Big Little Lies

She felt jealous of her cleaners.

Here she sat, in her big house, sulking.

She put down her tea, took her AmEx card out of her wallet and opened her laptop. She logged on to the World Vision website and clicked through photos of children available for sponsorship: products on a shelf for rich white women like her. She already sponsored three children, and she tried to get the boys interested. “Look! Here’s little Blessing from Zimbabwe. She has to walk miles for fresh water. You just have to walk to the tap.” “Why doesn’t she just get some money from the ATM?” said Josh. It was Perry who answered, who patiently explained, who talked to the children about gratitude and helping those less fortunate than themselves.

Celeste sponsored another four children.

Writing letters and birthday cards to them all would take hours.

Ungrateful bitch.

Deserve to be hit. Deserve it.

She pinched the flesh on her upper thighs until it brought tears to her eyes. There would be new bruises tomorrow. Bruises she’d given herself. She liked to watch them change, deepening, darkening and then slowly fading. It was a hobby. An interest of hers. Nice to have an interest.

She was losing her mind.

She trawled through charity websites representing all the pain and suffering the world has to offer: cancer, rare genetic disorders, poverty, human rights abuse, natural disasters. She gave and gave and gave. Within twenty minutes she’d donated twenty thousand dollars of Perry’s money. It gave her no satisfaction, no pride or pleasure. It sickened her. She made charitable donations while a young girl got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the grubby corners of her shower stall.

Clean your own house, then! Sack the cleaners. But that wouldn’t help them either, would it? Give more money to charity! Give until it hurts.

She spent another five thousand dollars.

Would that hurt their financial situation? She didn’t actually know. Perry took care of the money. It was his area of expertise, after all. He didn’t hide it from her. She knew that he would happily go through all their accounts and investment portfolios with her, if she so wished, but the thought of knowing the exact figures gave her vertigo.

“I opened the electricity bill today and I just wanted to cry,” Madeline had said the other day, and Celeste had wanted to offer to pay it for her, but of course, Madeline didn’t want her charity. She and Ed were perfectly comfortable. It was just that there were so many different levels of “comfortable,” and at Celeste’s level no electricity bill could make her cry. Anyway, you couldn’t just hand money over to your friends. You could pick up lunch or coffee whenever you could, but even then you had to be careful not to offend, to not do it so often that it looked like you were showing off, as if the money were part of her, when in fact the money was Perry’s, it had nothing to do with her, it was just random luck, like the way she looked. It wasn’t a decision she’d made.

Once, when she’d been at uni, she’d been in a great mood, and she’d bounced into her tutorial and sat next to a girl called Linda.

“Morning!” she’d said.

An expression of comical dismay crossed Linda’s face.

“Oh, Celeste,” she’d moaned. “I just can’t handle you today. Not when I’m feeling like shit and you waltz in here looking like . . . you know, like that.” She waved her hand at Celeste’s face, as if at something disgusting.

The girls around them had exploded with joyous laughter, as if something hilarious and subversive had finally been said out loud. They laughed and laughed, and Celeste had smiled stiffly, idiotically, because how could you possibly respond to that? It felt like a slap, but she had to respond like it was a compliment. You had to be grateful. Don’t ever look too happy, she told herself. It’s aggravating.

Grateful, grateful, grateful.

The vacuum cleaner started again upstairs.

Perry had never, in all their years together, made a comment on how she chose to spend their (his) money, except to remind her occasionally, mildly, humorously, that she could spend more if she liked. “You know we can afford to get you a new one,” he’d said once when he came upon her in the laundry, scrubbing furiously at a stain on the collar of a silk shirt.

“I like this one,” she’d said.

(The stain was blood.)

Once she stopped working, her relationship to money had changed. She used it the same way she’d use someone else’s bathroom: carefully and politely. She knew that in the eyes of the law and society (supposedly) she was contributing to their lives by running the house and bringing up the boys, but she still never spent Perry’s money in the same way she’d once spent her own.

She’d certainly never spent twenty-five thousand dollars in one afternoon. Would he comment? Would he be angry? Was that why she’d done it? Sometimes, on the days when she could feel his rage simmering, when she knew it was only a matter of time, when she could smell it in the air, she’d deliberately provoke him. She’d make it happen, so it was done.

Even when she was giving to charity, was it really just another step in the sick dance of their marriage?

It wasn’t like it was unprecedented. They went to charity balls and Perry would bid twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars with the unsmiling nod of a head. But that wasn’t about giving, so much as winning. “I’ll never be outbid,” he told her once.

He was generous with his money. If he ever discovered that a family member or friend was in need, he discreetly wrote a check or did a direct transfer, waving away thanks, changing the subject, seemingly embarrassed by the ease with which he could solve someone else’s financial crisis.

The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it.

“Mrs. White?” A stocky, bearded man handed her a giant bouquet of flowers.

“Thank you,” said Celeste.

“Someone is a lucky lady!” said the man, as if he’d never seen a woman receive such an impressive arrangement.

“I sure am!”

The sweet heavy scent tickled her nose. Once, she’d loved to receive flowers. Now it was like being handed a series of tasks: Find the vase. Cut the stems. Arrange them like so.

Ungrateful bitch.

She read the tiny card.

I love you. I’m sorry. Perry.

Written in the florist’s handwriting. It was always so strange to see Perry’s words transcribed by someone else. Did the florist wonder what Perry had done? What husbandly transgression he had committed last night? Coming home late?