Chapter 15
August comes with an excruciating heatwave.
Day after day passes by with no relief. Claire’s usual cooking and cleaning schedule has to be done in their sweltering house.
In these hellish conditions, she’s more grateful than ever to take shelter for a few blessed hours in Jackie’s air-conditioned living room.
Claire often gazes longingly at the pool from her humid bedroom window after their visits, but she never makes the suggestion to swim.
She’s seen Jackie’s chic swimsuit. Claire’s one and only handmade suit looks like a potato sack in comparison, and she’d rather Jackie didn’t have to see it.
The heat seems to make Claire’s anxieties expand along with everything else.
The card with the fertility specialist’s number stays next to the phone, with Claire’s appointment date scribbled underneath.
Every minute she spends with Jackie runs the risk of getting caught, but Claire can’t stop.
Spending time with her isn’t a desire anymore, not even an impulse—it’s a need.
A requirement just to get through the day.
She’s like an alcoholic, clinging to the bottle even as someone tries to wrench it away.
When Martha calls with an invite for fondue on a Saturday night, it’s actually a relief—Martha has air conditioning, too, and this way Claire won’t need to bake along with whatever she puts in the oven for dinner or listen to Pete complain about eating hot food on a hot day.
Martha’s belly is bigger than ever when she answers the door.
She looks about ready to burst, requiring more help from Claire than usual to get things together even if she won’t actually admit it.
When they’ve all sat down around the sizzling oil and melted cheese and Pete compliments Martha on her hard work, Claire bites her tongue.
“Thank you. Things have been so hectic lately, with the baby coming,” Martha says, demurely dipping the edge of a piece of broccoli into the cheese. “And that moon landing party was such a delightful time, but the planning and cleanup really took a lot out of me.”
“I’m glad we could have a quiet night in tonight,” Claire says.
“So are we,” Martha says. She sounds as sincere as Claire has ever heard her.
“Did you see that moon landing party across the road?” Walter says, chortling as he spears several pieces of sausage and sticks them all into the oil at once. “Looked pretty rowdy.”
Claire’s mouthful of bread and cheese doesn’t want to go down, suddenly—she chews and chews, while Pete laughs.
“I try not to pay much mind to that house,” Pete says. He stabs at a meatball so hard that it splits in half and falls into the cheese. “As does Claire. We’re of a like mind about that woman, aren’t we, sweetheart?”
Swallowing the bread is like trying to stomach sawdust, but Claire manages. “Yes, dear.”
Another lie. Another brick on the stack. It feels as if it’s piled so high at this point that she can hardly see Martha at the other end of the table.
Martha’s mouth is pinched. She keeps looking back and forth between Pete and Claire, though Claire thanks the Heavens above that she doesn’t actually open her mouth until she and Claire are alone in the kitchen doing the washing-up.
“Are you and Pete truly of a like mind about the neighbor these days?”
“She has a name, you know,” Claire says tiredly. “Why do you ask?”
Martha quietly washes a plate. She scrubs and scrubs at some imaginary crusted food, rinses it, and hands it to Claire, who wipes it with a towel. A reliable routine.
Walter and Pete’s distant laughter floats in from the den.
“After the last time, Claire, I told you I didn’t want to interfere anymore,” Martha says in a sudden hushed whisper, as if it’s an avalanche she’s only barely kept at bay until now.
“But having just seen you strolling around Macy’s with Jacqueline a few weeks ago, I’m starting to think that I might need to. You are lying to your husband.”
Claire drops the plate. It bounces off the countertop, but she manages to catch it before it shatters.
There’s no fib that can get her out of this.
“Were you spying on me?” Claire whisper-shouts back.
“I was minding my business buying maternity clothes, thank you very much!” Martha hisses. “You were the one who was—you were—cavorting around the department store.”
That word feels like a slap to the face. It brings to mind the changing-room—Jackie’s nails brushing Claire’s scalp. The absurd, shameful electricity of it all. It felt forbidden, somehow, but inexplicably right.
“Martha, please,” Claire says, setting the plate down but clutching the towel in shaky hands. “Don’t tell Walter. He’ll tell Peter, and then—”
And then Claire really won’t be able to see Jackie anymore. The thought is intolerable, now. Untenable.
Martha washes a wine glass with gusto, frantically running the sponge over every inch. “Why cause issues with your husband over a friendship? And with someone like her? There’s absolutely no reason, Claire, no reason at all.”
No reason. As if Jackie has given Claire nothing in their months of friendship, rather than showing her the most kindness she’s ever experienced. As if the balm Claire feels every time Jackie is near is anything short of miraculous.
“Jackie is wonderful,” Claire says indignantly. “She’s just misunderstood.”
“She associates with freaks. That makes her just like them.”
The indignation swells into a burst. Claire throws down her damp dishtowel so hard that it smacks against the countertop, turning on a wide-eyed Martha. “Do you know it was my birthday?”
“Excuse me?” Martha says.
“The day you saw me with her. It was my birthday,” Claire says fiercely.
She sets her hands on her hips—the effect is stifled by her dress, but she feels almost as she did when she first wore the outfit Jackie bought her.
Confident. Powerful. “You didn’t remember.
Pete didn’t remember. But Jackie did. She bought me a gift. ”
Martha swallows. Suds drip from her hands back into the sink.
“I give you and Walter cards for your birthdays every year. I give Pete a gift for his,” Claire continues, letting the anger sweep her up.
She can’t say these things to Pete, or risk losing Jackie forever.
Instead, she’s turning the geyser on Martha.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I got a birthday gift? ”
“I didn’t…realize,” Martha says faintly.
Martha looks as if she might cry. Claire has never taken this tone with her, not once in their years of being neighbors and friends.
When Martha spilled the beans about Jackie the first time, when she invited Jackie to Memorial Day out of spite, every time Martha has made Claire feel inferior or small since the start of her pregnancy—Claire has always quietly taken it on the chin.
Claire sighs. She braces her hands against the counter, letting her head drop forward.
“Martha. Please. If you’re truly my friend, if you’ve ever cared for my happiness at all, do this for me,” Claire says quietly. “I’ll never ask you for anything else. I swear.”
When Claire turns to her again, Martha looks stricken.
Walter’s head pops through the kitchen door.
“You ladies about finished in here?” he says, blithely unaware of the tension in the room. “We’ve got a game of parcheesi set up.”
“We’ll be there in just a moment,” Martha says. Her voice is measured. After a few seconds of silence, she bustles out to the den.
Martha is quiet for the whole game. She sends them on their way home without saying a word about Jackie, and though Claire is quite aware that she could blab the whole thing to Walter the moment they leave, she has the strange feeling that her secret is safe, for now.
The house is just barely cooler than it was during the day. Pete is insistent, tonight, on lovemaking, and the suffocating heat makes it more uncomfortable than usual. Claire does her duty, thinking all the while of the appointment on the horizon.
Once he’s snoring consistently, she rises and starts her routine—face washed. Jewelry in the case. Hair unpinned.
While she waits for the bath to fill, Claire wanders to the window.
The pool lights are on, and Jackie is in the water.
She’s in a bathing suit this time, at least, but she’s not swimming so much as she’s floating underwater, the shape of her body flickering with the surface movement.
She’s still. Her limbs are splayed, her dark hair fanned around her, and she stays under for a worrying amount of time.
Long enough for a pit of fear to form in Claire’s stomach.
Claire finally breathes again once Jackie surfaces. She slicks her hair back, her feet finding the bottom, and in a strange echo of the last time this happened, she looks up towards Claire’s window.
This time, Claire waves. Jackie only pauses for a moment before she waves back.
After a tepid bath, Claire slips into a night of fevered dreaming.
She’s in Jackie’s pool. She’s not sure how she knows it belongs to Jackie, since her eyes are closed, but with the smell of chlorine and the cool water on her skin there’s really nowhere else it could be.
She’s alone, at first, but then she senses someone behind her.
Someone moving closer. Currents of water are shifting against Claire’s back, warmer than the rest.
Two hands land on her hips. She knows without even opening her eyes who they belong to, and slowly Claire becomes aware of the fact that she’s not wearing a bathing suit.
The nakedness doesn’t feel the way it normally does. Usually, the only place Claire is entirely naked is the bath, her small private oasis after Pete has gone to sleep. Even in bed with her husband she usually keeps her brassiere on, if not her whole nightgown.