“They wanted more. They wanted me to bring them a box!” she said. She wiped at her eyes. “I mean, what was I supposed to say, ‘Which size?’” She bent over and put her head down, her whole body shaking with laughter.
“Well, apparently, the lites don’t fly very far,” I deadpanned. “They need the big guns.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes, waving them away, probably to keep her mascara in place. “Well, I will be sure to remember that in the future. You really do learn something new every day.” She took a deep breath. “And I thought my girls getting into my lip gloss was bad,” she said.
“Stick around,” I said. “A friend of mine once told me, ‘Boys are like dogs. They do things in packs they would never do on their own.’”
She nodded, her smile lighting up her face again. “And from the looks of things, you’ve got a pack of your own.”
I wondered if she knew how beautiful she was. It was my observation that most women didn’t. Sometimes when I met a truly beautiful woman, I just wanted to tell her, in case she didn’t know. I took in her appearance: denim capris and a white cap-sleeve blouse that had been crisply ironed. My suspicions were increasing that Justine and her iron were on very good terms. She had tied a hot-pink scarf through the belt loops, which added a perfect burst of unexpected color and style. I remembered my own haphazard ponytail and old clothing and suddenly wanted to melt through the floor.
“I brought you all a loaf of blueberry lemon bread,” she said, now that the laughter had died down. “It’s my girls’ favorite so I baked an extra loaf this morning. I thought it would be something you could snack on while you unpack.” She gestured to the slowly decreasing wall of boxes in the adjoining den.
“Yes, well, at this rate I will still be unpacking next year. With interruptions like lost dogs, pool parties, and rocket launching, I can’t seem to get anything done.” I shrugged my shoulders, once again deflated by the sight of the boxes. “I feel like I will never get caught up on my life again,” I admitted, then silently scolded myself. This person was not my friend. She was barely an acquaintance. I had no business telling her my problems.
She looked unfazed. “I meant it about helping. I love to help people get organized.”
I looked at her and narrowed my eyes. She laughed and waved her hand at me. “I do! I even give little talks about it. Oh—” she threw her arms up in the air. “I’m giving one tomorrow to the mothers’ group at my church. Would you like to come? It’s about how to use the summer to get a jump on projects around your house.”
“I’d love to, but I have the boys.”
“Oh no, we offer babysitting. It’s a nice break. Oh, and it’s a great place to spread the word about your business.”
I envisioned sinking into a chair and having at least one hour away from my boys. “Sure,” I said. “That would be nice. I could use some advice on organization.” And on discipline and parenting and marriage and time management and meal preparation and … I remembered my fantasy about having everything in order before David came home from work. Maybe Justine was my answer.
I smiled at Justine, and she smiled back. For just a moment, I wondered if this picture of perfection and I could actually be friends, ironing issues not withstanding. That day in my kitchen, I believed it was possible, even probable.
She looked around. “Do you think you’ll change anything in here?” she asked.
I followed her gaze. “David and I talked about it. He says he’d like to paint it a more neutral color. But I told him I liked the yellow. It feels … I don’t know … happy?”
She nodded. “That’s exactly what Laura said when she painted it.”
“So you knew the people who lived here?” I asked. I had already heard a bit from Erica but played dumb. I had met the former owners only once, days before they moved away. They weren’t at the closing. The wife, Laura, a pretty blonde who looked remarkably like Justine, didn’t say much to me in the short time we spent together.
She answered me quietly. “She was my best friend.”
“Oh,” I said. Suddenly I knew why Justine hadn’t come over those first few days to welcome us to the neighborhood. She wasn’t too busy. She just didn’t want to see other people in her best friend’s house. “I’m sure it was hard to see her go.” The gate between the two houses, I now understood, had been installed for them to have access to each other.
She nodded, swallowed. “You have no idea.” She forced a smile for my benefit, I was sure. “But I’m glad such nice people bought the house,” she offered.
“Well, the jury’s still out on how nice we are. I mean, you did witness the rocket incident,” I quipped.
She smiled as an awkward silence fell between us. I went to the refrigerator and began pulling out fruit for the boys. I would feed them sliced fruit and Justine’s bread for lunch. I had already forgotten what kind she said it was. I held up the loaf she had left on my counter and grinned. “Lunch,” I said.
“Well, when you’re in survival mode,” she said, running her french-manicured fingernails along the granite countertops. I imagined her and Laura choosing the counters together, their blonde heads bent over the samples. She and Laura probably both loved organizing, both dressed impeccably, both had it together. They probably got mistaken for sisters. And here I was in her friend’s space. How did I tell her that survival mode was our standard?
The phone rang, and I grabbed it when I saw David’s cell number on the caller ID. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked. I smiled at Justine over the receiver, and she smiled back.
“I’m going to have to be gone tonight,” David said. “I’m sorry. It can’t be helped.”
I wanted to hang up on him, but since Justine was watching, I played nice. “Oh well, if it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped.” I knew he could read beyond what I said and hear the clipped tone of my voice.
“I’m really sorry about this, babe.”
“Okay, well, bye,” I said, seething inside. He had promised he’d be home tonight, that we’d have dinner as a family. I hung up and looked back at Justine, wondering why I felt embarrassed, as though his call was some form of rejection.
Justine looked at her watch, hopefully oblivious to what I was feeling. “Well, I need to get going. I have to pick up the girls at camp. It’s really too bad you didn’t move in earlier. You could have signed the boys up for the camp at the neighborhood club. It’s heavenly,” she said and giggled.
“Yes, well, it sure beats the alternative activity they found for themselves,” I said as I cut into an apple.
“Oh,” she added, “and please do give me some of your business cards to start passing out.” I looked around for a moment, trying to remember which box they were in. She waved her hand. “I’ve already been telling people how blessed we are to have you living so close by.”
“Thanks, Justine. Nice to see you again.” I opened the box and grabbed a stack of business cards to hand her.
She smiled back at me as I pressed the cards into her hand, trying not to give away how grateful I was for her help. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow? It’s at Church of the Redeemer at nine a.m.,” she said.
I tried to picture getting the boys and myself up and ready and where we needed to be by nine on a summer morning in the midst of the boxes that still needed unpacking. But I wasn’t going to bring that up. “I’ll be there,” I said. When she opened the door, I heard a snatch of my neighbor’s music: George Winston, or a pianist who sounded very much like him.
After Justine was gone, I called the boys in for lunch. The bread she baked was the best I had ever tasted. I ate it while reading the Bible, bread and Bread, both filling up empty places within me.
That afternoon while the boys lay on the couch to watch a movie, their limbs tangled together so that it was hard to tell which boy was which, I heard a knock
on the door. I answered it to find Erica, the woman from the pool, standing on my doorstep, a bag of Oreos in her hand. She waved it back and forth. “I know lots of people will bring you homemade stuff, but I let go of that Suzy Homemaker stuff a long time ago. I don’t even pretend to bake anymore.”
I smiled at her and opened the door wider. “Come in,” I said. “At your own risk.”
She waved the bag of Oreos again. “Remember? Nondomestic diva? No judgment over here. But if you have any milk, these are a great afternoon snack. That much I do know.”
We sat down at the table, and though I saw the crumbs from lunch, I didn’t feel compelled to jump up and sweep them away. Erica unscrewed the top of an Oreo and licked out the filling, grinning at me. “I never can eat them like a grown-up,” she offered. I poured us each a glass of milk, and we ate in silence, neither of us feeling particularly compelled to keep up unnecessary conversation.
“This is nice. Thanks,” I said.
“I figured you were probably in the mood for a break.” She pointed at the wall of boxes. “You have my permission to take a year to unpack all those.”
I laughed. “A year? Really?”
“Sure! A year sounds about right to me. Three kids, busy life, husband to keep happy, meals to cook. You can’t do it all. Don’t get sucked into thinking that you can.”
I thought of Justine’s talk the next day on organization. I did believe I could do it all with the right information. I nodded at Erica. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
She shook her head. “She got to you already, didn’t she?” An amused smile played at the corners of her mouth.
“Got to me? Who?”
“The queen of Essex Falls herself. Justine Miller.” She pointed at her house through my kitchen window. “I guess it couldn’t be helped. I mean, she is literally in your backyard.”
I shrugged and put down my cookie. I had already licked the filling out of the middle anyway, the sweetness still on my tongue. “She invited me to her mothers’ group.”
“I’m sure she did. Mothers’ group is code for Justine Training Camp. Attend enough meetings and you’ll be just like her!” I didn’t miss the irony in her voice.
I couldn’t figure out where Erica’s animosity was coming from and I didn’t feel comfortable asking. I remembered how she had slipped away when Justine showed up at the pool. “I figured the mothers’ group would be a good way to meet people. Make some new friends here.” I didn’t know why I was defending my choice to Erica.
She nodded and smiled, the edge she had in her voice disappearing. “It is. You’re right. Sorry if I came on too strong. I’m just not like those women so I tend to shy away from them.” She tapped the Oreos. “Case in point.”
I grinned at her and wondered idly if I had Oreos in my teeth. “There’s nothing wrong with a bag of Oreos,” I said.
She pulled another one from the bag. “Indeed.” She chewed thoughtfully. “You be friends with whomever you want,” she said. “I just hope you’ll include me on that list. You seem like a cool chick.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I said. “You, too.” Neither one of us looked in the direction of Justine’s house, but I could feel it behind me, an uninvited guest at the table, frowning on eating store-bought cookies in the middle of the afternoon while unpacked boxes awaited my attention. I turned my body toward Erica and ignored Justine’s house. I took the top off another Oreo and scraped the white filling with my teeth, the sweetness filling my mouth again.
Chapter 7
Ariel
Who was I kidding? It was 8:30 a.m., and the boys were still running around in various stages of undress, no one had eaten breakfast yet, and I hadn’t put any makeup on my face. If I could even find my makeup, that is. “Boys! We need to leave in five minutes if we’re going to make it on time!” I yelled up the stairs.
No answer.
“Boys? Do you hear me?”
A muffled “Yes, ma’am” came from one boy.
I let out an exasperated sigh as I marched up the steps to my room. We were going to be late and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Maybe I’d be better off to just announce, as Erica had, that I would never be any better. That this was as good as it gets. But I wasn’t ready to give up on my promise to myself to get my life under control, and so far, this mothers’ group was the closest thing I’d found to a guarantee of that coming true.
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and took a few deep breaths, ignoring the clock’s reflection from my bedside, its backward red numbers tolling the minutes that were slipping away. I rummaged in my drawer and hit the jackpot: my makeup bag. Justine had seen me only without my makeup, but I intended to show her another side of me. Never mind that it was going to make us later. I paused long enough to holler at the boys, “You have cereal on the table. Go eat as soon as you are dressed.”
Returning to my room, I began applying base, eyeliner, mascara, blush. Normally in the summers I went without base or blush, but that was assuming I had spent some time in the sun. Our day at the pool party had been a nice start, but nowhere near enough. I heard a crash downstairs, and my heart began to race. I waited a moment for someone to call out or start crying.
“Mo-om,” Donovan called out. “Duncan dropped his cereal bowl and it broke and there’s milk everywhere.”
I looked back at the mirror and tried deep breathing again. Who said Lamaze was just for childbirth? “Don’t freak out,” I warned the woman in the mirror. “Just go clean it up. Pretend you’re not a raving lunatic.” When I entered the kitchen, I found all three boys clustered over the mess. Donovan was trying to pick up the broken pieces of bowl. Dylan had a broom and was trying to sweep up the wet cereal, and Duncan had a washcloth and was smearing the liquid into an ever-widening circle. Their sweet attempt to clean up would have melted my heart if it wasn’t making an even bigger mess and making us even later to the event.
“Boys, thank you. I’ll take it from here,” I said after taking a deep breath. I felt like crying. The microwave clock said 8:51. We should’ve already been in the car if we were going to make it even close to on time. I sighed. The boys stood rooted to their spots, Donovan holding pieces of broken bowl that thankfully hadn’t cut his hands, Dylan with the broom in his hand, Duncan holding the dripping cloth. “It was an accident,” I said to Duncan, who looked like he wanted to cry as badly as I did. They all exhaled in relief. “Go get your shoes on and then get in the van and wait quietly for me,” I said. Thankfully, for once, they did exactly as they were told.
The church parking lot was quite full, the turnout surprising to me for a summer morning. My guess was that other moms needed the break that Justine described as badly as I did and would take any excuse they could get.
After dropping off the boys in the babysitting room, where I was surprised to see Erica’s daughter, Heather, serving as one of the sitters, I headed toward the sanctuary. I heard Justine’s voice before I entered the sanctuary. She was onstage welcoming everyone, her Southern drawl already familiar to me. I felt proud that she was my neighbor, especially as I stepped inside and saw the crowd of women hanging on her every word. That is, until the door’s overloud click caused everyone to turn their attention to me. It felt like high school all over again.
With an exaggerated tiptoe, I made my way to a seat in the back beside a woman nursing a newborn. Justine found me, and our eyes met. She smiled warmly, the same bright smile I had admired that first day at her house. The exchange took less than a moment, but I felt welcomed by her. I ducked my head and was thankful that, with the lights low, she couldn’t see me blush.
As Justine launched into her lecture on organization, I noticed the other women whipping out pens and notebooks. I sat there looking helpless as another woman passed me a sheet of notebook paper and a stubby pencil from the back of the pew. There was barely a point on th
e pencil, but I whispered a thank-you and obediently took notes. Apparently, it was expected to write down every word Justine said.
As I listened to Justine extol the benefits of planning out your menus for the week, I absentmindedly scribbled, “She makes it look easy.” But as I continued to listen to her, I felt hope that I could be just like her. That with the right amount of planning and effort, I, too, could have a life like Justine’s. When I looked around the sanctuary, I realized that every woman in the room had the same idea. We wanted to be just like her, and she was giving us the keys to make that happen.
One of the keys she held up was her “life-management notebook.” The women ooohhed and ahhhed and murmured to each other as she went over the different divisions of the book: a section for each aspect of the busy homemaker’s life, she said. I dutifully wrote down the sections: calendar, health, menus, goals, projects, prayer journal, notes, and a section for each child, all while trying to rectify the person wiggling to the music in the pool chair the other day with the poised, prim woman in front of us.
After the meeting, I milled around with the other women, smiling politely and repeating my name over and over as we sipped watered-down punch and ate cookies. I wondered if they would log the calories in the health section of their notebooks like Justine had suggested. I grinned at my own private joke as I noticed the line of women waiting in line to talk to Justine. She caught my eye and waved me over. As I approached her, I noticed the pairs of eyes staring at us. Was it envy in their eyes as Justine put her arm around my shoulders and said loudly, “Ariel, I am so glad you came”? Awkwardly, I put my free arm around her shoulders and squeezed back briefly.
“Y’all,” she announced to the women around us, “this is Ariel Baxter, my new neighbor.” They all nodded, and I cast my eyes downward. “She lives right behind me and has the most adorable little boys. And she’s a fantastic photographer. You all know that portrait I have in my house of the girls in those white dresses?”
She Makes It Look Easy Page 7
