Chapter 5
“Hey there, neighbor,” Jacqueline says, obvious surprise turning to a smile as she opens her front door on Monday morning to find Claire on her doorstep holding a Tupperware full of freshly baked muffins. “I was wondering if I’d see you again. I got the idea your husband didn’t like my party much.”
Claire has been scouring her mind for days now for a way to atone for what happened at the housewarming party, and this seemed the most reasonable solution. Baked goods. A normal, neighborly thing to do. Pete had been so rude. Jacqueline didn’t deserve it, no matter who came to her party.
Jacqueline herself is wearing pants today, a dark maroon velveteen fabric with a belt, and a black silk shirt. Once again, she’s barefoot. She looks daring and naturally fashionable.
Claire smooths her hand over her pleated skirt, feeling just as frumpy as usual next to Jacqueline. “Yes, I wanted to apologize for that. Pete is—when he gets tired, you see, he—”
“I understand,” Jacqueline interrupts smoothly, saving Claire from needing to stammer an excuse. She points to Claire’s hands. “Are those for me?”
Claire had forgotten that she was holding the muffins. She thrusts them into Jacqueline’s hands. “Yes! Blueberry bran. I hope they make up for our impolite exit.”
“Sounds delicious,” Jacqueline says, pulling up the corner of the lid to peek inside. “Do you spoil the whole neighborhood like this?”
Claire doesn’t know how to answer that. The truth is that the first move-in casserole was customary, but Claire isn’t usually prone to baking for the neighbors unless there’s a potluck.
Thankfully Jacqueline lets the question lie. She moves aside after a moment, gesturing into the house. “Why don’t you come in for a minute? I’ll fix us that drink we missed out on.”
Claire hesitates.
She should really be getting back home. She has laundry to fold, and dinner to get started. She’d been planning to give the bathroom a good scrub. The front flower beds are in a state, and she really needs to get them in order so she can start her spring planting.
But Jacqueline’s house looks so inviting.
It’s just the two of them this time, no rowdy partygoers or irate husbands, and Claire so enjoyed their last brief conversation.
Jacqueline is an enigma, and Claire has only caught glimpses of her over the last week through the kitchen window as Jacqueline gets into her car and jets off for the day. Claire wants to know more.
She steps inside, and Jacqueline closes the door behind them.
The house looks quite different when it’s not littered with empty beer cans. Jacqueline has cleaned up so well that there’s no indication there was a party here at all. The air smells warm and spiced, like a scented candle Claire can’t identify.
“If you’re looking to get your dish back, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” Jacqueline says, leading Claire towards a breakfast nook in the corner of the kitchen. “I’ve been practically living off your casserole, and I haven’t gotten around to washing it yet.”
“Really? You liked it?” Claire says, twisting her fingers together.
Jacqueline breezes past the nook towards one of the cupboards.
She seems to have made a lot of headway in unpacking—the shelf hosts a truly startling array of liquors next to the glasses.
Taking up a large piece of counterspace is, staggeringly, a brand-new Amana microwave.
Claire has seen commercials, but she’s never seen one in person.
She can’t even begin to imagine how much it cost.
“It was delicious. Though I can’t cook to save my life, so maybe my opinion counts for very little,” Jacqueline says.
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Claire says quickly. “You can just keep the dish if you’d like. I have three.”
“Three?” Jacqueline remarks, leaning her hip against the counter. “You must make a lot of casseroles.”
“Pete usually gets me kitchen things from the department store for Christmas. He doesn’t know what I already have, so he just grabs something off the shelf,” Claire says, chuckling lightly. “It’s been casserole dishes the last three years in a row.”
Jacqueline doesn’t join in on the laughter. She looks at Claire with some concern, actually, with her hand suspended halfway to the cupboard.
Claire has joked about this same thing with Martha countless times.
Walter isn’t terribly observant either—Martha has a closet full of scarves she never intends on wearing after a decade of Christmases with him.
Claire has never had a second thought about it before, and it makes her suddenly self-conscious.
“Right,” Jacqueline says, shaking her head a little. Her expression clears. “What can I get you to drink? Coffee, tea, wine, beer? I have some liquor left from the party if you need a pick-me-up.”
“Tea is fine,” Claire says, smoothing her hair nervously.
She went with a different look today, a knot at the base of her neck with the top slicked down with hairspray instead of her usual more voluminous coif.
It’s a bit more modern. Pete looked at her strangely this morning, but Claire had told him it was because she was going to be working on the garden.
Foolishly, she hopes that Jacqueline will notice.
Jacqueline turns the stove knob underneath a shiny kettle. “Are you sure? I can put a nip of whiskey in it.”
“I don’t actually drink very much,” Claire admits. “It makes me act senseless, and Pete—well, I don’t want to embarrass him. He says I get too loud.”
Jacqueline pauses again. Her brow furrows.
Claire has the wild, unsettling impulse to press her fingertip against the divot it creates in her forehead.
“There’s nobody to embarrass here, Claire.”
Claire’s face feels hot, though she’s not entirely sure why. Her stomach is in knots. A silence stretches out between them that makes her want to run for the door. Instead, she tangles her fingers in her pearls.
Jacqueline smiles softly. She grabs two mugs and a box of teabags, setting them on the table. “Tea it is.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire blurts, already wishing she hadn’t said anything at all.
Jacqueline opens one drawer, and then another—in a third, she finally finds the spoon she’s looking for, holding it up victoriously. “Sorry for what?”
The pearls roll under Claire’s fingertips. She presses them hard against her breastbone. “I realize that I can be terribly awkward to talk to. Martha sometimes tells me that I say the oddest things.”
The kettle is boiling—it must have been hot already. Jacqueline pours water into Claire’s mug, and it slowly turns dark pink as the tea steeps. It must be some kind of herbal blend. “Who’s Martha?”
“From across the road,” Claire says, nodding in the direction of the house. She stirs some sugar into her mug. “Martha and Walter? They were at the party.”
“Ah,” Jacqueline says, just as Claire is blowing on the hot tea to take her first careful sip. It’s a delicious and fruity blend. “The one with the stick up her ass.”
Claire snorts into her mug, spraying tea across the table. She manages not to inhale it, but it spills over the sides of the cup as Jacqueline smiles again.
Claire probably shouldn’t laugh. Martha is her friend, and she shouldn’t be tickled by something so vulgar. But she can’t help but react to the truth of it. Martha is very uptight at times, and her reaction to Jacqueline has been especially so.
“Sorry. If she’s your friend, I shouldn’t be so rude,” Jacqueline says, though in contrast to her words she seems delighted. She passes Claire a handful of napkins. “She brought me cookies the other day, but I think I unsettled her a little.”
“No, it’s all right,” Claire says, coughing a little. “I know what Martha is like unsettled. I can’t imagine she was very welcoming.”
Claire mops up her spilled tea, her lip caught between her teeth, focused entirely on making sure the surface of the table is clean, and when she’s finished she’s startled to see Jacqueline watching her with an intense expression.
“Do I have something on my face?” Claire says, reaching self-consciously for her purse and compact mirror.
“No, no. Your face is fine,” Jacqueline says. She moves as if to put a hand over Claire’s to stop her reaching, but she stops just short. Claire wishes she hadn’t. “Sorry. I’m only thinking that—you know, you’re very different, Claire.”
Claire’s stomach sinks. She thinks of her house, in all its dull normalcy.
She looks down at her clothes—the plain blue pattern on her dress, her clunky brown shoes.
She is very different from Jacqueline. Jacqueline is calm, and confident.
Jacqueline is effortlessly stylish and appropriately feminine.
She’s everything Claire has never quite succeeded at being.
“Yes, I must seem dreary when you’re used to living in San Francisco,” Claire says, trying to sound light and airy. “I feel like a drab old lady next to you. You look like you walked out of Vogue Magazine.”
“Me?” Jacqueline says, leaning forward towards Claire with a frown. “No that’s not—I meant you’re different from Martha.”
Claire’s brain stutters to a halt.
“Oh,” Claire says blankly.
It’s Jacqueline who now seems to scramble. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I—it’s in a good way. I met a lot of the people in this suburb at the party. And besides the partiers who took over my pool, they’re all either…well, there’s a certain—”
It’s odd, seeing Jacqueline flustered. It calms Claire down a bit.
“They’re all horribly boring?” Claire says. She’s usually tight-lipped about her opinions, but it slips out of her, eager as she is to impress.
To her delight, Jacqueline laughs. It lights her whole face up, and she visibly relaxes as Claire gets a glimpse of her uneven canines. “Yes, actually. I was trying to be diplomatic, but you took the words right out of my mouth.”
Making Jacqueline laugh, even for those few seconds, somehow becomes one of the proudest moments of Claire’s life. She wants to do it more. She’s hungry for Jacqueline’s attention in a way she isn’t used to.
“My husband likes to socialize with the neighbors, but he avoids the swinger types. And as for me…” Claire pauses. “Martha is my friend, but she can be…a bit controlling, at times. You should see her at book club. She never lets anyone else choose the books.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jacqueline says. The corner of her mouth quirks. “You know, you’re the only person who’s really been nice to me since I arrived.”
“You seemed to be getting along just fine with Susan Wilson,” Claire says. The words feel a bit too sharp, but Jacqueline only hums, tracing a circle around the rim of her mug.
“Susan’s interest in me faded pretty quickly. I think most of the women in the neighborhood assume I’m here to steal their husbands.”
“Well, you can have Pete,” Claire says.
Her heart soars when Jacqueline laughs again. Can one translate a laugh onto paper? Is there some visual medium that can capture the way Jacqueline’s makes her feel?
“See, you’re funny,” Jacqueline says. “You’re quick. I wasn’t expecting to find someone out here so good to talk to.”
Claire is sure her face is glowing. Jacqueline’s attention is a hot spotlight, and one Claire doesn’t quite deserve—it doesn’t make sense for such a lovely woman to think Claire is interesting, to look at her like she’s a puzzle worth solving.
Claire can only hope that Jacqueline never discovers just how untrue that is.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Claire says, hiding her nerves in her mug. The tea is still so hot that it threatens to scald her tongue.
“I hope Pete appreciates you,” Jacqueline continues. “How long have you been married?”
Claire picks at the string of the teabag until it splits into tiny strands. “Eleven years. He asked me to go steady in junior year, and he proposed right after graduation.”
“High school sweethearts,” Jacqueline says. “Sounds idyllic.”
Now that Claire is saying it out loud to someone like this, it doesn’t seem idyllic.
Here sits Jacqueline, who lives on her own, who throws parties without a husband, who provides for herself and drives a Mustang, and Claire hardly leaves the house unless it’s to walk to the supermarket or go to book club.
She doesn’t even have a learner’s permit.
“It’s not near as interesting as your life,” Claire says, taking another overly large gulp of tea. “You must do a lot of travelling.”
“My family is from Greece, but they all live here in the U.S. now,” Jacqueline shrugs. “I’ve only been a few times.”
“Oh, no, I meant that—I can’t imagine there are too many job opportunities for photography around here,” Claire corrects quickly. The tidbit about her background is new, and Claire tucks it away. She’s never met anyone Greek before.
“Ah. Yes, I used to do more travelling. I’m trying to slow down.” Jacqueline chuckles to herself, but there’s no joy in this laugh—it’s almost bitter. “Life became a bit of a whirlwind for a while. Now I only take gigs I can drive to.”
“Is that why you moved here?”
Jacqueline hums noncommittally. “One of the reasons.”
The subject changes swiftly after that. The conversation turns to easier things, and by the time Claire gets home she finds she needs to sprint through the chores she ignored during those two lovely hours just to get dinner on the table in time.
She doesn’t tell Pete about her excursion.
Pete complains about work over his chicken Kiev, only stopping to tune into the evening news.
Claire settles in to mend some socks while he talks over the anchor’s coverage about NASA, but it’s harder than usual to focus her attention.
Her gaze keeps sliding from her stitches to the window, watching the way Jacqueline’s pool lights cast blue-white ripples across the side of her house.