by Kaira Rouda
From the front of the classroom, Sarah shot Melanie a look that was her version of a smile, an open-mouthed sort of movement that she would need to employ to eat, if she did that. The sides of her mouth did tilt up a bit with the gesture and Melanie gave her a wave. The families were social friends, members of the same country club, neighbors, and, for the past four years, thrown together during various kid-related events and PTA meetings. Whenever she was around Sarah, Melanie felt bland and doughy. Whenever she was around Sarah, she wanted to schedule an appointment with Sarah’s husband just to find out if he could transform her into a better version of herself, one that would be accepted here and back home. Sometimes she wondered if maybe he could make her feel more comfortable with herself.
But, right now she was simply annoyed. How had the Nelsons discovered her here, in shop class? She didn’t know why, but Jud and Sarah Nelson’s very presence in this room was causing a piercing headache just above Melanie’s right eye. Her eyes rolled involuntarily as he pulled out a stool two down from hers and settled Sarah into it and then sat down next to her, giving her a peck on the cheek in the process.
“Mel, you look lovely this evening,” he said into her ear, while settling in and waving hi to all of his fans and minions gathered around the shop table. She knew she should feel honored by his seat selection, and his overt display of their personal closeness, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t put a finger on what it was about him, but something just didn’t add up. Melanie was about to ask him if Ashley was in the class—maybe she had a secret love of silk screening?—just to make small talk, when the hippie teacher cleared his throat. It didn’t matter, she supposed, but a wave of relief washed over her that the Nelsons’ perfect kid was in a screen-printing class with Dane. Maybe her son and Ashley sat next to each other, worked on projects together, she thought. Melanie sat up a little taller on her stool and smoothed her black sheath dress. She closed her right eye, and that eased the headache. At least she’d stopped sweating for the moment.
“Thank you all for coming tonight. Parent involvement is what makes Crystal Beach High School one of the best in the state of California, am I right?” the hippie teacher said by way of introduction. She wondered if he was high. He could be high. Maybe that’s what I need to do, she thought. She needed to be stoned to make it through the night. “Thanks to the big donation from Dr. Nelson, Mrs. Nelson, and the Nelson Medical Group, our kids have a brand new screen-printing machine. Can I get a round of applause for Dr. Nelson here?”
As Melanie joined in the clapping, her face began to turn red. Ashley Nelson wasn’t in this class for dummies, she realized. The Nelsons were simply here to soak up kudos for helping the kids who would never amount to anything.
Kids like Dane, her tall, dark, and handsome hipster son.
Her youngest son wouldn’t speak to her in complete sentences any longer. Their relationship had turned toxic and she didn’t know why. All she wanted was the best for him during their last year together, but, as far as she could tell, all he wanted was to hide out in his bedroom playing video games and ignoring homework. He would not be venturing off to an Ivy League college. Dane might not even make it to community college. He might work in a print shop. This room could be his future. How will I ever show my face around town? Melanie wondered, pulling at her pearl necklace to keep it from choking her.
Suddenly the room started to spin. As she looked at the sea of fluorescent parent faces, the scene began to flash black and white and her ears filled with the sound of rushing water, as if someone had opened a fire hose. The last thing she remembered was turning, stricken, to grab Jud’s shoulder before everything went blank.
Melanie slowly opened her left eye a crack, just enough to try to figure out where she was. It seemed to her, from her limited view and perspective, she was lying on the floor of a classroom. And that was simply disgusting. She opened both eyes and rolled to her right side—a move ingrained in her during yoga class as a way to end savasana, aka lying down as if sleeping—and began to sit. Her stomach felt queasy, like she’d eaten an egg. She was mildly allergic to eggs, just enough to feel, well, like this. According to the article she’d read, feeling sadness because your useful life has ended was a sign of empty-nest syndrome, but fainting wasn’t. Was there something else wrong, too? she wondered.
“Whoa, take it slowly, Mel,” Jud said, rushing to her side from wherever he had been lurking. Melanie was now sitting and would, no matter what Jud said, get herself up and out of here immediately. She realized the stools were empty; in fact the entire classroom was barren. Just her and Jud. Perfectly horrible. And why did he insist on calling her Mel?
“I’m fine, Jud, really,” Melanie said, as he helped pull her to standing. He has soft, mushy hands, she thought. Standing, she brushed at her dress and wondered if she’d exposed herself as she fell. She felt the back of her head for a bump and was relieved when she found nothing.
“I caught ya,” Jud said, puffing out his chest. “Good thing I happened to sit right next to you, eh? Do you have a lot of those fainting spells, Mel?”
“No, I’ve never fainted. Thank you for catching me. So embarrassing. Well, gotta go,” Melanie said looking around for her purse and spotting it on the shop table. She grabbed it and pulled out her lipstick for comfort.
“You shouldn’t drive. I’ll run you home and Sarah or somebody can drive you to the school tomorrow to grab your car. Doctor’s orders.”
As much as Melanie loathed the thought, she did feel even dizzier than she’d felt when she’d arrived for Parents’ Night. Her stomach roiled. And clearly, she had missed a number of Dane’s classes already, if not all of them. “What period are we on?” she asked, rubbing the pearl necklace around her neck, hoping to manifest a sense of calm and normalcy she didn’t feel. She quickly swiped lipstick across her bottom lip and felt better.
“Don’t worry about the rest of the classroom visits tonight. I had Annie run around and get you the information from the rest of Dane’s teachers,” Jud said, patting Melanie’s hand, forcing her to notice the age spots and the intersecting veins protruding like angry snakes. Argh.
“Annie?” Melanie said, realizing now the high school Queen Bee would know Dane was in all regular classes, no AP classes for this one. Actually, Melanie thought, Ashley probably knew about Dane’s lack of course load.
“Yes, I just texted my daughter’s friend and explained what was going on and she was happy to help. Did you know Ashley and Annie are rooming together at Harvard next year? Such good girls,” Jud said, steepling his hands together and then tilting his head, a proud smile locked on his face.
“Such,” Melanie said, wondering how quickly she could make her escape from Crystal Beach High School if she had the weight of Dr. Nelson’s celebrity around her neck. She was high profile enough, simply because her family lived behind the guarded gates of the most exclusive community in town. Plus, she was now the latest gossip item; the fainting episode would be the talk of the PTA set. They’d never make it through the crowd. She needed an escape. “Jud, say, I’m going to run to the ladies’ room. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Mel?”
“—anie,” she said, finishing her name involuntarily. “Yes, yes, I’ll be fine,” she added, hurrying out the door and into the foggy night. Melanie decided she actually should duck into a restroom and check her appearance before navigating the quad. She rounded the corner, heading away from the now fog-enshrouded football field, and dashed into the restroom. She’d been in here many times before, jockeying with teenage girls for a spot at the sink to wash her hands while they primped and reapplied makeup.
Melanie wondered if she had been that self-absorbed in high school and decided she probably had been, but it was still annoying. Since she never had a girl of her own, she took sublime pleasure in judging everyone else’s. Tonight, blissfully, the lineup of sinks and mirrors were teen-free, and she hoped she had the entire
bathroom to herself. She glanced at her hair, noting the frizz that the fog and her overall state of mind had created. She was a mess. Her face was ghostly white, even taking into account the fluorescent lighting. A toilet flushed, and Melanie hurried into the first stall to avoid talking to whoever was finishing up.
She heard the tap, tap, tap of the woman’s heels walking past the row of stalls, including the one Melanie had ducked inside, and heard her turn on the squeaky faucet.
“Wonderful evening, as always,” the woman said, to nobody, Melanie assumed, and then she heard her laugh. A quiet, almost desperate laugh.
“Hello, Sarah, nice to see you,” a second woman said.
Inside her stall, Melanie’s heart dropped at the sound of even more company.
“You as well. Wonderful night at the high school. They do such a nice job with this, and all things for the children,” Sarah said, and Melanie imagined Sarah applying powder to her perfect face as her mouth attempted a smile directed at the other woman.
“Thanks to you and your husband. You guys fund everything,” the other woman said. “I’m going to need David to step it up.”
“Actually, Lauren, he used to be quite involved before,” Sarah said, as Melanie heard the change of tone as clearly as the other woman must have.
“You mean before me. With his first wife,” the woman, Lauren, said.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Have a good night,” Sarah said as Melanie heard her heels tap, tap, tap out of the bathroom, and the door bang closed behind her. Melanie imagined Sarah, dressed as she had been in silk-screening class, in a skin-tight, vibrant blue designer dress, perfectly accessorized. With a simple sentence she’d shamed the poor woman, Lauren, who now stood staring at herself in the mirror. Sarah was a force in town, someone to fear, Melanie knew, and whoever the other woman was in the bathroom, she’d just been put in her place. Melanie realized she should go say hi at least, and actually, she was curious as to whom it was that had caused the Queen Bee to show her true colors.
“Hey, you in there?” a man’s voice floated into the bathroom, echoing off the thin mirrors and the cracked white ceramic tile.
Inside her hiding stall, Melanie’s heart thumped a beat. Was Jud trying to find her?
“Yes, I am,” answered Lauren, the woman Sarah had been talking to, in what could only be described as a seductive voice. Who was Lauren? Melanie wondered. Oh, of course, her husband, David Potts, owned at least five Mercedes dealerships in Southern California. Melanie had been told the scoop shortly after moving to town. David’s family had the business. Lauren had been his young, hot secretary. It had been a scandal when they had married, what with the twenty-year age difference and David’s first wife and three young children. But everyone in town had eventually accepted the new Mrs. Potts, with the exception of Sarah it seemed. Melanie knew the Pottses lived in a sprawling mansion along the coast in south Crystal Beach. And they had one daughter, Kiley, who was in Dane’s class.
Mystery solved, Melanie was about to find the courage to extract herself from her hiding place and say hello to Lauren and her husband when she heard the unmistakable sound of two people making out.
Really? In the girls’ bathroom? Melanie thought, equal parts disgust and jealousy rising from the center of her being.
“Oh, oh,” Lauren said, a breathless, sensual sigh. Melanie knew then she was trapped in a romance novel, stuck in her stall in the girls’ bathroom. She wondered if the evening could get any worse. At least her stall had been cleaned extra well for Parents’ Night, smelling more of bleach than whatever funk was its typical aroma. As the panting escalated, she wondered how many long-married couples actually behaved this way on Parents’ Night. She and Keith certainly never had. Not even at elementary school Parents’ Night. She was certain she and Keith had never acted like this, even when they were dating.
“That’s it, baby,” David Potts said as they rushed past Melanie’s stall and into one a few doors down. “I’m going to make you come.”
Gross, Melanie thought. Two contradictory thoughts leaped to her mind: She needed to pee and she needed to escape. But she’d always been a shy bathroom-goer, and with all the bother happening a few feet away, she was frozen. Unable to empty her bladder. Unable to escape.
“Will, I need you in me now!” Lauren screamed.
What? Melanie heard the name Will as it ricocheted through the room. She now knew it was true that no longtime married couples made out in the girls’ bathroom. She needed air. She yanked open the stall door and hurried out of the bathroom without washing her hands. As she ran up the ramp to the quad, she rummaged in her purse for the hand sanitizer she always kept with her. She found it, squirted some into her palm and rubbed her hands together, trying to erase both the germs and the disturbing scene from the bathroom. Cutting through an archway welcoming her to the “Home of the Waves,” she found herself out on the street and almost to the parking lot. Only one clump of parents remained, and they were arranged in a complete, adoring circle around Jud. Thankfully, Sarah Nelson was nowhere in sight.
“Oh, hello, Mel!” Jud yelled as all heads turned her way and she saw the faces contort to concern. Yes, Jud had told them all of her fainting spell and of his rescue, she could tell.
She smiled and waved back, hurrying to make it to the crosswalk and freedom of her car waiting in the parking lot beyond.
“I’m driving you home, just you wait a moment,” Jud said. Melanie watched him break free of his circle of admirers and start in her direction. “I have the class notes!”
“I feel great! Thanks again!” Melanie yelled and hurried as fast as her sensible pumps would carry her across the street, reaching her car in record time. She popped the lock and scooted inside. As she started the engine, someone knocked on the driver’s side window, causing her heart to race. Jud. She rolled the window down and he handed a stack of papers to her.
“Some of these are due tomorrow, signatures and all,” he said, smiling his big white helpful annoying smile. “Feel better.”
Melanie took the stack of paper from his soft hand, smiled weakly, and nodded. “Thanks,” she said before carefully checking the rearview mirror and backing out to make her getaway. All she wanted to do was get home, change into her favorite pj’s, and pour herself a big glass of chardonnay.
The other car came out of nowhere, smashing into Melanie’s brand-new Volvo, making a sound so metallically guttural Melanie shuddered before bursting into tears.
SARAH
It was all her fault.
She knew it the moment the taillights shot into view in front of her, the moment she realized she didn’t have time to stop as the sickening crunch filled the otherwise quiet and dark, foggy night. This incident was not like her, not expected or welcomed in her perfectly constructed world. She’d been on edge all evening, going through the motions during what would be her last Parents’ Night. She was uncomfortable sitting down, a problem when you’re stuck wedging yourself into a teenage-sized plastic seat in classroom after classroom, scanning the desktops before she left each one, making sure to brush off any stray hairs she’d left behind. She’d been losing hair for weeks now, long blonde strands flinging themselves off her head. Her friends all told her she looked thin. She’d always been thin, and she knew she needed to eat, but nothing tasted good to her these days. The stupid second breast enhancement Jud had insisted on made her look even thinner, she realized, the juxtaposition between her chest and her waist too fake, too scary. So she wore bulky sweaters whenever possible, and layers, lots of layers.
Tonight, she had dressed to be seen as Dr. Nelson’s wife, in a vibrant blue, skin-tight dress. She was his product, his favorite marketing campaign. She’d much rather be wearing baggy jeans, boots, a white T-shirt, and a cozy blue cashmere sweater, the exact outfit she’d been wearing when he’d arrived home from work, the outfit he’d insisted made her look frumpy. She had defied him a bit, grabbing her jean jacket and bringing it with her, just in case.
>
She had pulled the jacket on as soon as she’d escaped from the silk-screening class presentation and Melanie’s embarrassing fall. The event had provided her with an escape from Jud. She’d enjoyed moving from classroom to classroom, basking in the praise for her only child, her daughter, Ashley. It was the soundtrack of Parents’ Night this year and every year before. Ashley was a star, an accomplished volleyball player and a great student, a good and loyal friend, a school leader. Everything Sarah could ever dream of in a daughter and more, the teachers all told her. Even the school counselor, pregnant with her first child, had crept up to Sarah and whispered, “I hope I have a baby girl as perfect as your daughter. That would be a dream come true.”
Perfect Ashley. Her daughter could be the next iteration of the Barbie doll prototype. Thin, athletic, realistic-sized boobs and waist. No high heels, maybe flip-flops or Converse tennis shoes. Just all-around cool. No surgery needed. Teens liked her, parents liked her, teachers liked her. Everybody, it seemed, liked Ashley and Ashley liked everyone. Except her mom. Well, that wasn’t completely accurate, Sarah realized, it was just that Ashley was moving on with her life. She had a boyfriend named Blake. Blake absorbed all of Ashley’s free time like a thirsty sponge. That had been the time and attention Sarah was used to having, the attention she realized she had craved and relied on to fill a big hole in her own life. It wasn’t healthy how much she craved her daughter’s attention, but it was who she’d become in the absence of a real relationship with her husband, she thought with a clarity typically reserved for 3 a.m. The shroud of denial was beginning to lift from Sarah’s life, even as she fought to hold it in place during the daytime.
Sarah had given up everything for her daughter. Ashley was supposed to be her best friend forever, but this year Sarah had been forced to start considering who she would be apart from her daughter. Who was she besides a mom? Well, she was a neglected wife, she thought, she had that going for her. Yes, Sarah was certain the mess of her life was her fault, but she had no idea how to fix it. She was both fed up, and stuck. But the irony of her situation didn’t escape her. Everyone else thought her life was perfect.
