Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  Tomorrow night, she was going to Windsor Terrace, to Carla Morgan’s house, for a Diversity Committee meeting. Each of the other members had husbands. Alicia and Carla had office jobs. Bess was president of the school Parents Association, as well as organizer of a few different committees, and spent a few hours each day in the PA’s basement office at Brownstone. They all got out of their houses, had daily face-to-face interactions with other people. If Robin didn’t have a date, weeks could go by without her having to talk to anyone for longer than three minutes, besides Stephanie, her ten-year-old daughter.

  Was Robin looking forward to surrounding herself with women who had fuller lives than she did? Short answer: not sure. The whole diversity agenda seems like dewy idealism, but she’d gone along simply to do something (anything) with other adult females. Robin had enjoyed playing cards last time at Bess’s house. She couldn’t say she felt bonded (would she even know what that felt like?), despite their swapping stories. She wondered what those three women thought of her, if they pitied her single motherhood, or were fooled by her jovial cynicism. She’d have to pretend again, but it was just more of the same, like she did every day on the phone, in emails when trolling for dates, at school drop-off when gossiping and chatting with Brownstone parents.

  Robin stepped on her cigarette butt and suddenly felt exhausted. Time to go home, treat herself to a nightcap. She noticed Alicia had been counting drinks at the last committee meeting, but Robin hadn’t felt harshly judged. She’d had decades of experience being harshly judged, on sight, by just about every person she met. Being obese had honed her paranoia or perception, depending on the setting. In this neighborhood, feeling judged was a near constant. Single moms might be plentiful in Bushwick. In Brooklyn Heights? Not so much. At Brownstone, she was a rare and dangerous species. Overcompensating, she flaunted her freedom, referring obliquely to cigarettes and cocktails, her many hot dates. Robin could gauge the happiness of the other mothers’ marriages by how interested they were in Robin’s social life. The women who avoided her like Ebola, or cornered her in the playground to get their vicarious thrills, had problems. The moms who seemed polite but indifferent—the majority—chalked her up as (1) a freak, (2) a pity case, and (3) not a candidate for double dates.

  Thus far, Robin hadn’t felt reviled, pitied, or envied by Alicia, Carla, and Bess. Nor has she formed solid opinions (or taken the emotional temperature) of the other three women—yet. At this point, she was most intrigued by Carla, if for no other reason than that she was black. Robin had no black friends: not much opportunity, no gravitational pull toward any particular black woman, and the fact that her limited social energies were focused on men. Exclusively white men at that (although not necessarily Jewish). Habitually, she clicked the “Caucasian” box in her online searches to find a racially compatible potential stepfather for Stephanie. The idea of dating a black man intimidated her a little. Robin had a white girl’s fear of black masculine power. She couldn’t help picture a huge black penis slapping against powerful black thighs. Robin would probably meet Carla’s husband tomorrow night. She’d be sure to check out his package. Bess’s husband Borden’s trouser basket had been a bit disappointing.

  Walking the five blocks home, Robin forced her thoughts away from penises of many colors. She fluffed her hair in the breeze, hoping to get out the smoke smell. To answer Stan’s question, Stephanie had no idea Robin smoked, or had nightcaps, or slept with men she barely knew and didn’t care about. Of course, Robin preached to Stephanie about the dangers of cigarettes, alcohol, and casual sex. The hypocrisy of modern parenting in a nutshell.

  “Sorry we’re late,” said Bess. Her teenage daughter, Amy, stood behind Bess in the hallway outside Robin’s apartment.

  “Welcome,” said Robin, inviting them in. “Stephanie can’t wait to meet you, Amy. And thanks again for pinch-sitting.”

  Amy nodded. Robin smiled at the sullen girl whose eyes were hidden behind a drape of dirty blond hair. Bess was, as always, preppy perfection, her shimmering yellow hair tucked behind her ears, falling silk across her shoulders. It’d be hard to have a beautiful mom, thought Robin, although this Amy had potential in the looks department. She was tall, and had decent bone structure (from what Robin could see of it), her skin was relatively clear. Most important, Amy was skinny. Skinny was the ultimate genetic prize. Everything else could be fixed with makeup and gel.

  “Stephanie is straight down the hall, first door on the right,” said Robin, pointing Amy down the long hallway of her two-bedroom apartment toward her daughter’s room.

  The teenager skulked away. Bess said, “She hates me. She has no respect for me. She told me tonight that I don’t deserve to consume ‘everyone else’s oxygen.’ ”

  At sixteen, Robin had said far, far worse things to her mother. “It’s a stage,” said Robin. “What started the fight?”

  “I asked if she’d written thank you notes for her sweet-sixteen party, and she just went off on me. ‘Sweet sixteen’ is an oxymoron,” said Bess.

  When Robin had been a sour sixteen, she’d refused a party, offered unenthusiastically by her kiss-kiss-slap-slap mother. What kind of celebration would it have been? Robin had three friends. Her mom would have forced Robin to invite the scores of girls who hated her and wouldn’t have come to her party if they’d been paid.

  “Did Amy cry?” asked Robin, thinking of her own teenage sob-fests.

  Bess laughed. “We both did. Can’t you tell?”

  Robin searched Bess’s creamy skin for puffiness, blotches, or smeared mascara, and found none. “It’s good to cry,” said Robin. “Like eating fiber, I make a regular and concerted effort to do so.”

  From the other side of the apartment, Stephanie burst out of her bedroom, dragging Amy along to show off her DVD collection in the living room.

  Robin leaned close to Bess and said softly, “If all goes well, we can make Amy’s babysitting a regular thing.”

  Bess said, “Keep her off the mean streets of Brooklyn Heights?”

  Robin laughed. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Can I use your bathroom before we leave?” asked Bess. They were to drive in Bess’s BMW to Carla’s house in Windsor Terrace.

  “That way,” said Robin, pointing Bess toward the powder room. Then she stepped into the living room doorway. Stephanie was excitedly cataloging her DVDs for Amy, trying to impress the older girl.

  Amy glanced at Robin and then quickly away. Robin moved a step closer. Again, the teenager shot her a look, cautious, a warning. “Don’t get too close,” said the teen’s body language. Robin could practically hear the grinding ax in Amy’s teenage head.

  “Did we agree on a fee?” asked Robin. “How about five bucks an hour?”

  Amy said, “How about ten?”

  Evidence of pluck, thought Robin, liking it. “Ten bucks an hour,” said Robin. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I’m worth it,” said Amy, pushing away her hair to make direct eye contact for the first time.

  “I’ll bet you are,” said Robin, seeing the glint of steel in Amy’s brown eyes. Robin doubted that the girl would be half as brazen if her mom were in the room. Robin took advantage of Bess’s absence to ask, “Big plans for the money?”

  Amy blinked like a rabbit at a fox, and instantly retreated behind her veil of hair. The girl was about to lie her ass off, thought Robin.

  “Just clothes,” said Amy. “Shoes.”

  “Shoes,” said Robin, checking out Amy’s tattered Vans. Obviously, the girl had other plans for her income. In time-honored teenage tradition, Amy would probably spend her babysitting money on pot, beer, music, taxis, and concert tickets.

  Quickly, while Bess was still out of sight and Stephanie was distracted, Robin whispered to Amy, “Okay, I’ll pay you ten. But there’s no drinking or smoking anything in my house. No boyfriends or girlfriends. If you show up stoned or drunk, I’ll know in a heartbeat. And if you break anything, you buy it.”

  “I hear and ob
ey,” said Amy.

  Bess came into the living room. Now that they’d reached an understanding, Robin and Amy were all smiles. Bess seemed puzzled by the sight of her laconic daughter and new friend grinning mechanically at her.

  Bess said, “I’m double-parked out front. We should go.” The women left the girls with the TV on.

  Bess had to circle only once to find a spot close to Carla’s house, a real house, not a townhouse. The three-story white Victorian, if dilapidated, had blue trim, gingerbread detailing, and a scalloped, shingled roof that made Robin’s heart fly. This was mansion Brooklyn, as opposed to brownstone Brooklyn, where you could imagine the expansive spread into the borough of nineteenth-century families, eight or nine kids in petticoats and short pants, running around the yard playing with hoops and sticks, a horse and carriage parked in the mud out front. Each house on the block had a lawn, and a patch of earth behind. Plenty of room, but Windsor Terrace was an hour commute to Manhattan. The classic trade-off of city living: you could have location or space, or both if you were one of the five people left in America with insane wealth, like Bess.

  Robin had a decent-sized cushion. She wasn’t fantastically wealthy like the Steeples, but she had, as New Yorkers understood it, “money.” She’d been left a sizable inheritance by her father, who died of lung cancer when she was twelve. Her mom followed Dad ten years later, netting Robin the remainder of the Stern accumulation of jewelry, property, and investments.

  Free of parental intervention and supremely well off at twenty-two, only-child Robin indulged excessively during her early orphan years. A lot of extravagant restaurant meals. Travel was a bit difficult because of her size, but she took a series of lengthy cruises. She bought jewelry, if not clothes (shopping was a depressing trial). She lavished gifts on a string of opportunistic men. And then, as quickly as it started, the wild spending stopped. Throwing money around hadn’t made her happy, alas. She purchased her apartment—the Hicks Street two-bedroom where she still lived; modest, but in a luxury building in a great ’hood—and scaled back to a frugal, hermetic life. She got pregnant, and was instantly grateful for having spent only a portion of her inheritance. She’d lost a lot less than most since the market downturn, thanks to having put the bulk of her nest egg in insured, triple tax-free bonds. Their interest was enough to support her life completely and indefinitely.

  Nowadays, if people wondered how Robin, a single mom with a low-salary job, could afford private school tuition, expensive clothes (even Boho chic could be pricey), they didn’t ask or were satisfied by her claim to have purchased 10,000 shares of Microsoft in 1987. As for why Robin worked at all: she felt compelled to keep herself tethered to the world somehow, even if by only a thread.

  Carla greeted Bess and Robin at the front door of her house. The host wore a green caftan tonight, and seemed to be a bit on edge. Her lips were tight as she waved them into the parlor level great room with a vaulted ceiling. A mahogany banister gleamed along the stairs, which the women were not invited to climb. Robin bit her lip instead of asking for a tour of the house. She got the instant impression that the committee members were going to stay on the first floor all night long.

  Which was fine. Robin would happily admire the teardrop molding, the marble fireplace (filled with philodendron in pots), the wainscoting and striped wallpaper. The furniture wasn’t period friendly. Not by a long shot. In the dining room, where the women were brought, a chunky thickly lacquered black table loomed, along with chairs and tie-on cushions. The walls’ built-in shelving held glass and ceramic figurines, the kind of stuff one saw at a flea market or Grandma’s; dusty and precious, and not Robin’s taste.

  Carla said, “Have a seat.”

  Robin and Bess sat. They heard a rattling flush, and Alicia banged out of a powder room, having to force the door open. “Sorry,” Alicia said, a bit flustered.

  “Don’t apologize,” said Carla. “The person who should apologize for not fixing the door isn’t here to do it.”

  “Your husband is working late?” asked Bess with I-can-relate geniality.

  “The one night I asked him to be here,” complained Carla, and then, the moment of candor was gone. She willfully relaxed the tension in her face, said, “I have food. Be right back.”

  Carla’s marital boil had only sent up the one bubble. But the evening was young. Alicia looked rumpled and somewhat mousy—the same, thought Robin. Gray suit, straight from work at, what was it, an ad agency? Carla’s three guests waited at the heavy table, and awkwardly smiled at each other. Early signs of discomfort. Perhaps the fun of that night at Bess’s house had been a fluke. Thus far, the women had nothing to say to each other.

  Robin needed a drink. And a smoke. She assumed that was not going to happen indoors. When Carla returned with a supermarket-bought platter of Italian antipasti, Robin’s banded stomach lurched at the sight of the oily, spicy, and acidic food. No way could she eat that.

  “Any Chianti to wash it down?” she asked hopefully.

  “I’ve got soft drinks,” said Carla. “We don’t allow drinking alcohol in the house.”

  Bess said, “Don’t want your boys to dip into it?”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” said Carla in a tone that almost made Robin quake. “It’s family policy that the boys never see Claude and me drink. It sets a poor example.”

  Moment of silence from the white girls. Alicia said, “Tim and I hardly ever drink, so we don’t have alcohol in the house either.”

  But probably not as a house rule, thought Robin.

  Bess, she of the fully stocked bar in the basement, said, “I think it’s an excellent policy. Good for you, Carla.”

  “Yes, goodie for all of us,” groused Robin, pining for a glass of something. “I applaud our diverse house rules.”

  Carla shook her head. Robin instantly regretted complaining, and felt a pang of shame. “I would love a Diet Coke,” she said to Carla, who went through the kitchen’s swinging door to get it.

  The refreshment business concluded, Bess said, “I have some input about the Diversity Committee calendar. A few Parents Association members brought up the idea of having a multicultural food festival or bake sale. We can raise funds and use the money to draw a great lecturer, or a whole panel of experts on Islam or the Middle East …”

  Robin groaned. “Can we put the agenda on hold for one more meeting? I think I can speak for Alicia and Carla when I say that we’re still in the getting-to-know-each-other stage, and not ready to start banging out ideas just yet.”

  Alicia nodded. “I concur. Although I really do want to work on it at some point.”

  Carla nodded. “Me, too.” She then dropped a cellophane-wrapped deck of cards in the center of the table. “Brand new pack,” she said.

  Bess said, “Wait, one more thing before we start. I have presents!” She reached into her oversized leather tote and handed out small wrapped boxes to each woman. Tearing away the red wrapping paper, Robin felt excited, giddy. A present! How unexpected.

  Alicia said, “A computer game?”

  They all had the same gift. A small box. The cover photo: a man’s hand, deftly revealing the top corner of the king of hearts and king of clubs, a pile of chips on a field of green felt. The title: World Class Poker with T. J. Cloutier. T.J.’s stamp-sized photo appeared on the lower right corner of the box—the poker-faced, aviator-glasses-wearing “champion” didn’t look too happy about it.

  Bess said, “I thought we could learn how to play Texas Hold ’Em for real. Real rules, strategy. Make it competitive.”

  “But I like our relaxed version,” said Alicia.

  “I just thought that, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right,” said Bess. “Learning poker as an essential skill, like playing piano or speaking a second language.”

  Carla said, “I don’t have a lot of spare time to play games.”

  Robin watched Bess’s face fall so low it nearly hit the floor. It was horrible to watch. Shot down again, plus a fi
ght with her daughter tonight, too. Robin hated to see disappointment on anyone’s face. She’d seen enough of it on her mother’s. “At some point, we should absolutely learn to play the right way,” Robin intoned. “And thanks ever so much, Bess, for buying the CDs.” Honestly, if playing by the rules made Bess happy, Robin was fine with following suit, not to belabor the card metaphor, even in her head.

  Alicia took the cards and unwrapped the cellophane. She put the jokers aside and started shuffling the stiff cards. “So we’re betting with chips now?” she asked. “No more playing for dirt?”

  “She can’t wait to talk about her sex life,” said Robin.

  Alicia kept her head down, focused on shuffling. She was embarrassed, but pretended not to be. This revealed to Robin that Alicia possessed the skill of Taking It. Robin wondered where Alicia got her stiff-lip training. The hard way? Or was she born with it?

  The petite brunette dealt the cards. Each woman had two facedown cards. Alicia slapped down the five communal cards.

  Checking her blinds, Robin smiled to see a pair of sevens. “Start talking anytime,” she said to Alicia.

  “Remember how I said my husband Tim and I haven’t had sex in two years?” asked Alicia. “That’s not entirely true. It’s been two years, one month, two weeks—”

  A sound from upstairs. A curious boy, Carla’s older son—Manuel, was it?—appeared at the top of the steps. Fourth-grader Zeke lurked behind his taller brother.

  Manuel said, “Ma, we finished the book.”

  “Good,” said Carla. “Take showers, and then go to bed.”

  It was just after eight o’clock. Bedtime was on the early side in Carla’s house of rules.

  Manuel said, “Because we’ve been quiet, as a reward, I thought we could watch a half hour of—”