Other People's Houses, page 5
Frances nodded, watching Ava tear away after her little sister, who was instantly hysterical with delight.
Six.
Michael was satisfyingly appalled when Frances told him the news that evening.
“He was going down on her? Before nine in the morning? Jesus.”
She nodded, not sure if it was the cheating or the earliness of the hour that bothered him, but then Lally came in. It was after dinner, she’d had her bath and was supposed to be brushing her teeth. To be fair, she did have a toothbrush in her hand.
“Do I have to brush my teeth?” She sounded like she’d maybe identified a loophole in the tooth-brushing law, and was ready to exploit it.
“Yes, you do.” Frances was firm.
“What’s up, Lal?” Michael was sitting in the big, comfy chair in their bedroom, his laptop open on his lap. Multitasking, as usual, although the news about Anne had almost made him close his computer.
The little girl turned to him and stuck out her arm. “There’s a hair on my toothbrush.” She pulled out her new strategy. “It seems unsantiary . . .”
“You mean unsanitary?” She nodded, because that was what she’d said. Michael took the toothbrush from her, removed the hair, and handed it back. “It’s fine now. Was it your hair?”
She shrugged, turning to go, her tiny little form in elephant pajamas almost too cute to bear. “I think it might have been Jack’s.” Jack was one of their dogs.
“Was he using your brush?” Michael was joking, of course. The dog had his own brush, one of those items that mysteriously turned up in drawers whenever Frances was looking for something else, but which couldn’t be found twice a year when she remembered you were supposed to brush the dogs’ teeth. In the same class were things like chargers for SLR cameras, passport photos you hadn’t sent in with the application yet, kitchen implements used only at Thanksgiving, and those tiny screwdrivers for fixing eyeglasses. Frances dubbed the whole class “occultatum,” after the Latin word for hidden. This coinage made her feel slightly pretentious, but she enjoyed muttering it when she pulled open drawer after drawer looking for something.
Lally was losing interest. “No, but I think Milo was combing his hair with it. I’m not sure. Something.”
Frances tried for clarification. “Milo was combing his own hair, or Jack’s fur?”
Lally just shrugged again and wandered out. Frances turned to her husband. “Did you understand that?”
He shrugged just as his daughter had and turned back to his screen. Then he remembered what they’d been talking about and looked up again. “No, really, right there in the front room? Visible from the street?”
Frances made a face. “No. They were on the floor, not hovering in midair. The only reason I saw them was because I walked into the actual house.”
“For the toilet roll tubes?”
“Yes. At first I thought it was Charlie . . .”
Her husband laughed. “You thought Anne and Charlie were having interesting sex on the floor of their living room at nine in the morning?”
Frances pulled off her boots and started taking off her clothes. “OK, maybe that isn’t very likely, but it is the first assumption you make when you see a married friend having sex on the floor.”
“Oh, I know that’s what I think every time. Have you ever seen anyone else having sex on the floor? Is this what you get up to while I’m at work?”
Frances pulled off her sweatshirt and bra, enjoying that first scratch of tit-freedom, then put on a large pair of flannel pajamas with dogs on them. “Yes,” she replied. “I creep from house to house, hunting for people having sex.”
Michael smiled. “We’ve been married nearly twenty years, and you haven’t changed a bit.” He paused. “Are you going to blow the whistle?”
“Good Lord, no. Why would I do that?” She looked at her toenails, which needed cutting.
“I don’t know. Because it’s honest?”
She looked at him, and raised her eyebrows. “You’re joking, right? Why on earth would I do that? This other guy could be just a one-time thing.” She reached into her bedside drawer, hunting for her nail clippers.
“Like in a porn film? He was delivering a pizza?”
She snorted. “Yes. Because Anne Porter has pizza for breakfast every day.” No clippers, what a fucking shock.
“OK, he was delivering a brioche and a venti Americano.”
Jack and Diane, the dogs, came in and jumped on the bed. Frances shut the drawer and scooched back to make room for snuggling, wondering if Anne would have had an affair if she’d had a dog. I don’t have the sexiest marriage in the world, she thought, but I get a lot of affection and approval from my dogs, with far less negative fallout. Maybe I should persuade her to drop the extracurricular sex and get a rescue dog instead. Then she thought about what Michael had said, and her mind wandered. “Why don’t they deliver more interesting things in porn movies?”
He didn’t look up from his screen. “Because most people aren’t focusing on what the setup is, you doofus. Oh, let’s watch The Sears Guy Always Comes Twice, it’s all about the exigencies of appliance repair. The way the director sets up the tensions and potential resolutions in the first ten minutes is masterful, and the anal is all in one take.”
Frances opened her mouth to reply, when Ava walked in. Michael closed his computer. Frances noticed this every time: For her he kept the screen open, just in case something more interesting popped up, but for his firstborn he shut the screen without even thinking about it. She wasn’t jealous; she was reassured every time she saw the pecking order in action. She would put the kids before him, every time, and he knew it and would do the same. If he didn’t take a bullet for the kids, he’d have to take one from Frances.
“Why are you guys talking about anal? And can I get a phone?” Ava asked this question pretty much every day, but so far the answer had been no. However, she had clearly studied compound interest and thought maybe bugging worked the same way: A little every day would mount exponentially. And maybe she was right. Frances could feel herself weakening.
“We weren’t talking about anal, we were discussing film theory, and no,” said Michael.
“But—”
Frances interrupted her. “Every kid in school has one but you, what if you get lost even though you rarely leave the house alone, you’d be able to keep your calendar on it, you’d be able to take notes in class, even though your school doesn’t allow phones in class. Yes, we’ve heard all your arguments, Ava, and sorry, but the answer is still no. You don’t need one, they’re expensive, and I want you to read books rather than spend all day gazing at a screen. You have a computer, that’s enough.”
Ava glared at her mother, as teenagers have glared at parents since Neolithic mom first refused to get Neolithic teen a new axe. “I hate you. You guys never go anywhere without your phones, but that doesn’t count, right? You just want to keep me dependent, because then you have something to do to fill your empty days and pointless existence.” She turned on her heel, pretty smoothly, and stormed out.
Frances looked at Michael. “That’s a new approach.”
He nodded. “It’s got potential.”
“My days are hardly empty.” Frances was a little stung, but not badly. “And how does she know about anal?”
“She uses the Internet, and don’t get mad, she’s full of hormones and squished on all sides by peer pressure. She’ll apologize before she goes to sleep.”
Frances nodded, because he was right, at least recently. Ava would pick a fight, or Frances would say something careless and Ava would get her back up, and suddenly they’d be bickering. Then, after a bit of shouting and stalking away, Ava would sit in her room and sulk for a while, then call to her mother in a wobbly voice and say she was sorry and that she didn’t mean it. Frances would apologize, too. She’d also promise to herself that the next time Ava pushed her buttons she’d bite her tongue, remembering only too well the driving desire to fight with her own mother at that age, the need to lash out and bang up against something. Then Ava would cling to her and cry, reassured that she’d never drive her mother away, that Frances would always be there to fight with, make up with, take for granted, and depend upon. Frances would smooth her daughter’s hair, tucking the damp strands behind her ears, knowing that in another couple of years Ava wouldn’t care enough about her opinion to fight with her. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
Michael was still on topic. “So, if you’re not going to tell Charlie, why did you tell me? What if I feel obliged to tell Charlie?” He had reopened his laptop, Frances noticed.
“You don’t. You wouldn’t.” Frances scratched Jack behind his ears, causing him to make that rumbly sound in his throat that made her smile.
“No, but what if I did?”
“I thought about that before I told you. I decided the risk of you suddenly changing completely after twenty years was smaller than the risk of me suffering a panic attack because I was keeping a secret from you.” Diane had pushed Jack out of the way and was now all up in Frances’s beak, demanding attention. Frances looked around her at Michael, and smiled at him.
He looked surprised. “You don’t keep anything secret from me?”
“Apart from my exact weight and the location of my secret chocolate stash, no.”
“A different stash from the third drawer in the laundry room?”
“Shit.”
“I’m an idiot. Now you’re going to move it.”
“Yes.” Frances paused. “Why, do you keep lots of secrets?”
“Of course. Some on purpose, and others just because you wouldn’t be interested. I’m not sure those even count as secrets.” He pushed down one of his socks and scratched his ankle. “I think we need to Frontline the dogs again.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t be interested? I have a very quiet life, most things are interesting. Try me.” She pulled on Jack’s long, soft ears, gently. He let her. It was symbiotic: He let her pull on his long ears like a toddler with a baby blanket, and she fed him and told him he was wonderful. And occasionally remembered to put flea medicine on him.
Michael gave it some thought. “OK, I never told you that Bob Adams got a divorce.”
A colleague from work she barely knew. “You’re right, that’s not all that interesting. Why?”
“His wife left him for her cats. Apparently she wasn’t satisfied with the six she had and wanted number seven. He put his foot down and said it was him or the cats, and she chose Pussy Town. Either he grossly miscalculated and is brokenhearted, or he won the war by losing the battle. He certainly didn’t seem all that sad about it.”
“I bet his new place will be much less fluffy,” Frances said.
“Oh, he kept the house. She took the cats and moved into a cat-positive commune in Northern California. When I said Pussy Town, I meant Pussy Town. That’s what it’s called.”
Lally reappeared. “I’m ready now. You can read to me now.”
“OK.” Frances got up and looked over at Michael. “If that is your idea of a boring secret, I want to hear all of them.”
“No, the whole point of secrets is keeping them. And none of them has anything like the human interest or feline backstory that that one did.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. That one was genuinely weird. I would have told you and about eight other people that story.”
“Can I be the judge?” Lally took Frances by the hand, looking up at her.
Frances grinned at her. “Sure, baby.”
“What is a judge?”
“Someone who decides things other people can’t agree on. Time for bed, OK?”
Lally went to hug her dad. He pulled her onto his lap and snortled in her ear, making her laugh. She curled up and giggled, and for about the nine hundredth time Frances wished she were small enough to curl up on some big person’s lap and be completely safe.
Seven.
Down the street, Anne was getting ready for bed. Outside the bathroom door she could hear Kate and Charlie laughing, as Kate explained something arcane about Pokémon, and Charlie pretended to get everybody’s name wrong.
“Isn’t that what Pookachoo does?” he said, causing Kate to click her tongue in amused irritation. “Isn’t Claptrap a chocolate type? Or is it a popcorn type, with attacks like saltypop, and deadly kernel?”
Kate burst into giggles. “Daddy, there is no such thing as a popcorn type, and you know that! You watched the show with me THIS MORNING before school.”
“Was that what that was?” Charlie sounded incredulous. “I thought that was an educational show about Japanese animals.”
“They’re made up!”
“They are?”
Anne used to find these exchanges endlessly touching. She’d fallen in love with Charlie for his whimsy, as much as his charming good looks. He seemed like a proper grown-up on the outside: well dressed, whip smart, a successful patent attorney and partner in his firm. But he was secretly about nine years old and still found farts, slipping on things, and silly hats hilarious. He loved to play with the kids, which was good because Anne had always had a hard time relaxing enough to enjoy it. She had found having small children utterly terrifying, convinced they were going to choke to death on something or drown in the bathtub or spontaneously develop dengue fever. Now that they were bigger and a little more robust she could relax more, but she still found herself contemplating their loss far more than she would have liked.
The affair had proved to be an effective antidote to fear, which was unexpected and, of course, ironic. When she found herself thinking about the pain of losing her children, the fear of making a mistake that led to their harm, the overwhelming sense of misplaced responsibility, she would just think about Richard. Think about his hands, his hair, his eyes, his desire, and let the physical arousal she felt blow right through her panic. She knew where she was with him; she was being naughty, she was being selfish, she was risking it all, and it confirmed her secret belief that she was a very bad person who never should have been given children in the first place.
She washed her face carefully, mixing water with some special cleansing grains she bought at the one store that carried them, the scent of roses and chalk signaling the end of the day. She enjoyed the feeling of them under her fingers, the way they held their hard edges in the water for a moment before succumbing and blooming into solution. She rinsed her face, looking for stray molecules of clay with her eyes closed, the contours of her face reassuring her. Still alive, then. Toner, again with the scent of roses, then moisturizer, firm strokes up her throat. She felt a tiny sore spot and tipped her head; the merest hint of beard burn, right under the edge of her jawline. She looked at it coldly, why couldn’t young men shave properly, then pulled her heavy pale pink dressing gown from its hook and went to help Charlie with the kids.
Charlie looked at his wife as she came out of the bathroom, bringing the scent of roses with her, the smell he associated with her, and with her being his. He loved this Anne, the one that emerged without a scrap of makeup, without her elegant outfits and cool eyes, her pauses in conversation, her judgment. She was wearing the cashmere and satin dressing gown he’d bought her for Valentine’s Day the previous year, the cost of which had made him pause for a moment before the memory of her skin against his blew his reservations away. He thought of this as the real Anne, the one that only he knew. Her eyes met his and they both smiled.
“Are you ready for bed, pumpkin?” she asked Kate, who ignored her and snuggled into her dad. He shrugged over her head, and Anne went to see what Theo was up to.
Unsurprisingly, he was on his computer, playing Minecraft. She sat on his bed, making a small stack of paperbacks slither to the floor, their irregular thuds on the rug reminding her suddenly of the sound of apples dropping at night, back when she was a child in Yakima County. Her children’s childhood was so different from hers, she wondered what sounds would pull them back—sirens and helicopters were their nightingales and falling fruit. She asked her son what he was building.
Theo looked at her with bright eyes, happy to tell her about it. “A fortress, right now, but I just finished the gardens. Do you want to see?”
“Sure.” Anne didn’t really understand Minecraft, but she loved it when the kids shared their ideas and projects with her. Her own mother had never been in the least bit interested in sharing her thoughts with her children and their opinion was utterly irrelevant to her. She’d expected them to love her and follow her instructions, and they did. It never occurred to her they might want more, and they had given up waiting for more to be offered. Maybe she’d had nothing to give.
Theo navigated through the half-finished structure he was building and outside, coasting above what were apparently acres of farmland. There were serried rows of plants, separated by mere pixels, fields of digital corduroy.
Theo was listing, “Carrots, wheat, sunflowers, potatoes . . . and over here we have chickens, cows, and ocelots.”
Anne raised her eyebrows. “Ocelots?”
He shrugged. “I like them.”
She smiled. “Who doesn’t?” She stood up. “It’s time to get off now though, and go to sleep.”
He looked at her, surprised. “But I still have homework.”
“You’re supposed to do it before you go online, you know that.” Her stomach sank; she didn’t have time to get angry now. “How much do you have?”
Theo looked worried and pulled his backpack closer across the floor. “I don’t know. Sorry, Mom, I only meant to go on for ten minutes after dinner and lost track of time.” His mom said nothing, and he found his homework quickly. “A math sheet and a chapter to read.” He looked up at her hopefully. “That’s not too bad, right?”
