“Sure," Jane said, opening it and getting out of the way while he maneuvered through. Willard tried to make an escape, which Jane thwarted with her knee. He backed off with a "well, it was a good try" look and collapsed pitifully in front of his empty food bowl.
Thinking she might fool Mike, Jane started toward the driver's side of the car, but Mike spit the donut out in the driveway and said, "I'm driving."
“Mike, don't throw that food there!"
“The birds'll eat it.”
Jane got in on the passenger side, wishing she had a crash helmet. "Have you got your learner's permit with you?”
Mike just rolled his eyes in exasperation and threw the car into reverse. They shot backward, Mike grinning, Jane with her hands splayed on the dashboard. Someday, she told herself, she'd remember this time fondly, but not anytime soon. Mike's driving made her crazy. This was the sort of thing Steve ought to be here for; teaching a boy to drive was "Dad work." It wasn't that Mike drove all that fast — well, only in reverse — but he was a curb-clipper. After sixteen years of perceiving the road from the passenger seat, he liked the same view, even though he was now sitting four feet farther left. "Watch the jogger!" Jane shrieked.
“I see him," Mike assured her placidly, swinging out a generous four or five inches to the left.
They stopped and picked up Ernest, a tubby, pimpled boy who tossed a trombone case in the back of the wagon, and Scott, a tall, California-blond, and altogether shockingly handsome boy who carried no books, only a pair of drumsticks. He bounced into the seat behind Jane and beat an affectionate tattoo on her shoulder. "Hi, Mrs. J. Lovely as always," he said, lifting a portion of her uncombed hair with a drumstick.
Jane half-turned. "I'm more concerned withinternal beauty, Scott. Of which I have loads, I might add. Mike! That truck is stopped!”
The high school was in the opposite direction from the junior high, and the time lapse had given the same trash crew time to get in her way twice in one morning. They'd probably get some kind of award for that, she thought.
“Plenty of room," Mike said, going around it with a fraction of an inch to spare.
“Excellent!" Scott said and beat out a happy rhythm on the window.
Someday I'll have hysterics or wet my pants or something equally embarrassing while riding with him, Jane thought. He'd have a regular license someday instead of a learner's permit, and she wouldn't have to ride with him anymore. He'd still do awful things with the car, but she wouldn't have to ride along and be a terrified witness.
Once the boys were out of the car, Jane was stranded in a snarl caused by a mob of girls surrounding a red Fiat. The high school parking lot made her strangely sad. These boys and girls on the verge of adulthood were all so young and healthy and beautiful. Even the plain ones had a wonderful vitality. But it wasn't their youth that saddened her. She was handling the march of time fairly well. It was their air of "belonging" that she envied. They waved and called to each other and moved in graceful shoals, like happy fish. The boys punched each other's arms in a friendly way; the girls put their heads together, sharing secrets.
Jane had missed all that. A State Department brat, she'd never attended the same school more than a single year, and several times had been only a semester in one place before her father's assignments moved them on. There had been benefits, of course. She'd lived all over Europe and much of the Far East, not to mention both east and west coasts of the United States. But those were the kinds of advantages that only the adults who chose such a life could appreciate. To a naturally shy child, it had been agony.
At least she'd spared her children that unhappiness, she thought as she squeezed through a group of boys noisily tossing a basketball back and forth over passing cars in the parking lot. Her kids had all been born here and had lived in the same house all their lives. When they left their familiar neighborhood, it would be because they wanted to, not because they had to.
There wasn't a lot she was willing to give Steve credit for, but thank God he'd left her with barely enough money to keep them in this secure life and neighborhood with a full-time mother. They'd never be able to keep up with the Christmas-in-the-Caribbean crowd, but at least they weren't going to have to move into a crackerbox rental house and sell off the china to make ends meet.
Todd was sitting on the front steps when she pulled into the drive. Just behind her a blue Mazda stopped and honked. The driver hopped out. Dorothy Wallenberg had on a tennis skirt and neon-pink blouse. She was a plump, solid woman who had thighs like tree trunks — well tanned, well-muscled tree trunks. Dorothy always seemed to be in a hurry, and this morning was no exception. "Hi, Jane, do me a quickie favor, will you?" she said, bounding around to the trunk of her car and gingerly lifting out an enormous sheet cake. "Take this in to Shelley, please.”
Jane slapped her forehead. "For the meeting tonight! I'd forgotten. I promised her I'd make a carrot salad. She'll skin me for not having it ready.”
Jane's friend and neighbor Shelley had a wonderful house for entertaining and did a lot of it. Almost any group she belonged to could count on her house for meetings and parties, but she despised potluck dinners, and when she was forced to have one she managed it like a parole officer. Nobody got to just wander in at their leisure, bringing their food. The food came first, early in the day; the guests could then arrive as late as they wanted without interfering with serving the meal. That was Shelley's standing rule, and it was a measure of the strength of her personality that her friends had learned to honor it.
“Thanks!" Dorothy said, easing the pan onto Jane's waiting arms.
“You're coming tonight, then?" Jane asked. Dorothy had previously claimed a schedule conflict. A former nurse, she volunteered in a free birth control clinic several nights a week.
“Sure," Dorothy answered with a grin. "Life isn't all vaginas."
“Mostly, though," Jane answered.
Dorothy laughed and got back into the car. "All settled, kids? Jane, there's a donut on your driveway."
“I know. Flocks of ravenous birds are due any minute.”
Her hands occupied with the big cake pan, Jane stuck out her leg and waved good-bye to Todd with her foot. He rolled his eyes and looked away.
A bad sign, that. A symptom that the beginning of the end was in sight.
TWO
Keeping a firm grip on the sheet cake, Jane went to the side entrance of Shelley's house next door and leaned her elbow on the doorbell. Just then a van pulled up in front. Across the side of it in blue letters was the message: Happy Helper Cleaning Service. A thin woman in her thirties with frizzy blond hair got out and waved good-bye to the driver and other passengers. She was wearing something polyester that looked like a nurse's pantsuit dyed light blue. Across the breast pocket it said Happy Helper.
“You must be Edith," Jane said as the woman joined her on the porch.
“No, I'm Ramona. Are you Mrs. Nowack?"
“No, but this is her house. I'm Mrs. Jeffry from next door. Ring the bell again, would you?”
Shelley, immaculately turned out as always, opened the door a moment later. Her sleek, dark hair looked like she'd just stepped out of a very expensive beauty shop, and her navy-blue sweats — which Jane had seen her purchase at K mart — looked like something a designer had whipped up especially for her. Shelley had a way of doing that to clothes.
“Mrs. Nowack?" the Happy Helper asked.
“Yes? I was expecting Edith. Hi, Jane."
“I know, ma'am, but Edith took sick and they sent me instead. They tried to call you from about six this morning, and the line was busy. If it's not okay, I can call and the van'll come back for me.”
Shelley obviously wasn't pleased, but said, "No, I need the help today and I'm sure you'll do a fine job. Come in. I wonder what's the matter with the phone. The dog must have pulled the basement extension off the table again.”
Both Shelley and the Happy Helper stood aside and allowed Jane room to safely negotiate the door with the unwieldy cake. "I didn't get your name," Shelley said to the cleaning lady.
“Ramona Thurgood, ma'am."
“I'll show you where everything is, Ramona, so you can get started.”
Jane leaned against the counter, studying the kitchen and wondering how it could possibly look cleaner. Shelley had the sort of house that Jane's mother would have said you could eat off the floors in — if you didn't mind the taint of fresh wax and Lysol. As many years as she'd known Shelley, Jane had never figured out just when Shelley did all that cleaning. She'd never caught her at it. Once she'd appeared at the door with a dustrag in her hand, and occasionally Jane was able to discern the scent of fresh furniture polish, but she never actually saw Shelley clean anything.
But then, there was a lot she didn't understand about Shelley. They'd become friends, Jane supposed, more through geographical proximity than natural inclination. Over the years, they'd come to spend a lot of time together and had a frank, friendly relationship, in spite of the fact that they were very different. But if they hadn't lived so close, Jane wasn't certain she'd have ever learned to like Shelley so well. She was a little too perfect, a smidge too attractive, a bit too bossy and self-assured for most people to warm up to her.
“You weren't supposed to make a cake," Shelley said when she returned to the kitchen a moment later. "I assigned you a carrot salad."
“I know you did, and it's in my refrigerator," Jane said.
“Yes?" Shelley cocked a shapely eyebrow.
“Well, it will be as soon as I fix it. This is Dorothy Wallenberg's cake. How is it that you can wear a paisley scarf with a sweat suit and look like a model? I wrap a scarf around my neck and I look like Dale Evans."
“Don't be a dolt. You could wear anything if you could just believe in yourself. You looked great last week in that green dress with the gold scarf."
“Only because you came over and tied it for me."