by Erin Duffy
I’d planned on making the playground part of my regular routine, but instead the weather gods intervened and decided to make it rain for eight straight days. Not the kind of rain where on the first day you think, This is the best sleeping weather ever! And then the next day, you think, This is awesome. I can organize my spice drawer, and clean out my garage, and finally get around to throwing out all the underwear I haven’t worn in two years. It rained the kind of rain that made you check the attic to see if the roof was leaking (it wasn’t, thank God), and the garage to see if your Christmas decorations were floating around in three feet of water (I had no idea. The garage scared me). I felt so guilty that I hadn’t done anything with Bo for over a week except read him books and plop him on his play mat in front of the TV, and I was really getting sick of feeling guilty for one reason or another all day, every day, so I was ready to look for alternatives.
Every Friday at 9:00 A.M. the children’s room at the library held story time for kids who were at least nine months old and it had been on my list of things to do, but up until now I hadn’t been able to get my act together fast enough to make it there on time. I hated to admit it, but part of me didn’t really want to go out and be with other people, which I knew was silly, and immature, and counterproductive, but I couldn’t help it. I feared having to listen to other women talk about their husbands and their kids and complain about how hard things were for them because their husbands left the toilet seat up. If this experience had done nothing else for me, it had given me some perspective. Still, I knew that Bo would probably like the library and I wanted him to socialize and start to make friends. One of us should have some kind of life here, and I didn’t want my grief to prevent me from doing something that he’d enjoy. I woke up early this morning and got showered and dressed. Rain or no rain, we were going.
I wrapped Bo up in his raincoat and carried him on my hip out to his car seat. When we arrived at the library, I parked my car and carried Bo quickly through the parking lot, falling in with the chaotic net of rain shield–covered strollers and trying to remember the last time I felt this uncomfortable. All of the other mothers seemed to know each other, and the cliques were evident even to someone who didn’t know anyone. Women pushed by each other trying to get through the entrance first, so that they could jockey for seats, and they whispered and gossiped and openly judged each other and I had no idea why. It was like The Real Housewives of Connecticut meets The Hunger Games, and I was afraid that I wasn’t currently equipped to handle this.
Rain continued to pour down, drenching the hem of my pants and causing Bo to bury his head in my shoulder. I hurried up the ramp and into the lobby past a friendly-looking elderly woman seated at a cracked wooden desk in the corner. The placard on her desk said her name was Barbara. I smiled as I walked by her, and she smiled back, the first smile that I’d received from anyone in town in a while, which felt really, really nice. I moved past the line of strollers that had been parked against the wall, black and gray and one purple one that stuck out like a purple stroller would, and pulled Bo up higher onto my hip. His sneakers were soaked and I was happy that I put plastic bags over his feet, the way my mom used to do when it snowed in Chicago, so I knew at least his socks were dry. I dragged him here in the rain for my benefit, though I told myself the whole way that it was really for him—that he would somehow be better off if a stranger read Goodnight Moon while thirty other toddlers sneezed on him. But I really came here for me. I came because I needed to try and meet some other women to socialize with so that I could spend my time doing something productive and not wallowing over the fact that my husband had left me. Also, I needed to send a picture of me and Bo in the children’s section to my mother as proof that I was actually up, dressed, and out of the house. We’d smile and I’d snap the perfect happy selfie and text it to her, and maybe she’d breathe a little easier at her yoga class this morning because she knew she raised an independent daughter who could handle anything. Right.
I followed the crowd down a large staircase to the basement and into a room filled with rows of folding chairs and a giant toy chest filled with puppets. I lowered myself into a seat in the corner and cautiously placed Bo on my lap. The folding chair creaked when I sat, the metal cold and unforgiving under my now bony butt. Somewhere, a bell rang, and all the moms lingering in the back discussing their playgroups and their luncheons and their tennis lessons shuffled in and took their seats. I held Bo’s hand too tightly, and he grunted as he tried to pull it free of my grasp. I quickly took a selfie with my phone, and texted it to my mom with the caption “love from the library!” Convincing her that I didn’t need her help was going to be easy. I was a social media consultant in my previous life. People used to pay me to carefully craft fiction and sell it as a reality. Making things look better than they actually were was kind of my specialty. If anyone was able to dupe her parents into believing that life wasn’t a total mess, it was me.
The girl reading took her seat at the front of the room, the book in one hand and a caterpillar puppet worn over the other like a giant, multilegged oven mitt with a face. The puppet wasn’t what caught my attention. She had a nose ring, an eyebrow ring, and no fewer than four hoops in her right ear, and those were only the ones that I could count from the back of the room with an astigmatism in my left eye. Her hair was bottle-dyed black, her lips painted a shocking red, her fingers strangled by stacks of silver rings. She appeared thin, but was drowning under drapes of black fabric and lace-up combat boots. She looked like she’d rolled out of a Marilyn Manson fan club meeting. She wasn’t who I would’ve expected to read to a bunch of children on Friday mornings. I leaned back in my chair and watched the girl make the puppet speak. I was out of the house. I was dressed. I was making progress. None of those things were small things. Not to me.
I heard them snickering before I saw them. I heard some of them say, “Shhh,” not because they were causing a minor disruption to Goth-girl’s caterpillar reenactment, but because they were afraid I’d notice them looking at me. I glanced at Bo, so enthralled with the existence of the caterpillar that he had no idea women were gossiping about his mother right in front of him. I prayed I’d make my way out of this mess before that ever changed—before things became hard for him, too. I quickly glanced over at them and, as expected, Dee Dee’s friends—Becky, Stella, and Stephanie, the triumvirate from hell—were seated next to each other behind me. I’d only been introduced to them once, a few months after we’d moved here, and once was more than enough. I was hoping to maybe meet some women to be friends with at this story hour, but it had never occurred to me that I would also have to dodge women I wouldn’t want to be friends with under any circumstances whatsoever. I hadn’t fully thought this through. It was a good thing I already sent the happy selfie, because things had just taken a drastic turn for the worse.
I met them when Dee Dee invited us to her Christmas party. “Christmas Cocktails,” the invitation read. Owen wore a tie, which was rare, and I wore my Spanx, which was not rare at all, and we bundled up and left Bo with Marcy so we could enjoy a night out, just the two of us. The party took place in a private room at a restaurant in town, and I’d thought that a holiday party would be a great place to meet people, because people were happy at the holidays, and also usually tipsy, and that makes for easy conversation. I wanted to show Owen that I was still fun and hip and so I went to Dee Dee’s party, and I laughed and I smiled and I tried very hard to make everyone like me. I wanted to feel like I fit in. I wanted Owen’s friends to become my friends, too. I tried not to think about that night too much because when I did, I wanted to smash my head in with whatever blunt object I could get my hands on.
“You just have to meet my friends, Claire,” Dee Dee said, as she grabbed my hand and pulled me over to three women standing together by the bar. One by one, she introduced me to the women in her crew: Becky, a steely blonde with a fake tan and a faker personality (I didn’t like her); Stephanie, a steelier blonde with a fake
r tan and an even more fake personality (I disliked her even more); and Stella, a dead ringer for Julianna Margulies, who didn’t seem to have a whole lot to say unless she was agreeing with Dee Dee, Becky, or Stephanie. She tossed her curly hair over her shoulder and stared down her nose at me, and I didn’t like her either, though I liked her better than the rest. They flirted with Owen like they owned him because they’d known him longer, and like I was only visiting their silly little world. They flirted with Owen right in front of me, and right in front of their own husbands, and drank too many Cosmos, and too many glasses of wine, and no one seemed to care one way or the other, because they were all just old friends, and it was all just harmless fun.
Until, of course, it wasn’t.
“Look at her roots,” one of them said now. I think it was Becky. She seemed to be the ringleader, and I was pretty sure without her the other two wouldn’t have said anything at all.
“She’s not even that pretty,” Stephanie added. “I can’t wait to tell Dee Dee we saw her. She will just die.” It took all of my strength not to stand up and scream, “I didn’t do anything! Your friend broke up my marriage! Not the other way around!” But there was no point. I knew that women like these would never change, but that didn’t make their insults hurt any less. I looked at their toddlers, all of them wearing miniature North Face anoraks and jeans, and felt my insides ache. It was only a matter of time before they became the class bullies who would no doubt stuff Bo in a locker or jam his head in a toilet bowl. It was only a matter of time until they learned from their mothers that it was okay to judge, to ridicule, and to exclude, for sport. I felt tears well in my eyes at the thought of one of these kids hurting my Bo, still staring at the caterpillar puppet with such amazement I could barely stand it, his pudgy little hands clapping along and his lips still stained from the cherries I swirled in his yogurt for breakfast.
I sat still and watched the wildly animated performance quietly, pretending like I didn’t hear their chatter, when we all knew that I had. When the session was over, I pulled Bo up off my lap and headed toward the door. I wasn’t going to say anything. I wanted to take the high road, but then I heard one of them snicker again, and I turned off the high road because while I may not have had any friends in this town, I wasn’t going to be anyone’s punching bag, either, and the high road wasn’t doing it for me anymore anyway.
“Let’s call Dee when we get back to your house, Stella,” I heard one whisper. I wasn’t sure which one, and it really didn’t matter.
“I know you intended for me to hear all of that. I don’t know why you guys have a problem with me. I’ve never done anything to any of you, and I’ve never done anything to Dee Dee. So why don’t you stop acting like teenagers and spare me the drama.”
“Excuse me?” tall, blond, Amazonian Becky asked.
“We’re all here with our kids. I don’t think story time at the library is really the appropriate forum for gossip,” I said, though I was pretty sure that they didn’t care.
“Then you should probably stop coming,” Stephanie said. I eyed Stella, who didn’t seem interested in saying anything one way or the other. She bent down and fixed a bow in her little girl’s hair, like if she wasn’t partaking in the conversation, she wasn’t as nasty as they were.
I sighed. I stood and pressed Bo tightly to my chest, covering him with my coat as I hurried out of the library, trying so hard to understand when the entire world had gone crazy.
I didn’t bother to put Bo’s coat on him—rather, I held him on my hip and sprinted through the flooded parking lot, figuring that at this point, an umbrella was totally useless. When we got home I’d put all of our clothes in the dryer, and put pajamas on both of us, even though it was only 11:00 A.M. Water streamed down my face as I struggled to strap him in his car seat, and Bo whined and squirmed in his seat, kicking his feet wildly and threatening to collapse into tears. I couldn’t blame him. His feet may have been dry in their ziplock-bagged sacks, but his jeans were soaking wet and his hands were cold and his little bald head was slick with rain. I held his hands up to my mouth and kissed his fingers, hoping that I could warm him enough to make it home without him screaming the whole way. I tossed my bag on the floor and buckled my seat belt, and threw the car into reverse, never, ever to return to story time at the library.
I poured myself a cup of tea when I got home and sat down on the floor next to Bo while he played with blocks. There was no reason in the world that I should have to endure the bitchy mommies at the library, and Dee Dee and Owen, and not be able to do anything to defend myself. I hated Owen more now than I did when I found out about the affair, and that was a fact. He forced me to stay in this town while also ruining any chance I had of setting up a normal life for us. Owen was so concerned about Bo, but what about me? I’m Bo’s mother! Doesn’t a mother’s happiness directly impact the happiness of her child? I put my mug down on the counter and glanced at my laptop, and suddenly I realized that the answer to some of my problems was sitting in front of me, and if it didn’t solve my problems, it would at least make me feel a hell of a lot better. I flipped open the computer and held my breath while I pulled up Facebook and entered Owen’s username and password. How did I not think of this before? I wondered. It was so obvious! It was right here! Owen had been using the same passwords for everything. I could log into anything I wanted, whenever I wanted, and with that knowledge came serious power. Part of me didn’t want to do it, because it would make me look immature and vindictive, but a bigger part of me did want to do it, because I didn’t care about looking immature or vindictive, I just wanted him to suffer. I began to type and type and when I was done typing I examined my work and felt satisfied with the result: Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you all know that I’m a lying, cheating asshole who had an affair right after I moved my wife and infant from Chicago to Connecticut. My wife caught me and my mistress in my house while my son was sleeping in his crib upstairs. Cast your votes for father of the year here!
I posted it. I didn’t know if it made me feel better. It certainly didn’t make me feel worse.
I had just put Bo down for his nap two hours later when my phone rang, but I didn’t know the number, so I ignored it. A few seconds later it beeped, so I removed it from my bag and listened to my voicemail: Hi, my name is Lissy, and I’m calling for Claire? You dropped your datebook in the library after story hour. I got your number out of it and just wanted to let you know that I have it. You can pick it up anytime today. I’ll be working at the stationery store in town. It’s called The Stationer. Thanks.
I probably could’ve gone a month before I realized my datebook was missing, and at that point I’d have no idea where to even begin to look to find it. Bo was hopefully going to sleep for an hour, but when he woke up, I’d feed him a snack and make my way into town to reclaim my planner. I’d lost enough lately. I didn’t need to add anything else to the list.
THE SIGN OUTSIDE the store was small, a little too small for anyone to notice, and there was no window display at all. I probably walked by it dozens of times, as it was located right next to the coffeehouse and down the block from the train station, and never even knew it was there. I pushed the door open and struggled to get the stroller over the doorjamb, causing a small bell over the door to ring, which I found charming. You don’t hear a lot of bells like that anymore. If anything, sometimes you hear a beep when a door opens to let you know that the store has an alarm system, and if you try to rob it the cops will be there in less than five minutes flat to arrest you, or you get your money back guaranteed. The store was cluttered, but not in a good way. There was a bodega near where I lived in Chicago that had somehow managed to stuff an inexplicable number of things into a finite amount of space. You could literally buy kimchi, Pop-Tarts, wheat bread, and stuffed olives in the same store, at the same time, though I didn’t know why you’d want to. This store reminded me of that—minus the overwhelming smell of fermented cabbage.
I battled with t
he stroller for a second, trying to hold the door open with my foot, while my wet hair hung in my face before someone said, “Let me help you with that,” which I appreciated. A hand reached down and grabbed the front end of the stroller, guiding it into the corner of the room. When I looked up, I realized the woman helping me was the Goth girl from story hour. I wasn’t expecting that. I’d just assumed it was another mom who’d found my datebook.
