White Elephant Read online

  “I go there all the time. I have a fort.”

  “How?”

  “How? I just walk in. I have a key,” she said, sly. “I stole it. Come on! Let’s go!”

  “Not right now . . . ,” Jillian said, meaning not ever.

  “Chicken.” Lindy started playing a Chipmunks song on her phone. The Chipmunks sang Christmas carols in high-pitched voices. Lindy sang along. Jillian watched her until Lindy pinched her and made her join in. Jillian could get sick of the Chipmunks pretty fast, but not Lindy, it seemed. They all kept singing and singing.

  Suddenly she turned the music off. “Okay, now,” Lindy said.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we’re going to the fort.” She got a key out of her night table and slid open the window above it. Then she dug out a contraption made of metal and rope from under her bed. She hooked the two metal arms over the windowsill, and unfurled a rope ladder toward the ground.

  “Your parents let you have a rope ladder?”

  “In case of fire, duh.” She climbed out the window and down the ladder. She landed on the ground with a thump. “Your turn!”

  Jillian wasn’t sure what to do. She could just leave. That was an option. She could just walk downstairs and out the front door and go home. That would be that. Safe and sound. No friendship with Lindy—but that seemed like a long shot anyway.

  “You coming, Miller?” Lindy called up.

  Miller. No one had ever called her that. It sounded kind of cool. Kind of tough.

  A girl named “Miller” could climb out windows and sneak into houses. Maybe.

  “Hurry up,” Lindy called.

  Jillian climbed onto the table, her heart beating hard. Lindy was down on the side lawn. She smiled up at Jillian, making Jillian feel like she’d passed a test. She took a deep breath and climbed out the window. The rope waggled back and forth, but it felt strong. She climbed down, rung by rung, her heart loud in her ears. By the time she reached the ground, Lindy was running around the back of Jillian’s house and over to the White Elephant.

  “. . . AND CINDERELLA FORGAVE HER STEPSISTERS—” KAYE READ. JAKEY was edging toward the lip of the couch. “But it’s not over yet, buddy.”

  “I know what’s gonna happen,” Jakey said.

  “Well, o—”

  Jakey burst off the couch, racing up the stairs. Kaye sighed, closing the book of fairy tales.

  She sat alone on the couch, eyeing the furniture, all Baker, all upholstered in white velvet: the $8,000 sofa, the $4,000 lounge chair and matching $5,000 chaise. The dining room table, visible through the arched doorway, had cost $11,000 and the ten chairs $2,000 each. The chandelier was nearly $9,000; it was made of glass from Venice. The painting of the rosy nude over the couch—$6,000, chosen by their decorator—picked up the pink of the stones around the fireplace. But what good was it all when you didn’t have any friends to envy it? Down in Beaufort, they were the popular family; here, they were nobodies. Why? She wasn’t doing anything differently that she could tell.

  Not that she could complain! She was lucky and she knew it. To have all this stuff? God was looking out for her, no doubt. She’d grown up this side of poor, on a little South Carolina sea island where the tourists never came anymore. You couldn’t blame them. The beaches were worn away and the government had never cleaned up the old dye plant, where the old-timers used to work, Kaye’s father included. When Kaye was small the tap water still ran sweet, but since then they’d declared the water unsafe to drink. Residents had to get fresh water from the town hall in jugs. Her father had left her their little house on Sea Breeze Court when he died, two years ago. It wasn’t much, but it was hers. Everything else they owned seemed like Nick’s. He earned the money, after all.

  Feeling nostalgic, she unlocked her phone and opened her Facebook app. There were Darla and Maureen clinking champagne glasses at Tara’s. There Amber, Kitty, and Bonnie after manicures. Tina and Lila and their kids at the beach showing off their tans. Kaye “liked” each photo, thinking, Don’t like. Don’t like. Don’t like.

  She’d had a hope that the new neighbor, Suzanne, would start coming by with her little boy for playdates, but Suzanne had practically had an allergic reaction when she came over last Tuesday. She’d gasped—actually gasped—when she saw their television, and Kaye could tell it wasn’t in awe, the way Grant had when she gave him a tour. He’d said “Wow” about a hundred times, and “You gotta be kidding me!” He counted the bathrooms out loud and they had to go around the house a second time for confirmation: yep, there were six of them. He seemed super nice, but Suzanne was a little stuck up, frankly.

  “How many video-game systems does Jakey have?” she’d said, eyeing the game cabinet with something like fear.

  “Oh, you know boys!” Kaye had said. Who knew how many systems he had? Did people count things like that? Suzanne left after a scant half hour, never having touched the fudge or the coffee Kaye had put out.

  Maybe Kaye had laughed too much. Or chattered more than her fair share. She couldn’t help that she was a happy person. She’d always been a happy person, cheering up friends, cheering up her father, keeping busy, busy, busy. She and her girlfriends had practically run Lindy’s old school, organizing talent night, the spring fair, field day—you name it. Up here, the women did things differently. Multicultural night at Willard Park Elementary? How were you supposed to contribute when you didn’t have a culture? “Do you think I’m not serious enough for her?” she’d asked Nick, who’d said, “Let it go, babe,” as if Suzanne were a fish too small to keep.

  With no kids or husband to see to, no housekeeper to chat with—she and Carmen always ate lunch together, which was sort of like having a paid friend—no piles to clear or online shopping to do, Kaye was free for the moment. Free to indulge in the pastime she’d meant to keep as just that—a little something to do while the kids were occupied. Now that Jakey was in first grade she couldn’t keep him home from school just for company anymore. She’d just do it for an hour, to get it out of her system.

  She wandered down the basement steps, slipping past the wine cellar, past the lounge and the gym to her room. It was her own room. She’d begged for it when Nick was allotting purposes for the rooms in the house.

  “Promise never to go in,” she’d told him, her finger to her smiling lips, her eyelashes batting.

  “Why would I?” he’d said.

  He wasn’t even curious about what she did in there. He wasn’t curious about her, period. Did he consider her a trophy wife? She was only a few years younger than he was, but she looked better than a lot of women her age. A little hair color and a lot of hours with a personal trainer went a long way. Well, if she was a trophy wife, he was a trophy husband. He would always be a trophy husband since the trophy aspect of husbands had to do with cash value, but what was going to happen to her? At thirty-nine, her chrome was starting to lose its shine.

  She opened the door, then went around the room turning on the light boxes that hung at intervals on the wall. Each was topped with a mammogram film. Some were of single breasts, but most were a pair, two films side by side, like globes of the world with land masses and seas. They were painted in a rainbow of colors, and she’d named them: Red Sky at Night, Orange Storm, Sea Change.

  Something was wrong with her, to want to paint breasts. She felt that deep within her in a clammy, embarrassed way, but she couldn’t help herself. It was like an addiction. Worse than shopping.

  She ought to have stuck with watercolors of sailboats and sunsets, like her mother used to make. She and Kaye used to sit side by side in beach chairs with their palettes and easels when Kaye was little. Kaye was the one who emptied the dirty water in the sea and brought back fresh cups to dip their brushes in. Her mother was really talented. Kaye had a few of her paintings framed in the guest bathroom even though the decorator disapproved. That was a normal pastime, something you could tell people you did. But this . . .

  She’d had the inspiration durin
g a mammogram several years before. The doctor had shown her the films on a light screen, her right breast and her left. “Such frequent screenings are overkill at your age,” she told Kaye, who was thirty then. Kaye, lost for a moment in the symmetry of her own breasts, had snapped to. “I’ll get them every month if I choose,” she said. Her mother’s breast cancer had been fast and virulent, leaving Kaye motherless at eight.

  She’d painted dozens of films since then. A technician at the radiologist’s had given several hundred to her, as many as she wanted, when the office moved from film to digital images. They didn’t care what happened to them as long as the patients’ identities were stripped off. What was she going to do with them all? Keep painting them, she supposed. Maybe one day she would find she’d had enough of breasts and she would be able to move on to something normal, like fruit.

  Kaye locked the door. She got out her paints and turned on a “nature sounds” playlist. The first song was a recording of ocean waves; she chose a breast with a vast white patch that looked like a desert island, and she started to paint.

  9

  NOVEMBER 14

  Jillian’s father stabbed a tiny potato and held his fork up like a king holding his scepter. “I got four signatures last night,” he said.

  Jillian and her mother made encouraging sounds. They talked about the petition every night at dinner.

  “And guess what?” he said.

  “Four trees were down?” her mother said.

  “A maple sapling. Down by the creek.” From his expression, you’d have thought he’d run over a dog.

  “That’s how many by the creek, eleven?” her mother said.

  “Easiest place not to get caught. He’s such a coward.”

  “We don’t know it’s him,” her mother said, cutting her salmon.

  “The town ought to hire a dick to follow him.”

  She and her mother both looked up.

  “A dick?” Jillian said.

  “It’s a term for a detective,” her father said.

  Jillian nodded. It was a term for something else too. She lined her string beans up in a row. They looked like the planks of a raft. Or the posts of a picket fence. That was it. A fence. She slipped them under the table one by one, to Candy’s waiting mouth. Candy kept sniffing her leg. She probably smelled Rex. It was lucky her parents’ sense of smell wasn’t as good as the dog’s.

  Her mother looked at Jillian’s plate. “Not hungry, Jill?”

  “I had a late snack,” she said. Lindy had candy bars stashed in the White Elephant fort, Twixes and peanut butter cups among them, Jillian’s favorites. She and Lindy had been going up there every afternoon all week. That was what she did after school now. She didn’t go to clubs. To heck with clubs. The fort was a wonderland with lemon candles from Lucy’s (“Did you steal them?” “I borrowed them.”), a big beach towel, throw pillows, and sugar. There was a Ouija board and Gypsy Witch tarot cards, which they used to learn their fates. “Does Mark Strauss love me?” they asked the Ouija board. Y-E-S the board said, and it didn’t feel like Lindy was pushing it. Lindy kept it all in a box she stashed in the rafters, transforming the room from construction site to magic fort in a few short minutes.

  “Did you like those new rice cakes?” Jillian’s mother said.

  “What?”

  “The ones I packed. They’re a new kind.”

  “Mm-hm,” Jillian said.

  “Club went late today, didn’t it?”

  “I didn’t go,” Jillian said, not thinking.

  “What?” Her parents paused midbite to look at her.

  “I mean, I went . . .” They told her they wanted her to be honest with them, but they didn’t. Not if it was to say something they didn’t want to hear. “Late. I went late because I wanted to finish my English homework first. We picked up trash by the creek.”

  “I hope you wore gloves,” her mother said.

  Her parents resumed eating, order restored to their world.

  The conversation shifted away from her to Annie Get Your Gun. It was a relief. And a letdown. Was that all they cared about? If she wore gloves? What about her? Her parents had no idea she loved Mark Strauss. They didn’t care.

  “Grant and I are working on ‘Anything You Can Do’ tonight,” her mother said.

  Her father took a sip of his milk.

  “He’s terrific. Picks up the dance numbers so quickly. Knows everyone’s lines. I swear he could do a one-man show. Did you hear he nearly was on a children’s television show?”

  “Yes,” her father said. He started clearing plates.

  “He’s got a beautiful voice. No real training.”

  “Are you finished?” her father said. Her mother handed him her plate.

  “Come on, Ted. Suzanne signed it, and most of our other friends. You can’t have everything.”

  “But he was the one who suggested the damn thing!” her father said.

  “I like them.”

  “I like her well enough, but him . . .”

  “She’s pregnant,” her mother said.

  “Good for her.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone yet. Don’t say anything,” she told Jillian.

  Jillian shook her head. Why would she? Who cared?

  “They’re going to have to put an addition on the house,” her mother said.

  Her father threw a fork in the sink. It landed with a clatter. “Are they going to tear it down? Is that what this is about?”

  “She just wants to add a room or two.”

  They were quiet as they washed up, her father probably thinking about making time stand still, her mother about the wonderfulness of Grant. I’m friends with Lindy Cox, Jillian screamed. In her head.

  Her father grabbed an armful of signs from the hall closet. They were signs protesting the big houses—as if a sign would do any good. He had asked her to draw the picture like he thought she’d be excited to do it. At first she’d said no—more specifically, No chance, Dad—but he looked so sad that she agreed to, as long as he didn’t make her sign it.

  It was a drawing of three little square houses, each with two windows that looked like big, sad eyes and a frowning door, alongside a huge house that towered above them all, with an expressionless door and squinty window eyes. That house had a red X drawn through it. He gave one to anyone who would sign the petition. A lot of the lawns in town had them up now, and it made Jillian feel secretly proud when she saw them.

  “I’m off to get more signatures. Want to come, Jillian?”

  “Homework,” Jillian said.

  “Rehearsal should be over by ten,” her mother said, kissing the top of Jillian’s head.

  Jillian laid her books across the kitchen table, still slightly moist from the sponge. She didn’t have much homework, a half hour maybe. Unless she did the Greek temple project. But Lindy had assured her that that would be taken care of. How weird was that? She wanted to watch TV, but their TV sucked too much to bother. She sighed and settled into her homework, looking up now and then to see the changing images on the Coxes’ TV next door, a vivid reminder of all she didn’t have.

  SUZANNE ROLLED FROM SIDE TO SIDE LIKE A ROTISSERIE CHICKEN, UNABLE to stop thinking about Adam, unable to get away from Grant. They slept in a double bed now, a so-called full, but all it filled was the room. Their king-size bed was too big, a fact they’d discovered when the movers tried to get the mattress into the room on moving day. Grant was always touching her now, accidentally, if not on purpose. His foot would graze hers, which would remind him that he wanted to have sex, which meant he was constantly pulling at the waistband of her pajama pants. “Hey, hot mama,” he whispered now, nuzzling her neck.

  “I am not your mama!” she snapped.

  “Whoa, there! I meant it carnally, not maternally.” He started rubbing her shoulders. She softened a little, silently forgiving him for yet another cowboy exclamation.

  “Adam’s doctor today called me Mom, the nurse—they all do, the whole staff,
like I’m Old Mother Hubbard. I hate that.”

  “What’s the prognosis?” he said, working his thumbs into the hollows just below the base of her skull, where tension had calcified nearly to bone.

  “She thinks it might be a sinus infection. She put him on antibiotics. Do sinus infections cause headaches? He’s had a headache for a month, Grant.”

  A better mother would have taken him to the doctor right away. Or just a more hovering one? Her hesitancy wasn’t out of a lack of love or compassion, she told herself; it was optimism. She had a surfeit of it: She wasn’t pregnant, it was heartburn. Her son wasn’t sick, he was just getting accustomed to the new school. Her father hadn’t left, he was just on a very long business trip.

  Her mind began to peek into the dark and terrifying alleys the Internet seduced her into when she’d Googled “headaches” this afternoon, something she had not allowed herself to do until today—carbon monoxide poisoning, blood clot, aneurysm, brain tumor—

  “He’ll start to get better now. He just needed the right medication,” Grant said, drawing her back again.

  “He will, won’t he? He’s a healthy five-year-old.”

  “That’s right. And the smartest one I’ve ever known.”

  “He is!” She laughed, her relief exploding into the room.

  Grant’s reassurances allowed her to believe that everything would be okay. He did this for her. He had always done this for her. Brought her back from the brink. It made no sense, really. He knew no more than she did—less, he usually knew less—but his voice was steady and soothing and it allowed her to breathe again.

  Neither of them mentioned Adam’s parent-teacher conference, which they had attended before the doctor’s appointment. He interrupts other children. He cries easily. He looks out the window instead of at the board. This, too, was surely the result of the headaches.

  When she walked Adam home from school after the conference, they passed three little trees that had been cut low on their slim trunks, not all the way through, but half to three-quarters, like a slash to their Achilles tendons. They leaned together, holding one another up, reminiscent of three children crying, which had inspired Adam to cry too.