She Makes It Look Easy Read online

  I smiled. Leave it to a little boy to go to bathroom humor in the midst of a crisis. “Like lots of things. Like you and me and Donovan and Dylan. He knows each of us by smell, and he can find his way back to us by smelling his way.”

  I put him down, and he crouched on all fours with a big grin on his face, pretending to sniff the ground. “Hey, Donovan, I’m Lucky. I’m smelling my way home.”

  Just then I saw Donovan raise a finger and point to our backyard neighbors’ house. “I think I see Lucky!”

  I tried to follow his line of sight but saw nothing outside, no movement, no black figure. “Honey, I don’t see anything.” I ruffled his hair and was about to walk back inside to get out of the heat for a moment, but he persisted for me to look again. I wrote it off as his eyes playing tricks on him.

  “No, Mom. Inside the house,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the house.

  I looked again, through what I assumed was the kitchen window. Sure enough, I saw a woman petting a large black dog. “Boys,” I said cautiously, “that might just be their dog. We don’t know that’s Lucky.”

  “It is Lucky. It is! I can see him!” Duncan said, jumping up and down with enthusiasm, though I doubted from his height he could see much of anything. He climbed up on the deck railing to get a better view, but I pulled him off before he could fall. I had no choice but to call for Dylan to come with us and, flanked by my band of merry warriors, trek into the neighbors’ yard.

  The boys clustered behind me, satellites around my orbit, as I pressed the neighbors’ doorbell. The dog—who I now knew was Lucky—barked his head off as I heard our neighbor unlocking a series of dead bolts, which incidentally seemed excessive in this safe suburban neighborhood. “I heard Lucky in there!” Duncan smiled around his finger, which had worked its way back into his mouth on our walk. I didn’t bother telling him to remove it.

  The door opened a crack as the woman checked us out. Apparently assuming a mother and her three little boys were safe enough, she swung the door open with a smile. “Yes?” she asked.

  I gestured at the boys, who were all pressed close to me, suddenly shy. “We were looking for our dog and wondered if maybe he wandered over here,” I said.

  On cue, Lucky pushed his nose through the space between her and the door, shoving her out of the way with his big head as he bounded toward the boys. “Lucky!” they all shouted at once.

  “I was just on the phone calling animal control,” she said with a look of relief. Her face looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her. She gestured at the dog. “He wasn’t wearing a collar.”

  I felt oddly scolded. “I know, yes. Well. He has a collar. We just took it off, and I … well, I forgot to put it back on him. We just moved, and everything’s been—”

  “Are you the new family who moved in behind us?” she asked. Her hand rose to her sleek bob, smoothing down her hair, although it looked perfect to me. She wore lipstick, even though she didn’t appear to be going anywhere. I wondered what I looked like in David’s baggy, ripped jeans; stained, threadbare T-shirt; and greasy hair desperately in need of shampoo. I wore lipstick only to special events. She smiled at me, displaying perfect straight white teeth and dimples. I imagined she got her teeth bleached at a dentist. I hadn’t been in for a cleaning in over a year.

  I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets. “Yes, we are. I’m Ariel Baxter, and these are my boys, Donovan, Dylan, and Duncan.”

  “Oh, you did Ds,” she said. “We did Cs.”

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “Your boys’ names. All Ds. My girls are Cameron and Caroline. Cs.” She smiled and extended her hand. We shook with the stiff formality of strangers. She then shook each of the boys’ hands while they looked at me questioningly but, thankfully, went along with it.

  “I’m Justine Miller,” she said. “I guess we’ll be neighbors now.” She laughed. “I apologize for not coming over yet. I saw movement over there and should have been by with some goodies for you.” She seemed to be scolding herself. Lucky flopped down by our feet on her front porch. “You guys look thirsty. Would you like to come inside for some lemonade?” she asked.

  “Sure,” the boys said in unison, never ones to turn down juice or the chance to potentially destroy someone else’s house. Before I could protest, Justine waved them all in, including Lucky. “I could go put Lucky back in the fence,” I offered.

  “Oh no. Lucky’s fine.” I noticed he walked in like he owned the place, the traitor sticking close to Justine. She giggled. “He knows I have treats for him in here.” She ordered him to sit while she opened a canister and threw two dog treats at him, which he greedily swallowed after catching them in midair. I looked around but saw no dog anywhere. I decided not to ask. It was none of my business why this woman kept dog treats in her house but didn’t own a dog.

  We all stood awkwardly in her kitchen until she commanded we sit down. Each of the boys took a seat at the table, where she placed a plate of sugar cookies. “I just baked these today. I’m so glad I did,” she said. The boys snatched the cookies off the plate just as greedily as the dog had gulped down his treats. I didn’t say a word but made a mental note to go over manners with them when we got home. I looked up to see Justine studying us, the full lemonade pitcher in her hand, a puzzled look on her face.

  “So you said you have two girls?” I asked, to make small talk. Two perfect little girls would explain the perfectly appointed house full of breakable knickknacks, the time to bake homemade cookies, her calm demeanor. I surveyed the large kitchen/eating area/living room. Not a thing was out of place.

  “That’s right. They just got home from summer camp and are upstairs resting for a bit. They get so tired from a full day of activities,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

  My boys never rested. They had two speeds: bouncing off the walls or passed out. She turned to the boys. “I know my girls would love to meet you. You all could play together. We have a lovely playset outside, and you guys are welcome to come play anytime.”

  Donovan looked over at me with a look that said, “See, you overreacted earlier.” “That’s a nice offer,” I said, “but we might want to put some limits on it. Trust me—you don’t want my boys constantly in your yard.”

  “Oh, the more the merrier, I always say,” she replied, grinning broadly at the boys. “I noticed you don’t have a playset, and my girls don’t play on it nearly enough. Might as well get some use out of it.”

  I felt stung, as if our lack of a playset was some sort of commentary on my ability to provide entertainment for my children. “Well, we have the trampoline,” I said. “The boys love that, and it’s a great way for them to get some energy out.” Why did I feel the need to justify our outdoor play-equipment choices?

  “Your girls are welcome to come jump anytime,” I added, matching her kind offer with an equally kind one, I thought.

  She shook her head gravely. “No, I had a friend whose child was severely injured on a trampoline. Our girls know not to get on one.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling chided and a little embarrassed. I took a long swallow from my lemonade and calculated how quickly I could get out of there. I looked up to see Dylan and Duncan using Justine’s long scrolled candlesticks as guns, pretending to fire them at each other. This, I remembered, was why I didn’t have nice decorative touches in my home. I plucked a candlestick from each boy’s hand and deposited them back onto the wrought-iron holders in the center of her glass-top table, which, I noted, was strangely devoid of fingerprints, smudges, or smears. Except for the ones my boys had just added.

  “Well,” I said, draining my glass, “it’s really nice to meet you, but we’d better get back home.” I eyed Donovan so he would follow my lead. I stood up and hoped the boys would too. Instead all three of them snatched the rest of the cookies off the plate and gulped the lemonade like orphans.
r />   “Oh, I wish you didn’t have to rush off so fast,” Justine said. She was wearing a perfectly pressed pink polo shirt and white shorts. Maybe they were new. Or she actually ironed. Which meant that we could never be friends.

  “Well, I still have quite a bit of unpacking to do,” I offered, gesturing at my house, which was clearly visible from the bank of windows in the room we were in. My eyes rested on the framed portrait above her fireplace, a portrait I remembered taking at a charity event. That was how I knew her. It had been one of my first real gigs, a nightmare afternoon of families full of fussing children moving on and off the front porch where I was shooting the pictures. One family after another had paid an exorbitant fee for fifteen minutes on a porch swing flanked by ferns.

  Justine had picked the one of just the two girls, each dressed in white eyelet dresses, huge bows on top of their blonde heads. I remembered taking some good ones of their whole family and wondered why she hadn’t chosen one of those. Her husband, I recalled, had been quiet as Justine told me exactly what shots she wanted done, as if she was the expert and I was just the hired hand. It was all coming back to me the longer I stood there. I pointed at the photo. “I remember taking that,” I said and smiled at her.

  Her eyes widened as she realized what I was saying. “You? That was you that day?”

  I chuckled. “You’ll do just about anything when you’re first starting out, trying to build a name for yourself.”

  “Well, you must’ve really wanted to build a name. It was hot as Hades out there,” she said and laughed, fanning herself dramatically to make her point. “I nearly melted.” She looked at the photo for a second, as though she had forgotten it was there.

  “I remember you have a beautiful family.”

  She smiled brightly again. “Well, thank you.” She pointed at the portrait. “And you do good work, even when it’s 112 degrees outside. Wait till I tell everyone that you live here now. You’re going to be super busy once everyone finds out that you are here. I get oodles of compliments on that portrait. There are a ton of families in this neighborhood that would love your services. Do you have some cards?”

  “Yep.” I smiled. I had just received in the mail the new ones with our updated address. “I’ll run some over here sometime.”

  “Or I’ll just stop by if that’s okay. I am going to personally see to it that you stay busy, just you wait and see.”

  “That would be fine for you to stop by, but I have to warn you the house is a disaster.”

  “Oh, girl, you just moved in. It’s fine. No one’s expecting House Beautiful.”

  I wondered how to tell her that my house would never—barring a miracle—be House Beautiful, that I could already tell that was her area of expertise. Instead I asked, “How long have you lived here?”

  “Five years. We love it here,” she added quickly.

  “We’re very happy to be here,” I said. “But I’ll be happier once I get everything unpacked and organized.”

  “Well, you might be in luck because organizing’s kind of my thing. You know, like photography is your thing. So if you need any help, just say the word.” She visibly brightened as she said it. From the looks of her house, I knew she was telling the truth. How organizing could be anyone’s thing was a mystery to me.

  “I just might take you up on that,” I said and smiled back at her, though I doubted my smile was as high wattage as her ultrawhite one. “Well, come on, boys, it’s back to work.” I tried to make my tone match her cheery one. I made my way to the door, the boys and Lucky dragging behind me. As I put my hand on the knob, Justine’s voice stopped me.

  “Are you coming to the summer-kickoff party?”

  I turned to her again. Her smile was still in place and she wore an expectant look. I vaguely remembered a flyer affixed to our mailbox when we moved in. The sun had faded it slightly so that the bright red paper was a pinkish color by the time I brought it in and laid it down on the built-in desk in my kitchen. It had been buried under other papers since then.

  “Remind me what it is?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s just the hottest thing going in this neighborhood. You just have to come! I’ve already got the girls’ bathing suits picked out. Cutest little matching polka-dot bikinis!”

  I thought about my boys’ mismatched suits and wondered if I needed to do a quick shopping trip so they, too, would match.

  “It’s this Saturday,” she added. “I hope you’ll come. If you do, I’ll introduce you around and tell everyone how lucky we are to have you living here. You can become our official neighborhood photographer!” She clapped her hands together.

  I found myself nodding along with her. “Sure,” I said. “We’ll be there.”

  The truth was David and I had promised each other we’d spend Saturday doing nothing but unpacking. Oh well, the packing could wait a day longer. And we didn’t have to go to church on Sunday anyway. That could wait. Making friends in our new neighborhood couldn’t.

  I reminded the boys, “Say thank you for the cookies.”

  They all imitated angel children and thanked her. I breathed a sigh of relief that they had complied. We really needed to work on their manners. As we tromped back across the yard, stopping to wave to Justine, who was watching us through her kitchen window, I couldn’t help thinking that, compared to Justine, I had lots to work on.

  Chapter 4

  Ariel

  We made a ragtag crew as we lumbered our way from the parking lot to the neighborhood pool. David carried the cooler, and I held a jumbo-size tote bag full of towels and sunscreen and pool toys—anything I could think of that might be needed for an afternoon by the water. Walking with the boys was like walking with the Three Stooges as they fell into each other and picked at each other every step of the way. David was intent on successfully getting the impossibly heavy cooler past the pool gates without dropping it. I made another mental note to buy a cooler that rolled. I knew there were many other items on that growing list, but I couldn’t have named one of them on that bright summer day.

  I slipped out of my cover-up self-consciously, tugging at my suit in vain. It was the first time I had been in a bathing suit that summer. I didn’t know what was worse, my translucent skin or the way the suit showed my rolls in all the wrong places. David still raised his eyebrows and whistled when I took off my cover-up, but I couldn’t discern whether he meant it or was just being kind. He stripped off his shirt and stretched, seeming not to notice or worry that he was as pale as I was.

  “Boys, let’s go get in the water,” he said. “Let Mommy relax for a minute.” I mouthed the words thank you as he walked off with the boys in tow.

  With nothing better to do, I pulled out a parenting magazine that I had stuck in my bag. Articles about potty training, birthday parties, and nutritious snack ideas swam before my eyes, and I longed for a good novel to read instead. I laid the magazine down and rested my eyes.

  As I felt my skin warming, I remembered that, though I had slathered the boys with sunscreen, I had forgotten all about myself. I was digging around in my bag for a bottle when I heard someone sit in the empty seat on the other side of me. “I know that look,” the woman beside me said. I looked in the direction of her voice. She leaned toward me, extending her hand. “Erica,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you,” I responded, shaking her hand. “Ariel,” I added.

  “Nice to meet you, Ariel,” she said, then paused. “I knew who you were.” She smiled with her confession. “Not much happens in this neighborhood that doesn’t get spread around. Especially new neighbors.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” I looked over at the boys and back at her.

  “I live over on Hastings,” she said. Hastings was the main drag of the neighborhood. A large percentage of residents lived on that street.

  “I’m on Schuyler,” I said.r />
  “Yes. You bought Dan and Laura’s house,” she said.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She smiled at me. Her long dark hair and exotic looks seemed out of place in our vanilla neighborhood. I wondered where she fit in with the other suburban moms. “Dan and Laura were the poster children of the neighborhood,” she said with an almost irritated smile. “Laura and Justine used to run the place. I’m sure you’ve met Justine.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She invited us to this party.”

  “So tell me about yourself,” she said. “Married? Kids? I saw you with those boys. Are they all yours?”

  I winced at her use of the word all. “Yes,” I said, “I have three boys. Donovan’s eight, Dylan is six, and Duncan is four. I’m married to David,” I added. “He’s in sales. He travels,” I continued, as if I was completely in support of my husband’s travels, the doting wife.

  “My husband never traveled,” she said. “He was always home every night for dinner.” She pulled down the large dark sunglasses she was wearing so I could see her dark eyes. “Not that that helped,” she said. She giggled ironically. “We’re divorced now. But at least I got the house.” She rolled her eyes and pushed the sunglasses back up to the bridge of her nose, hiding her eyes once again. “That’s what all the women around here say to me. They can’t think of anything else to say because they are too afraid to talk about it. Talking about it makes it real. If you talk about it, it might happen to you.” She smiled without showing any teeth and smoothed out nonexistent wrinkles in her towel.

  A teenage girl came running up, wearing the regulation swim-team bathing suit I had seen some other children wearing, black with green racing stripes. She shook her head violently, sending water spraying everywhere like a dog. “Heather!” Erica shrieked. “Must you do that?”

  Heather, undeniably Erica’s daughter, grinned at her mother and then over at me. “Sorry, Mom,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Ariel Baxter. She just moved in. She has three little boys.”