Shelly looked at her and tipped her head to one side. “You know, Frances, you don’t need to be defensive. Friends rally around at times of crisis, it takes a village, right?” She smiled sweetly. “It’s interesting when other people’s pain brings up issues . . . Are you and Michael having problems?”
Frances resisted the urge to punch the other woman in the throat. “I didn’t think I was being defensive, Shelly. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.” She felt herself starting to sweat, hating any kind of conflict. “If you’re so worried about the Porters you should go and speak to Charlie, he’s right there.” She wasn’t even going to touch the comment about her own marriage. She herself never felt she was intimate enough with someone to ask about their marriage, unless they were, like, friends for a decade or related by blood or thrown together on a sinking cruise liner or something. You came across this false, fast intimacy all the time in the circles she moved in. People who loved to talk about their feelings, their fears, their colonic irrigation, their therapy, their children’s therapy, their sex life, their new car. Frances barely had room in her head for her own feelings plus a running grocery list. She felt like the Mad Hatter: No room! No room!
She looked around, hoping the soccer game was nearly over, or that Lally had been mildly concussed, or something that would end this stupid conversation. But no, Lally was now running in a different direction, still wrong, but different. Over on a nearby pitch Milo was playing a real game of soccer, as the difference between four and ten years old was significant when it came to rules and balls. Ava had loved soccer. Frances suddenly had a vision of the little trophies she used to bring home proudly, the slices of orange making her wrists sticky, the bouncing ponytail as she pelted across the grass. That nine-year-old was long gone now and Ava seemed to barely remember her, or even care about the things that used to matter so much. Dinosaurs. Doll clothes. Horses. Legos. Drawing was the only one that stayed, the one passion that had yet to wane.
“Frances?” Shelly was still looking at her, a deeper wrinkle between her eyebrows. Shit, apparently she’d drifted off there for a moment. She looked at Shelly and smiled vaguely.
“Sorry, Shelly, got distracted. What were you saying?”
But Shelly herself was suddenly distracted by something behind Frances, and the way her eyes widened suggested it was way more interesting than Frances’s apparent descent into dementia. Frances turned, guessing before she saw her that Anne Porter had just arrived.
• • •
Anne realized as she got closer that this was a major mistake, but she had told Charlie she would show up and there was no turning back. She couldn’t have chosen a more public place to appear, as pretty much everyone she knew was there, or at least enough of them that everyone she knew would get a firsthand account.
She felt like crap. Apart from the eggs at Frances’s she’d barely eaten in the last few days. She still hadn’t called her parents: Her mother didn’t enjoy bad news. Or maybe she did enjoy it, but whoever brought the bad news lived to regret it. Anne decided to wait until she had a better story to tell. Rather than, “Hi, Mom, I fucked up massively and now my life has shattered into a million pieces,” she wanted to be able to lead with, “Hi, Mom, Charlie and I have been having some problems, but it’s all better now. How are you?” It might take a while, but she was going to wait for that. Her mom preferred to parent the good parts of her children only.
Now Anne was standing in the heat of the soccer fields in the park, looking around for her kids and trying very hard not to make eye contact with the parent body of her school. It was hard because although a generous third of them were doing her the courtesy of pretending she wasn’t there, the other two-thirds were avidly watching and hoping she was either drunk or insane. Some of them were looking behind her, hoping she’d brought the eighteen-year-old she was supposedly sleeping with.
Suddenly she saw Frances, and instinctively started walking toward her. Frances was looking at her, but with a question in her eyes, rather than judgment: Are you OK? Anne walked toward her resolutely, avoiding any other eye contact. As she got closer, though, she realized Shelly was standing with Frances and nearly stopped. Shelly was absolutely the worst possible person to run into, but fortunately Frances was stepping around her and walking to meet Anne in the middle, curving her body as she walked to suggest a bench off to one side as a meeting point. It was like semaphore: Don’t panic, we’re heading for that bench, we’re going to make it, keep going. Anne had started to feel tingling in her hands, and pulsing nausea; she was going to have a panic attack.
“You’re fine,” was the first thing Frances said as they got close enough to hear each other. “You’re fine, just sit down on the bench. I’ll get out the taser and keep the bitches at bay, OK?”
“OK.” Anne’s voice was a whisper.
They were now walking together, and Frances added, “Lili’s here somewhere, and so are Jim and Andy, and between us we will create a human shield if we have to.”
They reached the bench and sat down. Anne was breathing rapidly, her color very bad, her nausea worsening.
“I’m going to throw up.”
Frances shifted her purse on her shoulder and let it fall to the ground. “Oh dear, I dropped my purse. Quick, bend down and help me pick up my shit. Keep your head lower than your knees.”
Anne did as she was told. Frances, it turned out, had a great deal of stuff in her handbag. Toys,
