And so, she dried her eyes. She buried her loneliness so deeply that she lost the knowledge of it. She stopped seeing it.
The following decade, she transformed herself into everything a suburban wife and mother ought to be. She organized all the block parties and made it her business to befriend every new addition to Maple Street with a basket of chocolate goodies and Fritz’s newest perfume. She volunteered at the kids’ schools and raised funds for iPads and art teachers. She resolved arguments and reported bullies. She sent out annual family Christmas cards with the Schroeders in matching sweaters, adopted class crayfish, and stayed up late most nights with her daughters, because one of them invariably had a crisis.
She worried about Gretchen’s perfectionism, and Fritz Jr.’s shyness that he used to medicate with food and now he medicated with other things. About Shelly’s instability, and Ella’s stutter, which had since resolved. Four kids is a lot. But she did it well. She raised them popular and healthy and smart. Teachers complimented her. So did neighbors. She dressed like she was supposed to, in Eileen Fisher, and she cooked nutritious foods, and she kept her figure acceptably trim. She looked the part until she felt the part. Until she was the part.
Once her youngest started grammar school, she picked up work as an adjunct professor, teaching English Composition at Nassau Community College—the only job she’d been able to get after the stain on her record.
Mostly, these things were enough. But occasionally, the murk unfurled. She’d spy her reflection in a mirror when she was alone, mid-argument with an imaginary enemy （and there was always some jerk she was mad at）， or else brushing Shelly’s hair, and think: Who is that angry woman?
It frightened her.
When her oldest left for Cornell University last year, she’d taken it hard. She’d been happy for Gretchen, but her brilliant future had made Rhea’s seem that much more dim. What was left, once all the kids were gone away, and she was left with a thirty-year-old dissertation and Fritz Sr., Captain Earwax Extraordinaire? She’d wanted to break her life, just to escape it. Drive her car into the Atlantic Ocean. Take a dump on her boss’s desk. Straddle her clueless husband, who’d never once taken her dancing, and shout: Who cleans their ears with a washcloth? It’s disgusting! She’d wanted to fashion a slingshot and make a target range of Maple Street, just to set herself free of these small, stupid people and their small, stupid worlds.
It would have happened. She’d been close to breaking, to losing everything. But just like when Fritz moved into her apartment complex: fate intervened. The Wildes moved next door. Rhea couldn’t explain what happened the day she first saw Gertie, except that it was magic. Another outsider. A beautiful misfit. Gertie’d been so impressed by Rhea. You’re so smart and warm, she’d said the first day they’d met. You’re such a success. Rhea’d known then, that if there was anyone on Maple Street to whom she could reveal her true feelings, it was this na?f. One way or another, Gertie Wilde would be her salvation.
Rhea had courted Gertie with dinner invitations, park barbeques, and introductions to neighbors. Made their children play together, so that the Rat Pack accepted the new kids on the block. It wasn’t easy to turn local sentiment in Gertie’s favor. The woman’s house wasn’t ever clean or neat. A pinworm outbreak coincided with their arrival, which couldn’t have been a coincidence. The whole block was itching for weeks.
Worse, her foulmouthed kids ran wild. Larry was a hypersensitive nutbar who carried a doll and walked in circles. Then there was Julia. When they first moved in, she stole a pack of Parliaments from her dad and showed the rest of the kids how to smoke. When her parents caught her, they made her go with them door to door, explaining what had happened to all the Rat Pack parents. Rhea had felt sorry for crying, confused Julia. Why make a kid go through all that? A simple e-mail authored by Gertie stating the facts of the event would have sufficed—if that!
It’s never a good idea to admit guilt in the suburbs. It’s too concrete. You say the words I’m sorry, and people hold on to it and don’t let go. It’s far better to pave over with vagaries. Obfuscate guilt wherever it exists.
The sight of all the Wildes in their doorways had added more melodrama than necessary. The neighbors, feeling the social pressure to react, to prove their fitness as parents, matched that melodrama. Dumb Linda took her twins to the doctor to check for lung damage. The Hestias wondered if they should report the Wildes to Child Protective Services. The Walshes enrolled Charlie in a health course called Our Bodies: Our Responsibility. Cat Hestia had stood in that doorway and cried, explaining that she wasn’t mad at Julia, just disappointed. Because she’d hoped this day would never come. Toxic cigarettes! They have arsenic!