Big Little Lies

“I was going to do it.”

No, you weren’t, my darling, she thought as she brushed away her tears with the back of her hand. No, you weren’t.

Dear Ziggy,

I don’t know if you remember this, but last year at kindergarten orientation day I was not very nice to you. I believed that you had hurt my daughter and I now know this was not true. I hope you will forgive me and I hope that your mum will forgive me too. I behaved very badly to you both and I am sorry.

Amabella is having a going-away party before we move to London, and we would be honored if you would attend as our very special guest. The theme is Star Wars. Amabella said to bring your lightsaber.

Yours sincerely,

Renata Klein (Amabella’s mum)

82.

Four Weeks After the Trivia Night

Has she tried to speak to you?” said Jane to Tom. “That journalist who is interviewing everyone?”

It was midmorning on a beautiful winter day. They stood together on the boardwalk outside Blue Blues. A woman sat at a table near the window, frowning as she transcribed notes onto her laptop from a Dictaphone attached to her ear by a single earplug.

“Sarah?” said Tom. “Yeah. I just give her free muffins and tell her I’ve got nothing to say. I’m hoping she’ll mention the muffins in her story.”

“She’s been interviewing people since the morning after the trivia night,” said Jane. “Ed thinks she’s trying to get a book deal. Apparently even Bonnie spoke to her before she was charged. She must have reams of stuff.”

Tom waved to the journalist, and she waved back, lifting her coffee in a salute.

“Let’s go,” said Tom.

They were taking some sandwiches around to the headland for an early lunch. Jane’s sling for her broken collarbone had come off yesterday. The doctor had told her she could start doing some gentle exercise.

“Are you sure Maggie can handle the café?” asked Jane, referring to Tom’s only part-time employee.

“Sure. Her coffee is better than mine,” said Tom.

“No, it’s not,” said Jane loyally.

They walked up the stairs where Jane used to meet Celeste for their walks after school drop-off. She thought of Celeste hurrying to meet her, flustered and worried because she was late again, oblivious to a middle-aged jogger who had nearly run into a tree trying to get a second look at her.

She had barely seen Celeste since the funeral.

The worst part of the funeral had been those little boys, with their blond hair slicked to the side, their good white dress shirts and little black pants, their serious faces. There was the letter that Max had written to his father and placed on top of the coffin. “Daddy” in uneven scrawling letters with a picture of two stick figures.

The school had tried to support the parents of the kindergarten class as they decided whether or not to send their children to the funeral. An e-mail had gone out with helpful links to articles written by psychologists: “Should I Let My Child Attend a Funeral?”

The parents who didn’t let their children go were hopeful that those kids who did attend would have nightmares and be just a little bit scarred for life, at least enough to affect their university entrance results. The parents who did let their children go were hopeful their kids would have learned valuable lessons about the circle of life and supporting friends in their hour of need and would probably be more “resilient,” which would stand them well in their teenage years, making them less likely to commit suicide or become drug addicts.

Jane had let Ziggy go because he wanted to go, and also because it was his father’s funeral, even though he didn’t know it, and there would be no second chance to let him attend his father’s funeral.

Would she tell him one day? Do you remember when you were little you went to your first funeral? But he would try to attach some sort of meaning to it. He would look for something that Jane finally understood wasn’t there. For the last five years she’d been searching fruitlessly for meaning in a drunken nasty act of infidelity, and there was no meaning.

The church had been packed with Perry’s grief-stricken family. Perry’s sister (Ziggy’s aunt, Jane had told herself as she sat in the back of the church with the other school parents who didn’t really know Perry) had put together a little movie to commemorate Perry’s life. It was so professionally done, it felt like a real movie, and it had the effect of making Perry’s life seem more vibrant, rich and substantial than the lives currently being lived by the congregation. There were crisp, clear photos of him as a fair-haired chubby baby, a plump little boy, a suddenly handsome teenager, a gorgeous groom kissing his gorgeous wife, a proud new father of twins with a baby in each arm. There were video clips of him rap-dancing with the twins, blowing out candles, skiing with the boys between his legs.

The sound track was beautiful and perfectly synchronized for maximum emotional impact, so that by the end even school parents who barely knew Perry were sobbing violently, and one man accidentally clapped.

Ever since the funeral, Jane kept remembering that movie. It seemed irrefutable evidence that Perry was a good man. A good husband and father. Her memories of him in the hotel room and on the balcony—the casual violence with which he’d treated Celeste—felt flimsy and unlikely. The man with two little boys on his knees, laughing in slow motion at someone off-camera, could not possibly have done those things.

Forcing herself to remember what she knew to be true about Perry seemed pointless and pedantic, almost maliciously so. It was better manners to remember that nice movie.

Jane hadn’t seen Celeste cry at the funeral. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, but Jane hadn’t seen her cry. She looked like she was clenching her teeth, like she was waiting something out, for some awful pain to pass. The only time it looked like she might have broken down into tears was when Jane had seen her outside the church, comforting a tall, good-looking man who could barely walk he seemed so weighed down by his grief.

Jane thought she heard Celeste say, “Oh, Saxon,” as she took his arm, but perhaps that was her mind playing tricks on her.

“Are you going to speak to her?” asked Tom as they reached the top of the stairs.

“To Celeste?” said Jane. They hadn’t spoken, or at least not properly. Celeste’s mother was staying with her, helping her with the boys, and Jane knew that Perry’s family was also taking up a lot of her time. Jane felt as though she and Celeste would never talk about Perry. On one hand there was far too much to say, and on the other, there was nothing. Madeline said that Celeste was moving to an apartment in McMahons Point. The big beautiful house was going on the market.