42.
Where is Perry this time?” asked Gwen as she settled down on Celeste’s couch with her knitting.
Gwen had been babysitting for the boys since they were babies. She was a grandmother of twelve, with an enviably firm manner and a little stash of gold-wrapped chocolate coins in her handbag, which wouldn’t be necessary tonight, as the boys were already sound asleep.
“Geneva,” said Celeste. “Or, wait, is it Genova? I can’t remember. He’ll still be in the air right now. He left this morning.”
Gwen studied her in a fascinated sort of way. “He leads an exotic life, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Celeste. “I guess he does. I shouldn’t be very late. It’s a new book club, so I’m not sure—”
“Depends on the book!” said Gwen. “My book club just did the most interesting book. Now, what was it called? It was about . . . Now, what was it about? Nobody really liked it all that much, to be honest, but my friend Pip, she likes to serve a dish that sort of complements the book, so she made this marvelous fish curry, although it was quite spicy, so we were all a little, you know, Pip!” Gwen waved both hands in front of her mouth to indicate spiciness.
The only problem with Gwen was that it was sometimes hard to get away. Perry could do it charmingly, but Celeste found it awkward.
“Well, I’d better be off.” Celeste leaned down to pick up her phone, which was on the coffee table in front of Gwen.
“That’s a nasty bruise!” said Gwen. “What have you done to yourself?”
Celeste pulled the sleeve of her silk shirt farther down her wrist.
“Tennis injury,” she said. “My doubles partner and I both went for the same shot.”
“Ow!” said Gwen. She looked up at Celeste steadily. There was silence for a moment.
“Well,” said Celeste. “As I said, the boys shouldn’t wake—”
“It might be time to find another tennis partner,” said Gwen. There was a no-nonsense edge to her voice. The one Celeste had heard her use to astonishing effect when the boys were fighting.
“Well. It was my fault too,” said Celeste.
“I bet it wasn’t.” Gwen held Celeste’s eyes. It occurred to Celeste that in all the years she’d known Gwen, there had never been mention of a husband. Gwen seemed so completely self-contained, so chatty and busy, with all her talk of her friends and grandchildren; the idea of a husband seemed superfluous.
“I’d better go,” said Celeste.
43.
Ziggy was still crying when the babysitter knocked on the door. He’d told Jane that three or four kids (she couldn’t get the facts straight, he was almost incoherent) had said that they weren’t allowed to play with him.
He sobbed into Jane’s thigh and stomach, where his face was uncomfortably wedged, after she’d sat down on the bed next to him and he’d suddenly launched himself at her, nearly knocking her flat on her back. She could feel the hard pressure of his little nose and the wetness of his tears spreading over her jeans as he pushed his face against her leg in a painful corkscrewing motion, as if he could somehow bury himself in her.
“That must be Chelsea.” Jane pulled at Ziggy’s skinny shoulders, trying to dislodge him, but Ziggy didn’t even pause for breath.
“They were running away from me,” he sobbed. “Really fast! And I felt like playing Star Wars!”
Right, thought Jane. She wasn’t going to book club. She couldn’t possibly leave him in a state like this. Besides, what if there were parents there who had signed the petition? Or who had told their children to stay away from Ziggy?
“Just wait here,” she grunted as she unpeeled his limp, heavy body from her legs. He looked at her with a red, snotty, wet face and then threw himself facedown on his pillow.
“I’m sorry. I have to cancel,” Jane told Chelsea. “But I’ll pay you anyway.”
She didn’t have anything smaller than a fifty-dollar note. “Oh, ah, cool, thanks,” said Chelsea. Teenagers never offered change.
Jane closed the door and went to phone Madeline.
“I’m not coming,” she told her. “Ziggy is . . . Ziggy isn’t well.”
“It’s this thing going on with Amabella, isn’t it?” said Madeline. Jane could hear voices in the background. Some of the other parents were there.
“Yes. You’ve heard about the petition?” she asked Madeline, trying to keep her voice steady. Madeline must be sick of her: crying over Harry the Hippo, sharing her sordid little sex stories. She probably rued the day that she’d hurt her ankle.
“It’s outrageous,” said Madeline. “I am incandescent with rage.”
There was a burst of laughter in the background. It sounded like a cocktail party, not a book club. The sound of their laughter made Jane feel stodgy and left out, even though she’d been invited.
“I’d better let you go,” said Jane. “Have fun.”
“I’ll call you,” said Madeline. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix this.”
As Jane hung up, there was another knock on the door. It was the woman from downstairs, Chelsea’s mother, Irene, holding out the fifty-dollar note. She was a tall, austere woman with short gray hair and intelligent eyes.
“You’re not paying her fifty dollars for doing nothing,” she said.
Jane took the money gratefully. She’d felt a twinge after she’d given it to Chelsea. Fifty dollars was fifty dollars. “I thought, you know, the inconvenience.”
“She’s fifteen. She had to walk up a flight of stairs. Is Ziggy OK?”
“We’re having some trouble at school,” said Jane.
“Oh dear,” said Irene.
“Bullying,” expounded Jane. She didn’t really know Irene all that well, except for their chats in the stairwell.
“Someone is bullying poor little Ziggy?” Irene frowned.
“They say that Ziggy is doing the bullying.”
“Oh rubbish,” said Irene. “Don’t believe it. I taught primary school for twenty-four years. I can pick a bully a mile off. Ziggy is no bully.”
“Well, I hope not,” said Jane. “I mean, I didn’t think so.”
“I bet it’s the parents making the biggest fuss, isn’t it?” Irene gave her a shrewd look. “Parents take far too much notice of their children these days. Bring back the good old days of benign indifference, I reckon. If I were you, I’d take all this with a grain of salt. Little kids, little problems. Wait till you’ve got drugs and sex and social media to worry about.”
Jane smiled politely and held up the fifty-dollar note. “Well, thanks. Tell Chelsea I’ll book her up for babysitting another night.”
She closed the door firmly, mildly aggravated by the “little kids, little problems” comment. As she walked down the hallway she could hear Ziggy still crying: not the angry, demanding cry of a child who wants attention, or the startled cry of a child who has hurt himself. This was a grown-up type of crying: involuntary, soft, sad weeping.
Jane walked into his bedroom and stood for a moment in the doorway, watching him lying facedown on the bed, his shoulders shaking and his little hands clutching at the fabric of his Star Wars quilt. She felt something hard and powerful within her. Right this moment she didn’t care if Ziggy had hurt Amabella or not, or if he’d inherited some evil secret tendency for violence from his biological father, and anyway, who said the tendency for violence came from his father, because if Renata were standing in front of her right now, Jane would hit her. She would hit her with pleasure. She would hit her so hard that her expensive-looking glasses would fly off her face. Maybe she’d even crush those glasses beneath her heel like the quintessential bully. And if that made her a helicopter parent, then who the fuck cares?
“Ziggy?” She sat down on the bed next to him and rubbed his back.
He lifted his tear-stained face.
“Let’s go visit Grandma and Grandpa. We’ll take our pajamas and stay the night there.”
He sniffed. A little shudder of grief ran through his body.
“And let’s eat chips and chocolates and treats all the way there.”
Samantha: I know I’ve been laughing and making jokes and whatever, so you probably think I’m a heartless bitch, but it’s like a defense mechanism or something. I mean, this is a tragedy. The funeral was just . . . When that darling little boy put the letter on the coffin? I can’t even. I just lost it. We all lost it.
Thea: Very distressing. It reminded me of Princess Diana’s funeral, when little Prince Harry left the note saying “Mummy.” Not that we’re talking about the royal family here, obviously.
44.
It didn’t take Celeste long to realize that this was going to be the sort of book club where the book was secondary to the proceedings. She felt a mild disappointment. She’d been looking forward to talking about the book. She’d even, embarrassingly, prepared for book club, like a good little lawyer, marking up a few pages with Post-it notes and writing a few pithy comments in the margins.
She slid her book off her lap and slipped it into her bag before anyone noticed and started teasing her about it. The teasing would be fond and good-humored, but she no longer had the resilience for teasing. Marriage to Perry meant she was always ready to justify her actions, constantly monitoring what she’d just said or done, while simultaneously feeling defensive about the defensiveness, her thoughts and feelings twisting into impenetrable knots, so that sometimes, like right now, sitting in a room with normal people, all the things she couldn’t say rose in her throat and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.
What would these people think if they knew there was someone like her sitting across from them, passing them the sushi? These were polite, nonsmoking people who joined book clubs and renovated and spoke nicely. Husbands and wives didn’t hit each other in these sorts of congenial little social circles.
The reason no one was talking about the book was because everyone was talking about the petition to have Ziggy suspended. Some people hadn’t heard about it yet, and the people who did know had the enjoyable task of passing on the shocking development. Everyone contributed what information they had been able to offer.
Celeste made agreeable murmurs as the conversation flew, presided over by a flushed, animated, almost feverish Madeline.
“Apparently Amabella hasn’t actually said that it is Ziggy. Renata is just assuming it is because of what happened on orientation day.”
“I heard there were bite marks, which is pretty horrifying at this age.”
“There was a biter at Lily’s day care. She’d come home black-and-blue. I must admit I wanted to murder the little brat who did it, but her mother was so nice. She was in a state over it.”
“That’s the thing. It’s actually worse if your child is the one doing the bullying.”
“I mean, we’re talking about children here!”
“My question is, why aren’t the teachers seeing this?”
“Can’t Renata just make Amabella say who is responsible? She’s five years old!”
“I guess when you’re talking about a gifted child—”
“Oh, I didn’t know, is Ziggy gifted?”
“Not Ziggy. Annabella. She’s definitely gifted.”
“It’s Amabella, not Annabella.”
“Is that one of those made-up names?”
“Oh, no, no. It’s French! Haven’t you heard Renata talk about it?”
“Well, that kid has a lifetime ahead of her of people getting her name wrong.”
“Harrison plays with Ziggy every day. He’s never had any problems.”
“A petition! It’s just ridiculous. It’s petty. This quiche is great, by the way, Madeline, did you make it?”
“I heated it up.”
“Well, it’s like when Renata handed out those invitations to everyone in the class except Ziggy. I thought that was unconscionable.”
“I mean, can a public school expel a child? Is it even possible? Don’t the public schools have to take everyone?”
“My husband thinks we’ve all gone too soft. He says we’re too ready to label kids bullies these days when they’re just being kids.”
“He might have a point.”
“Although biting and choking—”
“Mmmm. If it were my child—”
“You wouldn’t do a petition.”
“Well, no.”
“Renata has pots of money. Why doesn’t she send Amabella off to private school? Then she won’t have to deal with the riffraff.”
“I like Ziggy. I like Jane too. It can’t be easy doing everything on her own.”
“Is there a father, does anyone know?”
“Should we talk about the book?” This was Madeline, finally remembering she was hosting a book club.
“I guess we should.”
“Who has actually signed this petition so far?”
“I don’t know. I bet Harper has signed it.”
“Harper started the petition.”
“Doesn’t Renata work with Harper’s husband or something? Or wait, am I mixed up, is it your husband, Celeste?”
All eyes were suddenly upon Celeste, as if they’d been given an invisible signal. She gripped the stem of her wineglass.
“Renata and Perry are in the same industry,” said Celeste. “They just know of each other.”
“We haven’t met Perry yet, have we?” said Samantha. “He’s a man of mystery.”
“He travels a lot,” said Celeste. “He’s in Genova at the moment.”
No, it was Geneva. Definitely Geneva.
There was still a strange lull in the conversation. An expectant air. Had she spoken oddly?
She felt as if everyone was waiting for more from her.
“You’ll meet him at that trivia night,” she said. Perry, unlike many men, loved costume parties. He’d been keen when she’d checked his schedule and saw that he’d be home for it.
“You’ll need a pearl necklace like Audrey wears in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” he’d told her. “I’ll get you one from Swiss Pearls in Geneva.”
“No,” she said. “Please don’t.”
You were meant to wear cheap costume jewelry when you went to a costume party school trivia night, not a necklace worth more than the money they needed to raise for SMART Boards.
He’d buy her exactly the right necklace. He loved jewelry. It would cost as much as a car, and it would be exquisite, and when Madeline saw it she’d be delirious and Celeste would long to unclasp it from her neck and hand it over. “Buy one for Madeline too,” she had wanted to say, and he would have if she had asked, with pleasure, but of course Madeline would never accept such a gift. Yet it seemed ridiculous that she couldn’t hand over something that would give Madeline such genuine happiness.
“Is everyone going to the trivia night?” she said brightly. “It sounds like fun!”
Samantha: Have you seen photos from the trivia night? Celeste looked breathtaking. People were staring. Apparently that pearl necklace was the real McCoy. But you know what? I was looking at some of the photos and there’s something sad about her face, a look in her eyes, as if she’d seen a ghost. It’s almost like she knew something terrible was going to happen that night.
45.
That was fun. Maybe next time we’ll actually remember to talk about the book,” said Madeline.
Celeste was the last one there and was efficiently scraping plates and putting them into Madeline’s dishwasher.
“Stop that!” said Madeline. “You always do that!”
Celeste had a talent for the silent, unobtrusive tidy-up. Any time Madeline had Celeste over, her kitchen would be left pristine, bench tops gleaming.
“Sit down and have a cup of tea with me before you go,” she told Celeste. “Look, I’ve got some of Jane’s latest lot of muffins. I was too selfish to share them with the book club.”
Celeste’s eyes brightened. She went to sit down, but then she awkwardly half stood and said, “Where’s Ed? He might want the house back to himself.”
“What? Don’t worry about Ed. He’s still snoring away in Chloe’s bed,” said Madeline. “Anyway, who cares? It’s my house too.”
Celeste smiled weakly and sat down. “It’s awful about poor Jane,” she said as Madeline put one of Jane’s muffins in front of her.
“At least we know that nobody here tonight will be signing that stupid petition,” said Madeline. “When everyone was talking I just kept thinking about what Jane went through. She told you the story about Ziggy’s father, didn’t she?”
It was a formality; Jane had told her that she’d told Celeste as well. She wondered for a guilty moment if it was gossipy to mention it, but it was OK, because it was Celeste. Her appetite for gossip was healthy; she wasn’t one of those mothers always ravenously searching it out.
“Yes,” said Celeste. She bit into the muffin. “Creep.”
“I Googled him,” confessed Madeline. This was really why she’d brought it up. She felt guilty about it and she wanted the release of confession. Or she wanted to burden Celeste with the same knowledge, which was probably worse.
“Who?” said Celeste.
“The father. Ziggy’s father. I know I shouldn’t have.”
“But how?” Celeste frowned. “Did she tell you his name? I don’t think she even mentioned it to me.”
“She said his name was Saxon Banks,” said Madeline. “You know, like Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. Jane said he sang a Mary Poppins song to her. That’s why his name stuck in my head. Are you OK? Did it go down the wrong way?”
Celeste banged her chest with her fist and coughed. Her color was high.
“I’ll get you some water,” said Madeline.
“Did you say Saxon Banks?” asked Celeste hoarsely. She cleared her throat and said it again, slower. “Saxon Banks?”
“Yes,” said Madeline. “Why?” Understanding hit her. “Oh my God. You don’t know him, do you?”
“Perry has a cousin called Saxon Banks,” said Celeste. “He’s a . . .” She paused. Her eyes widened. “A property developer. Jane said that man was a property developer.”
“It’s an unusual name,” said Madeline. She was trying not to sound breathlessly thrilled by this horrible coincidence. Of course, it was not exciting that Perry was related to Saxon Banks. This was not an “it’s such a small world!” coincidence. This was awful. But there was an irresistible breathless pleasure in it and, like the awful petition, it was a welcome distraction from her increasingly embittered, almost crazed feelings about Abigail.
“He has three daughters,” said Celeste. She looked off into the distance as she collected her thoughts.
“I know,” said Madeline guiltily. “Ziggy’s half sisters.” She went to get her iPad from the kitchen bench and brought it back to the table.
“And he’s devoted to his wife,” said Celeste as Madeline pulled up the page again. “He’s lovely! Warm, funny. I can’t even imagine him being unfaithful. Let alone being so . . . cruel.”
Madeline pushed the iPad over to Celeste. “Is that him?”
Celeste looked at the picture. “Yes.” She put a thumb and finger on the screen and enlarged the picture. “I’m probably just imagining it, but I think I can see a resemblance to Ziggy.”