It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
Dancing lasts an hour, sometimes longer, depending on the mood in the room (and how strong the cocktail is). Liesl, Bets, and Rhonda can all walk their troops home; Hollis has to drive, but it’s less than a mile away. Brooke and Charlie live the farthest and for this reason, Brooke has to stay somewhat sober, because Charlie certainly isn’t going to.
Monday mornings at school drop-off, items of clothing, sunglasses, and serving dishes are returned and exchanged among the members of the group. The teachers and other parents notice this, along with the bloodshot eyes and sagging countenances of the football parents. A rumor goes around that there’s an orgy at the Undergroves’ every Sunday and that the parties involve switching sexual partners.
Electra loves these rumors. Everyone is so jealous!
Rock and roll football is the coolest thing going on in Wellesley. Brooke looks forward to it all week—studying up on the teams playing, planning her outfits, ordering the cheese platter from Wasik’s (she can’t cook so this is what she brings every week). What she loves most isn’t the food or even the dancing—it’s the camaraderie. Raising children is hard (and twins are really hard!) and it can be lonely—but for years, when they’re in an insular, unified group in the trenches together, Brooke feels like part of the proverbial village.
Yes, Caroline remembers those parties. Things in the basement weren’t quite as wholesome as the parents might have believed. One week, they watched Ted even though it was expressly forbidden. Once the kids hit eighth grade, Carter Undergrove would steal a couple of his father’s beers and they would pass the cans around, each taking a sip or two. Then there were the hookups in the powder room—Will Kirtley and Layla Undergrove, for example. But Caroline won’t tell Brooke any of this. Why ruin her burnished memories?
“Are there any not-so-fond memories?” Caroline says. This is a leading question. She knows the answer is yes, the whole thing with the Undergroves fell apart, but as a kid, Caroline was never quite clear on what, exactly, transpired.
“Well, yes,” Brooke says. “Electra dropped me.”
Everyone knows there’s a hierarchy at rock and roll football, with Electra and Hollis at the top of the pyramid and Liesl, Bets, Rhonda, and Brooke down at the bottom. Brooke doesn’t care much about Liesl, Bets, and Rhonda. They’re perfectly nice women with perfectly nice husbands and kids the same age as her kids. If she were to nitpick, she might say Bets can be judgy, Liesl needs more cowbell, and Rhonda is always bragging about how hot her marriage is (which makes Brooke think maybe it’s not so hot). Brooke prefers the company of Hollis and Electra, but really that means Electra.
Brooke always offers to clean up, following right behind Electra every time she leaves the room, complimenting Electra on her hair, her earrings, the new mirror in the powder room; she inserts herself into conversations between Electra and Hollis, she apologizes too much and generally emits a cringey “Will you please sign my yearbook” vibe. Electra has a tic of her own: She’s fixated on the accomplishments of Brooke’s children. Will is the captain of soccer, basketball, and lacrosse, he’s also class president and started a chess club. Whitney is the lead in the school play and she scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on the MCAS. Brooke tries not to talk about them, because to talk about the twins is to brag, but Electra is always asking where Brooke gets them tutors, if she hires personal trainers, if she gives them vitamin supplements.
“No,” Brooke says. “They’re just good kids. I have no idea why.” She belatedly (too belatedly?) adds, “They certainly don’t get any of it from me or their father.”
Who knows which reason it is—pick one or all—but one random Thursday, Brooke receives a text from Electra. This isn’t unusual; Electra sends the whole football group a text every Thursday. But this one is sent only to Brooke.
It says: We’re trying a different format with football this week. We’ll miss you and Charlie. Thanks for understanding! XO, E.
It’s only looking back now, today, that Brooke can admit to herself that she had a terrible crush on Electra, and sublimating it turned her into someone weak, vulnerable, and—she’ll just say it—very annoying. Brooke regards the camera frankly. “I can be slow to pick up social cues,” she says. “But even I got the message: Charlie and I were no longer invited.”
Immediately Brooke calls Electra, but she’s treated to her voice mail. Brooke calls back—voice mail. She tries a third, fourth, fifth time. Finally, she leaves a message so pathetic, she can’t bear to think about it: “Electra, please, I’m not sure what I did wrong. Please, Electra, call me. Let’s talk this through.”
She considers calling Charlie or even Simon Undergrove—but they’re bros and are therefore useless.
By the time Brooke calls Hollis, she’s in full-blown hysterics. She can barely get a coherent word out, so finally she just cuts and pastes Electra’s text and sends it to Hollis. What can Hollis say? “You’re right, it sounds like maybe—”
“Did she text you?” Brooke asks.
In a meek voice, Hollis says, “Yes, she said she’s making shrimp fried rice in the wok. I’m bringing potstickers.”
“Who else was on the text?” Brooke says.
Hollis checks: Liesl, Bets, Rhonda. “I’m sorry,” Hollis says. “I didn’t realize you weren’t on it too. You’re always on it.”
It makes no sense! Brooke has been racking her brain, trying to remember anything that was out of the ordinary the Sunday before. Electra’s sister, Nadine, had been visiting from Manhattan. Nadine was a slicker, shinier version of Electra, all done up with hair, makeup, clothes, nails, perfume. She was like a woman fashioned from enamel. Brooke had exchanged only a few words with her before Nadine turned away to talk to Rhonda. Had Nadine asked Electra why someone as underwhelming as Brooke was included in the football group? Then Brooke gasps. Had Charlie been inappropriate with Nadine, maybe followed her to the powder room and made advances?
“Can you call her?” Brooke asks Hollis. “Can you ask what I did?”
“Oh, Brooke,” Hollis says. “I don’t want to get in the middle of this. You and Electra need to work it out between yourselves.”
“I’ve called her six times,” Brooke says. “I’ve left messages. She doesn’t want to talk to me. She just… kicked me out, like we’re kids in a clubhouse.”
“I’m so sorry, Brooke,” Hollis says. “It won’t be the same without you.”
“Your mother kept going to Electra’s house. Not only that Sunday but every Sunday for the rest of the football season,” Brooke says. “She went to Electra’s knowing that Electra had dropped me from the group.” Brooke holds up a hand. “I could see why Liesl and Bets and Rhonda didn’t take action. They were followers. But your mom is a good person, a strong person, and I guess I assumed she would stand up for me.”
“She did at some point,” Caroline says. “She and Electra are no longer friends.”
“She waited until after the Super Bowl,” Brooke says. “Electra and the other girls were planning your senior spring break in Harbor Island, and Hollis told Electra she wasn’t going. She called me up and we planned a trip to the Virgin Islands instead.”
“Ah,” Caroline says. This makes sense. She and Hollis did go to the Virgin Islands with Brooke and the Kirtley twins. Charlie stayed in Wellesley because it was tax season and Matthew had a paper to present somewhere. Caroline, for one, had been glad to be rid of Carter, Layla, and the other kids. She’d known there was some kind of drama going on with the adults, but what did she care? Because they were eighteen, she and Will and Whitney were legal to drink in St. John and they had spent the week inhaling rum punches and listening to live music at the Beach Bar.
Caroline shuts the camera off. “Wow, Electra is a real bitch. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Brooke shrugs. As she was telling the story, she felt a refreshing detachment, as though she were talking about someone else. “Electra is a small person who steps on others to make herself feel big,” Brooke says. She worries she sounds like a pop-psychology cliché. “In her defense, I always felt insecure in the group, insecure in my life—and that affected how I acted. I tried too hard, I lacked confidence. I thought that to make people like me, I had to defer to them instead of acting natural.” Brooke sighs. “It doesn’t matter now. Your mom and I are friends and Electra is irrelevant.”