,” Rita says. “If you’re going to be having my grandchildren, you’re going to need some more meat on your bones. We make healthy babies in this family.”
Claire grits her teeth. After this morning’s appointment, the very mention of grandchildren makes her stomach roil.
It’s not that Rita is viciously unkind, exactly, but she’s never been warm with Claire.
Rita is capable of it—she dotes on her existing grandchildren, and she’s more affectionate with her four sons than Claire’s mother ever was with her only daughter.
But there’s always been a layer of ice between Rita and each of her sons’ wives.
Claire has always suspected that she resents the women who took her boys away.
“I should run and check on dinner,” Claire says. “If you’ll excuse me for just a tick?”
She ducks out of the room before anyone can protest. Her hope that Pete might be home before Rita arrived is dashed, but she can at least retreat to the safe haven of the kitchen until he gets here.
The blast of hot air against her face when she opens the oven door to peek at the chicken makes her wince, but she stays there for a few extra moments until her skin starts to tingle.
For once, the sound of Pete’s car pulling into the driveway is a relief.
Dinner is a strain on Claire’s patience.
Rita comments on the cooking—too much salt, and she prefers corn to peas.
She points out a stain on the tablecloth.
Towards the end of the meal the spotlight is taken off Claire when Pete announces his recent promotion at work, but by the time the dishes are done Rita has already insisted on taking Claire’s measurements for the hundredth time and bringing the dress home to fix.
The dark and quiet of the bedroom is a balm once the company has gone home and Pete has fallen asleep.
Claire goes through her usual quiet routine, brushing her frazzled hair out of its updo and removing her makeup.
Every piece of jewelry has its place on her vanity, and the orderliness of it calms her.
Lost in thought, Claire glances out the window at the neighboring yard.
She’s gotten used to it being dark, but tonight the pool lights are on. There’s lawn furniture out—two reclining chairs, and a table with an umbrella. The windows are lit up. Occasionally a dark silhouette passes by the sheer curtains, but Claire can’t make out any details.
Tomorrow, Claire should go meet the new neighbors.