Being a Sweet Nothings Ambassador was very stressful. Each month, she had to sell eight hundred dollars of product to remain at the Executive Fuchsia Level, which gave her a thirty percent commission on her sales. (If she’d manifested better, she’d have a downline of salespeople she would have recruited; their sales would add to her total.)
For the last few months, Emma had bought her own stock at retail cost from herself. Cassidy Rose (who would add tohertotal whenever Emma bought anything) had patiently explained that paying for Sweet Nothings product Emma had already purchased was an investment—an investment in Emma. It seemed counterproductive to buy productsfrom herself,but without these sales, Emma couldn’t have reached eight hundred dollars of sales for April and would have been demoted to Beige. Going back to Beige Brand Ambassador meant that she’d have to pay the three-hundred-dollar signing fee again if she wanted to keep working for Sweet Nothings.
Cassidy Rose was vibrant and charismatic. Emma felt like an infatuated teenager around Cassidy Rose, growing warm in her presence. Her eyes were gray, shot with yellow. She had perfectly highlighted hair. Sometimes, Emma wanted to kiss Cassidy Rose, and sometimes Emma just wanted tobeher.
“Your job is to empowerevery woman in this town,” Cassidy Rose had said, raising her cute eyebrows and looking serious. When Emma ran out of her own friends to call, she thought of her mother’s best friend, Harriet, whom Emma hadn’t spoken to in years. Luckily, Harriet was game. “Nothing here to do,” Harriet had said. “Why not, I guess? Are we talking about—what, sex toys and such?”
“Well…” said Emma, “well, no, it’s not sex toys. Well, I mean, Ido havethose items, of course, but Sweet Nothings is all aboutconnection and um, loving yourself. Inside. Um, feeling…empowered.”
“Did you say something about free wine?” said Harriet.
With her new Discover card, Emma had bought one box of red wine and one of white, then transferred the cheap stuff into bottles from the recycling bin that belonged to wealthy oenophiles down the street. She rinsed the bottles first, of course, buying 150 corks on Amazon for $16.99 and putting the bottles in boxes from Missoula Liquors. Hiding in the shadows of the alley behind her house on recycling day, cold raindrops hitting her cheeks with painful pinpricks, Emma felt she had taken a wrong turn.
Maybe she should have left town, like her sisters and even her mother. But now she had her boys—she just had to move forward. Even if moving forward meant crouching in alleys, ruining the Ugg boots her mother had given her when she fled to Arizona, and jamming used wine bottles in her eldest son’s hockey bag.
—
“Welcome, Harriet and friends!” cried Emma. Harriet’s retirement condo was pretty, and Emma had hung Sweet Nothings panties over the electric fireplace for ambience. “Let’s start by talking about foreplay!” she said, trying to sound as confident as Cassidy Rose in their Boss Babe training sessions. Reciting the script she’d memorized, Emma said, “Foreplay should be yoursecondfavorite ‘F’ word!”
A woman in a lumpy cardigan tittered. Emma thought the woman looked familiar. She squinted, and the woman winked. Oh my God, it was her middle school gym teacher, Mrs. Randolph. “Pheromones,” she managed, holding up the Hot ’N’ Heavy lotion. “Pheromones help with your happy and your horny!” The words had sounded hilarious when Cassidy Rose had spoken them, but now Emma just felt gross. She was supposed to make everyone cup their hands into “hand-ginas” next, then squirt variouswarming lubes into them. Mrs. Randolph watched her. No—no way. She wasn’t doing the hand-ginas.
“If you’re single as a Pringle, you can buy this for yourself!” she said weakly.
“May I try?” said Harriet kindly. Harriet had always made Emma feel wonderful, even when they were small. She’d roll her eyes when Emma’s mother told her to lay off the cookies, Donna holding her nose up with her finger to simulate a pig nose. Harriet would say, “Oh, Donna, hush!”
“Yes, of course,” said Emma, passing her the lotion. “Thank you, Harriet.”
Harriet, a muscular woman with shoulder-length gray curls, squeezed a peach-colored daub and rubbed it into her hands. She brought them to her face. “Mmm,” she said. “Smells delicious. Here, try!” She held the bottle out to her friends.
Emma quickly opened her box of scented lotions. “Everyone! Please!” Emma said, passing around shea-butter massage oils and the heart-shaped warming pack that you rubbed until it became hot. She handed out catalogs and order forms.
Harriet’s friends, tentatively and then with gusto, asked straightforward questions, and, gaining confidence, Emma answered them. She decidednotto say (as Cassidy Rose had suggested), “Great Head lube reduces the gag reflex in the back of your throat and masks the taste of semen…so no more yackin’ while you’re snackin’!”
Instead, when Sally Pope, who had run the post office until her retirement, said, “Emma, honey, do you have any lotions for…well, making things less dry down there?” Emma passed her a selection of lubricants. Emboldened with a bit of her boxed-then-bottled wine, she even held up an illustration of a woman’s privates, explaining the places women enjoyed being touched. “I’m sure you know all this,” she said, though she wasn’t sure at all.
—
After the Love Fest Party, Emma parked outside her home, the one she and Rich had moved into when Rich’s parents passed away and left them enough money to scrape together a down payment and secure a big loan with an adjustable interest rate that had rendered them worried each month as soon as the higher interest rate kicked in. Still, they were fortunate: Much of Missoula had been bought up by landlords who charged so much that many of Rich’s teacher colleagues had been forced to move out of town and face long commutes.
Their front living room faced the street, and Emma could see her husband sitting on the couch, a boy on either side of him—Jameson leaning on Rich’s shoulder, Guinness sitting upright. All three needed haircuts; Emma made a mental note to get out her clippers. The boys were too old for stories, and yet it looked as if Rich were reading to them.
Emma took a moment to scroll through her phone. Sylvie had posted a picture of herself with someone Emma didn’t recognize. Emma’s baby sister looked radiant, holding up a margarita glass. Underneath the photo, Simon had commented “Cheers!” Emma stared at the picture for a while, feeling strangely dislocated by the thought of Sylvie’s happy life with these strangers. If this was Sylvie’s family now, who was Emma?
Donna’s move to Arizona had made Emma feel unmoored, despite the fact that Donna was mean to Emma and her family.
In the Missoula Free Box, Emma had once grabbed a book calledParent Yourself: A Twelve-Step Healing Plan for Motherless Daughters. After reading the first two chapters, Emma tossed it. She was too busy taking care of everyone to be able to examine why she took care of everyone.
She liked taking care of everyone!
Inside, Rich stood and stretched. The boys rose as well, hugged their dad. Emma wanted to feel delight, watching them. She knew she should feel delight. Instead, a list of things that needed doingscrolled in her mind: apples for lunches, make the minimum payment on the credit cards, call back the dentist and explain a bounced check…but how? What was the explanation for a mother who bounced checks for dental cleanings?
Emma opened her order forms and tallied the night’s total. She had sold one hundred and twenty-seven dollars of Sweet Nothings product. She ignored taxes these days, preferring to get through one week at a time. She would handle tax day next April.
Her phone rang—it was Cleo. “Hey!” said Emma. “You’ll never believe where I’ve been this evening. Remember Mom’s friend Harriet?”
“Em,” said Cleo, sounding weird, and maybe drunk. “We need to talk about Sylvie’s fiancé. This Simon guy is not what he seems. He has secrets, Em. Deep, dark secrets.”
Emma kept the engine running. “Tell me everything,” she said.
