Big Little Lies

Madeline had yelled at everyone in sight, while Celeste hugged her two wet boys to her and sobbed crazy, grateful thanks. The swim school had been both obsequiously apologetic and appallingly evasive. The child wasn’t in danger, but they were sorry it appeared that way and they would most certainly review their procedures.

They both pulled their children out of the swim school, and Celeste, who was an ex-lawyer, wrote them a letter demanding compensation for Madeline’s ruined shoes, her dry-clean-only dress and of course a refund of all their fees.

So they became friends. And Madeline understood when Celeste first introduced her to Perry and it became clear that she’d only told her husband that they’d met through swimming lessons. It wasn’t always necessary to tell your husband the whole story.

Now Madeline changed the subject.

“Has Perry gone away to wherever he’s going this time?” she asked.

Celeste’s voice was suddenly crisp and clear again. “Vienna. Yes. He’ll be gone for three weeks.”

“Missing him already?” said Madeline. Joke.

There was a pause.

“You still there?” asked Madeline

“I like having toast for dinner,” said Celeste.

“Oh yes, I have yogurt and chocolate biscuits for dinner whenever Ed goes away,” said Madeline. “Good Lord, why do I look so tired?”

She was making the phone call while sitting on the bed in the office/spare room where she always folded laundry, and she’d just caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe on one side of the wall. She got off the bed and walked over to the mirror, the phone still held to her ear.

“Maybe because you are tired,” suggested Celeste.

Madeline pressed a fingertip beneath her eye. “I had a great night’s sleep!” she said. “Every day I think, ‘Gosh, you look a bit tired today,’ and it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s not that I’m tired, it’s that this is the way I look now.”

“Cucumbers? Isn’t that what you do to reduce puffiness?” said Celeste idly. Madeline knew that Celeste was spectacularly disinterested in a whole chunk of life that Madeline relished: clothes, skin care, makeup, perfume, jewelry, accessories. Sometimes Madeline looked at Celeste with her long red-gold hair pulled back any-old-how and she longed to grab her and play with her like she was one of Chloe’s Barbie dolls.

“I am mourning the loss of my youth,” she told Celeste.

Celeste snorted.

“I know I wasn’t that beautiful to begin with—”

“You’re still beautiful,” said Celeste.

Madeline made a face at herself in the mirror and turned away. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, just how much the aging of her face really did genuinely depress her. She wanted to be above such superficial concerns. She wanted to be depressed about the state of the world, not the crumpling and creasing of her skin. Each time she saw evidence of the natural aging of her body, she felt irrationally ashamed, as if she weren’t trying hard enough. Meanwhile, Ed got sexier each year that went by as the lines around his eyes deepened and his hair grayed.

She sat back down on the spare bed and began folding clothes.

“Bonnie came to pick up Abigail today,” she told Celeste. “She came to the door and she looked like, I don’t know, a Swedish fruit picker, with this red-and-white-checked scarf on her head, and Abigail ran out of the house. She ran. As if she couldn’t wait to get away from her old hag of a mother.”

“Ah,” said Celeste. “Now I get it.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m losing Abigail. I feel her drifting, and I want to grab her and say, ‘Abigail, he left you too. He walked out on both of us.’ But I have to be the grown-up. And the awful thing is, I think she is actually happier when she’s with their stupid family, meditating and eating chickpeas.”

“Surely not,” said Celeste.

“I know, right? I hate chickpeas.”

“Really? I quite like chickpeas. They’re good for you too.”

“Shut up. So are you bringing the boys over to play with Ziggy? I feel like that poor little Jane is going to need some friends this year. Let’s be her friends and look after her.”

“Of course we’ll come,” said Celeste. “I’ll bring chickpeas.”

Mrs. Lipmann: No. The school has not had a trivia night end in bloodshed before. I find that question offensive and inflammatory.

15.

I want to live in a double-decker house like this,” said Ziggy as they walked up the driveway to Madeline’s house.

“Do you?” said Jane. She adjusted her bag in the crook of her arm. In her other arm she carried a plastic container of freshly baked banana muffins.

You want a life like this? I’d quite like a life like this too.

“Hold this for a moment, will you?” She handed Ziggy the container so she could take another two pieces of gum out of her bag, studying the house as she did. It was an ordinary two-story, cream-brick family house. A bit ramshackle-looking. The grass needed a mow. Two double kayaks hung above the car in the garage. Boogie boards and surfboards leaned against the walls. Beach towels hung over the balcony. A child’s bike had been abandoned on the front lawn.

There wasn’t anything all that special about this house. It was similar to Jane’s family home, although Jane’s home was smaller and tidier, and they were an hour’s drive from the beach, so there wasn’t all the evidence of the beach activities, but it had the same casual, simple, suburban feel.

This was childhood.

It was so simple. Ziggy wasn’t asking for too much. He deserved a life like this. If Jane hadn’t gone out that night, if she hadn’t drunk that third tequila slammer, if she’d said no thank you when he’d slid onto the seat next to hers, if she’d stayed home and finished her law degree and gotten a job and a husband and a mortgage and done it all the proper way, then maybe one day she would have lived in a family house and been a proper person living a proper life.

But then Ziggy wouldn’t have been Ziggy. And maybe she wouldn’t have had any children at all. She remembered the doctor, his sad frown, just a year before she got pregnant. “Jane, you need to understand, it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for you to conceive.”

“Ziggy! Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy!” The front door flew open and Chloe, in a fairy dress and gum boots, came running out and dragged Ziggy off by the hand. “You’re here to play with me, OK? Not my brother Fred.”