Lie Still (3 page)

I remember holding the violent message in shaking fingers, as the soft rain turned to hail, a thousand fingernails tapping on the living room windows, wishing Mike were there so I could finally tell him everything. He showed up at the apartment ten hours later, exhausted and bruised, after I’d tucked the piece of paper away in a shoebox with all of the others.

That is the short story of how we ended up here in the Southern hemisphere, seeking warmth. Mike turned in his resignation and I quit the gallery, promising to take it easy until the baby was born, with the idea that I’d take up my painting again. Life was suddenly an open, blank canvas that we could sketch with careful hands.

“Go away,” I said now, as Mike’s fingers began to roam again. “Go make out with yourself. It’s acceptable in the second trimester.”

He stood, his large frame blocking my view of the couple in the mirror. Not budging.

Now it was just us. The
real
us.

Flesh and blood and flaws.

I fought a sudden urge to cry, which seemed to be happening about every fifteen minutes these days. Losing this man would kill me. I pulled his head down and traced my tongue along his mouth. I felt the rush of familiar heat that had sustained us through everything. He drew away for a second, grinning.

“Is this hello or goodbye?”

I pushed him back onto the bed.

Maybe I could help him out a little.

F
ourteen minutes later, adjusting the seat in my newly purchased, pre-owned Volvo station wagon, I tipped down white wraparound sunglasses picked up off the streets of New York for ten bucks, and took one last pass at myself in the rearview mirror. Not too bad. My green eyes were made less weary by dark blue eyeliner, the splash of gold in the center of the iris more noticeable than usual.

I’d opted for a bold New York/Texas compromise: a body-hugging black cotton-Lycra dress that left no doubt about my state of maternity and over-the-top, gem-studded gold flats bought at a Barneys sale two years ago.

My body buzzed pleasantly. It seemed wrong to love the thing that had ripped my life apart. But sex set me free in a way nothing else did.

I plugged Caroline Warwick’s address into the navigation system that Mike insisted I’d need as a person born without directional ability. He’d bought the GPS from a friend setting up an online business of British paraphernalia, so my guide ordered me around like a bored Hugh Grant.

As the sun slid down in an orange halo, I found myself on the outskirts of Clairmont, driving for 2.3 miles on a farm road, a field of rising corn on one side and a rolling stone wall on the other. When Hugh crisply ordered me to turn, I did so with relief, away from the corn and toward the façade of a medieval-style gatehouse. Fields of corn always remind me of a gang of children wielding farm tools and a childhood slumber party where I didn’t sleep a wink. Thank you, Stephen King.

I could see instantly that I had entered a land of surreal-dom. A little city of copper turrets and tile rooftops lay beyond the stone wall, a glittering mirage on the prairie. The gold letters set into the limestone wall announced T
HE
M
ANSES OF
C
ASTLEGATE
.
I rolled slowly forward and halted at a miniature stop sign that looked like it belonged at a Renaissance Faire. For a second, I wondered if Hugh had the magical powers to transplant this place from across the Pond.

A sun-beaten troll of a man in a beige uniform sat in cramped air-conditioned quarters, nursing a Diet Coke and watching
Wheel of Fortune
on a tiny TV. I wondered if his prior life involved tending the field across the way.

“Yep?” he drawled, sliding open the window.

“I’m here for a party at Caroline Warwick’s. My name is Emily Page.”

Manses were supposed to be the homes of ministers, not vulgar rich people, a detail I remembered from a Scottish architecture course, and something I’m sure my troll friend didn’t want to hear from an uppity New Yorker. He ran his finger down a small computer screen, found my name, punched a button. The iron gates swung open easily into a pseudo-snotty fake England.

Why did people who could afford multimillion-dollar castles like this install their 15,000-square-foot homes on postage-stamp front yards, forty feet apart from neighbors on either side? While the general impression was grand, after a block or two, the cupolas, curved stony walls, and widow’s walks blurred together like a theme park.

A few twisty detours on cobbled streets designed to invoke the feel of the Ripper’s old London, and I turned off the ignition at 4203 Elizabeth Drive, a faux palace half the size of our New York apartment building.

The ivy-covered brick archway to Caroline Warwick’s manor rose to the sky. Mike had told me that in Texas, the height of the front-porch arch directly correlated to the price of the house. It was like a house bragging about its penis size. And this was a top-dollar, porn-star penis.

As for my own house hunt, I had quickly abandoned the
newer subdivisions after five days of drifting through bland, light-filled spaces with half the rooms already wired for flat screens. Our real estate agent expressed dismay when Mike and I stumbled across a wood-frame fixer-upper a few streets outside of Clairmont’s historic downtown and fell in love. A giant live oak in the front yard, honeysuckle run amuck, a stone fireplace, a wraparound porch, sixty-year-old wiring, and a kitchen that felt cramped with three people in it, including the one in the womb. Still, it was twice the kitchen space of our Manhattan apartment. Now staring at the formidable home in front of me, I considered a U-turn back to my bed.

“Honey, open up. Don’t be shy.”

My head whipped around to see a woman’s pudgy hot-pink manicured fist banging vigorously on the window, the other balancing a plate of something triple-covered with Saran Wrap. I switched off the ignition and opened the door two inches, straight into the rolls of her stomach pressed against my window.

“Watch it. You’re going to spill Aunt Eloise’s Lemon Squares. They’re not quite set. Here, carry them.”

She deigned to move a few inches back and I squeezed by, grabbing the plate dripping from her fingers. She didn’t seem to notice that Aunt Eloise’s Lemon Squares nearly fertilized the grass.

“You must be Emily,” she told me. “I’d die to have had a little pregnant basketball like that but my family’s all big-boned. That dress is a little tight on you, don’t you think? You’re a pale one. I guess it’s New Yorky. If you want, I can get you into a tanning bed real cheap. My cousin Marsha Lynn Gayle runs the best facility, about seven miles from here, in Keller. Her motto is, ‘Tanned fat looks better than white fat.’ I told her she should paint it on the door.”

I watched a raindrop of sweat drip down her face, tracing a
white line through her makeup. “Not to get you worried or anything,” she continued, “but labor is like one of them Iraqis torturing you. All three of my kids were like poopin’ frozen turkeys. Not to mention the hem’rhoids. I read on the Internet that I could dab apple cider vinegar on them, but all that did was make me stink like Easter eggs for a week so I don’t recommend it.” That was a hell of a lot of similes in one breath.

She must have weighed 250-plus pounds, but she moved fast, her mouth a blur of candy-pink lipstick and her ass a giant, bobbing red and yellow flowered pillow. As she propelled me toward the house, I was trying to figure out if she meant she smelled like the vinegar you put in with the dye pellets or … I didn’t want to know. She’d guided me halfway up the walk before I could think about asking her who the hell she was.

“I’m Leticia Abigail Lee Dunn. Everybody calls me Letty. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.” Her twang fell heavy into the hot air.

When I looked blank, she said impatiently, “Oh, come on, honey. Wife of Mayor Harry Dunn the
fourth
, your husband’s new boss. Daughter of William Cartright Lee
of the Robert E. Lees
. You know the General, don’tcha, honey? We’ve also got a long line of pageant girls in our family, too, but I don’t want to brag.” She gave my arm a squeeze.

“I was fourth runner-up in Miss Texas. Miss Congeniality was outright
stolen
from me by Miss Haltom City,” she whispered, as if it were a secret.

I nodded mutely, struggling to imagine a crown perched on the top of that teased mountain of bleached-blond hair, happy that I didn’t have to participate for this conversation to go on.

I wondered how she knew so instantly who I was. She swept her hand grandly at the nearby houses. The ripples of fat on her lower arm swung like dimpled bread dough.

“This tract used to be one of our ranches. I think my ancestors would like that it is now home to modern royalty. You aren’t
a Democrat, are you? That’s one thing I told the girls, ‘We might have to brainwash the Hillary out of her.’ ” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “We can just walk on in, honey. Caroline is real gracious that way. She’s a bit of a control freak in other matters but you’ll get used to it. Have you filled out an application?”

Application?
I risked a breath instead of speaking, hoping that once again she didn’t really want an answer. I needed to prepare myself. A roomful of unknowns churned up my insecurities every time. I liked a script, a purpose, when entering a room.

My best friend in New York, Lucy, is a chameleon like me. Assessing the audience, adapting as necessary. She’s the only other person I’ve ever known intimately who is as deliberate and sneaky about it as I am. I remember our instant connection at a museum gala nine years ago, bonding over a Lucian Freud portrait, a mediocre glass of merlot, and our predilection for dark thinking. I wished Lucy and her biting humor were with me now as I navigated this land of twangy trolls and lemon squares.

Leticia grabbed the knob of the massive arched double door. She hesitated. One of her long pink fingernails tucked back a piece of my hair that I’d purposely styled to fall out of the bun on my head.

“I’ve got a little spray in my purse that will take care of that if you want to scoot off to the bathroom first. Be forewarned, this is a curious bunch. And we’re tight. You’ll need to suck up a little to get in.”

In where? The door? Was she talking about my stomach? Her stomach? Why, why had I said yes to this?

“Hey, y’all!” Leticia bellowed into the house. “I got Emily here. The new chief’s wife.” She swept me across a marble floor, past a jade inlaid mirror in the entryway and a barely glimpsed
Miro sketch, down a hall of ancestral pictures in striking, contemporary frames. Twenty feet in, I stopped impulsively to admire the view.

A stunning garden room ran along the entire back side of the house, an atrium of tropical wonders—ferns, banana trees, and hibiscus I’d seen only on the Internet. Thirty or so women crowded around talking and drinking wine, a much more diverse, anorexic, and formal group than I’d expected after encountering Letty. A pale young harpist wrapped in a gauzy dress played Mozart near a banana tree as if she were all alone, or at least wished it. A few of the women paused at our entrance, smiled, then turned back to their conversations.

“Gimme those squares so I can present them to Caroline.” Letty grabbed the plate and abandoned me, parting the crowd like a whale churning through water.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face two nearly identical women, with taut, Botoxed faces, breasts like tennis balls, $150 haircuts, spray tans, French manicures, white capris, and tight sleeveless tanks that showed off their Pilates regimen. Women who looked older than they were because they worked way too hard at achieving the opposite.

“I’m Red Mercedes,” said the one who appeared the tipsiest. “And this is Beach House.”

“Stop it, that’s not funny if she doesn’t know us. Mary Ann’s had a little bit too much to drink already. It’s an inside joke. I’m Jenny, by the way. We have the same plastic surgeon in Dallas. And he owns a Mercedes convertible and a beach house, which we’re pretty sure we paid for. I can’t believe I’m explaining this. God, you look amazing. Do you even wear foundation? Oh, to have ten years back.”

“Thank you. It’s very nice to meet you.” I felt like curtsying.

Huge diamonds in multiple forms and sizes glinted on their fingers as if they bred at night. These were women who likely
graduated out of college sororities straight into marriage, part of the pack of hausfraus I’d dodged this week in the local upscale grocery, Central Market. The women who pretended not to see you as they cut in line at the cheese counter and their Justice- and Abercrombie-clad children demanded Havarti over Gouda.

“Welcome to our butt-hole of a town,” Jenny told me. “The gossip is that your husband is a modern-day gladiator.”

“Did Letty mention she was a pageant girl?” Mary Ann tipped the last sip from her wineglass. And, then, under her breath, “She’s such a
bitch
.”

I felt like I’d fallen into a Texas rabbit hole. Or maybe a tarantula hole. I’d gotten my first scary look at one of those suckers in the front yard yesterday. The six-year-old boy next door had offered to stick his garden hose in it and blast out the owner, an offer I politely declined.