Chapter 8 #3
“I’d say more…buttoned-up,” Jackie says thoughtfully. Her feet swing idly, dangling over the arm of the couch. “But I think there’s an animal in you, just waiting to break out.”
Claire laughs towards the ceiling. “An animal?”
“There’s a lion in here,” Jackie says, tapping on Claire’s chest with a grin. “I know it.”
“Ha! More like a squirrel, maybe. Or a rabbit.”
Claire’s eyes feel sluggish and slow, but still she drags them down to look at Jackie again.
Jackie isn’t handsome. Jackie is stunning.
Jackie has full lips and prominent cheekbones and a lovely jawline.
Her eyebrows have a gentle arch, thick and well-shaped where Claire’s are light and sparse.
Jackie doesn’t need to cover up every feature with makeup the way Claire does—she only emphasizes her natural ones.
She wears clothes that show off her figure, rather than hiding it.
And she has the softest, most silky hair Claire has ever seen.
Claire wishes that she could draw this moment. She aches to commit this image to paper forever, so she can never forget it. If there was anything in the room to sketch with, she might do it right now on the back of her own hand just to keep this feeling a little longer.
“I’m sorry that Acacia Circle doesn’t have a beach. But I’m very glad you moved here, Jackie,” Claire says quietly.
“So am I,” Jackie says. Her brows knit together. “I wasn’t expecting to find a friend.”
A thrill rushes through Claire, from the roots of her hair all the way to her toes. She doesn’t just want to be Jackie’s friend—she wants to be her best friend. She wants to be the person Jackie comes to with her problems. The person she knows she can trust with anything.
The part of Claire’s brain that usually stops her from doing silly things seems to be turned off, and against her usual instincts she gives in to her impulse to touch. She cards her fingers through Jackie’s hair, feeling the silky strands tickle her skin, and giggles again.
“You have such nice hair,” Claire murmurs. With Jackie’s head on her lap like this, it’s hard not to wonder how her hair would feel against Claire’s bare legs. The thought makes something twinge, deep inside her. “How do you get it so soft? Mine is like a Bichon Frise.”
“Your hair is not like a dog’s coat,” Jackie says, chuckling. “It’s just curly. Curly hair is lovely. But I use a good conditioner. Hair oil, and no hairspray.”
“You don’t use hairspray?”
“Nope.” Jackie makes a little pop with her mouth on the word, and they both dissolve into giggles at it. The laughter makes Jackie curl up a little, but she doesn’t let go of Claire’s hand.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this relaxed,” Claire sighs. She tips her head back, resting it on the back of the couch to stare up at Jackie’s popcorn ceiling. “Do you do this all the time?”
“Rarely,” Jackie says, her fingers still tracing patterns over Claire’s. “I find it too easy to get addicted to things.”
The swirls that Jackie is making on Claire’s palm seem to match the nonsensical patterns in the ceiling.
With her eyes so relaxed, Claire keeps finding images in the plaster.
A cresting ocean wave. A dinosaur, with a spiky back and an open mouth.
An airplane with a crooked wing. They look like brushstrokes in thick white oil paint.
Claire keeps stroking Jackie’s hair with her free hand.
It keeps her grounded—she’s a kite, riding the smoke higher and higher to join that airplane, and Jackie is the only thing keeping her from getting lost in the big blue sky.
Claire lets the strands of Jackie’s hair slide through her fingers, and then she scratches her nails over Jackie’s scalp.
Jackie moves suddenly. Her back arches a little, and she makes a noise that Claire has never heard before. It’s high, and throaty, and it gets cut off by Jackie clearing her throat before Claire can examine it further.
Jackie’s chest is flushed under her robe. She drops Claire’s hand.
It sticks in Claire’s mind, that little one-second soundbite. She wants to recreate it. Make it longer and louder. Claire is full to the brim with something she doesn’t understand, suddenly, and the cloudiness of her mind isn’t helping at all.
The movement has made Jackie’s negligée shift up her thighs.
The hair above her knees is unshaven and dark, like her arms; Claire wonders, as the skirt glides over her skin, what it might feel like to be that scrap of silk.
Light and flowing, pressed so intimately to Jackie for as long as she chooses to wear it.
A silk negligée doesn’t have to go home to its husband after every visit.
That thought is finally enough to part the clouds in Claire’s mind. When she glances up at the clock on Jackie’s mantel, it reads 3:47.
The anxiety that’s been so blissfully absent for the afternoon comes back in a great wave. It floods her, crashing against every surface, and Claire springs to her feet, dislodging Jackie from her lap.
“Shoot—it’s almost four! Oh, I should have been home hours ago. I have to make dinner.”
Jackie frowns up at her from the couch cushion. Her hair is ruffled, and she looks like she doesn’t quite understand what’s happened.
“I’m sorry, Jackie, but Pete will be so upset if he gets home with no supper,” Claire says, hopping on one foot towards the door as she tries to get her shoes back on—she doesn’t remember taking them off. Her fingers aren’t quite working properly.
“Okay,” Jackie says quietly.
Claire trips over the two steps leading up and out of the conversation pit. She catches herself, her face flooding with heat, and darts to the door.
She can’t look back at Jackie. If she looks back, if she sees the expression that accompanies that okay, she might not have the willpower to leave, and she can still remember how Pete reacted the last time she didn’t have dinner on the table when he got home.
There had been an Arctic chill in the house until he felt she understood not to do it again.
Cooking is twice the chore it usually is. She finds herself forgetting parts of the recipe that she knows by heart. Twice she burns the onions she’s sautéing because she’s staring out the window at Jackie’s front door, remembering the softness of her hair, and she has to start over.
Dinner still isn’t finished when Pete’s car pulls in.
“Smells like lasagna,” Pete calls from the foyer, as if they don’t have lasagna every second week without fail.
Claire doesn’t answer. She’s hurriedly washing the dishes, trying to get the kitchen as clean as she can while the lasagna bakes, and her attention has caught on a stubborn piece of food on the edge of her cutting board.
“How long until dinner?” Pete says, poking his head into the kitchen.
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Forty-five—” Pete throws his briefcase onto the kitchen table as he passes, and the loud noise makes Claire flinch. “Since when can you not make a lasagna by 5:30?”
“Would you prefer undercooked pasta?”
Pete stops in his tracks. The lasagna bubbles in the oven, marinara sauce sizzling over the edges of Claire’s spare casserole dish.
Claire has never snapped back. When she makes a mistake she apologizes, often incessantly, sometimes to the point of annoying her husband further.
Something is different today. Today there’s a resentment in the pit of her belly that something—the drugs, probably, or fact that she had to abandon a perfectly lovely day with Jackie to come back home—is making manifest.
Today, she hears Jackie’s voice in her head.
You should be kinder to yourself.
Pete slams the kitchen door behind himself. “What’s gotten into you? I work to put food on the table, and you can’t do your job and cook it?”
You’re very different, Claire.
In this moment, Claire wants to be different. She wants to be daring. She can’t imagine Pete scolding Jackie for not having dinner on the table—Jackie would push back, like she did at the housewarming party. She’d stand her ground.
Why shouldn’t Claire?
“I wanted to work, too. Remember?” Claire says. Her voice is thin, but she gets the words out. “I had a job at Anita’s arts and crafts store, and you asked me to quit.”
Claire had been so proud of herself for getting that job in high school.
Anita was a kindly older woman who gave Claire the freedom to sketch in her downtime, and for a time, when Claire’s mother had been busy planning her second wedding, Anita had been like the parent Claire was missing.
She gave advice, and taught Claire to cook.
She’d even allowed Claire to stay the night a few times while her mother enjoyed extended visits at her soon-to-be-husband’s house.
“I had you quit so that you could stay home and take care of the house,” Pete says loudly. “I gave you a gift, and this is how you repay me? With laziness?”
“Please don’t speak to me that way,” Claire says, as calmly as she can. Her fingers are tangled in her pearls, but her voice is steady.
Pete steps closer. He peers at Claire, squinting, before rolling his eyes. “Oh, Claire, don’t start crying. You know I hate it.”
Claire rubs her eyes. They’re dry, but she realizes now that they must be red like Jackie’s were. She’s grateful that he doesn’t suspect the real reason. “I lost track of the day. It won’t happen again.”
“I should hope not. Martha manages to keep an immaculate house, and she’s pregnant,” Pete says, loosening his tie and throwing his jacket over the back of a chair.
Instinctively, Claire picks it up to be hung in the closet.
“There’s nothing stopping you, is there?
My mother raised four sons and she still managed to get a damn lasagna out by dinnertime. ”
It's a backhanded jab. Another reminder that Claire hasn’t given Pete what he wants.
Claire smooths her hand over the soft cotton of the jacket.
There’s an imperfection in the weave near the collar.
The brief bout of confidence that drove her to talk back to Pete is leaking out of her.
Pete’s voice has been raising for the entire conversation, and the volume has the effect it always does.
Claire deflates.
“Yes, dear.”
Fighting is useless. What can she really do besides grin and bear it? Pushing back only reminds Pete of all the ways Claire is failing him. She has no idea why she even tried. Her indulgence this afternoon was a mistake.
Pete is cold with her for the rest of the night. It means a break from some of Claire’s wifely duties, at least, and for that she’s grateful.
By the time Claire wakes up the next morning fresh and sober it all seems a bit embarrassing.
The way she acted. The way she’s been acting when it comes to Jackie.
Disobeying her husband, causing friction in her marriage.
She wishes she was as strong as Jackie is, able to buy a house and have a job and live on her own, but she isn’t. She never has been.
She’s Peter Davis’s wife.