“Jesus fucking Christ!” Owen yelled.
“What the hell is going on up there, Owen?”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Owen yelled again.
Owen could hear Izzy’s footsteps hurrying up the staircase.
“Holy shit,” said Owen.
“What happened?”
“Holy shit!”
“Where’s my air conditioner?”
“It fell out the window.”
“Are you serious?”
“I almost lost a finger,” said Owen. “This finger right here was almost ripped off of my hand.”
“If you didn’t know how to install an air conditioner, you should just have told me.”
“I did tell you. I said exactly that. And then you said it was easy and that your idiot husband Christopher did it every year.”
“You’re right. You did tell me that,” said Izzy. “My bad.”
“Do you have a first-aid kit?” Owen asked. He looked down at the gash in his finger. It was bleeding profusely. He tried not to think of all the rust that encrusted the old AC, the one that was now outside in pieces on the lawn. Rust caused tetanus, right? Jesus. Jesus! “I need some Neosporin.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up,” Izzy said. She looked out the window at the air conditioner, which had flattened one of her boxwoods. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Can we take a moment and be grateful it didn’t hit anybody?”
“No. No, we can’t.”
“It could have killed somebody. Or a dog or a cat or something. It fell two stories down.”
“I’m not grateful for this. I can’t afford to be doing things like buying new air conditioners, Owen. I live on a fixed income. It’s called alimony, and it’s shit.”
“I can’t turn back time, Izzy. I apologize for not making my inability to install an air conditioner clearer to you at the onset.”
“I’m perimenopausal, Owen.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Izzy said, “I get hot.”
Six
It is true that in the natural world, there is one foolproof way to revive a flagging libido—find a new partner.
—Constance Waverly
The Indigo Initiative
The Waldmans’ outdoor wood-fired Japanese soaking tub had achieved almost mythical status in Beekman, even though the Waldmans had moved away long ago, the tub itself had fallen into disrepair, and the house was now owned by wealthy retirees who spent their winters in Palm Springs. Still, the tub lived on in the communal mommy-memory of the town, passed down from woman to woman on park benches at the tot park, over bottles of wine at the Cutting Room, alternately chilling and thrilling, scandalous and intriguing.
What had happened was this. Some number of years earlier, a local attorney named Elliot Waldman had installed a handmade wood-fired Japanese soaking tub in the woods behind his home. Elliot had built it himself—he was that kind of guy, very handy, always finding plans for things on the Internet and then building them for less than seventy-five bucks. The sprawling Waldman property also boasted a saggy, stained yurt and a lethal-looking tree house that Elliot’s wife forbade their three children to use.
The soaking tub sat six people comfortably and eight or even nine if everyone was willing to be ever so slightly pressed up against one another. And sitting in the middle of the woods in a tub of hot water drinking wine while snowflakes floated down all around you, or looking up at the stars while passing around a glass pipe, turned out to be just about as much fun as anyone had managed to have in Beekman in a very, very long time.
There was still a debate about whether swimsuits were worn in the tub. Some said yes, others whispered no. Some claimed suits were wriggled out of, or people forgot them altogether, quite possibly on purpose. But swimsuits or no, the tub was filled with drunk and/or high, slippery-wet mommies and daddies pressed up against one another in the pitch-dark, deep in the woods.
Late the following summer, the divorces started. Only two of the original hot-tub buddies still lived in town, now married to each other, and they were looked upon with suspicion by the Long-Memory Mommies, the ones who knew which young mothers of current pre-Ks used to be nannies in the employ of their now-husbands, who knew which man used to live with his ex-wife in a house presently owned by a new couple running in their set, who knew where all of the bodies were buried.
The lasting impact of the Waldmans’ soaking tub was this: the young mothers of Beekman were fundamentally conservative, not in their politics, but in their behavior. They did not flirt with one another’s husbands. Cleavage was suspect. Bikinis worn to the club pool were analyzed and then texted about. Sometimes even photographed if it was possible to do it discreetly (and it was). Lingering hugs, drunken conversations that took place in corners of rooms at Beekman parties and lasted ten minutes too long—all of that was frowned upon.
And the wives—well, they looked out for each other. So when Claire Chase and her son Blake were driving through the parking lot at Home Depot, and she spotted Owen, she made a mental note of it.
Something about it struck her as off. It was the middle of the workday, for one thing, and Owen had a large window-unit air conditioner wedged into the top of a shopping cart and was walking rapidly toward his Subaru. Once there, he popped the back open and began an awkward dance of trying to get the air conditioner from cart to car. For reasons she was unable to fathom, Claire did not stop her car, roll down her window, and say hello.
A few minutes later, it hit her: Owen and Lucy have central air.
*
Saturday-morning soccer was an exercise in futility, but Lucy and Owen kept signing Wyatt up for it every year. They wanted him to have the experience of playing a team sport.
That Saturday, Lucy and Wyatt showed up to the game twenty minutes late because Wyatt had refused to get into the car. Finally, Lucy bribed him with five—yes, five—Hershey’s kisses. He’ll burn the sugar off on the soccer field, Lucy thought when she gave them to him. Wyatt could be a tough negotiator when he sensed he had the upper hand.
“Go on,” Lucy said to him when they got to the field. “Your team is in the yellow. Go and have fun. Remember, no hands on the ball!”
Wyatt wandered off slowly in the direction of the scrum of kids chasing the ball just as Sunny Bang sidled up to Lucy and said quietly, “Yo.”
“Hey, Sunny.”
“I’ve found someone for you.”
“A babysitter?” Lucy was always looking for new babysitters. Wyatt chewed through them. They’d babysit once, and then become mysteriously, perpetually unavailable.
“No, you idiot,” said Sunny Bang. “A guy for you to have sex with.”
“Sunny—”
“GO, TOBIAS!” Sunny shouted. “GO, TOBITO-BAMBITO! GO! KICK IT! KICK IT! GOOD TRY! GOOD TRY, BABY!
“Well, you’re not making any progress on your own,” said Sunny. She turned away from the soccer field and stared intently at Lucy’s face. “Unless you are and just aren’t telling me about it, in which case I will be extremely mad at you. But also proud of you. I’ll be equal parts mad and proud.”