I could tell that she craved company; whether it was mine specifically I didn’t know. But every night when she and Peter would come home from dinner in Plattsburgh or wherever they’d been, Peter would head out back to his barn studio and Libby would look at me with pleading eyes and ask me to stay for a mug of Earl Grey.
And I always did. Even when it was late and Gus had been at the neighbors’ for too long, I couldn’t refuse the extra hour or two that Libby would pay me to sit with her. First and foremost, I needed the money, but I was also enthralled by everything about her. Being in her presence put me in a kind of trance.
One night it was past eleven when Libby shuffled through the door, her cheeks rosy pink from the sharp November cold. Her pale blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and she was wearing dark eye makeup. She looked so pretty it was almost agonizing.
“The kids get to sleep okay?” She unzipped her smooth leather boots.
I nodded.
“Sorry we’re so late.”
“That’s all right. Is Peter out back?”
“But of course.” Libby rolled her eyes. “He’s most inspired in the middle of the goddamn night.” She formed air quotes around the word inspired.
I refrained from mentioning that Peter also seemed to spend most of each day closed off painting in the barn.
“Tea?” Libby glanced at me, hopeful, and reached for the kettle.
“I shouldn’t.” I wanted to stay, but that night Gus had a cold, and I knew I needed to pick him up from the Carsons’ and get him in his own bed.
“Wine?” Libby’s mouth slid into a small smile, and there were those hopeful eyes again. It was the first time she’d offered me alcohol. I couldn’t imagine the kind of wine she and Peter drank, but I knew it’d be better than the jugs Kyla’s older sister bought us.
“I could stay for a glass.” I nodded. “Thanks.”
I watched Libby open a bottle of red with expert hands, twisting the screw into the cork and whisking it out in an easy flash. She wore an ivory silk blouse that billowed around her bony chest, and tight black pants that made her legs look like chopsticks. I had begun to envy every single piece of clothing she owned.
She poured two glasses and slid one across the counter toward me. Libby held her stem and, closing her eyes, lowered her perfect nose to the rim. She inhaled, and her face flooded with something satiated and dense. I drew in the details of the elegant way she sipped, tilting her chin up ever so slightly.
I knew nothing about wine; I’d only ever had it from a plastic cup. I attempted to take as graceful a sip as Libby’s, but I pitched the glass too far back and it sloshed all over my throat. Still it ran down smooth, and a warm glow settled in my belly. An even sweetness lingered on my tongue. I could’ve drunk the whole bottle.
“So.” Libby shifted forward. “How’s the boyfriend?” She hadn’t asked me about Burke since that first day.
“We broke up,” I stated, proud.
“Oh?” Libby looked surprised. “Is that good news or bad news?”
“Well, I’m the one who ended it.”
“I see.”
“So, good news.” It was the story I was telling myself, the conviction I used to bury the part of me that was cracked in two without Burke, unhinged and flailing. “He parties too much.” The truth.
“If I’m being honest, my initial hunch was that you were way too good for him.” Libby twirled the stem of her wineglass. “I mean, he’s good-looking. But my hunches tend to be pretty on point.”
I nodded. I understood that Libby could see beyond Burke’s tall frame and pretty blue eyes, past his status as the dreamiest guy in the junior class at our high school. She saw the Marlboro Reds and the bad manners; who, in Libby Fontaine’s world, would flick a cigarette butt out the window onto somebody’s front lawn? Somehow, I knew, not a soul.
To Libby, Burke was a hick. White trash. And by some miracle—perhaps my quick transformation or perhaps due to something more profound that only Libby could see—I was not. I was mature enough to employ as a babysitter. I was poised enough to drink tea with. And in the short time I’d come to know Libby, that had begun to mean everything.
“I just think that with someone like Burke…” Libby drummed her fingertips across the marble countertop. “Well, one, beware the party boy. And two…” She looked up, her cinnamon eyes clear. “I know I haven’t actually met him, but I get the sense he isn’t nearly as smart as you, Heather. And you should be with someone who’s smarter than you.”
“Is Peter smarter than you?” It came out sounding like a challenge, and I immediately wished I hadn’t asked.
“Yes,” Libby said, unfazed. “I mean, we’re smart in opposite ways. Peter’s very mathematically minded, believe it or not. His art is numerical and precise. And I’m better with language and writing.”
“Interesting. Is that what you studied in school?”
Libby nodded. “I was an English major at Barnard. I worked in book publishing for a few years after college, and I thought about applying to grad schools and going back to get my MFA … but then I got pregnant.”
I made a mental note to look up MFA when I got home.
“I still write every now and then. Mostly short stories, and I’m working on a longer novella. But with the little ones…” She smiled stiffly. “It’s hard to find the time.”
“I understand.” The wine coursing through my veins tempted the honesty out of me. Before I could stop myself, I was telling her about Gus.
Sweet, four-year-old Gus, with his messy head of golden hair and inquisitive eyes, the same shade of green as mine. Gus was born when I was in sixth grade, two years before my mom was found dead in the front seat of her car. Some lady found her slumped over the steering wheel in the Price Chopper parking lot and called the cops.
I wasn’t sad, not really. My mother’s death was something I’d anticipated long before it happened, an inevitable occurrence that left me feeling ambivalent as I helped my father clean out her closet the day after she overdosed. Except for a short-lived stint when she was pregnant with Gus, my mother had always done drugs. In elementary school we learned that drugs kill you. My mother had been killing herself for most of my life, and I wasn’t surprised when she died.
The worst part of her death was what it did to my father. I was old enough to understand that unlike my mother, my father was one of the numerous addicts in Langs Valley who was able to stay functional. He worked construction to keep us afloat, and though on plenty of nights I’d hear my parents ripping lines in the living room and cackling with laughter into the wee hours of the morning, my father always dragged himself to work the next day, while my mother slept it off or went to a friend’s to continue her bender.
My father was lucky to have a job, he always said so. The employment rate in Langs Valley had plummeted since the big cotton mill closed in the late sixties after too many companies took their businesses overseas. The mill had employed hundreds of workers, my grandpa among them, and when it tanked, people lost everything: jobs, health insurance, hope. The town was never the same after that.