Chapter 15
FOR A WHILE, things returned to their natural order.
Anna took the kids to play mini golf up at Captain’s Corner, in Salisbury, where Ben showed off his natural athletic ability.
Afterward, they went across the road to Hodgie’s Too and ordered lime and watermelon sherbet freezes, ice-cold drinks fizzy with seltzer.
They sat in the sun and watched people eating tall and drippy cones while they got swarmed by yellow jackets.
Another day, they drove out to Crane’s, Anna digging into her purse and forking over the painful forty-dollar entrance fee for the beach, hauling out a rolling Yeti cooler filled with drinks and sandwiches—tomato for her, peanut butter and jelly for the kids—until they were bored with her and with the too-cold water and the too-hot sand, and so she had to do the entire thing in reverse, backtracking through the sand, through the parking lot, her whole life a tape played back in the opposite direction.
Then it was a stop at Russell Orchards, this time for tender apricots and green compostable quarts of blueberries, which she allowed the kids to eat in the car, even though she knew she would find shriveled berries under the seats for the next six months.
A typical New England summer, which was all she ever really wanted anyway.
It had been the reason she came home, the reason she had pleaded with Denny to move back, all of these sweet things, these memories she would share with her kids and hold on to forever.
The beach and the fruit and even the Yeti back and forth on the sand. And she loved every minute of it.
Anna had just about forgotten about Mimi Mar and the pool at Life Time and the letter she had sent to the superintendent.
A month had passed. It was mid-July, past the official start to summer.
The weather had been cooperative and hot since well before Memorial Day, though she had stopped visiting the health club, had stopped putting herself in the path of any of the usual Hamilton suspects, especially since when she did run into any of them, they gave her the cold shoulder.
Even sweet Ellen Wilson had been cold as ice the last time she saw her, at the Citgo over on Bay Road.
She drove over to Di’s house right after that happened and sat in the driveway until her friend came out.
“What’s up?” Di asked, walking out to the car. “You just planning on sitting here forever?”
Anna had the radio on and the sunroof open.
“I’m just sitting here feeling sorry for myself,” she said.
The only thing that would make it better, she thought, was a pack of Parliament Lights, and, just like magic, Di opened her hand, et voilà: two cigarettes that might as well have come straight from 1998.
“I come bearing gifts, of course,” Di said. “But you have to tell me why you’re sitting in my driveway listening to Garbage with the sunroof open.”
“I ran into Ellen Wilson at Citgo.”
“Big fucking deal. Hamilton’s the size of my ass. Which, as you know, is not that big.” She put both cigarettes in her mouth and lit them both, before passing one to Anna.
Anna accepted it, looking at the burning ember in wonder. It had been a very long time.
“She wouldn’t even make eye contact with me,” Anna said.
“I didn’t realize you were actually close,” Di said. She turned her mouth into a wide O and blew smoke rings, an old and faded party trick that never really lost its shimmer.
“It’s not that we were close, but she was always nice to me.”
“I’ll tell you a thing about Ellen Wilson. I’ve never met a person so afraid of fucking up in my whole life,” Di said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Ellen’s entire life revolves around what the members of the PTO think about her, and if you take that away, I swear to God she would die a slow and painful death right in front of you.
She’s cold to you because her Hamilton life depends on it.
She practically doesn’t exist without Mimi and Karen. ”
“That’s the most pathetic thing I have ever heard,” Anna said, because it was.
“I don’t make the rules, I just loosely obey them,” Di said.
Anna nodded. The problem wasn’t only Ellen, of course.
What was irritating her was that it felt like there was a conspiracy of people set up in Hamilton.
Everywhere she turned, people were icing her out.
Or maybe she had just been having a bad couple of days.
“Actually, it wasn’t just Ellen,” she confided in Di.
“Rachel Kincaid, too. When I was out running the Artichoke the other day.”
“You didn’t tell me that part.”
“It was when you were watching the kids for me. I saw her while I was running. I said hi and she just . . . kept running,” Anna said.
“Maybe she didn’t hear you,” Di said, optimistically.
“She ran right past me, eyes to the ground.”
“Okay, well I’ll admit, that’s kind of bad,” Di said.
“It’s just that I’m finally starting to realize that I am completely out,” Anna said.
She could see Henry in the corner of the driveway, dribbling a soccer ball toward the house.
She had to give it to Di. The woman certainly had invested in the kid.
His form didn’t look great, but he did seem passionately invested in the sport.
Maybe he had graduated from T-ball, after all.
“I’m alone. I’m a ghost in this town. Even with the people who were just a tiny bit nice to me. Even with the people I grew up with.”
“You’re not a ghost to me, kiddo.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Anna said. She inhaled once more, and deeply, then tossed the butt out the window. “Stomp that one for me.” Winking at her friend, she put the car in gear and headed back out on the road.
Later, Anna took the kids all the way out to Sandy Point, six miles out from the entrance to the Plum Island Reservation, the most beautiful slice of beach on the eastern seaboard, if you asked Anna.
Ben came back with a large, gray bone, a vertebra from a whale, and Louisa claimed as her own one of the triangular structures that the locals always made: lean-tos, really, swept away by the wind and sea late in the season, rebuilt by beach masters when the weather perked up.
“It’s my Dream House,” she shouted with glee, bringing a towel and sand toys inside.
Anna packed up the kids, spent and sand-covered, and drove them down the long road all the way back, through Newburyport and Newbury, through Rowley and alongside the Great Marsh, where the marsh grasses were just beginning to show signs of autumn: golden and red grasses were always the first tells.
They drove past the canoe landing, in Ipswich—locals called it the haul-out—where day-paddlers were pulling red and green boats out after a day on the Ipswich River.
She remembered a day from long ago, at summer camp, when she had spent a day on that very river, paddling with an inexperienced boater and swimmer.
The canoe had capsized, leaving them waist-deep in warm, murky water, an experience that had baked into her bones. She had avoided the river ever since.
They pulled into the driveway at dusk. The Jeep was parked there.
Anna could see a plume of smoke coming from the yard: dinner, the grill, more summer memories, and a relief, too, that she wouldn’t have to think about it.
She stopped at the mailbox on the way up, grabbed the mail, and shoved it in her beach bag without thinking.
Inside, the house was cool and dark. It felt like summer.
Much later, when she was cleaning out the beach bags before bed, Anna remembered about the mail.
Mostly bills, as usual. Gas. Electric. A few pieces of junk mail.
She left the things for Denny on the counter.
She was about to toss the rest in the trash when she noticed a piece of mail that was completely separate from the rest. It was handwritten, addressed to her, written in loopy script.
Mrs. Anna Plummer. The stamp was perfectly affixed. So straight. Unnervingly straight.
She opened it. Inside was a typed note.
Dear Anna Plummer,
We have tried to express to you that you are getting in over your head.
Please try to understand.
Our generosity only extends so far.
Consider this the final extension of our kindness.
—A friend.
This is unhinged, Anna thought to herself.
I have to be imagining this. There is no way that the PTO is actually coming over to my house and putting threatening notes in my mailbox.
Even repeating the story in her own head, she wasn’t sure if she believed it.
Was the note real? Was she holding the paper in her hand?
More likely: Some kid had overheard a parent complaining about her and had decided to get in on the fun.
It was impossible to take seriously any kind of childish prank that involved a “threat” in a mailbox. In 2022.
“What in the actual fuck am I supposed to do now, anyway?” Anna said to the empty kitchen.
Denny had gone upstairs to watch a show about aliens or Nazis.
Or maybe both. She knew that she couldn’t just let it go.
It was not in her nature, it was not acceptable to walk away from this.
Plus, that was just giving the bully what she wanted, even if the bully was just a neighborhood kid who had overheard a parent talking shit about her around the dinner table.
I’m going about this all wrong, Anna thought. I need to beat the PTO at their own game.
I got another ridiculous message, she texted Di.
What is it this time