Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  “I spoke to the teacher and asked her to keep a close eye on the two of them,” said Alicia. “Nothing to report. Yet.”

  Robin said, “Now that you’ve warmed up by confronting a spoiled ten-year-old, are you ready to confront Tim?”

  “A spoiled forty-year-old?” asked Alicia. She didn’t add that she had no right to call out Tim for a dalliance with Anita, or even heavy flirting, when she was in the midst of a full-blown, hot and heavy affair with her co-worker.

  None of the committee members knew or suspected. It was way too soon to discuss it openly. But she’d been thinking about it constantly since it happened a few days ago. Wild emotions seesawed back and forth between elation and guilt, gratitude and regret. Although the idea that Tim had touched another woman infuriated Alicia, the reality of it would instantly erase any negative feelings about her affair with Finn. Alicia half-hoped her husband was cheating.

  If that wasn’t a sign that the marriage was over, what was?

  Robin said, “It’s against my personal philosophy to defend a man, but you’ve got to look at it from Tim’s perspective. Playdates are horrible! Having to make small talk with mothers, pretending to like the other kid. You can’t fault Tim for ignoring the boys and getting an ego boost with Anita.”

  “If that’s all she boosted,” said Bess, grinning goofily.

  “Listen to you, Pollyanna, with the sexy entendre!” said Robin. “I’m a good influence.”

  Carla shook her head disapprovingly. “Let’s see some cards, Pollyanna.”

  Bess dealt the turn, a black jack. Carla tossed ten bucks into the pot. Robin folded. Bess scrutinized her cards, looked closely at the four on the table. The tone got serious for a second.

  “Call,” said Bess.

  “Good,” said Carla.

  Alicia watched, and admired how intense the Black Queen and White Diamond were about the game. They were better players than she and Robin. “Have I told you how impressive you guys were at Casino Night?” she asked. “Beating all those finance pricks at their own game.”

  Carla deadpanned, “I’ve got skills.”

  Robin added, “And you’ve got a new BFF.”

  “What?”

  “Renee Hobart?” said Robin. “Don’t think we didn’t notice. You’re mighty chummy. Unless I’m mistaken, I saw you two leave school the other morning, and—wait for it—go to Starbucks together. The place you’ve likened to the fourth circle of Hell whenever I suggest going there. Or maybe you’re a Starbucks hater only with me.”

  “Are you stalking me?” asked Carla.

  Bess dealt the river. “Oh, that’s lovely,” she said, reacting to the ten of spades. “All in.”

  “Fold,” said Carla, “even though I’m pretty sure you’re bluffing.”

  Bess raked in the pot. “Pretty sure, but not a hundred percent.”

  “Nothing in life is a hundred percent,” said Robin.

  “May I please see your cards?” asked Carla, superpolite.

  Bess said, “Of course,” and pretended to turn over her pocket cards, only to tuck them into the deck at the last second. “Oops. Sorry, Carla. They slipped.”

  Alicia smiled at the easy camaraderie. But she disagreed with Robin’s comment. Finn was a hundred percent: all man, all sex, all heat, every chance they got. Instead of his usual lap of blog reading at breakfast, Finn devoted that time to her. Laying her down behind their desks, licking her until she was a puddle of satisfaction on the carpet. He’d asked her to wear skirts every day, no underwear. Once she got to the office, her first stop was the ladies room to take off her panties. Even in this last blast of winter chill, she was overheated like a broken furnace. They’d never been known to lock their office door in the mornings, and the change in behavior was surely noticed by the rest of the staff. Chaundry would object, except he was granting them a reprieve. They’d won the Punch Gym account. The contract would keep the agency afloat for another six months, and would probably take Bartlebee to a higher level.

  At thirty-six, Alicia had finally discovered true passion, and confidence at work, in the same week. Her office hours were full of kudos and climaxes. Home life? Gray as old mud. She and Tim had been tiptoeing around each other, barely talking, except about Joe.

  Robin’s turn to shuffle the cards and deal. “I want to know what Renee Hobart has that we don’t,” she said. “What’s the attraction, Carla? It’s because she’s churchy and black.”

  “Robin!” said Bess.

  Carla laughed hard. Alicia marveled, as usual, at what Robin could get away with.

  “Come now, Robin,” said Carla. “Don’t you ever feel the need for some like-minded company? Don’t you have any lushy Jewish friends?”

  “Carla!” said Bess.

  “No, she’s right. I do long for lushy Jewish friends,” said Robin, grinning widely. “The problem is, so few of us drink. And look at you, Black Queen, calling me on my shit. I’m a good influence on you, too. Admit it!”

  “Being friends with you is what drove me to Renee,” said Carla.

  That was a brutally honest admission, thought Alicia, not sure how Robin, or any of them, should take it. During the few beats of silence, Alicia checked her hole cards, liking her pair of eights, and throwing a few chips into the pot.

  Robin asked, “Diversity is too much of a strain for you?”

  “I get what you mean, Carla,” said Bess, calling. “You need balance.”

  “She needs a mirror,” said Robin. “Someone you can look at as a reflection of yourself. Too many women use their kids that way. It’s healthier to make a friend. And Renee is a great choice, Carla. She’s a cool, confident woman. I’m still jealous, though. I demand a coffee date.”

  “In public?” asked Carla, raising (as usual).

  “At Starbucks, you bitch. How about with Renee?” asked Robin, eyebrows up, folding her hand.

  “Boundaries,” warned Carla.

  Suddenly, Amy appeared in the kitchen doorway; Alicia couldn’t help noticing how she’d changed. She’d gained about twenty pounds. Her clothes were grungier, clearly on purpose. Her hair was dirty, and obscuring most of her face. At the beginning of the school year, Amy was teetering on the edge of coltish loveliness. Seven months later, she’d fallen, hard, on the wrong side of the wall that divided pretty and plain, seemingly on purpose.

  Bess looked up, smiling sweetly at her seething daughter. “Need something?” asked Bess.

  “I’m going to take off now,” said Amy, barely audible.

  “What was that, honey?” asked Bess.

  Amy sighed dramatically, as if repeating herself was beyond human endurance. “It’s ten o’clock. Time to go.”

  Bess said, “We’re not quite finished, honey.”

  Amy threw her hands up and dropped them to slap against her sides, “Stay all night. Has nothing to do with me. I’m just sitting in there watching TV with the kids. They’re almost asleep.”

  Carla said, “That’s my cue.”

  Robin said, “Sit down, Carla. You’ve got all the chips.”

  Bess said, “If you can wait ten minutes, Amy, we’ll walk home together.”

  “I’m not going home,” said Amy. “I’m hooking up with some friends.”

  “It’s a school night,” said Bess, her painted-on smile starting to fade.

  “So what,” said Amy, squaring off her feet (in scary black boots).

  Alicia recoiled instinctively. She hadn’t been intimidated by a sixteen-year-old girl since she was that age, and every kid in school terrified her.

  “We’re leaving together in five minutes, and you are coming home with me,” said Bess, holding her ground. “It’s a school night, and you have to get up early. End of discussion.”

  Had any conversation really ended with “end of discussion”? It was a launch point, as far as Alicia was concerned. Amy, too.

  “You have no right to tell me what to do!” shrieked the ungrateful girl. “If you cared about my homework, you would
n’t have forced me to sit in there, bored to death for three freaking hours already. I need to see my friends. They actually care about me—me, who I am. I don’t give a shit about it being a school night or embarrassing you in front of your friends.” When she said “friends,” Amy air quoted.

  Alicia, Robin, and Carla eyed each other frantically, unsure what to do or say. Should they step in—Alicia had several choice comebacks knocking around in her head—or let Bess deal with her daughter alone?

  Two beats of wired silence. Bess said, “You’re only embarrassing yourself.”

  Pretty lame comeback, thought Alicia, but at least Bess sounded rational.

  Robin said to Amy, “I thought you liked babysitting.”

  “I like getting paid,” said Amy.

  Robin laughed. “I bet you do.” She pushed herself up from the table, found a few bills in her jeans pocket, and handed a twenty and a ten out for Amy. The girl tentatively entered the kitchen, snatched the bills from Robin’s hand, and quickly retreated.

  Amy looked at Carla and said, “Your kids are here, too.”

  Carla said, “You won’t get a penny from me, young lady. You disrespect your mother and yourself. If you were my child, I’d relax my policy on spanking.”

  Robin said, “What is your policy on spanking?”

  “Not after age seven.”

  “Lucky seven,” said Robin. To Amy, she added, “Carla’s right. Gimme my money back.”

  Amy looked frightened for a second. It was hard to tell, with all that hair in her face. The girl tucked the cash into her pants pocket and ran out of the apartment. The women heard her boots stomping down the hallway.

  Bess, meanwhile, had dropped her head in her hands. Alicia reached over to give her a comforting stroke on the back. As soon as her palm touched the pink cashmere of her friend’s sweater, Bess started crying, heavy wracking sobs that made her shoulders rattle.

  Robin said, “Oh, thank God. I was afraid we’d break tradition and get through a game without someone crying.”

  “It’s always me,” said Bess between gulps of air.

  “That’s true,” said Carla. When Alicia and Robin glared at her, she added, “Well, it’s never me.”

  “Black don’t crack?” asked Robin.

  “You are bad,” said Carla. “But no, actually, it don’t.”

  Bess recovered enough to speak, “I just don’t get it. Did I create that monster? I’m not a perfect mother, I realize that. But I’m pretty sure I’m a decent human being. Borden is a wonderful person. How could we have raised a child to turn out … like that?”

  “Demon seed, you mean?” asked Alicia.

  “Yes! Where did she come from?” asked Bess, looking at each woman as if she might have a concrete answer. “Maybe she did come from Hell.”

  “Amy isn’t evil,” said Carla. “She’s just …”

  Bess blinked and looked up. “She’s what?”

  Alicia waited for Carla’s answer, too. Perhaps a pediatrician could give a reasonable explanation for why bad children happened to good people.

  Robin said, “Well, Doctor?”

  Carla sighed. “She’s angry and feels misunderstood, we all see that. And resentful, I don’t know why. She’s hostile, and enjoys testing how far she can push you, Bess. She’s got a dramatic flair. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d spent the last hour on the couch in the other room mentally composing her little speech.”

  “So she’s creative?” asked Bess, with heartbreaking hope.

  Carla smiled balefully. “She’s destructive, Bess. The changes she’s made in her appearance seem like self-sabotage to me. And her rudeness. She’s hurting herself as much as she’s hurting you.”

  “Don’t turn her into a depressed mental patient,” said Robin. “Amy is just a confused sixteen-year-old with enough intelligence to question authority.”

  “Like you were?” asked Carla.

  “Yes!” agreed Robin. “I mellowed with age.”

  “Like cheese?” asked Alicia.

  Carla said, “You also hated your parents, blew up to over three hundred pounds, had indiscriminate sex with men you barely knew, and the smoking …”

  Robin shushed her. “Stephanie is in the next room.”

  Bess said, “Amy didn’t ask me once about my lump. Or my surgery. She didn’t come to the hospital, or to my room during the recovery. Amy does not care if I live or die. I doubt she cares about anything, except her mysterious friends, a roving pack of teenage lesbians for all I know. She acts like nothing matters!”

  “Doesn’t care about anything. Nothing matters,” said Alicia. “That’s sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Is she reading Nietzsche, too?”

  Bess wiped the tears still streaming down her cheeks. “Maybe I was inspired by her,” she said. “I used to be able to feel her feelings. Maybe that’s where my apathy came from. Amy’s attitude infected me. I kept thinking, ‘nothing matters.’ But what I really felt was, ‘nothing I do matters.’ I can be strict or kind, patient or impatient. It’s immaterial. Amy detests me. I have no idea why. I can’t make her like me or talk to me. I ask if she’s okay. I offer to help. But she screams at me to leave her alone and slams the door. I have to keep trying, though. Which is not easy. Honestly—this is horrible and frightening to say—I kind of hate her right now.”

  “Me, too,” said Robin.

  “Same,” said Alicia.

  Carla said, “We have to remember that her brain isn’t fully formed. She looks like an adult—”

  “A dirty, scary adult,” corrected Bess.

  Carla continued, “But she’s still a kid. That said, I agree: Amy is not a great advertisement for teenage girls.”

  “What am I going to do?” asked Bess, crying again, harder. “Have any of you lived with someone who despises you? It’s awful.”

  Alicia looked at her hands. She’d been spared that sorry fate. For all her problems with Tim, the distrust and neglect, her cheating, his suspected flirtations, she didn’t actually hate him. He didn’t hate her, although he might if he found out about Finn. She dared to look up at the other long faces around the kitchen table. Robin seemed contemplative, for once, short on words. Carla gazed at Bess with professional compassion.

  Pricking up her ears, Alicia realized that the house was quiet. Too quiet. The hum of the TV was gone. Little ears had been listening. But for how long?

  Alicia said, “I think we have spies.”

  “Kids!” bellowed Carla. “Get in here!”

  Stephanie, Zeke, and Manny waited for a second, and then showed themselves. They’d been listening from right outside the kitchen doorway. They might’ve heard everything.

  “Get your coats, boys,” said Carla. “It’s time to go home.”

  The two boys nodded and went to the TV room to get their things. Zipped up, they returned to the kitchen. Carla and Alicia rose, too, readying to depart.

  Carla said to Bess, “Call me. I can give you some names, counselors, teen specialists.”

  Bess nodded, trying to seem happy in front of the children.

  Alicia said to Robin, “Thanks for inviting me.”

  Robin said, “The pleasure is all mine.”

  They moved to go, but Zeke stepped into the kitchen and went over to Bess. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I think you’re a very nice person, Mrs. Steeple.”

  Bess smiled at the ten-year-old and pulled him into a tight hug. She held on to him for a few seconds too long. From the clench, Zeke glanced over at Carla, his mom, as if to ask, “What now?”

  Finally, Bess released him. They all left Robin to console Bess further by herself.

  Alicia waited until she and the Morgans were on the street, safely out of the building, to say to Zeke, “That was excellent of you to say.”

  Carla said, “It was very sweet of you, Zeke. But you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping. I’ve half a mind to punish you both.”

  The boys drooped slightly. Alicia caught Zeke�
�s eye and smiled at him. Carla had to be so proud of these quiet, polite children. The others mocked Carla for her strict rules, but she was doing something right.

  Alicia tried to picture Joe making such a kind gesture, being empathically attuned to someone else’s sadness or fear. Would he truly feel Bess’s pain, or merely witness her having it? The latter, Alicia decided. Her son was stuck in his own head.

  Just like Mommy.

  10

  Robin

  “It’s too tight,” said Stephanie. She and Robin were in a tiny dressing room at the Old Navy at Atlantic Center, near the future location of the long-threatened Atlantic Yards development. If the overlords didn’t run out of money, the Nets basketball franchise would soon call this part of Brooklyn their home court. Only two miles from Brooklyn Heights, the proposed development—basketball arena, shops, housing—was causing quite a commotion in Robin’s neck of the borough. Residents were concerned with increased traffic, parking problems, human congestion. Robin believed, in her cynical heart, that when Brooklyn Heights people complained about the advancing horde of car and foot traffic, they weren’t talking about white people. Black people would come to see the Nets. Black people would occupy the low- and middle-income housing. Black people had already swarmed to Atlantic Center’s discount stores, Pathmark, Target, DSW. Robin and Stephanie had been browsing and trying on outfits at Old Navy for an hour already. Not a single white face in sight.

  Bess had never been to Atlantic Center. Her brood shopped at Old Navy (these days, even the rich buy cheap), but Bess took them to the store in Manhattan. “The Soho store is much bigger,” claimed Bess. Robin didn’t think Bess was a racist. More a classist. Bess would buy the same shirt at the same chain store, as long as the store was in a ritzy zip code.

  In Brooklyn, you couldn’t buy a pair of jeans without it having racial overtones.

  “Are you sure?” asked Robin, tugging at Stephanie’s waistband. They’re a size twelve.”

  “Mom, that hurts,” whined Stephanie. “Can we just go? We’ll order online.”

  “We’re here already,” growled Robin.