“More like a survivors’ club,” says Elsie.
“What? That’s depressing.” Beverley frowns.
“Exactly. Stop that. I don’t want to be depressed,” says Margot, lighting a cigarette. “In fact, I want to make margaritas. Beverley, where’s your salt?” She stands, tosses the newspaper onto the table.
“Most men who kill murder their wives or partners,” Elsie continues. “We’re still here, so technically we are survivors.”
Margot rolls her eyes.
“Weare,” Elsie urges. “We’re victims in all this, too. Don’t forget that.”
“Sorry, but this”—Margot circles the air in front of her face with a finger—“is not what a victim looks like.”
Elsie huffs loudly. She always was a prude. They’d met only at Beverley’s request. Bev and Elsie had been exchanging letters about their husbands for months, and Beverley thought it would do Margot good to meet someone else in the same situation as theirs.
It is true, though. Criminals’ wives—victims of their husbands’ indiscretions—sometimes had a certainlook. Margot could see it in newspaper articles and rolling coverage on the TV. Especially those wives who loyally followed their husbands to court, adamant that their Joe/Bob/Frank could never be responsible for such abominable acts.He was such a kind man,they’d parrot in interviews after trials that laid out in scrupulous, incontestable detail how their husbands had slaughtered multiple people.He never raised a fist at home.
“We’re not simpering wives. We learned the truth; we got mad; we moved on,” says Margot.
“Is this really moving on?” Beverley asks doubtfully. “I just had to relive everything in front of a roomful of cops.”
“Well, I’m drinking cocktails at two thirty in the afternoon. I’ve moved on,” Margot replies.
“I made melon balls.” Elsie shrugs weakly.
—
When the airhas turned lilac, the amber trails of the fading sun smearing across the skyline, Margot helps Beverley clear up in the kitchen. The children are in bed and Elsie has left for the drive back to Burbank, but the TV’s still on in the living room, Ronald Reagan’s voice, bemoaning beatniks and radicals, filtering through the walls.
“Did you decide what to do about the anniversary, by the way?” Margot asks, tightening an apron covered in little brown rabbits around her waist. “Five years—that’s a milestone, right?”
“What did you do for yours?” Beverley asks, wiping her hands on a dishcloth before tossing it on the mint-green countertop. Behind her, the matching refrigerator, covered in children’s artwork, emits a faltering hum.
It felt like both minutes and years since the truth about Margot’s husband, Stephen, had come out. She turns and leans back against the sink, pulling on yellow rubber gloves, a cigarette clasped between her teeth. “Drank about ten Manhattans and passed out on the couch.”
“Margot…”
“All right, all right. I went to church.”
There is a short silence.
“Margot Green! Church?”
Margot knows she does not belong at church. She is not church. She is Hollywood mansions and fuchsia chiffon. But the truth is, she hadn’t known what to do when five years rolled round for her, either.
“Hated every second of it, of course,” Margot continues, changing her mind about the hideous apron and unlacing it with a tug. “But that was years ago now.” She tosses the apron on the counter and waves a hand dismissively after it. “Just do whatever feels right—even if that’s nothing.”
“Well, there is something.”
Margot pauses, intrigued.
Beverley reaches behind the bread bin and pulls out an envelope. “I got this. Someone left it on my windshield last night, after the gala.”
Margot pulls off the gloves, reaches for the envelope and reads.
“They want you to go on TV?” She looks up from the letter. “For the anniversary?”
“Just a local network. Nothing major.”
