And When She Was Good (23 page)

F
RIDAY,
N
OVEMBER 18

H
eloise is driving home from an appointment, listening to another profanity-laced message from Sophie, the girl's voice slurring and staggering over itself, broadcast into the car via the Bluetooth. Sophie has called every day to curse her, threaten her, but the messages are losing steam. Still, she will have to be careful not to answer the phone when Scott is in the car. Leo, who when sober seems equally terrified of both Heloise and Sophie, swore he didn't give Sophie the home number or address, and as the home phone has been blissfully quiet so far, it appears he's telling her the truth.

Nevertheless, she's unnerved to see a car parked at the corner, although she knows instantly that it's not Sophie's. It's too nice, too clean. She slows as she passes but doesn't make eye contact with the driver. Yet after changing to more comfortable clothes—leggings, a loose cashmere top, flat boots—she walks down to the end of the street and taps on his window.

“I'm sorry,” Terry says. Sheepish, embarrassed.

“This is creepy, Terry. You're freaking me out. We never even—”

“I know, I know,” he says. “I just never had someone drop me so quickly. Especially someone who seemed to like me.”

She looks around. She can't decide what is best—speaking to him here or letting him enter the house. She still has an hour until Scott comes home.

“Do you want to come in? To talk, I mean. Leave your car here, though, and wait five minutes. I'll open the garage door and you can come in through the kitchen.”

She's not even sure why she takes that precaution. The neighborhood has the empty, ghostly feel it always has during school hours. Regardless, she doesn't want anyone to see her walking down her street with a man. Old habits die hard.

Terry follows her instructions, seemingly eager to show how obedient he can be. Her stove is so powerful that the tea water is already warm. She fixes him a mug, although he hasn't asked for one.

“I don't know how to do this,” he says.

“Me either,” she replies, although she's not sure they're talking about the same “this.” She doesn't know how she can have a relationship with a civilian when she's not sure how she's going to escape her old life. Even now, with the sale of her business set for the week after Thanksgiving and Sophie neutralized, Heloise can't decide what will be safest for her, and therefore best for Scott. Should they move? Will Scott reconsider his request to stay through the school year? Will it be harder or easier to find a job in a new place?

And what the hell is she going to do? That's the question she should have been asking all along. She put money away for retirement (although not in the right investments, according to Kiplinger, and with no employer to match her contributions). She had been prudent with her spending, living well within her means. She opened a 529 when Scott was two and is on pace to have enough to pay his college tuition—but only if she keeps earning at the same rate, and that isn't going to be possible. How has she failed to see this? She isn't someone in an industry that has been transformed by technology, although she supposes that day could come, that even sex could be digitized. How has she ignored the fact that she would have to change careers eventually or risk her son's knowledge of what she does? Even Val saw it coming, although he thought she should simply segue into management.

“I'm not wrong,” Terry says. “You liked me.”

“I like you. But I have a son, and we're thinking about making some changes. I might sell my business, try something new. We might move. It didn't seem fair to you to start something.”

“Maybe you should let me decide what's fair to me.”

She wants to bury her face in his neck, if only to smell him. She bets he smells great, of soap and shaving cream and some kind of old-fashioned, citrusy aftershave.

“I just have a lot going on right now. Maybe later.” She wants to tell him that she's a caterpillar and he should wait for the butterfly version but fears she will sound insane.

He stands up, takes his mug to the sink, rinses it out, and puts it in the upper rack of the dishwasher. It's a bit ostentatious, almost as if he's going overboard to demonstrate his perfection. But then he walks over to Mother's office, as the realtors would have it, and turns his back to her for a second, facing the wall where the family calendar hangs, with Scott's myriad activities highlighted in purple marker. His shoulders are heaving. He doesn't want her to see that he's crying, or about to cry. It is equal parts freaky and flattering.

“I'm going to take you at your word,” he says in a voice that doesn't quite quaver. “I'm going to let you be. You know how to get in touch with me. I could be good for you, Heloise, I really could. But I respect that you're not in a place right now where that works for you. Let me know if your situation changes.”

He makes a very dignified exit through the kitchen door to the garage, only to have to return because the garage door is down. Heloise walks back to the kitchen door with him, punches in the code. In the split second before the door raises to the top, exposing them to the empty street, he pulls her to him and kisses her. It manages to be at once a passionate and respectful kiss, quick as it is. He walks away as soon as the door is up, and she watches him go.

Ten minutes later, when Audrey returns from running errands, Heloise is still standing there.

Audrey gives her a weird look but says only, “You're getting Scott today, right? It's Friday.”

“Right.”

“Heloise, are you okay?”

“Perfectly fine.”

S
itting outside Scott's school, she feels— She's not quite sure what she feels. Not perfectly fine, that's for sure. She watches her son come toward her. Every day he's more guarded, closer to being a teenager, too cool to show that he's happy to see her. If she does her job right, he will grow up, go to college, thrive in a career he loves, marry a nice girl, have children of his own. He will be subsumed into his wife's family, as husbands usually are. And she will be—what? Lonely? Alone? Both? Will she consider it a good bargain, then? Will she regret the choices she has made? In living her life for her child, has she neglected herself as surely as her own mother neglected her? Her mother favored her husband over her child. Heloise has favored her child over herself. The first one is wrong, the second one is right—right?

“How was school today?”

“Okay.”

“Should we have our usual Friday treat?”

“Of course! But don't forget, next Friday I have a sleepover at Lindsey's. You remember, right?”

The sleepover, a very big deal as Scott is allowed only a few, is the day after Thanksgiving. Heloise has agreed to it because she knows that some of her regulars will be wild to escape the house that weekend, will try to squeeze in appointments while their wives and families descend on the local malls. She's been booking cash dates, risking a little under-the-table income, keen to capture every dollar she can in these final days.

“I won't forget, buddy. But first we have Thanksgiving, right? And you're going to make the gravy this year.”

“The gravy and the mashed potatoes. Plus, you promised I could use all the real knives this time. Under supervision, you said.”

“I did.”

She has never been the kind of mother who calls her son “my little man” or “my best guy.” And Scott was not the kind of child who ever announced he wanted to marry his mother. That's a good thing for a boy with no father. But he often tells her that she is pretty, the prettiest of all the mothers that he knows. He loves her. He's enough. Right? He has to be enough.

S
UNDAY,
N
OVEMBER
20

D
oes Paul
really tell us that God forbids homosexuality in his Epistle to the Romans,
perhaps his masterwork?”

The Reverend Frida arches an eyebrow, aware that
she has captured everyone's attention with that single word “homosexuality.”
Even its third syllable alone would have done the trick. Is it just Heloise's
imagination, or does the Reverend Frida also touch her shaved nape, encouraging
people to notice her short, short hair, daring her congregation to speculate, as
she must know they have frequently speculated, on the nature of
her
sexuality? It's the one part of her life that the
reverend has not shared. Yet.

“Let's look at the relevant passages even as most
of you are thinking, ‘Well, this is a heck of a way to kick off the Thanksgiving
sermon.' I bet you were hoping for something about gratitude. But the flip side
of gratitude is ingratitude, and Romans happens to touch on that subject,
too.”

And she's off. One has to decide early in a Frida
sermon whether to follow or zone out. That's her genius. Or presumption, if one
prefers. Her sermons zig and zag; it's impossible to predict where she will end
up. Having gotten everyone's interest by declaring that she's stalking a
somewhat bold and interesting topic, Frida is now reminding people of the
context of the epistles, jumping to Paul's biography. Heloise wants to listen,
she really does, but her mind is such a stew these days. She tries to settle in,
only to think—
Do we have to have turkey for Thanksgiving?
Even a small one means leftovers for days.
Maybe I can talk Scott into quail, if I make it sound fancy
enough.
Or:
Is frozen piecrust really so
awful?
Being the mother of a foodie has its trials. She'll make it in
the Cuisinart, which Scott also considers cheating, but of a lesser degree.

The Reverend Frida is talking about the road to
Damascus now, the alternative theories about what happened to Paul, if there
might be a scientific or medical explanation as to what struck him. Perhaps if
Heloise can still her mind, she will be rewarded with her own epiphany; the
answers to all her problems will become clear. But even as she longs for this,
she doubts that it ever works that way. Brainstorms are always unbidden. She
felt as if she was close to one the other day, leaving the Mandarin Oriental, or
maybe it was the Wit & Wisdom. Something about a hotel, the parking valet. A
bed-and-breakfast? God, no.

The Reverend Frida zags back to the passages in
Romans concerning sex, the confusion over what women were doing with one
another, if anything, the references to shrine prostitution, which may be better
understood as false idolatry. Is it just Heloise's imagination, or does Coranne
turn back and smile at her? What's that about? This is why Heloise has always
been nervous about Scott's having close friends. He might unwittingly transmit
information that is laden in ways he can't comprehend.
My
mom gets to go out to the best restaurants in Washington and Baltimore. Who
does she go with? Oh, different guys. She calls them clients.
All
quite factual, all legitimate when explained in the context of her life as a
lobbyist, but lies have a way of outing themselves when found in a more innocent
mouth.

Then she remembers: Coranne was there when Heloise
spoke to the Reverend Frida about prostitution in the Bible. She probably means
the glance as tribute.

Besides, Coranne is as distracted as Heloise, her
neck swiveling as her gaze bounces around the half-filled room. She's probably
trying to still her own thoughts. She looks exhausted, her hair dribbling out of
a lackadaisical chignon, her knit suit tight and rumpled. Would Heloise change
places with her if she could? Would she be forty-something Coranne, who seems
perpetually overextended yet cheerful? No, not cheerful exactly, but determined
to be cheerful. There's a difference. Coranne has sold herself to one man,
Heloise to many. Who came out ahead in that equation?

W
hat
did you think of the sermon?” Coranne asks Heloise at the fellowship. “Was that
the direction you thought she would take it, when you suggested the prostitutes
of the Bible?”

Heloise realizes she has brought this upon herself.
See where even a moment of pretend friendliness leads one.

“I thought it was almost
too
personal. I understand why the Reverend Frida is interested in
the Scriptures' ideas about homosexuality—or think I do. For someone who talks
so much about herself, she's pretty coy. And I usually like the way she wanders
around a topic. But today it felt like a stretch, the whole
ingratitude-to-gratitude peg. I would have liked to hear a straight-up sermon on
gratitude, counting our blessings.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”
Yes.
Heloise
finds herself interested in the conversation almost in spite of herself. “It
seems to me that people very quickly get used to both the worst and the best
life has to offer. We can be incredibly stoic and spoiled at the same time.”

“Oh, I'm just spoiled,” Coranne says. “My husband
would be the first to tell you that.”

“I don't see that at all.”

“I complain constantly. I'm a stay-at-home mom,
which is what I wanted. Rick would have been happy to have a second income. He
works in a precarious industry, but he's hung in there and ended up making more
money than ever. We don't want for anything, my kids are healthy—well,
relatively, the baby always seems to have a cold or a stomachache—yet all I do
is dwell on the negative.”

Heloise is unnerved by how personal the
conversation has become, wants to derail it. “Oh, you're too hard on yourself,”
she begins, but Coranne will not be deterred.

“I never have time for myself. That's why I look
like such a wreck. And don't say I don't, because I know I do. And I don't feel
like I can ask for help, because that's my job, right? Staying home with my
kids? Only who else has a job where they're on call 24/7? I mean, yes, two of
them are in school, but Jillian's home with me. She's fourteen months, she takes
one nap a day. If I'm lucky. That's what I get to myself. That and my own
night's sleep—but, well, listen to me. I'm preaching out of self-interest, too.
It's hard to avoid, I guess.”

Heloise feels almost violated by this torrential
confession. If a man had unleashed this kind of energy, she would expect to be
paid. Her mind leapfrogs:
Maybe I could be a shrink.
No, too much school, more than a decade. Clinical social worker, psychologist?
Whatever path she takes, she can't get around the fact that all she has is a GED
and some business courses from an unaccredited online school. And it strikes her
as unfair that she would make so much less, having her ears filled, than she
has— She interrupts her own flow of thought, feeling she must say something to
Coranne, find a way to answer the imploring look in her eyes.

“Look, if the sleepover this Friday is too much, we
can cancel. I don't want to add to your burden.”

“Oh, no, Scott is a dream guest. Do you know he
strips the bed? I've had adult guests who haven't thought to do that.”

Heloise smiles, thinking,
I
taught him well.

“His manners are simply wonderful. You'll have to
tell me sometimes how you did that. Regular beatings? Just kidding.” Her voice
does the motherly deprecation trill, high and desperate. “Seriously, he's nice,
Heloise. I mean, he's smart, too, and other things, but he's so considerate. It
knocks me out.”

“Me, too,” Heloise admits. Then, “I can't take
credit, really. He was sweet from day one. Just born that way.”

“They do show up with their own temperaments. For
better or worse.”

The Reverend Frida is making the rounds. Trolling
for praise—from Heloise's point of view, a little unseemly in a minister.
Heloise never solicits praise from her clientele and doesn't worry if it's not
articulated. If the men come back, that's all she needs to know. And some of the
ones who don't come back have a fetish for novelty, so she doesn't worry about
them, either. She almost wishes she could share this advice with the Reverend
Frida, tell her just to note who keeps coming back week after week.

“How are you ladies doing today?”

“Great,” Heloise says.

“Fine,” Coranne says, but the waver in her voice
makes it less than convincing.

“Coranne's having a tough week,” Heloise says.

“Oh, it's not so bad,” Coranne says.

“The holidays,” the Reverend Frida says, nodding
sympathetically. Hell, Heloise thinks, why provide the answer? Why not fucking
ask
? The rhetorical devices employed in sermons
have made the Reverend Frida forget that it's allowed to ask people questions
without knowing the answers.

“I know, right?” Coranne says, grateful for being
spared having to answer. It's as if she'd rather agree to any banal assessment
of her situation than admit what's really going on. Then again, how did Heloise
reward Coranne's candor? She tells herself that she's not the reverend, that
this isn't her gig. But out of guilt she decides to throw herself on the grenade
that is Frida.

“Great sermon today,” she says.

The Reverend Frida brightens. “You think so? I know
it was a little unusual, not what people expect. I was originally planning a
sermon about what led me to my calling when I started out in investment
banking—” And she was off to the races, blah, blah, blah. Heloise decides to
zone out, having heard much of the story before. She tries to locate the tickle
of an idea that she had when she was thinking about social work, but it's gone.
That's what she gets for being nice and listening to Coranne. That's why she's
not really suited to social work. Whatever she does, Heloise needs a job that
allows her mind to slip away at times. The current one has been great for
that.

And then, lo and behold, a miracle: The Reverend
Frida says something helpful.

“What I learned is that sometimes you just have to
leap even if you don't know where you're going to land,” says this earnest young
woman who has always had the safety net of a family's money—and unconditional
love. That fact has come up in the sermons again and again. “I thought I could
continue to work and go to seminary. A straddle. But I had to commit to leaving
my job before I could see what I really wanted to do with my life. The moment I
quit, I had utter clarity.”

Well, that's what Heloise is doing in spite of
herself, so why hasn't she achieved clarity, utter or otherwise? Will it happen
when she has the cash in hand, when her days are suddenly empty?

No, she realizes. It will happen when she tells Val
that she's quitting. Then it will be real, urgent. Once she tells Val, it will
be true.