14.
I’ve invited Jane and Ziggy over for a playdate next week.” Madeline was on the phone to Celeste as soon as she hung up from Jane. “I think you and the boys should come too. In case we run out of things to say.”
“Right,” said Celeste. “Thanks so much. A playdate with the little boy who—”
“Yes, yes,” said Madeline. “The little strangler. But you know, our kids aren’t exactly shrinking violets.”
“I actually met the victim’s mother yesterday when we were getting the boys’ uniforms,” said Celeste. “Renata. She’s telling her daughter to avoid having anything to do with Ziggy and she suggested I tell my boys the same.”
Madeline’s hand tightened on the phone. “She had no right to tell you that!”
“I think she was just concerned—”
“You can’t blacklist a child before he’s even started school!”
“Well, I don’t know, you can sort of understand, from her point of view. I mean, if that happened to Chloe, I mean, I guess . . .”
Madeline pressed the phone to her ear as Celeste’s voice drifted. Ever since Madeline had first met her, Celeste had had this habit. She’d be chatting perfectly normally, and then she’d suddenly be floating off with the fairies.
That’s how they’d met in the first place, because Celeste had been dreaming. Their kids were in swimming class together as toddlers. Chloe and the twins had stood on a little platform at the edge of the swimming pool while the teacher gave each child a turn practicing their dog paddle and floating. Madeline had noticed the gorgeous-looking mother watching the class, but they’d never bothered to talk to each other. Madeline was normally busy keeping an eye on Fred, who was four at the time and a handful. On this particular day, Fred had been happily distracted with ice cream, and Madeline was watching Chloe have her turn floating like a starfish when she noticed there was only one twin boy standing on the platform.
“Hey!” shouted Madeline at the teacher. “Hey!”
She looked for the beautiful mother. She was standing off to the side, staring off into the distance. “Your little boy!” she screamed. People turned their heads in slow motion. The pool supervisor was nowhere to be seen.
“For fuck’s sake,” said Madeline, and she jumped straight into the water, fully dressed, stilettos and all, and pulled Max from the bottom of the pool, choking and spluttering.
Madeline had yelled at everyone in sight, while Celeste hugged her two wet boys to her and sobbed crazy, grateful thanks. The swim school had been both obsequiously apologetic and appallingly evasive. The child wasn’t in danger, but they were sorry it appeared that way and they would most certainly review their procedures.
They both pulled their children out of the swim school, and Celeste, who was an ex-lawyer, wrote them a letter demanding compensation for Madeline’s ruined shoes, her dry-clean-only dress and of course a refund of all their fees.
So they became friends. And Madeline understood when Celeste first introduced her to Perry and it became clear that she’d only told her husband that they’d met through swimming lessons. It wasn’t always necessary to tell your husband the whole story.
Now Madeline changed the subject.
“Has Perry gone away to wherever he’s going this time?” she asked.
Celeste’s voice was suddenly crisp and clear again. “Vienna. Yes. He’ll be gone for three weeks.”
“Missing him already?” said Madeline. Joke.
There was a pause.
“You still there?” asked Madeline
“I like having toast for dinner,” said Celeste.
“Oh yes, I have yogurt and chocolate biscuits for dinner whenever Ed goes away,” said Madeline. “Good Lord, why do I look so tired?”
She was making the phone call while sitting on the bed in the office/spare room where she always folded laundry, and she’d just caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe on one side of the wall. She got off the bed and walked over to the mirror, the phone still held to her ear.
“Maybe because you are tired,” suggested Celeste.
Madeline pressed a fingertip beneath her eye. “I had a great night’s sleep!” she said. “Every day I think, ‘Gosh, you look a bit tired today,’ and it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s not that I’m tired, it’s that this is the way I look now.”
“Cucumbers? Isn’t that what you do to reduce puffiness?” said Celeste idly. Madeline knew that Celeste was spectacularly disinterested in a whole chunk of life that Madeline relished: clothes, skin care, makeup, perfume, jewelry, accessories. Sometimes Madeline looked at Celeste with her long red-gold hair pulled back any-old-how and she longed to grab her and play with her like she was one of Chloe’s Barbie dolls.
“I am mourning the loss of my youth,” she told Celeste.
Celeste snorted.
“I know I wasn’t that beautiful to begin with—”
“You’re still beautiful,” said Celeste.
Madeline made a face at herself in the mirror and turned away. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, just how much the aging of her face really did genuinely depress her. She wanted to be above such superficial concerns. She wanted to be depressed about the state of the world, not the crumpling and creasing of her skin. Each time she saw evidence of the natural aging of her body, she felt irrationally ashamed, as if she weren’t trying hard enough. Meanwhile, Ed got sexier each year that went by as the lines around his eyes deepened and his hair grayed.
She sat back down on the spare bed and began folding clothes.
“Bonnie came to pick up Abigail today,” she told Celeste. “She came to the door and she looked like, I don’t know, a Swedish fruit picker, with this red-and-white-checked scarf on her head, and Abigail ran out of the house. She ran. As if she couldn’t wait to get away from her old hag of a mother.”
“Ah,” said Celeste. “Now I get it.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m losing Abigail. I feel her drifting, and I want to grab her and say, ‘Abigail, he left you too. He walked out on both of us.’ But I have to be the grown-up. And the awful thing is, I think she is actually happier when she’s with their stupid family, meditating and eating chickpeas.”
“Surely not,” said Celeste.
“I know, right? I hate chickpeas.”
“Really? I quite like chickpeas. They’re good for you too.”
“Shut up. So are you bringing the boys over to play with Ziggy? I feel like that poor little Jane is going to need some friends this year. Let’s be her friends and look after her.”
“Of course we’ll come,” said Celeste. “I’ll bring chickpeas.”
Mrs. Lipmann: No. The school has not had a trivia night end in bloodshed before. I find that question offensive and inflammatory.