This tipped the scales for Janice. “How much would it be?” she asked.
“You’d want…what, half a gram?” Janice nodded, having no idea what exactly a gram represented. “That’d be fifty bucks.”
“Fifty dollars? Vicodin costs a fraction of that at the pharmacy.”
James laughed. “Yeah, well, I don’t accept any insurance. Sorry.”
She paused. She knew better than this, and yet something in her felt reckless. She closed her eyes and had a sudden vision of herself at twenty in a patterned shift dress and long flaxen hair, gesturing widely with a Gauloise. When she opened her eyes, James was still there. “How soon could you get it?”
“Later today?” James said. “I’ll need to talk to—”
“Please,” she said quickly, sensing how fragile her grasp on this moment really was. “I don’t need the details.”
“Not a problem.” He hiked the pool net over his shoulder, as if he were a javelin thrower about to send the pole flying over the pool into the bougainvillea. “I assume this means I’m not fired after all?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Well, anything you need. I’m your man.”
“Thank you,” said Janice, who thought she felt better already. “Oh, and James?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t smoke pot in my garden. The neighbors might smell it. And it’s really not good for you, you know.”
“Sure,” he said. “I won’t do it again. Thanks again, Mrs. Miller.”
“Please,” she said. “Call me Janice.”
by the time janice reemerges from the bathroom, Margaret has vanished from the kitchen. Janice goes to work on the pie with renewed energy, quickly and efficiently sifting flour, squeezing lemons, measuring out sugar by the tablespoon (her hand still shakes slightly, she notices). The butter is too cold; she takes it out of the fridge and sets it on the counter to warm. She’ll have to wait to finish the pie. She glances at the clock: It is now three in the afternoon. Her fingernails rap agitatedly on the granite countertop. Her mind races from one thought to another, settling on each for precisely two seconds before it forgets and moves on to the next. She feels marvelously alive, marvelously in the moment, implacable and unperturbed.
She picks up the morning paper Margaret left on the table and turns to the business section to study the Nasdaq listings. APPI has gone up another one and a quarter points, making the shares worth $148.75, which, by Janice’s mental calculations, means that the 2.8 million shares they own are worth roughly $3.5 million more than yesterday. Funny money. She thinks of the FedEx in the hallway whose contents she suspects she knows already and reminds herself, Half of that money is yours. Over $200 million dollars—my God, she can do whatever she wants with it now, without even asking Paul. This thought thrills her for a minute and then nauseates her, as if she’d just eaten an entire bag of marshmallows in one sitting.
Janice folds the newspaper neatly closed, walks it over to the trash compactor (acutely aware of the racing pulse at the back of her neck), and throws it on top of a pile of eggshells and onion skins. She hits the “On” button and listens to the whole mess grind down into a muffin-sized cube. Then she goes to work chopping the butter into the flour, kneading it into dough, and noticing how sticky and wonderful it feels between her fingers. She should do this every day.
Margaret materializes through the kitchen door again, wearing the same shapeless sundress with the dangling hem she had on yesterday. Did she not bring any other clothes home with her? “I’m going out,” she announces.
“Oh, don’t do that,” Janice says. “I’m just about to make a pie. Lizzie will be home any second and I thought maybe we could play a game together. We have Pictionary? Or Monopoly. Hearts—do you remember how much you loved to play hearts when you were little? Lizzie should be here any second.”
And yes, just then Lizzie walks in the door from swim camp, carrying her wet swimsuit in a string bag over her shoulder and looking somewhat boiled from a day spent immersed in chlorine. “See!” crows Janice.
“What’s going on?” asks Lizzie. Lizzie is all round and soft and sun-kissed, tottering in her unwieldy shoes. Her baby girl, her miracle child. After all those years of miscarriages, after sex had come to feel like a game of roulette, after they’d taken her doctor’s advice and given up trying (so much so that they’d rarely had intercourse at all), she’d been so surprised by her pregnancy that she hadn’t actually believed it until she’d held the purple squalling infant in her arms. At the time, Janice had felt blessed—Lizzie had saved her marriage, she’d thought then, though now she wonders whether her second child was just a distraction from her crumbling relationship. It doesn’t matter: Lizzie will always be her baby.
“I’m baking a pie,” says Janice. “Apple. You like apple pie, right?”
Lizzie ogles the dough. “I thought I was supposed to be on a diet.”
“Well, I’m cheating on my diet, too,” says Janice. “Want to roll out the dough?”
Lizzie drops her swim bag on the floor, and chlorinated water begins to make a puddle by the back door. She happily grabs a rolling pin and thwacks it into the pile of dough on the counter. Flour goes flying in all directions, and Janice thinks of the mess this will make of the floor, but discovers that it doesn’t bother her a bit. The idea of mopping actually fills her with pleasure. She rapidly slices the apples into perfect, even wedges and squeezes lemon over them, to save their color, before starting on the lattice for the top of the crust. If she’s going for traditional American kitsch, she might as well go all the way. Serve it up on a checked tablecloth, wearing a frilly apron. The thought makes her hiccup a giggle.
Lizzie breaks a piece off the dough and eats it, watching Janice out of the corner of her eye. Janice says nothing.
“So, Lizzie, how was your day? How was camp? Getting faster?”
“Good,” says Lizzie. She breaks off another piece of dough and crams it into her mouth. “I shaved a half second off my time in the five-hundred meter.”
Margaret is still standing by the back door, waiting for Janice. “Mom, we need to finish our discussion about…you know,” she starts. “Maybe not now, but let’s pick a time. I might be able to help.”
“Discussion about what?” asks Lizzie.
“I don’t need help, Margaret,” Janice says, and turns to Lizzie to change the subject. “Do you have any social plans this week, Lizzie? Any parties you’re going to?” Lately, Janice has noticed, Lizzie has been staying at home on Saturday nights again, and this concerns her. For a while, during the spring, it seemed like Lizzie had started making some friends, and while perhaps it’s just that the summer is quiet because everyone is off on vacation, she worries that Lizzie is reverting to her old, antisocial ways. Lizzie spends far too much time by herself, her social life starting and ending with Becky. Friends are so important at that age. It pains Janice to think that her daughter might be lonely. Hasn’t she done everything she can to make sure that her daughters were shown the easy path through life, easier than her own? And yet no matter what she does, she can’t quite protect them from cruel schoolmates and shiftless boyfriends and the vicissitudes of youth.
“Maybe you want to join some kind of activity group, with all your spare time this summer,” she continues, feeling chatty. “I think there’s a tennis tournament for teens at the country club.”
Lizzie sighs. “I don’t like tennis. You know I don’t like tennis.”
“Well, maybe you could start a knitting club,” she says. “I hear knitting is very trendy these days. I could teach you how—I used to knit when I was in college. I made a sweater for your father once. They have kits, now, I think, for beginners. It’s actually a very social activity. You’d be surprised.” Lizzie doesn’t respond, having apparently given up on rolling out the crust in order to stuff her face with dough.
“Want to leave some for the pie, Lizzie?” says Janice, and Lizzie abruptly stops chewing, her mouth bulging with pie dough, her eyes f
rozen in fear. Janice gives up and takes the dough, pressing it quickly into the pan, arranging the apples in symmetrical circles, and sprinkling the top with cinnamon and sugar. She places the lattice over the top and has the pie in the oven within minutes. She looks around the room, jittery with energy. Now she can clean. Where is the mop? She turns to see Margaret still standing behind her, watching, and quickly averts her gaze, worried that, if given a direct glimpse into Janice’s eyes, Margaret might somehow see straight into her mind and know exactly what she has just done in the bathroom.
“Mom? Are you okay?” Margaret says, staring at Janice.
Before Janice has to answer, the doorbell rings. “That’s the door!” she chirps. “Is anyone expecting someone?”
Lizzie shakes her head no. “Well, maybe it’s a package delivery,” says Janice, although she recalls that FedEx has already come and gone today. For a second she wonders, Could it be Paul? But why would he ring the bell? Then she decides it is more likely a neighbor or a friend coming by to see how Janice is holding up. She is thankful that, if that’s the case, they will be walking into an idyllic domestic tableau. No train wreck here. No. Train. Wreck. Heeeeere! But at the door, instead, is Paul’s personal assistant, Evan. Evan is in his early thirties—awfully old to be an assistant, Janice has always thought—and prematurely balding. Unlike older men who use the comb-over or the close crop to disguise their hair loss, youthful Evan has chosen to disguise his receding hairline by wearing a baseball cap with the Coifex logo on it. Janice is annoyed that he doesn’t take the hat off when she opens the door.
“Hi, Janice,” says Evan. “How are you?”
Taken aback, Janice nods, choosing not to be overly friendly with Evan until she knows what, exactly, he is here for. “I’m fine. How may I help you?”
“I’ve come to pick up Mr. Miller’s things,” Evan says, and shoves his hand deep in the pockets of his khakis. He pulls out a folded piece of paper. “He gave me a list.”
Janice is aware of Margaret’s presence behind her, so close that she can feel her hot breath against her neck. She doesn’t turn around. “His work papers, I assume? They’re in his office in the back.”
Evan won’t look at her but instead unfolds the paper and stares at it as if he is reading it for the first time, though he clearly isn’t. “No, Mrs. Miller. Mostly his personal belongings. His clothes.”
“Oh,” says Janice, suddenly dizzy. “Well, come in.” She watches him walk through the door and lets him start up the stairs before she calls up after him.
“Wait,” she says. He pauses mid-step and turns around slowly. “Take off your hat. We don’t allow hats in the house.” Evan nods and removes his hat, folds it in half, and shoves it into his pocket. Janice notices that underneath the hat, Evan’s remaining hair is greasy and creased.
She follows Evan up the stairs and is followed, in turn, by Margaret and Lizzie, trailing a cautious ten feet behind. Evan seems to know his way to the bedroom already—it appears that Paul has drawn him a map on a piece of paper—and immediately walks into Paul’s closet and begins pulling down wool suits, shoes, rugby shirts, chinos, and polo sweaters. He takes the suitcases off the top shelf—he seems to already know that the gray suitcases are Paul’s, whereas the burgundy ones are Janice’s—and begins to throw the clothes into them, willy-nilly.
“Oh, don’t do it like that,” she says, unable to prevent herself from moving forward to help. “Fold them, at least.”
But Evan shakes his head and blocks her way to the suitcases. “Really, this is fine. We’ll just have them pressed.”
She steps back and lets her hands flutter aimlessly by her sides. They itch to do something—to fold a shirt, to tuck a pair of shoes into a shoe bag, to smack Evan over his smug head with a sweater. She senses It throbbing through her veins, keeping her from doing anything stupid or rash, but senses, too, that its copacetic thrall isn’t as strong as it was just a few minutes ago.
Evan picks up a beige summer suit that is lying on the chaise, a casualty of her Hefty-bag incident, covered with scuff marks and smudges. Can Evan tell that she has mistreated Paul’s suit? Is he judging her for that? “That needs to be cleaned,” Janice informs him, trying to snatch the suit from his grasp. “You shouldn’t take it.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Evan answers. He points to the top of the dresser. “That’s his jewelry case, right? He wants his cuff links.”
Margaret and Lizzie are standing in the doorway of the closet. Lizzie’s mouth hangs open, and Margaret’s hands are clenched in front of her, radiating fury. It is their presence more than Evan’s curt efficiency that makes Janice feel like she is about to fall apart, despite It. She moves to the door and waves her daughters out. “Leave,” she says. “Just leave.”
Evan looks up. “If this is awkward, I don’t really need you to be here, either, Janice,” he says. “I’ll be quick. I know where everything is. He told me.”
Janice nods, feeling more helpless, she thinks, than she has ever felt in her life. “I’ll leave you alone,” she says, desperate to get down to her purse. It’s only been an hour since her last dose and James said she should wait at least four, but maybe just a little tiny bit more would help. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Actually, if you don’t mind, he wants his golf clubs? I think he said they’re in the garage?”
But Janice stands there, unable to tear herself away from the spectacle, until a high-pitched shriek splits the air. Janice jumps, her hands flying up in an involuntary spasm of panic, and she realizes that it’s the smoke alarm going off downstairs. She can hear the neighbor’s Labrador retriever barking wildly through the ringing in her eardrums and the bleating of the alarm. Evan freezes, his hands buried in Paul’s sock drawer, and stares at Janice until she turns and bolts from the room.
She races down the stairs, smelling burning sugar. In the kitchen, tendrils of black smoke drift, snakelike, from the oven up to the ceiling. She grabs the nearest dish towel—the oven mitts are not in their usual spot by the stove—yanks open the oven door, and grabs the scorching pie plate. It burns right through the rag, searing the flesh on her hands. She flings the pie dish away instinctively and watches it skitter across the kitchen floor as charred bits of apple splatter across the tile. The glass plate cracks right through the center. She thrusts her hands in the sink and runs cold water over her palms as the smoke alarm continues to go off. Smoke billows from the superheated pie plate, which, Janice realizes, is now burning a mark into her cherry wood floor.
Lizzie and Margaret materialize in the kitchen behind her.
“I can’t believe he sent his envoy to do his dirty work,” says Margaret. “How cowardly. You can’t possibly still think he’s coming back, Mom.”
“Are you okay?” asks Lizzie. “Did you burn yourself?”
Janice shakes with fury. “Make the goddamn alarm stop right now!”
Lizzie and Margaret look at each other, waiting for the other person to take action.
“Um, how do you turn it off?” asks Lizzie.
“Oh, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’m the only person in this entire house who knows how to do anything!” Janice shouts, and she lifts her hands from the running water—contact with the air makes them throb—and grabs a broom from the broom closet and stomps over to the smoke alarm, which hangs over the kitchen door. She takes the broom and tries to push the alarm off its screw, and when that doesn’t work after two tries she gives up and thwacks the alarm, and then thwacks it again and again until the white plastic breaks open and the battery comes spilling out and little bits of plastic get in her hair. The alarm whines to a stop.
“Mother,” begins Margaret, but Janice cuts her off.
“Oh, shut up! Just shut up, Margaret!”
Margaret shuts up. Lizzie stares at them with bulging eyes, looking from Janice to Margaret to Janice again.
Janice takes a deep breath. “I’m going to go upstairs and take a nap,” she says in an eve
n voice. She turns, grabbing the bottle of chardonnay off the counter, and leaves.
She encounters Evan on the stairway, lugging suitcases bulging with Paul’s possessions. “Fuck you,” she says as she passes. He stops in surprise and stands there speechless as she continues past.
She marches up, up the stairs, down the hall and into the bedroom, where the closet door has been neatly shut, leaving no sign of the devastation that has just taken place inside it. She finishes the bottle of wine and climbs beneath the sheets.
but she cannot come even close to sleep, and she curses the chemicals that keep her eyes dry and open. She tosses and turns. Twilight creeps in, what’s left of the day staggers off into the sunset, and she can hear clanking dishes in the kitchen downstairs, the rattle of Margaret’s car in the driveway leaving and then returning. The television comes on in the downstairs den, and canned laughter drifts up the stairs. As the sun eventually sets, a silence slips down over the house like a tea cozy. Janice can hear nothing but her own breath. She lies there in profound discomfort, hating Paul, hating her life, hating every decision she has ever made that has brought her here to this bed at this moment. She thinks of her purse downstairs, the little packet hidden inside, but can’t muster the will to go downstairs and face her daughters again, so she just lets her high fade away with the day. In its place comes a throbbing headache.
At nine, there’s a soft knock on the door. Janice doesn’t lift her head.
“I don’t want dinner,” she says to the closed door. “I’m not hungry.” But Lizzie opens it anyway, peeking cautiously around the jamb. She has a plate in her hand; and on that, a piece of apple pie.
“I thought you’d want some,” says Lizzie.
Janice stares at the pie, not understanding. “That’s not the pie that burnt, is it?”
“No,” says Lizzie, looking down at the plate. “It’s a new one. We made it.”
“You baked a pie?”
“It’s pretty good. Not as good as yours, though.” Lizzie proffers the plate in clenched hands. “Margaret had to get more apples from the store, and I don’t think they were the right kind because they were kind of mushy.”
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