Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  “It looks empty.” Salomon peered up at the house on Morningside Avenue as he walked the brick path with his mother. Rosalita had been expecting an impersonally large mansion, but Ardie’s house had the style of a cottage—a very nice, large cottage—with blue trim and ivy growing up the white wall. The oak in the front yard was as thick as a bear and shaded the lawn where an iron bench waited to be sat upon. Rosalita couldn’t see how anyone’s life could be stressful if they came home to a place this lovely. Good for Ardie.

  “You are working, Salomon. When you are working, you arrive at least ten minutes early.”

  As they walked up to the front door, Salomon toyed nervously with the brim of his baseball cap. “Why, though?”

  “Because you’re here to be useful. Not to party.” She gave a small wiggle of a dance to tease him and then pushed Salomon gently toward the doorbell. “Remember to keep your hat on, pajarito,” she added quickly as he pushed the button.

  “Do you think there will be candy?” he turned to ask, smashing his hand over his cap.

  The sound of footsteps approached from the other side of the door. “I brought you snacks. You are working,” she repeated. “Ms. Valdez is paying you. She’s not paying you because she needs a food-eater.” She pinched the back of his neck.

  “She might,” he grumbled, swatting her hand away.

  Rosalita had only a spare second to rethink the entire idea, to consider leaving before she allowed her son to step foot inside this beautiful home. And then it was too late.

  Ardie appeared and she was ushering them across the threshold and Rosalita told herself she was being ridiculous. It was $125. On a Saturday. All was well. Better than well, even.

  Once inside, Rosalita was met with more immediate concerns. Such as whether or not to take off her shoes. She seemed to recall vaguely that this was a thing white people did. Her uncle worked as an air-conditioner repairman and he said that he had to wear foamy foot-covers over his boots before he entered a customer’s home. This felt like an opportunity for immense embarrassment should she choose incorrectly.

  She glanced at Ardie’s feet. She was wearing a pair of slip-on flats—loafers, Rosalita thought they were called—and did not seem to be worrying about Rosalita’s feet in the slightest. So she kept them on and when Ardie beckoned her further into the house without mentioning the footwear, she relaxed. A little.

  “I have your costume all laid out for you. You can change in the guest room,” Ardie said to Salomon, pointing him down the hall. “You’re going to make a tremendous Spider-Man.” Salomon grinned. He adored Spider-Man.

  “Rosalita, what can I get for you? Mimosa? Coke? Sparkling water? Iced tea?”

  She followed Ardie into the kitchen. Her house was much cleaner than Rosalita had expected. Compared to the rest of the women on the fifteenth floor, Ardie Valdez was less … contained. Like a person with threads popped at the seams. Her hair was never quite brushed in the back. Her blazers were too long in the arms. She wore wide-legged pants that wrinkled when she sat. But Rosalita had noticed that Ardie made certain investments. A pretty handbag. Beautiful leather shoes, though not the pointy-toed, dangerous-looking ones the other women wore.

  Rosalita clasped her hands together at her waist. “I’m okay, thank you.”

  “We’re about to have ten children under the age of five in this house, you may need something to take the edge off.” Ardie wiped a countertop with a paper towel.

  “I’m okay.”

  Ardie pushed her thin lips together and nodded. “Me too. I’m sticking to iced tea. Help yourself if you change your mind.” She tossed the damp paper towel into the garbage. “Salomon is doing great in our lessons, by the way. He’ll be ready for the entrance exam, I have no doubt.”

  Rosalita perked up. Salomon was a subject matter she couldn’t resist. That was how the tutoring sessions came to be. Do you have kids? Ardie once asked her after they’d been having their small snippets of conversation for many months. And Rosalita had been proud, proud, proud to tell Ardie about how smart her little boy was and Ardie had listened, and then every time she saw Ardie thereafter, she would say: How’s Salomon? And Rosalita would tell her that he was well, until one day his teacher had sent him home with a note in tricky, unreadable cursive. Timidly, she’d presented it to Ardie, who translated it for her. The gist? Salomon needed to change schools. He would not reach his potential at their neighborhood one. He was, his teacher believed, gifted. Gifted!

  Rosalita had cried. Not happy tears. Helpless ones. But a few days later, Ardie had left a few printed pages on top of her desk, along with a sticky note that read: For Rosalita.

  A new school with an entrance exam and scholarships, and Ardie would help Salomon get in.

  “Do you think so?” Rosalita asked. “Is he understanding the mathematics or just memorizing it?” She touched her finger lightly to her temple.

  For most of their sessions, Rosalita took Salomon to meet Ardie at the Barnes & Noble where Ardie ordered cold “coffee” slush that came with a swirl of whipped cream. Rosalita wandered the aisles, pulling out travel books and imagining trips to locations she wouldn’t visit. Many times since, Rosalita had wanted to ask why Ardie was helping her, but she guessed it had something to do with not wanting to be home alone when her own son was at his father’s house. Rosalita wasn’t a lucky person, but she was lucky that she didn’t have to share.

  “Oh, he understands it. He just gets lazy about applying all the steps occasionally. I keep telling him: math is a subject for which you have to show your work.”

  Rosalita bobbed her head. “I will work with him at home. I will keep telling him.” She then checked over her shoulder for Salomon to appear, as though the beautiful house might have gobbled him whole. But he returned, in a full-body Spider-Man suit. He struck a pose and stuck his forearm out, fingers splayed to cast an imaginary web.

  Ardie clapped her hands. “Perfect. Salomon, can you please help me carry these trays out to the backyard?”

  Rosalita would have liked to ask Ardie more about Salomon’s progress. She would have liked to fish for compliments, really. Those for her son were the best kind. If his father was nothing else, he was smart. It was one of Rosalita’s sole sources of comfort when it came to Salomon’s paternal heritage.

  Soon enough, the house was filling. Over the next thirty minutes, kids stampeded into the house, trailing moms and dads in their wake. Rosalita stood patiently in the corner of the kitchen, her purse hooked over her wrist. She tried neither to hide herself nor to mingle with the other guests. She had worn a jean dress from Old Navy with slip-on sandals and was glad to see that she’d chosen well for the party.

  Through the windows, she could see Salomon passing out superhero masks and capes to the younger children. He introduced himself to grown-ups. He showed the toddlers how to flex their muscles. He fit in. She wanted this. She did. But it wasn’t without discomfort.

  Even from her place in the kitchen, there was no missing the Sloane woman’s entrance. She wore a fitted blue-and-white striped tee, skinny jeans, and sling-back wedges with a cutesy-checkered pattern. Her hair was pulled into a shiny, blonde ponytail that bounced against the back of her neck. She was speaking loudly, as if narrating the entrance for her family. Her hands rested on a little girl’s shoulders. The man—her husband—closed the door behind them. “Look at this!” Sloane exclaimed to the room in general. “Ardie went all out.”

  Sloane’s daughter looked up and whispered something in her mother’s ear and then skipped outside. Rosalita’s eyes followed and, in moments, the little girl had found Salomon and the two older kids took on the role of chief organizers together.

  “Is he yours?” Sloane crossed the kitchen and helped herself to one of the champagne glasses. “Want anything, honey?” she asked over her shoulder. But her husband was already stepping outside to where the kids and other adults were gathered.

  “Yes. His name is Salomon.”

  Sloane poure
d a mostly full glass of champagne, the foam bubbling up so precariously close to the rim that Rosalita felt certain it would spill over. But it didn’t and Sloane topped it with a splash of orange juice. “They look like they’re almost the same age, my Abigail and Sal—Salomon.” She stumbled over his name.

  “I’m Sloane, by the way. I don’t think we’ve formally met. I recognize you from … from…” She twirled her finger in the air like she was trying to catch the word and then snapped her fingers. “The office!”

  “Rosalita.” She extended her right hand.

  But just then the front door chimed with new guests and Sloane’s hand, cool and smooth in her own, slid free as she looked back to the entryway.

  “Grace! Katherine! Excuse me.” She held up one apologetic finger. “Just one moment.” She teetered off in her wedges, champagne glass in hand. “Y’all made it! Did you drive over together? Look at you two.”

  There was a lot of hugging. That particular lean-from-the-waist, straight-backed, neck-arching hug of women like Sloane. And Rosalita saw that Katherine was a woman with short hair—that woman from the office—and quickly angled her face away.

  Rosalita avoided looking down the hall and instead let her eyes travel the room to the cat-shaped cookie jar, to an empty fruit bowl, to a child’s backpack hooked onto a miniature table-and-chair set.

  And now the women were clomping across the wood floors.

  “Wine!” Sloane said to Katherine, who clasped the neck of a bottle. “To a children’s birthday party! I like your style.”

  Sloane took the bottle as though it were her house and set it on the kitchen counter. “Come in, come in, I was just chatting with Rosalita, here.” She pronounced Rosalita’s name as though it were a fiesta.

  “Grace.” Another blonde woman, slightly younger and very pretty, held out her hand for Rosalita.

  “Hello,” said Rosalita. “My son is helping with the party.” She pointed outside to where Salomon was giving a piggyback ride to Ardie’s son, Michael. He was a hit.

  “I just had a baby. And I’m using this as an excuse to sneak away for a couple teeny tiny hours. I feel guilty, but…” She shrugged. She didn’t actually seem like she felt all that guilty. Rosalita already knew about the baby from the pumping equipment stowed underneath her desk, but she pretended she didn’t.

  When Salomon had been born, she hadn’t wanted to leave him even for an hour. But she had to. Sometimes she overheard the women in the office complain that they couldn’t wait to return to work after having a baby. But Rosalita knew that they could wait. Because they did.

  Katherine had seen Rosalita. She was sure of that much. Katherine had done a similar angling away of her face the moment their eyes had glinted off one another’s, like a ricochet. Katherine went straight over to where the beverages were set up. “Want anything, Grace?” she asked, without glancing again in Rosalita’s direction. No one else seemed to notice. Katherine skipped the orange juice altogether and when she finished pouring, she suggested they go outside. The suggestion managed not to include Rosalita. But Rosalita saw. Rosalita always saw everything. The question in this case had been: in Ames’s office that night, what exactly had she seen?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1-APR

  The champagne bubbles had gone straight to Sloane’s head. She was considering asking Rosalita to arrange a playdate with her son—what was his name? Sal—Sal—Sal-something. Yes, she should do that. She put the glass to her lips again, one hand on her hip, thinking. But … would that be open-minded or condescending? Asking Rosalita’s son to play with Abigail, she meant.

  And, actually, was wondering whether it was open-minded in itself evidence of a lack of open-mindedness? This was a conundrum. Sloane hated these ethical jigsaw puzzles. Wasn’t it enough that she liked everyone? She’d never met a person that she couldn’t talk to properly. But no, that was apparently naïve of her. Or, an uglier word she’d learned—privileged.

  In Ardie’s backyard, the sun shined with just the right fervor. Branches swayed overhead and the shrieks of children knocking over cardboard buildings felt like a snapshot out of a Pottery Barn Kids catalogue. She would worry about the politics of a playdate later.

  She really did enjoy the sensation of bubbles swimming up to her head.

  For another moment, she stood atypically off to the side of the party, watching her daughter play superhero with Rosalita’s son. Two small children whose relative ages made them relatively important in this one particular context.

  She’d deleted the text messages on Abigail’s phone. Poof! Gone! And now look! Her daughter was playing happily outside and Sloane had made that happen. Abigail’s meddling mother.

  Maybe the emailed memorandum was a bit much in the light of day, but the school needed to be taught a lesson and who could blame her? She was a mother.

  She smiled the easy smile of someone one-and-a-half drinks in, then returned to the patio, where Grace, Ardie, and Katherine stood around her husband.

  “Are you swimming in estrogen yet?” She looped her arm through his elbow. His soft, worn-in polo brushed against her cheek. He was a dad who looked great in backyards. Tailor-made for tossing a football and carrying children on his shoulders. She was still debating whether to tell him about her missive to the school board. She was leaning toward no. It was, after all, a formal complaint to his employer, but that was precisely why she’d had to take matters so firmly into her own hands. It was better for him to be kept in the dark. Innocent. And anyway, a legal memorandum wasn’t his purview.

  He bowed his head, his stubble catching her hair. “I remembered to hold my breath before I dove in.”

  She grinned at the group. “Excellent, then what’d I miss?”

  Grace held a bottle of champagne by the neck. She wore a chambray shirt tucked into an A-line floral skirt. Sloane had never looked that put-together after Abigail had been born. She’d lost the baby weight relatively quickly despite having gained a full forty-five pounds, but her shape was another story. It had been like her body had shifted half an inch to the left and didn’t settle back in until almost a year postpartum. “I was just topping off Katherine’s glass, here.” She gave a small curtsy. “It appears her roots are beginning to show.” Grace waggled her eyebrows mischievously.

  Katherine took an aggressively long swig of champagne and Sloane squinted at her. She was too young to be showing gray.

  “She was just complimenting me on my potty platta.” Ardie held up a fruit and cheese tray stabbed through with toothpicks.

  Sloane hesitated and then her eyes widened, which was probably overdoing it, but she didn’t care. “Have you been hiding a Boston accent?”

  The thought tickled her right along with the champagne bubbles. Perfectly proper Katherine Bell. Master enunciator. Sloane helped herself to one of the toothpicks with watermelon attached and popped it into her mouth. “I thought you were a boarding school girl or some such?” Sloane munched.

  “Not exactly,” she said, taking another sip. “South Boston. Public school.”

  “You’ve come a long way from home, Dorothy,” Grace said.

  “Dah-thy,” Katherine quipped.

  “Oh! Oh! Say something else!” Sloane clapped her hands. And she only rolled her eyes slightly when, after that, Derek whisked her glass away. Such a teacher. But she could always locate another.

  Katherine held out her glass to Grace, who obliged with a soft, complicit laugh. “I guess I’m driving now.”

  Katherine pointed a finger at Sloane. Her nails were childishly short. Chewed nearly to the quick. “Sloane Glovah, you ah wicked smaht.”

  Maybe it was the lovely weather or the smell of fresh cut grass, but Sloane made an impulsive and irreversible decision to like Katherine. Katherine wasn’t an ingénue. She was a woman who’d fashioned herself out of scraps into a mosaic of a Harvard Law graduate and Big Law associate. She had gumption.

  I want to be like you. The words that Katherine had said�
�maybe said—bubbled to the surface along with the bubbles. Or—wait—did she say, I want to be you? Did it matter? Sloane felt the slurpy, slushy feeling of guilt mucking about, weighing her down somewhere in her conscience. Goodness, she hoped she wouldn’t have a hangover.

  “Okay,” Derek said, setting Sloane’s half-full glass on the outdoor dining table. “Better question: Who’s more of an A-hole, Jerry Jones or Bill Belichick?”

  “Well, I know who’s more of a winner.” Katherine lifted one eyebrow.

  “Ohhh, burn.” Derek shook his hand out, laughing. Though he really did love the Cowboys. Every year for his birthday, Sloane scored two of Truviv’s field-level seats. “So, what brought you here from Beantown?” he asked.

  Sloane sighed and slyly retrieved her glass from the table. “Look at my husband trying to be cool,” she teased.

  Katherine tipped her own glass back and drained it. “Oh, I was fired from my job.”

  Grace wiped her mouth with a folded napkin.

  Ardie’s forehead creased. “You were fired? From Frost Klein?”

  “Yep.”

  As Katherine’s boss, Sloane wasn’t sure she should be hearing this. But as an incorrigibly nosy person, she couldn’t resist.

  “It was a nightmare, actually,” Katherine said, staring into the bottom of her glass. “What’s in these things?”

  Ardie cocked her head. “Champagne,” she answered, slowly.

  “That explains it.” Katherine nodded, solemnly.

  “So, what happened?” Grace asked.

  Sloane remembered vaguely where they were, which was a children’s birthday party, sometime just after noon. Derek excused himself to check on Abigail. The good parent, Sloane registered with mild annoyance. More with herself than him.

  Ardie slipped her shoes off and stretched her feet on the patio tiles for a moment as she listened.

  “The year before I was fired,” Katherine said, “the firm had done some statistical analysis for this public company on equal employment that made it look like the client was much better off than it was because the partner, who was the section head, by the way”—she moved the stem of her glass in a spiral—“had used the wrong statistics. The opinion letter with that analysis had been used, disclosed, and relied upon to complete a high-profile merger, which our firm helmed.”