Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17
T he doorbell rang, surprising me. I opened the door, seeing Tasha Turner on the front stoop. A vision in a bright pink sundress, the luxurious drape of the garment hugging her jutting hips and accenting her tiny waist. I self-consciously placed my hands against the stubborn post-baby pudge clinging to my waistline and blinked, taking a second to translate her into my world.
“Are you going to let me in?” she said, smiling. I realized with a start that I hadn’t even opened the door all the way.
“Oh, yes.” I stepped back, swinging the door wide. I had few friends. Tasha’s weekly visit after work each Thursday was something I looked forward to. Of course she had no idea how upside down my world had become. “Is it four already? I’ve lost track of time.”
“As long as one of us remembers, it’s fine.” Her teeth were dazzling.
“Oh, I remembered.” I mimicked her smile. Recalling how much Muzzy had appreciated specific meeting times, I strained to keep my lips upturned. “I just got caught up in chores.”
Chores, really, Caroline? Mother’s voice was disapproving.
Tasha crossed the living room in front of me, not glancing to the left where a talk-show host doled out advice from the dusty television screen, or to the right where the sticky-looking, red-rimmed wineglass resided on the end table. Fortunately, she didn’t look back at my reddened face either. The place was a mess.
Pausing before my tiny kitchen table, Tasha flowed like water into a mismatched chair that sat alongside it, its empty seat the only free space amid the clutter of baby items and knickknacks on every other surface. She placed her hands on the tabletop, and I noticed her oval-tipped nails were the shape and shade of lush red grapes.
“Can I get you a drink?” My gaze shot to the empty wineglass on the end table before focusing back on her cabernet-colored fingertips. I wondered if the chosen shade was a subliminal advertisement for her sommelier husband. “I have wine.”
“Oh no.” She laughed. “If I drink now, I’ll fall asleep cooking dinner.”
I nearly snorted. As if Tasha made dinner . She likely had some sort of food service. Or a personal chef. But I couldn’t let my manners slip. I needed Tasha. More than she knew.
“How are the twins?” I asked. “Any recent photos?”
“Sure.” She whipped out her cell phone and pulled up a picture of the adorable toddlers—a boy and a girl, of course—on an intricate wooden playset next to a gated inground pool in the Turners’ massive backyard. Both kids were mini replicas of their Tyra Banks look-alike mom: hazel eyes slanted like a cat’s, tawny skin. I thought of the day we’d met, when she’d opened her wallet to remove something, and I’d glimpsed a small wedding photo that looked like a shot from the pages of Vogue : Tasha’s model-thin frame strategically filling out a wispy blush wedding gown in all the right places. Her beaming groom, Nelson, in a dove-gray tuxedo, his dark hair and skin gleaming in the tropical-looking sunlight.
“They’re such beautiful children.”
“Thanks, Caroline.” She placed the phone on the table and gestured to the chair across the table. “Let’s talk.”
I toyed with the idea of telling her about what I’d seen on Pine Hill Road. But if she didn’t believe me, I risked her abandoning me like Tim had. Most people avoided crazy.
“You don’t know how much it means to have you help me hash out this marriage stuff,” I said, sliding into the chair. “Tim still refuses to talk to me. Not even on the phone. And I don’t know why.”
She lowered her brows, slicing a vertical line into the skin of her forehead, just above her nose. She’d have to Botox that trouble spot. I was surprised she hadn’t already.
“I think you do, Caroline. You just don’t want to talk about it—or even think about it.”
I placed my elbows on the table and clasped my hands together in front of me. “Well, would you? If Nelson walked out?”
She nodded slowly. “That would hurt me, no doubt, but I think Tim’s hurting too. Things like this take time?—”
I rolled my eyes. “Now you sound like my neighbor, Mary. She keeps telling me to give us more time. And time may be a luxury we don’t have.”
“Why do you say that?” Tasha’s tone turned wary. “You’re both young.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. My parents were young when my dad died. Neither of them had even hit thirty when he drowned.” I suddenly realized they’d been the exact same age I was now. The thought sent a quiver through my hands. I quickly placed them on my lap, out of sight.
“Your mother never remarried.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“I guess she didn’t want another man raising her only kid.”
“Hmm, you’d think she’d welcome someone new to share not only the work of child-rearing but the fun too.” Her eyes met mine, her gaze speculative. “Maybe your mom had decided that no man could measure up.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think she was so traumatized by the way Daddy died...” I closed my eyes to the memory of sunlight blazing on the pond’s surface, thousands of dazzling silver sequins.
“The accident,” she said.
I opened my eyes; felt a sharp pain in my neck. Reaching up and kneading the area with my fingertips, I remembered our family, so close together. “As you know, we were in a rowboat on a small lake. On vacation, I think. It’s hard to remember, I was so young. I’m sure I’ve mentioned to you, I stood up, causing the boat to capsize.” A shiver raced up my arms as though I’d plunged anew into icy water. I placed my hands on the tabletop to steady them. “My father drowned saving us.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” Tasha covered my hands with hers. “A horrible memory.”
I fought the urge to pull my hands away. “That’s just it: I don’t remember it at all.” I gazed up, my eyes locking with hers. “I recall sitting in the boat together, and that’s it.”
Tasha nodded. “That makes sense though, right? That you would block out the traumatic event?”
Emmy began wailing from her bedroom. I shot out of my chair. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” I ran to the nursery, swinging Emmy’s door wide and peering into the crib for the cause of her sudden, violent cry. She lay in the center of the mattress, her legs raised up to her tummy and her face an angry red. I bent down and expertly scooped her up, recalling what my pediatrician’s nurse had said during our first postnatal visit: “ That’s the loudest cry I’ve ever heard out of a baby!”
I bobbed Emmy gently up and down, rubbing her back in soothing circular motions, trying to ease the gassy spasms slicing through her, but her cries only grew louder. I bounced faster and whispered, “It’s okay,” over and over into her ear. Eventually, her cries died down to pathetic little mewls. I donned the baby carrier and tucked her in, angling her so her ear would be against my heart.
I swayed back and forth, knowing it was the motion Emmy liked best. As her whimpers transitioned into hiccups, I marveled at what a reliable friend Tasha had become, even before Tim left. In the beginning, I’d had my doubts. Gun-shy after Muzzy, I wasn’t seeking friends, but Tasha had barreled her way into my life, intent, it seemed, to stay.
When Tim first mentioned the woman named Tasha who worked in the same office complex as he did, doing what he called “personal growth consulting,” I envisioned her job as a mix of beauty advisor and career counselor. When he’d invited her to our home one Monday evening after a particularly trying weekend full of arguing and infant wailing, I’d looked at her sharply; her smooth greeting and direct gaze felt disconcertingly authoritative. A woman in charge, I’d thought, suspicious of what—or whom—she planned to manage.
“You need a friend,” Tim had explained after she left. “We don’t know the neighbors all that well.”
“There’s Mary...”
“Mary is more than fifty years older than you.” He’d looked at me pointedly, his eyebrows raised. “Among other things.”
“Tasha doesn’t live around here though.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “She’s over in Glenwood Estates. Each backyard in that development is bigger than our entire neighborhood.”
“She lives a few miles down Route 22, Caroline,” he said, impatience ribboning through his words, as usual. “Close enough.”
But worlds away , I thought.
As if summoned by my musing, Tasha peeked her head around Emmy’s door.
“Everything okay, Caroline?”
“Yes, I’m just putting Emmy down. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve gotta run. I have to get my kids from their enrichment program.”
“But you just got here.”
Tasha looked at the carrier strapped across my chest, the set of her mouth—lips thinned, the corners turned slightly downward—suggesting disapproval. “I got here forty minutes ago.”
I glanced at the digital clock on Emmy’s dresser. I couldn’t believe how long I’d been soothing her. “Oh geez, I’m so sorry to have left you sitting in my kitchen all this time. I had to?—”
“It’s okay.” She held up one hand. “I’ll drop by next week.”
“All right.” I followed her as she hurried toward the front door and let herself out. “Next week,” I repeated to the closed door. Would the day come when Tasha would no longer find value in our friendship? Would she realize she was getting nothing out of her visits with me? I thought of her pristine manicures and hurried into the bathroom in search of a nail file. Spotting a worn emery board on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, I snagged it and crossed back to the living room, settling on the couch. Reaching around a now-sleeping Emmy bundled against my heart, I shaped the uneven tips.
The pretty girls stick together. My mother’s words. How often had she told me that during my childhood? Every time I didn’t get invited to a birthday party or play date.
The advice paid off, said Mother now. You were popular in high school .
I laughed at the thought. My popularity had more to do with my expanding bra size the summer between seventh and eighth grades than any personality advantage. I blossomed from a 32A cup to a 34C in three months. And I let the captain of the football team feel me up.
Now I must pay more attention to my grooming habits. As my mother had often chimed, friendship had standards. Motherhood did too. Scratching Emmy’s tender skin with one of my untended claws would be unforgivable. I sawed away at the jagged nail edges.
“You’ll get invited to everything,” I nuzzled Emmy’s downy head with my lips and angled the emery board with purpose. “I’ll make sure of it.”