I bring silverware and plates and sit perched on the edge of a wicker lounge chair across from Cora, as she has taken my chair. She takes over quickly. It’s as if she can’t help but take the role of the one entertaining, even though she’s at my house. She scoops generous servings of the whatever-she-called-it and plates them, licking the excess off her thumb as she hands me one. I will Avery to wake up and start wailing so I have an excuse to run her inside and shut down this visit, but she lies peacefully, her perfect, damp little curls clinging to her head, her rosebud mouth pursing and releasing, lost somewhere in a dream, maybe. What could a baby possibly dream about? I wonder.
We sit across from each other. I smile. I know I’m supposed to say something nice about the brown dish, but American desserts are too sweet for my taste, and I don’t want a second bite.
“Lovely,” I lie.
“Oh, thanks. Old family recipe.”
“Oh, nice,” I reply, and we eat in silence.
“It’s white sugar,” she giggles, her round cheeks flush.
“I’m sorry?”
“The secret in the recipe. White sugar instead of brown, so I guess I should call it a white Betty. Oh, and a little squeeze of orange.”
“Oh.” I smile.
“It’s not really a secret, I guess. I can give you the recipe if you want.”
“Oh, gosh, I don’t really bake, but that’s very sweet of you to offer,” I say, and she makes a wave gesture, indicating it’s no problem. It’s silent again. Then...
“Do you know, our husbands have gotten together a few times, and I can’t believe this is our first time hanging out,” she says. I didn’t realize we werehanging out. It feels more like a trap I’m trying to free myself from. But I nod, having no other response.
“I just—I see you driving in and out all day, figured you must be a very busy lady,” I manage to say, like a normal person making conversation.
“Oh, my goodness. Mia is involved in everything. Volleyball, violin lessons, dance. Then there’s the PTA, the food bank, the toy drive—year-round, mind you. The list would bore you, but yes, you have that right. I’m sure I make you dizzy with the back-and-forth all day.” She laughs, and her cheeks redden again. She seems to be nervous for some reason. “Oh, but never too busy for my neighbors, of course,” she adds.
“Sounds really exciting, actually,” I say, and then her face changes.
“Oh, no. No, it’s not, it’s just...dull actually.” She looks down at her plate and pushes the crumbs around with her fork. Shit. She knows. Lucas must have told her husband or whoever about me—that I can’t leave the house—and the news has reached her. This is a pity visit, and she thinks I’m a freak.
“Well, a little bird told me that your Lucas might be playing a golf thing with my Finn in a couple of weekends. I thought I’d invite you and sweet little Avery over for some cake and wine. Of course, I guess you guys would call itafternoon tea.” She does a bad English accent when she says this and laughs at her own joke. “Oh, wait” she continues. “You call lunchdinner, and you call dinnertea,” she says, laughing.
I don’t know what to say. If Lucas told her about me, then why would she think I could possibly go to her place? He probably explained that I can go to the small community park behind our house when it’s empty and can sometimes walk as far as the mailbox without a panic attack, and she thinks that means that anything between here and there is home base, therefore okay—not a trigger. I’ve thought about this a lot. How he has to explain it to friends. What they must think.
She’s been very kind, if not a little pushy, and I still don’t know how to handle this conversation. She sets her plate on the ground by her chair and wipes the crumbs off her maxi skirt. She looks at me expectantly. I can’t say that I have to check my schedule or that I’m busy. Lucas has taken those excuses away by telling her.
She notices that I’m taking too long to answer. I can feel a rash of heat blotch my chest, and just then, Avery starts to cry glorious, screeching howls. I rush over to her and pick her up, rocking her on my hip and cooing at her.
“Well.” Cora stands, taking it as her cue to leave. “You just let me know, sweetheart,” she says kindly, touching my arm, but she looks visibly disappointed at the same time, and I can’t help but wonder why in the world she cares. I’m the odd stranger across the street. Why all the effort? She takes Avery’s little bunched-up fist between her thumb and forefinger and kisses it. “Aren’t you the sweetest?” she says, and then, “You keep the rest of that Betty, and I’ll get the dish another time,” and then she’s off.
I try not to think about the fact that she’s left herself a reason to return. I watch her walk across to her house. She waves to Paige and pets one of the neighbor’s outdoor cats that’s sunning himself on her front step, before a teenage girl runs out, handing Cora her purse, saying they’ll be late. Mia, I assume. They get in her Lexus and drive off.
I watch the taillights turn past the mailboxes and security gate and onto the main road. I kiss Avery’s head and close my eyes. I make a silent promise that that will be me—us: mother and daughter, carefree on a drive to soccer practice. That I will find a way out of the personal hell I’ve gotten myself into somehow, and maybe she’ll never even have to know I was ever like this.
4
CORA
The next day, I think about Georgia while I dump baskets full of clean clothes onto the couch and sit to fold them. I limit my soap-opera viewing time to the space it takes me to fold the laundry, so I take my time. Today, Marco Devine has woken up from his coma only to find out that his evil twin, Blaize, has impersonated him while he was sleeping and stolen his lover. So today, I match the socks with extra care so I can see if Bianca Lovewright will reveal who her heart belongs to. Even as she weeps at Marco’s bedside once she finds out he’s alive, I still find it’s hard to focus. Georgia seemed so glossy and exotic, but now, I don’t know what to make of her. She looks...I want to sayill.
I can’t imagine life inside my house all day. We live on the Oregon coast for the exact opposite reason, in fact. The Douglas fir and hemlock dwarf the neighbors’ and make the minimansions along the coast look like hobbit houses beneath their majestic canopy. The houses on our side of the road have woodsy backyards that slope slightly to meet the lakefront. Each long dock stretches out into the clear water, and most have recreational boats attached for lazy weekend rides up to Dockside’s country club on the other side of the lake a few miles down. Georgia’s side of the street backs onto a forest of Douglas firs with a clearing, which holds a picnic table and a swing set passing for a small park. The air perpetually smells like moss-covered tree bark, sandalwood, and pine, and it’s paradise, if you ask me, so how she could be afraid of all of this and not leave the house is baffling.
I wonder what the thing was—the trauma that happened to her. What an odd way to handle a trauma. I watchedMy 600-Lb Life, and they’d all had a trauma and then comforted themselves with cheese fries and beef brisket until they had to be forklifted out of their house and sent to Houston for gastric bypass surgery. I could see that. And the hoarders, who have a dumpster full of stuffed animals and nineteen cats but no litter boxes. I could even see that, sorta—the need to pad yourself with things you find comforting—but poor Georgia. No beef brisket or Care Bears to comfort her. She’s all alone all day. Well, she has the baby, but that little, unknowable person cannot be a comfort at that age. The opposite, I would think. I mean, I love babies. No one loves babies more than me, but it’s not healthy to be locked away like that with no help.
I could help her. I mean, she’s a little weird, but I think I could get through to her and get her out of the house. I took social psychology my sophomore year, and people really respond to me, I think. I’m not tooting my own horn, but I am a people person. I have practiced listening to the woes of my girlfriends for years. I was the one they came to: even back in college, I held their hair back in the bathroom of a dirty bar countless times when they got too drunk and threw up after a rejection from some co-ed. I picked them up from the apartments of one-night stands so they could avoid the walk of shame, and now that we’re older, who does Connie Wilkinson call when her son escapes from rehab and we need to drive through the neighborhood in search of him? Who does Vivian Fletcher call when Steve goes on a bender? And the school, whenever they need costumes sewn for the fall play or scones made for the volleyball bake sale? People rely on me. So I just need to figure out how I can show Georgia that she can, too.
As I try to decide whether I’ll make rhubarb squares or lemon meringue to bring over to her for a follow-up conversation, I feel a small, crinkly object fall from the still-warm bath towel I’m shaking out. I stare down at it—the half of a rolled joint lying on the couch cushion—and my chest tightens. I sit down and pick it up, examining it. There’s a faint pink circle of lipstick around the edge. I don’t know whether it’s worse if Mia is smoking it or if Finn has a special friend.
