“My apologies for being late, Caroline.” She touched her hostess’s cheek briefly with her lips, leaving a light lavender smear. “Todd and I kept getting cut off. A bad overseas connection.” She plopped into the empty place next to me and made a face. “We’re having a few issues.”
Caroline’s expression said she didn’t believe Misty, not for a second, while I wondered about openly using a fight with her spouse as an excuse and showing up for tea dressed like a Skype hooker. After Misty’s biting attack on these women at our lunch, I wondered about her showing up at all.
But, thank God.
Caroline didn’t say a word. She reached for a small wooden box on the Louis XV end table beside her. The signal, apparently, that we were beginning. Every eye in the room was now glued to that box.
“As most of you know, there is one opening in my club this year because of Helen’s unfortunate death. I thought this would be a good way for me to get to know the prospective candidates a little better.”
Who was Helen?
I stared at the box. Human ashes? Misty stared at her bitten nails. Tiffany eagerly propped herself forward. Holly appeared to want to power through this as quickly as possible and get after that potato. Lucinda of the multisyllabic last name tossed back two pills from a prescription bottle, a little too late.
“Your husband’s resume is obviously going to be a huge asset to our little community, Emily.” Before I could respond, Caroline nodded at Misty. “I’m sure not everyone will cotton to you two being on the fast track. The other girls here have been applying for years.”
Tiffany shot me a death stare, while I made a vague mental note to Google the etymology of cotton as a verb, during the part of my pregnant day when I sprawled on the bed with orange Doritos and Googled random things. During the part of my day where I pretended there was only one of me, not two or three or four.
“In this box, there are five slips of paper,” Caroline continued serenely. “Each one is a secret that belongs to someone in this room. We’ll pass the box, and each of you will randomly pull one out and read it aloud to the group.”
Not the boxed remains of a dead person. But this-what was this? I waited for the burst of laughter. For rebellion. For people to jump up and say they’d left these kinds of silly games behind a long time ago, at around fifteen, with séances and slutty bathroom graffiti. But no one flinched.
Caroline passed the box to me. I took it. I had a decision to make. It was a lovely box. Dark mahogany. Old. An intricate ivory rose was inlaid in the lid. My hand shook a little as I fiddled with the brass catch.
When I raised the lid, I smelled the sea. Salt. Decomposition.
Guilt.
The box held a jumble of white slips of paper that appeared to have escaped from fortune cookies. I tried to buy time by running one of my fingers over the words etched into the inside of the lid. The rose remembers the dust from which it came.
Caroline leaned over and moved my fingers into the nest of paper.
“Pull one out and read it aloud.” Insistent.
What did she know about me? I fumbled to separate one piece of paper from the others and smoothed it out between my fingers. I heard a voice, surely not mine, because the smart me would already be in her car, turning the key.
“I killed Alex.”
6
I wanted to take the words back as soon as they floated from my mouth. Words like insidious dandelion seeds, blown from a slight puff of breath. Poisonous words that would thrive in a room like this, where the soil was already disturbed. But that must be the point.
One of the women in the room drew in an audible breath, either of shock or guilt. I didn’t care who.
This was not my secret.
I stared at the other slips of paper, wondering which one was.
“Pass the box,” Caroline ordered.
Reluctantly, I handed the box to Misty.
Misty glanced at her slip and then over at me, hesitating. Then she read in a clear, calm voice: “This baby is not my husband’s.”
“Are you kidding me?” The words flew out of my mouth. “How could you read that? Of course this baby is my husband’s!”
Caroline’s hand landed lightly on my knee. “Emily, this is a bonding exercise. We hold our thoughts until the end. You do not know if other women in this room are carrying a child.” I sucked in a breath. Every other belly in this room was a washboard. Actually, Tiffany’s and Holly’s sank in, like small moon craters.
Tiffany eagerly grabbed the box out of Misty’s hands. “This is fun. It reminds me of the old days at Alpha Chi. We told each other everything.” She giggled nervously, smoothing out her piece of paper. “This one is bad. It says: I do not believe in God. Well, I can tell you this is not my secret. Just ask the woman I witnessed to in the Kroger express lane yesterday.”
She thrust the box at Holly, whose hands were tightly clenched in her lap, a one-inch red nail digging into her wrist like an implement of suicide. It also looked sharp enough to mutilate a potato.
“Come on, Holly, you need to play.” Tiffany’s voice was impatient. “Hell, I’ll just pull a slip for you. Do you want me to read it?”
“That’s not allowed,” Caroline said.
“Give it here.” Holly snatched one out. I was mesmerized by the small crescent-shaped indent in her wrist. She read the words silently. Something I wish I’d done. But then her face relaxed. “It says, Look under my bed.”
“It doesn’t say that. That’s not a secret. It’s more like an order.” Tiffany ripped the slip out of her hand. “Oh. It does.” She shrugged. “Kind of ambiguous.”
What’s under my bed? Nothing, I assured myself. No old sketches. No diary. Just dust. Maybe a pair of Mike’s dirty socks.
The box passed to Lucinda, and I could feel its weight, so much heavier now that it was a few slips of paper lighter. I prayed that she would be the one person in this gathering with the common sense to stop all of this.
“There is blood in my house.” Lucinda’s lisp was a little hard to understand, but the word blood was unmistakable. She popped the slip of paper in her mouth and began to chew like a bubble gum addict on cocaine. I had guessed her to be the one who didn’t believe in God, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was blood in her house. Maybe her husband beat her, or her children. Maybe all the bad things in her life, all her insecurities and decisions, sprung from her very first lisping word.
A trickle of sweat rolled down my back. I felt physically pinned to the chair by invisible forces. Waiting for the punch from a sneering bully. I was certain this exercise was going exactly as Caroline intended.
A butterfly brushed my arm. Caroline’s silk dress. She was swaying slightly in her chair, falling into me. I leaned over to steady her while everyone else remained rooted, staring the other way, fascinated by Lucinda’s vigorous chomping.
“Are you OK, Caroline?” I said it loudly to get their attention, struggling to fake concern. After all, this nasty creature was torturing us.
Us. Already, the bonding that Caroline sought, and a seed of fury sprouted in me.
Lucinda had ceased to be the most bizarre thing in the room. Something appeared to be very wrong with Caroline. Her face was slick and waxy. “I’m getting one of my migraines,” she stuttered out. “We’ll have to finish this some other time. Misty, can you see me up?”