Wednesday, September 1, 1982
Six Months, Thirteen Days Before the Sacrament
SHE HAD BEEN wrong.
Wrong about everything.
Wrong about them.
It happened during a switcheroo—they still made her go. It didn’t matter if she was pregnant. Robin stayed behind with Eloise while the group piled into both Avis’s and Maggie’s cars. Maggie drove her Volvo. Gypsy drove Avis’s hatchback. Just recently having learned to knit from Lily, Avis had wanted to stay home and work on the tiny sweater she was making the baby for winter, but she said nothing when they told her to get ready. Nearly four months pregnant, she squeezed between Sunnie and Lily while Jeff took the front seat.
The house Jeff picked out was beautiful. Overlooking the beach, it had the biggest picture windows Avis had ever seen. She tried to imagine it during the day while the rest of the group milled about, wondered if, perhaps, the couple had a baby. If they did, maybe she could pocket a few onesies and a couple of toys. But when she wandered too far away from the group, Jeff called her back. And so she stood in front of the enormous window and stared out into the darkness, wondering what it would be like to be a mother. Would she be allowed to stay home to take care of the baby then? Or would Robin or Maggie be regulated as the babysitter while Avis was forced into a life of crime?
The girls picked through a well-stocked pantry and a meticulously organized refrigerator while Kenzie and Noah eschewed their redecorating for a more artistic approach. Rather than moving the furniture around, they chose to stack it as high as it would go. With a coffee table on top of a chair on top of a couch on top of a rug, they cackled as the tower of furniture began to tip. They had the stack perfectly balanced when a slash of headlights cut across the living room wall.
They froze like deer, their gazes darting from one shadowed face to another. All eyes stopped on Jeff. Avis hardly heard what he said, deafened by the thud of her anxious heartbeat, but she could read his hand gestures well enough.
Stay quiet, don’t move.
It was late. The home owners were more than likely coming back from dinner. The group could only hope that the occupants had had a little too much to drink, that they’d go upstairs without so much as looking in the direction of the living room. If they did, the group of intruders would be left to sneak out undetected. But the longer they waited for the home owners to come inside, the less likely an easy exit seemed.
They could hear a couple arguing before they ever unlocked the front door.
“Oh, of course,” a woman’s voice snapped. “Let’s just give them all our money, shall we? Screw it, let’s sell the house, sell all our possessions, live in a cardboard box in their driveway. Would that make you happy?”
Avis’s stomach twisted with the familiarity of the fight. She’d spent her youth listening to her parents throw barbs that were almost identical. With so much money between them, she never understood why they clashed over something they had so much of. She still didn’t understand it, and doubted she ever would.
“I don’t need that to make me happy.” A man’s voice. The sound of keys hitting a sideboard. “You shutting up about what I do with our finances, that would make me happy.”
“Oh, because I’m useless, is that it?”
“Well, you’re damn well not fucking useful, Claire.”
A moment of enraged silence.
A light flicked on in the foyer.
Avis gritted her teeth. She suddenly needed to go to the bathroom more than she had in her entire life. She felt woozy and hot. The baby didn’t like all this stress.
“If my staying home is such a burden, you should have opened your stupid mouth when we were discussing whether I should go back to work.”
“Work?” A harsh laugh. “You mean that Avon shit you sell? You call that a job, Claire? Really?”
Another light went on.
Avis took a deliberate step away from the shard of light that cut across the hardwood floor. The ocean roared behind her, invisible in the darkness beyond the window.
“Well, I apologize that I didn’t become a scumbag lawyer like you . . .”
“Scumbag,” the man muttered. “Right.”
“Right!” Claire barked back. “I think you’re a scumbag, Richard. I think you’re a prick.”
“Good.” Another mutter.
“Great.” A chirp in return.
She could sense Richard stalking through the hall toward the kitchen, toward the living room it opened into. One flip of the switch and they’d all be exposed. She held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, bit her lips to keep herself quiet. On the opposite side of the room, Jeffrey looked more impatient than worried.
“Let’s end it, then,” Claire said, stalling Richard’s trajectory toward the kitchen.
“What?”
“I said, let’s end it,” she said coldly.
Avis tried to imagine how the woman looked. A short, professional haircut, probably blond. Slender, lots of makeup, the kind of person who steps into the house and immediately pulls off her high heels. It took her a second to realize she was picturing her own mother, prim and proper despite her anger, still pretty in light of her features twisted by fury. She didn’t want to be like her mother. She’d prayed nearly every night for God to help her raise her child right, to not be harsh and critical and uncaring, to not repeat history.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Richard said. Avis pictured him lifting a dismissive hand at his wife. She hated him despite not knowing who he was, hated him for how completely smug he sounded. Just like her father. Just like them both.
“Ridiculous?” Claire’s voice inched up an octave. “Why, because you think I don’t know you’re sleeping around? Is that what makes this so ridiculous, you piece of shit?”