Chapter 15 #3
It’s a smoother lie than Claire could come up with so quickly.
Luckily he’s dressed nicely—his maroon shirt has a loud paisley print on it, and doesn’t have a single wrinkle.
He’s taller than Claire expected, too. She’d first met him in a bathing suit reclined on a pool chair, but at full height he must be well over six feet.
He cocks his hip with a smile, waiting for her answer as Dorothy steams.
“We can discuss it,” Claire says, quickly leading him towards the house by the elbow. Dorothy’s eyes are fixed on where Claire’s hand is touching his arm. “Dorothy, I’ll see you at book club?”
“Ta-ta, Dottie,” Theo calls over his shoulder.
Claire is sure that half the neighborhood will know what happened by the end of the day, but Claire’s tolerance for the suburban politics of Acacia Circle has waned lately.
As long as it doesn’t threaten her friendship with Jackie, she couldn’t be bothered anymore.
If Dorothy’s husband happens to mention this to Pete, Claire will just tell him that she was looking into designing a nursery, and Theo was who the design firm sent.
Theo follows her into the house, looking around judgmentally as Claire shuts the door behind them. “You really could use a remodel, you know. The décor is very 1956.”
“My husband doesn’t like change,” Claire says.
She leads Theo to the kitchen, putting the kettle on and arranging two cups.
“Thank you for coming up with that story. The only lie I could think of was that a neighbor down the road was having her lawn re-sodded again. The crew was mostly colored last time. But that wouldn’t explain how we know each other.
” She pulls the sugar down from a cabinet, dropping a spoon into the jar.
“Hopefully Dorothy believes you’re a designer.
That’s possible, right?” When she turns back to him, Theo’s expression has changed.
“Yes. But it’s more believable that I’m the help,” he says.
Claire’s stomach sinks. That familiar feeling of stepping wrong in a conversation is worse than ever before, and her pearls are between her fingers before she knows it. “That’s…not what I meant.”
“It’s really impossible for you people to imagine me doing anything besides underpaid manual labor,” Theo says. He laughs to himself. “Couldn’t be seen with someone like me any other way, could you? Not in this neighborhood.”
“No,” Claire says. “No, that’s not—that isn’t it. It’s not about—” she swallows hard. The kettle is starting to whistle, and she takes it off the heat. Her tongue is in a tangle. “Oh, I’ve put my foot in it.”
“It’s nothing I wouldn’t expect from a Suzy Homemaker,” Theo says. He smiles, but it’s tighter than it was before. More guarded.
“That’s not all I am,” Claire protests.
“And I’m not a laborer,” Theo says bluntly. “Yet your first thought to placate your little friend was wandering workman.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire says again. “My husband doesn’t like my friendship with Jackie. I was worried that if I told Dorothy the truth, it would get back to him. She’s a blabbermouth. And you salvaged the situation. I really am grateful.”
Theo’s lips purse together. Claire has no idea what he’s thinking, but he hasn’t stormed out yet, at least.
“I’m not always sure what to say around you,” Claire admits. “I’ve never known anyone like you before.”
“A Black queer?”
Claire hopes she’s managed not to flinch. Though Theo is using it to describe himself, it still feels vulgar. “Yes.”
“I know better than to expect anything but the same old rules in this hellhole,” Theo says. “Say whatever you want. We were never going to be friends, were we?”
“But I’d like to be,” Claire says.
One of Theo’s thick eyebrows arches delicately. “I don’t make a habit of befriending people who look down on me.”
“I don’t,” Claire says. When he raises his other eyebrow as well, she sinks down into a chair. Her stomach is now in a state of uneasy flux. “Do I?”
Theo says nothing. Claire taps her pearls against her teeth until it feels like they’re reverberating in her brain.
Does she look down on Theo? She was uncomfortable when they first met, but she’d put that down to jealousy over his friendship with Jackie.
But she said what she said, and didn’t think twice about it until Theo said something. Is she any better than Dorothy?
“You’re going to be the talk of the suburb after the stunt you pulled today,” Theo says.
Claire crosses her arms across her chest, squeezing tight until the anxious feeling subsides a little. “Probably.”
“Does that bother you?”
It’s been a long time since she was in school, but something in his voice makes her feel like she’s in a cramped desk sweating her way through an algebra test. “So long as I can still see Jackie, I’d rather a little gossip than Dorothy calling the police on you just for sitting in your car.”
“Why?”
Claire considers that, for a moment. She can’t say she isn’t a little bit worried about the potential drama this could cause, but in the end the answer is simple. “Jackie loves you. I’d rather try to be like her than like Dorothy. Even if I don’t always succeed.”
For a minute, Theo just stares at her. The clock ticks. The refrigerator hums. Claire drums her fingers on her forearms as his eyes drill into her.
“You’re an odd duck,” Theo finally says.
It doesn’t sound derogatory in the same way it did when he called her Suzy Homemaker. If this really has been some kind of test, Claire can only hope she’s passed some threshold in his estimation.
“So I’m told,” Claire says. She goes back to the stove, pouring the slightly cooled water into two mugs and pushing one towards Theo. “Will you sit down with me?”
Theo seems to consider his options. He looks from Claire to the door, and then from the door to the tea.
“You’re not as much of a freak as Jacks. But it’s a start,” Theo says slowly. He sits down, making himself more comfortable and pulling his tea towards himself.
Claire exhales in one big rush. It’s obvious that this doesn’t mean she and Theo are fast friends, but it must mean something that he’s still giving her the time of day. “Thank you. And that’s maybe the first time someone has told me I’m not strange enough.”
“Trust me, hon. You’re barely on the scale,” Theo says. “Unlike Jackie, who should have been here an hour ago.”
“Is she often late?”
“She was late to her own birth,” Theo drawls. “She was supposed to meet me at eleven, after an early shoot. Apparently, there’s some record store in Sacramento the likes of which I couldn’t possibly find in San Fran.”
“That sounds like a nice time,” Claire says mildly.
She’s not sure how to continue the conversation, but Theo does it for her—he stands up, pointing out the kitchen window where Jackie’s car is rolling into the drive. “Look, Jacks is home. Come on.”
He abandons his undrunk tea, and Claire blinks in his wake. It sounds like an invitation, but it comes so suddenly that she can’t keep up. “You want me to come with you?”
Theo raises his eyebrows, as if she was invited all along and this shouldn’t be a surprise at all. “What else do you have to fill the time? Waxing the linoleum?”
It turns out to be a wonderful outing, even if Theo only invited her out of some kind of curiosity.
Jackie is in a good mood after her photoshoot, and apologizes to Theo for several minutes about her lateness while they drive to the record store.
Theo pokes fun at Claire’s music taste, seeming to test her boundaries, but it feels more in jest than genuinely mean.
He’s strange and often impolite, but he’s also clever.
He makes Jackie laugh. Above all, he clearly cares about Jackie’s happiness as much as Claire does.
When they first met Claire never thought she’d come to enjoy his company so much, but she finds that after that strange afternoon she’s always quite happy when she sees his car in Jackie’s driveway.
If Pete knew she was associating with someone like Theo, he might be as angry about that as about the Jackie of it all. And Pete will never understand the pull Claire feels towards Jackie Callas.
Even Claire doesn’t fully understand it.
All of it, every hour spent listening to Joni Mitchell or shopping with Theo or watching raptly as Jackie licks an ice cream cone, Claire hides from her husband.
She’s always home with dinner on the table before he’s any the wiser. These days, she has it down to an art.
And she’ll keep at it for as long as it takes.