65.
Eight Hours Before the Trivia Night
It had been raining steadily all morning, and as Jane drove back into Pirriwee it got so heavy she had to turn up the radio and put the wipers on fast, panicky mode.
She was on her way back from dropping Ziggy off at her parents’ house, where he was going to stay the night so that Jane could go to the trivia night. It was an arrangement they’d made a couple of months back when the invitations for the trivia night had first come out and Madeline had gotten all excited about planning fancy dress costumes and putting together a table with the right mix of accumulated knowledge.
Apparently her ex-husband was known for his pub trivia skills (“Nathan has spent a lot of time in pubs, you see”) and it was very important to Madeline that their table beat his. “And obviously it would be nice to beat Renata’s table,” said Madeline. “Or anyone with a gifted and talented child, because I know they all secretly think their children inherited their genius brains from them.”
Madeline had said that she herself was hopeless at trivia, and Ed didn’t know anything that happened after 1989. “My job will be to bring you drinks and rub your shoulders,” she’d said.
With all the dramas going on over the last week, Jane had told her parents she wouldn’t go. Why put herself through it? Besides, it would be a kindness not to go. The petition organizers would see it as a good opportunity to collect more signatures. If she went, some poor person might find themselves in the embarrassing predicament of asking her if she’d like to sign a petition to have her own child suspended.
But this morning, after an excellent night’s sleep, she’d woken to the sound of rain and a strange sense of optimism.
Nothing was sorted yet, but it would be.
Miss Barnes had e-mailed back, and they’d arranged a time to meet before school on Monday morning. After the hairdresser yesterday, Jane had texted Celeste and asked her if she wanted to meet for coffee, but Celeste had replied that she was sick in bed. Jane was in two minds about whether to try to tell her about Max before Monday. (The poor girl was sick. She didn’t need to hear bad news.) Perhaps it wasn’t necessary. Celeste was too nice to let it affect their friendship. It would all be fine. The petition would discreetly disappear. Maybe, once the news got out, some parents might even apologize to Jane. (She would be gracious.) It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, was it? She didn’t want to hand her bad-mother title over to poor Celeste, but people would react differently when they knew it was Celeste’s child who was the bully. There wouldn’t be a petition for Max to be suspended. Rich, beautiful people weren’t asked to leave anywhere. It was going to be distressing for Celeste and Perry, but Max would get the help he needed. It would all blow over. A storm in a teacup.
She could stay in Pirriwee and keep working at Blue Blues and drinking Tom’s coffee. Everything would be fine.
She knew she was prone to these bouts of crazy optimism. If a strange voice said “Ms. Chapman?” on the phone, Jane’s first thought was often something ridiculous and impossible, like, Maybe I’ve won a car! (Even though she never entered competitions.) She’d always quite liked this particular quirk of her personality, even when her insane optimism proved to be once again unfounded, as it invariably did.
“I think I’m going to go to the trivia night after all,” she’d told her mother on the phone.
“Good for you,” her mother had said. “You hold your head high.”
(Jane’s mother had whooped when she’d heard Ziggy’s revelation about Max. “I knew all along it wasn’t Ziggy!” she’d cried, but so exuberantly it was obvious she must have harbored some secret doubts.)
Ziggy and Jane’s parents were going to spend the afternoon working on a brand-new Star Wars jigsaw, in the hope of finally passing the jigsaw passion to Ziggy. Tomorrow morning Dane was going to take him to an indoor rock-climbing center, then bring him back later in the afternoon.
“Have some time to yourself,” said Ziggy’s mother. “Relax. You deserve it.”
Jane was planning to catch up on laundry, pay some bills online and do a clean-out of Ziggy’s room without him there to untidy as she tidied. But as she got closer to the beach, she decided to stop at Blue Blues. It would be warm and cozy. Tom would have his little potbelly stove going. Blue Blues, she realized, had begun to feel like home.
She pulled up in a non-metered spot down near the boardwalk. There were no cars about. Everyone was indoors. All the Saturday-morning sports would have been canceled. Jane looked at the passenger-seat floor where she normally kept a fold-up umbrella and realized it was back at the apartment. Rain splattered so hard on her windshield, it was as though someone were pouring buckets of water. It looked like very determined, very wet and cold rain, the sort that would make her gasp.
She put a hand to her head, considering. At least she didn’t have as much hair to get wet. That was the other thing that was responsible for her good mood. Her new haircut.
She pulled down the rearview mirror to study her face.
“I love it,” she’d told Mrs. Ponder’s daughter yesterday afternoon. “I absolutely love it.”
“You tell everyone you see I gave you that cut,” said Lucy.
Jane couldn’t believe how the short cut had transformed her face, giving her cheekbones and enlarging her eyes. The new darker color did something good to her skin.
For the first time since before that night in the hotel, when those words had wormed their malevolent way into her head, she looked at herself in the mirror and felt uncomplicated pleasure. In fact she couldn’t stop looking at herself, sheepishly grinning and turning her head from side to side.
It was embarrassing just how much genuine happiness she was gaining from something so superficial. But maybe it was natural? Normal even? Maybe it was OK to enjoy her appearance. Maybe she didn’t need to analyze it any further than that, or to think about Saxon Banks and society’s obsession with beauty and youth and thinness and Photoshopped models setting unrealistic expectations and how a woman’s self-worth shouldn’t rest on her looks, it was what was on the inside that mattered, and blahdy, blah, blah . . . Enough! Today she had a new haircut and it suited her and that made her happy.
(“Oh!” said her mother when she’d seen her walk in the door, and she’d clamped her hand over her mouth and looked like she might burst into tears. “You don’t like it?” said Jane, putting a self-conscious hand to her head, suddenly doubting herself, and her mother had said, “Jane, you silly girl, you look gorgeous.”)
Jane put her hand on the keys in the ignition. She should go back home. It was ridiculous to go out in the rain.
But she had such an irrational craving for Blue Blues and everything about it: the smell, the warmth, the coffee. Also she wanted Tom to see her new haircut. Gay men noticed haircuts.
She took a deep breath, opened the car door and ran.