by Tom McNeal
From the courtyard she’d been hearing the jangling sounds of girlish merriment, so she stood back from the kitchen window and looked out. There in the softening light of early evening three of Camille’s friends were laughing at a fourth, a prankster named Torry McQuaid, who Judith knew was a Roberto Benigni fan and who now stood on the diving board pretending to sketch with her hands the trajectory of a preposterously difficult dive involving twists and, if Judith counted correctly, a triple reverse. This drew rowdy hoots from the girls—Lauren Hartman was one, Isabella somebody was one, and Judith didn’t know the third. Fit girls in skimpy suits, with streaked hair and perfect teeth; girls who Judith would bet the house had snubbed the meat loaf completely. Except Lauren Hartman, of course. She would’ve tried some meat loaf and praised it as if she meant it. Lauren was so smart and so pretty and so kind that Judith’s approval of the girl mingled with envy of her parents. Torry the Prankster slowly, reverently crossed herself and then, haw-hawing, cannonballed into the deep end, and a second or two thereafter she broke up through the water grinning, receiving her friends’ derisive cackles as if they were tens straight across. And where was Milla, the hostess of this soiree? There, alone, away from the others, moving from the deep shade of the gazebo into the open doorway, phone to her ear, deep in conversation. The other girls shouted something to her—Judith couldn’t hear what—but Camille looked up, squinched her nose, and merrily waved her middle finger at them all, which provoked further laughter from her friends.
Sonya sat by herself on the shady stoop of the guesthouse, the unwanted chaperone, the paid informant, watching while not watching, reading a book, wearing jeans and a dowdy brown T-shirt with some indecipherable inscription on its front. Here was a surprising fact: Sonya could dive. Judith had seen her one day standing still on the diving board in a surprisingly stylish black one-piece, looking straight ahead, waiting for some kind of internal composition to fall into place. Then, decisively, she stepped forward and bounded up from the springboard, her sleek tight body describing a graceful arc before the water’s surface swallowed her in one quick gulp. Judith wished she would do it now, go put on that same slimming one-piece suit, walk before these girls to the diving board, and demonstrate how incomplete their imaginations regarding her might be.
Judith rinsed her plate—she’d eaten every bite and craved more—then pulled the Edie Winks phone from her purse, powered it up, and checked for messages. None. She felt strangely thwarted. She stared at the phone as if it were a magical box that contained important secrets but couldn’t be opened. Finally she just switched it off and put it away. She removed her shoes, sorted the mail, and sat down with a Pottery Barn catalogue, pulled in by the beautiful bedding on the cover. She found herself regarding something the catalogue was calling a glass tealight holder. Monogrammable, it said. Was that a word? And why would people want their initials on a candleholder? Or—she flipped the page—on soap sets or bedsheets? To say, Just so you know, these sheets are mine? Also the candleholders. But anything else you see, without my initials? Go ahead and take it. Feel free. Really, she thought, dropping the catalogue into the recycling bag, too much is too much.
She opened the kitchen door to the courtyard and presented herself to the girls. Camille sat now in the middle of the others, turning over Tarot cards one by one.
“Milla?”
Camille turned a card and said something that provoked laughter.
“Have you heard from your father?”
Camille looked up and shook her head.
“He called,” Sonya said from off to the side, closing her book over her finger. “He said he’d be home between eight and nine.”
Judith took this in. “The meat loaf was scrumptious, Sonya. Everything a Wednesday ought to be.”
Sonya smiled. “Glad somebody liked it besides Lauren.”
So Judith had been right. The others had snubbed it. “Everything else okay?” she said.
“It’s all good,” Sonya said.
The girls had grown quiet. In a certain kind of movie, they would meet later to discuss ways of killing Sonya, or perhaps selected parents. “I’ll be inside if you need me,” Judith said, and some not quite audible response—“Fat chance,” maybe?—provoked murmuring laughter at the fortune-telling table.
Judith bristled at the laughter and turned around. “Do I know you?” she said.
All four girls at the table turned to her with odd frozen expressions, but Judith looked only at the girl she hadn’t recognized. It was Camille who figured this out by tracing Judith’s gaze to the new girl. “God, Mom,” she said. “It’s Olive. You’ve only met her about a gazillion times.”
Judith didn’t remember meeting anyone named Olive, ever, but that didn’t mean she wanted to argue it out in public, so without another word she went back inside, picked up the New Yorker that had come in the day’s mail, and sat with it in her favorite armchair near the front window. As the room dimmed, she looked out into the yard on the north side, where the impatiens still bloomed. And the hydrangeas, which Milla had helped her plant to earn money for a sock monkey. It seemed only a few months past, but—she was counting—it was eight years, or maybe nine. Milla had made a little bed for the sock monkey every night, and she set a separate place at the dinner table with the monkey in a little chair before it. The monkey’s sole diet was grapes, and Judith and Malcolm would take turns diverting Milla while the other snitched a grape. Then Milla, playing along, would say, “Well! I see Socko ate another grape, or”—looking about with exaggerated suspicion—“somebody did.” Darling precocious Milla, not so innocent even then. Still, it was during that time, when Milla lived for tea parties, stuffed animals, and picture books, that Judith’s love for the girl could honestly have been called keen and pure. As soon as Milla found Judith sitting still, there she would be, a determined set to her face, presenting a copy of Babar or Curious George, Madeline or Amos and Boris, saying, “This one, please,” and “Now this one,” preferring Judith’s reading voice to the nanny’s or even Malcolm’s. Judith had to smile. For that little girl, she would’ve given her life in a heartbeat.
“Mrs. Whitman?”
A dim presence on the other side of the dim room.
“Oh, hi, Sonya. You gave me a start. I was just…” Just what? Regretting Milla’s growing up? Wishing my high school lover would call? Wondering whether my husband is off humping his assistant? She switched on the lamp, which changed the mood at once. She could see, for one thing, that the inscription on the front of Sonya’s T-shirt said, It’s not about me. Which meant what, exactly? What was it about, then? And Sonya was barefooted; that was how she’d stolen in so quietly.
“Sit, sit,” Judith said, waving her toward the other armchair. “This is such a nice room and nobody sits in it.” Then, as Sonya seated herself, Judith said, “You know, I was thinking of you a while ago. Of how beautifully you dive. You did high school gymnastics, too, didn’t you?”
Sonya nodded.
There was something else Judith sketchily remembered, some disappointment about cheerleading, but that couldn’t lead anywhere good. “They’re related, aren’t they? Diving and gymnastics?”
“Diving and gymnastics related?” Sonya said, and Judith, wondering if somebody would just please shoot her, said yes, she bet they were.
A few uneasy moments passed before Judith thought to say, “This new girl, Olive—is she nice?”
“As nice as most of Milla’s friends.” Judith knew what this meant, and Sonya knew what Judith’s next question would be so went ahead and answered it. “She’s in AP classes and also on the tennis team. Number three on the varsity.”
Judith nodded. It came to her suddenly just how much Sonya knew.
“By the way,” Sonya said, “I don’t think you’ve ever been introduced to Olive before.”
Judith smiled and murmured, “So I’m not completely losing my marbles.” She’d begun to wonder what business Sonya had come in to conduct. “So, Sonya
, is everything okay?”
“Better than okay.” She waited a moment. “I guess you know I got into GCC.”
“GCC?”
“Glendale Community College. The nursing program.”
“Oh, Sonya! That’s just perfect. You’ll make a wonderful nurse!” Clearly Judith should already have known about this, so she added, “I always thought so.”
Sonya nodded. “I start next week but I just wanted to let you know I’ve got it worked out so I’m always home before Milla,” she said, and there were more details, how many units she was taking, what classes she was looking forward to, the length of the commute—during which discussion Judith was thinking how predictable it was, Sonya’s going from nanny to nurse, trading one form of subordination for another, though nursing paid real money, she supposed, and then Sonya was saying, “Well, anyhow, thank you again. Without you and Mr. Whitman, I could never have done this. I mean, the money you’re lending me for the car and insurance and all.”
They were lending her money for a car and insurance? Yes. They were. And here was Sonya, watching her, savoring the intimate release of her secret. “Really, Sonya,” Judith said, employing a sedate tone as she scrambled to higher ground, “it’s nothing. We’d always been looking for a way to help. I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”
Malcolm, due home between eight and nine, pulled into the driveway at 10:23. From their upstairs bedroom, she could hear the pinging sounds as he heated his meal in the microwave, then heated it some more. She could also hear him chatting it up with Milla and her girlfriends, who’d stayed to watch a movie, something with a lot of singing. Thirty minutes passed and he still didn’t come to bed. Finally she went down. There was Malcolm in the front room, seated in the midst of the kids, a glass of red wine in his hand, his empty plate on the coffee table before him.
She’d recently had a dream in which Malcolm sat naked in a room full of Persian carpets, bright pillows, and other naked people, women primarily, and when she arrived fully clothed he talked to her as if nothing whatsoever were out of the ordinary. Now he looked her way, and at once his cheerful expression slackened. “Uh-oh. Headache?”
What? She looked sick to him? Miserable? Shrewish? “No, I just couldn’t sleep.” She glanced at the wide, flat television. Little Shop of Horrors, with Steve Martin as a sadistic singing dentist. “I was wondering if you could just—”
“Sure, Mom,” Camille said, preferring reduced volume to extended conversation with Judith.
Malcolm, rising, smiling, said, “And we might just close the door as well.”
Upstairs, alone, Judith pulled the silver cell phone from the depths of her shoulder bag and again checked for a message that wasn’t there. And during the night, when she awakened with Malcolm’s dead weight against her, she took her bag into the bathroom, where the voice within Edie Winks’s phone again informed her that she had no unheard messages.
At work the following afternoon, Judith was standing in the women’s bathroom, waiting for the phone to power up, when Lucy walked in. “So there you are!” she said, and disappeared into a stall without another word. Lucy and Judith had spent most of the morning undoing edits Lucy had done on her own and then going with cuts that Judith admitted to herself, if not to Lucy, were inferior.
Three days passed without a return call from Willy, which only tightened the grip of her preoccupation. Why wouldn’t he call? Why would he go to the trouble of putting on his answering machine a message customized specifically for her, then not call her back? Why in God’s name would you bait for a particular fish and then, when it bites, just let it run off with miles of line? What if he’d never forgiven her? Loathed her? Couldn’t believe after all these years she would have the nerve to disrupt his life? Judith was thinking thoughts like these one evening at the kitchen sink while pouring pasta into a colander when, from behind, Camille said, “What’s with the slutty new phone?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The seriously slutty one at the bottom of your purse.”
Judith, turning, seeing the Edith Winks phone in Camille’s hand, forced a laugh. “I’ll pass your verdict on to Leo Pottle. He provided the phone so the studio would be able to get hold of me. Though I may have to explain to him that slutty’s no pejorative among the thirteen-to-sixteen age group.”
Camille had the phone open now and was punching buttons, looking at the screen, punching more buttons, making Judith really nervous. “For God’s sake,” she said, “put that back. It’s not yours. It’s not really even mine, and I don’t want to screw it up.” Her voice sounded strange to her. She remembered what she’d been preparing to do. She slid the pasta from colander to serving bowl.
Without looking up from the phone, Camille said, “Did you give Dad this number? So he can always get through to you, too? Because sometimes he can’t.”
“No, Milla, I didn’t. It’s the studio’s phone. It’s for them to get to me.”
Camille kept playing with the phone, trying this and trying that. “So it’s like seriously limited minutes?” she asked.
“Maybe. I didn’t ask. Because I have no intention of making calls on it.”
“Can you give the number to me? For emergencies and stuff?”
“No, Milla, I can’t. For reasons I just explained.”
Camille abruptly stopped tapping the function keys. Surprise registered on her face. She looked from the phone to Judith and back to the phone. “Well, somebody’s been making calls,” she said.
Judith had never really understood what it meant to feel clammy, but she understood it now. She needed to say or do something, but she couldn’t. She just stood there.
Camille kept punching buttons and studying the phone.
“Camille, I mean it. Put the freaking phone back where you found it.”
Camille looked up from the phone and produced a benign expression that Judith understood was designed for vexation. “God, Mom. It’s not like I found a derringer in your purse or something.”
“My purse,” Judith said, but it was no use. Her authority had slipped away, and in some perverse squeeze-and-bulge transaction, Camille’s had grown.
Camille smiled, shrugged, and, having won, held up her hands in mock surrender. She went off to put the phone back in Judith’s purse. When she returned, she said, “Where’s 308, anyhow?”
“What?”
“The 308 area code. That’s what was dialed and I was wondering where it would be.”
“I have no idea,” Judith said, but, really, enough was enough, so she said, “Who, by the way, is Theo?”
“Theo? Well, there’s a Theo Lane on the water polo team, if that’s who you mean. He’s Torry’s go-to guy. At least he was.”
“Until?”
“I don’t really know.” Camille’s face was so placid and pretty and unruffled that it gave Judith a chill. She could almost guess what she was thinking. Who, by the way, is Theo? How did we jump from a 308 area code to Theo? Maybe not those exact words, but that would be the basic progression.
Usually when Camille returned to school, Judith’s productivity improved, but this year, if anything, the opposite seemed true. When she wasn’t at work, she tried to stay away from the storage room. She scheduled weekend outings with Malcolm and Camille—a drive to the beach, a visit to Huntington Gardens—but she was besieged by either headache or torpor. She fell asleep in the car during both outings.
Work incrementally worsened. One morning when she got to the studio, Lucy handed her a Post-it note that said, Air date 12 days away, Judith, and line forming behind you. Where is the fucking show?!!!! It wasn’t signed. It didn’t have to be. Everyone knew Pottle’s left-leaning cursive.
“It was stuck to the middle of the monitor when I came in,” Lucy said. She gave Judith a look of startling sincerity. “Do you think he’s going to fire our asses?”
“I doubt it,” Judith said, but the truth was, she was as uncertain about what Pottle might do as she was abou
t the cuts she was making, as she was about the odd marital and parental thoughts she was having, as she was, in fact, about the entire termite-eaten life she was leading. Sunday, for the first time in years, she went to church, and felt as fraudulent there as she did at home and at work. She was sitting in the church parking lot wondering what to do next when her own cell phone rang. It was Malcolm calling to say he was taking Camille and some of her friends to a street festival in Santa Monica.
“If I understand correctly, someone’s cousin is playing in a band called Snitch Is Rich,” he said. “There will also be crap booth after crap booth.” An old line of his. Then: “Would you like to join us?”
Judith declined, and added that she really needed to log some hours in the editing room. But she didn’t drive to the studio. She drove to her storage room and plugged in the charger for her Edie Winks phone, which had gone dead. As soon as it had a partial charge, she checked for messages—none—then stretched out on the bed. She didn’t even try to read. She folded her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. She was dreaming—of what, she wouldn’t remember—when the chords of Debussy began softly to sound.
Judith reached for her phone, flipped it open, and preposterously, recklessly, foolishly said, “Willy?”
After a long moment, a voice said, “Yeah. It’s me.”
It was his voice all right, slightly sagged with age. “Oh, Willy,” Judith said in a tender fallen voice. “How are you?”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m okay.”
Something was happening. The room unhinged itself and, very slowly, began to revolve. She wanted to speak, but first she had to close her eyes.
Willy said, “I need you to do something for me, Judith.”
Judith took three quick breaths in, expelled them, then eased open her eyes. To her relief, the room and everything in it was fixed, unmoving, normal-seeming again.
“Judith?”
“I’m sorry, Willy. What were you saying? You need me to do something?”
“Yeah, I do. I need you to come out here for me.”