Page 8 of Valley of the Moms
“I don’t think we can agree on that, actually. But in any case. Ihave an afternoon meeting,” Mimi said. “So, I do have to get going. I hope we’ve cleared things up here?”
“I’m just wondering,” Anna said. “What if we haven’t? Cleared things up?”
It was the first time Anna had seen a change in Mimi. That porcelain face—for just a second—twisted into a contortion. Had Anna imagined it? But just like that, it was back to normal, like a doll you see in a horror movie. Blink once, imagine its disfiguration; blink again, it’s as if it never happened. Mimi pursed her lips, which made her cheeks tuck in just a little. She had a dimple on one side, Anna now noticed. People probably thought that was cute and endearing.
“It’s best if we have. Cleared things up,” she said. There was no room for ambiguity. “And I think we have!” At that, it was as if a switch had flipped. She clapped both hands together and stood up with a little hop, allowing the chair to jump back against the wall of the bakery, and Anna could see that Mimi’s boots (also Gucci!) had a heel to them—they were designed for neither snow nor rain. “I’m so, so glad we did this!”
“Right,” Anna said. “Me, too.”
“I have to run, but you know where to reach me,” Mimi said, collecting her phone and her purse. “And I hope you’ll consider, you know,the membership.” At that, she took a step forward and leaned in and did the thing that wealthy white women in New England towns did, grabbing Anna by the shoulders and pulling her into a half-hug and barely brushing her cheek with the kind of kiss that you offer someone that you don’t know very well and don’t care to know much better. Anna’s body was stiff. She didn’t yield to the embrace. Mimi squeezed Anna tight. Surprisingly tight.She’s got a bodybuilder’s grip,Anna thought to herself.She could wrestle a tiger to the ground. Then stopped herself from laughing at the thought.
“Sogoodto see you, though, Anna,” Mimi said, and Anna could tell that she almost meant it, that most people would have been fooled. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.” She pulled the big black Gucci glasses down over those fluttering eyelashes and then she was gone, leaving Anna Plummer with the crumbs of the croissant and a baguette to bring home, one loaf of bread that she would contemplate tearing into in the car.
Chapter 6
HE WOKE UPin the night, sometimes twice, three times, sticky with his own sweat, imagining a depressed side of the mattress, realizing there was nobody there. The air felt chilled, like he was sharing the space with a ghost, but then, Denny remembered, hewassharing the space with a ghost, because Anna was everywhere: in the paint colors she selected, and the upholstery that was her idea (the fuckingvelvet,she loved to announce, to anyone who would listen), and the diffusers that lived in unused corners, smelling of Balsam and cranberry, irrespective of the season, since she had a thing for Christmas.
In the first few weeks, he left the house untouched, as if willing her much-anticipated return. Despite her proclivity for tidiness, a pair of her slip-on sneakers—Vans, inexplicably decorated with bagels—sat on the middle landing to the stairs, and he did not bother to bring them up or down. It was as if he expected someone to come for them. Mornings, he found that Ben came and stuck his feet into them, then took them out, dazed. They were all waiting for something to happen that never did: for Anna to walk throughthe door, her purple perfume of energy behind her, sometimes a pulsing angry purple, sometimes lilac-hued, soft.
Thinking back on it later, Denny would remember almost nothing about the funeral. The service was at Twomey, LeBlanc, on High Street, in Newburyport, at Anna’s mother’s request. Anna herself would probably have preferred a party over at the Elks, with free Bud Light for everyone (he seemed to remember her once saying she wanted to have a funeral party at a Chinese restaurant, but good luck finding a place big enough in Newburyport, and anyway, Szechuan Taste had closed down).
There were people he knew and people he didn’t, thanks to an obituary taken out in theDaily News; he had nothing to do with that, either. The white walls of grief had made him a shell of a person in those first days. He was awake in the morning with the express purpose of dressing and feeding his children. In the evenings, he stumbled to bed realizing that he had gone hours without eating, and then walked down into the kitchen in a daze, picking through casseroles that had been left behind by neighbors and friends, a kindness he felt he didn’t deserve.
All of that time was compressed, impossible to parse. The only distinguishable moments, Denny realized, were the ones punctuated by visits from the police, which seemed frequent enough. Denny could feel them poking around like dogs sniffing days-old trash. At first, they had come by only in what he thought of as an ever-widening circle. Evidence, site investigation, procedural stuff, they said. But soon, Denny started to get the sense that he might be a suspect in his wife’s murder, and he became gripped by a sense of unease.
The stubbier officer, Denny had come to know by now, was named Malkin, a local guy who once played hockey, and well, too. In fact, everyone called him Sticks, though you’d never know from looking at him. Sticks had stopped by exactly three times since The Night. The first time, it was to drop off a ziplock bag filled with afew things that had once belonged to Anna: a wedding band with five diamonds on top, all adding up to one carat total. Where was the engagement ring, Denny wanted to know?Musta come off in the river.Denny didn’t believe that part for a second, didn’t believe most things cops told him, never had. Despite the officer’s kindness on that first night, Denny had grown leery of him. Sticks had the kind of smarmy way of talking out of the side of his mouth that made it sound like everything he was saying was a lie. That ring had belonged to Anna’s mother, one large oval diamond in the center, surrounded on the side by two baguettes, as they called them, though it made Denny think of bread, each time, without fail. Now it was either beneath a block of ice in the Ipswich River, or, more likely, sitting on the charmed finger of some police officer’s wife, who would never dare wear the thing out in public.
A few nights after the wedding band was returned, Sticks showed up a second time, this time with an officer Denny had never seen before. Sticks held his hat in his hand, much like the first time he had come to the house.
“Mr. Plummer,” he said when Denny came to the door. Denny, busy feeding his two children, had taken some time. No use correcting the officer who, he could see, would plainly never call him Denny.
“Did you want to come in?” he asked.
“No, no.” Sticks cleared his throat. The other officer looked uncomfortable. He was slightly taller, also round, and stared at his shoes. “It’s just …” Sticks continued: “We’re going to ask you if you can come into the station. Sometime? Maybe this week?”
“You came here at dinnertime to ask?”
“People are usually home at dinnertime,” the second officer offered.
Sticks looked at him, and this time not with kindness.
“We’re sorry to have bothered you,” Sticks said. “We just wanted to ask.” And that was it. They disappeared into the Januarynight, which had turned a bruising sort of cold, the kind that burns your cheeks the second you step outside.
But on the third time around, they weren’t as kind. The knock came a week later. Denny hadn’t been avoiding it. He had only forgotten. Anna had signed the kids up for ski lessons on Wednesday nights. There was Spanish on Mondays, and library on Tuesdays and the gym classes to remember and the snow pants to pack with the regular pants. The groceries, of course, and the laundry. So much laundry. Sheets needed to be stripped and washed, baths needed to be drawn. Here was the grief, hanging heavy like a cloud, thick and dark and impossible to navigate. Before he knew it, another week had passed, another week without his wife, another week without a drive to the station.
Sticks’s knock, on this third appearance, was pronounced. Denny didn’t need to guess who was at the door.
“Officers,” he said, giving a nod.
“Mr. Plummer,” the officer said. “Maybe you know why we’re here?”
“I assume it’s to ask me why I haven’t been down to the station yet.”
“Good guess.”
“I do apologize for that,” Denny said. “I did lose track of the time a bit.” He gestured around the entryway to the house, which was a mess: papers overflowing on a credenza; a glass of water with a ring of condensation large and wide around its base; toys surrounding the foot of the stairs.
“I see,” Sticks said. “Sorry about all this. Just see to it you get in soon?”
