Donna Birdsell - Suburban Secrets

“Right. Mullet.”

“What? What’s a mullet?”

“A bad haircut. And the name of the band Roseanna followed.” Grace chugged her soda. “C’mon, tell me. What did you mean I’ve changed?”

Her mother got up from the table and took Grace’s empty glass. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Grace, I didn’t mean anything by it. Is that what you’re wearing?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.” Grace tugged the hem of her black skirt, but it refused to budge. She buttoned the red Chinese silk jacket Tom had given her the Valentine’s Day before last. It had been the only thing in her closet remotely resembling club attire.

Her mother raised her eyebrows again. “Well, have fun. Tell Roseanna I said hello.”

“Right.”

Grace stalked to the bottom of the stairs. “Megan, Callie, Kevin. I’m leaving now!”

Megan and Kevin shouted a muffled goodbye. Callie stuck her head over the second-floor railing. “Bye, Mom. Have fun without us.”

Grace tamped down a sudden attack of guilt. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too. Can we make brownies when I come home?” Callie could sense Grace’s subtle vibrations of guilt like a fine-tuned seismograph.

“Sure.”

“Grace, are you still here?” her mother called from the kitchen.

If she didn’t get out of there soon, her mother would be dragging her up to the guest bathroom to show her the decorative fertility mask she’d made out of half of a bleach bottle.

Grace wiggled her fingers at Callie and slipped out the front door.

Friday, 8:08 p.m.

Killing Me Softly

Grace sped down the Blue Route in the eight-year-old BMW that used to be Tom’s but was now hers. He’d insisted on getting a manual transmission, and now she was stuck with it—a real pain in the butt while she was trying to wipe noses and juggle juice boxes.

She much preferred the minivan, but she’d be damned if she was going to pull into a club driving the family taxi.

She fiddled with the radio. Why were all the stations in her car set to soft rock? When, exactly, had her eardrums surrendered?

She searched the dial for the station that played all eighties, all the time. AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” came on and she smiled. It took her back to when she and her girlfriends would cruise the back roads in an old Dodge Dart looking for keg parties, blasting this song and singing at the top of their lungs.

How sad. Somehow she’d gone from AC/DC to Celine Dion. From keg parties to the occasional glass of chardonnay. Was that what her mother meant? Was that how she’d changed?

She knew it was that, and a whole lot more. She used to have spirit. She used to take risks.

But when she’d married Tom, somehow it had been easy to accept the security and stability he provided in exchange for a few little changes. Higher necklines. Lower hemlines. The Junior League instead of her bowling league.

She drove around for almost an hour, reprogramming the buttons on her radio and thinking about all the crazy things she used to do, forcing herself not to worry that she was going to be late.

Eventually, she pulled into the parking lot of the club. She squinted up at the sign.

Caligula?

She checked the address in her Day-Timer. Sure enough, it was right.

She almost backed out of the lot, but images of her closet filled with navy poly-blend slacks and V-neck sweaters bolstered her nerve.

She could be every bit as crazy as her teenage alter ego. She could.

She got out of the car and tugged her skirt down as far as she could.

“Bring on the Romans,” she said to the dark.

Friday, 9:13 p.m.

Flaming Togas

“ID, please.”

The guy at the door wore baggy jeans and a black T-shirt with a picture of a snarling bulldog. His fingers worked the buttons of a Game Boy with lightning speed.

The B-52’s “Love Shack” blasted out through the open door of the club.

Grace leaned in so the bouncer could hear her over the noise. “You’re kidding me, right? Have you even looked at me? I was twenty-one when this song actually came out.”

He shined a flashlight in her face. “Sorry ’bout that. Five bucks.”

He stepped aside, and she walked straight into ancient Rome. Or a Hollywood-meets-Las Vegas version of it, anyway.

Buff, gorgeous, toga-clad waiters and waitresses wandered the faux-marble floor carrying trays of colorful drinks. Buff, gorgeous, denim-clad patrons sipped them while leaning against faux-marble columns. They were all so young. Well, most of them, anyway.

Grace had no trouble spotting her old high school friends. They were the only ones not trying to look bored.

Roseanna must have had one eye on the door, because she waved to Grace as soon as she walked in.

“Oh. My. God. It’s Grace Poleiski,” somebody shrieked.

Grace smiled. “Hi, everybody.”

The women at the table jumped up and swarmed around her. She exchanged a quick hug with each of them, blinking back the tears that had inexplicably formed in her eyes.

“Sit,” commanded Roseanna. “We just ordered a round of Flaming Togas.”

Grace hooked her handbag over the back of a chair and sat down, taking in all the changes in her friends. “Cecilia, you look great. You lost weight?”

“Forty pounds. Ephedra, until they took it off the market. If I hadn’t started smoking again to compensate, I’d probably look like the Michelin Man already. Hey, you’re looking good, too, Grace.”

“Yeah? I guess you could say I lost some weight, too. About two hundred pounds.”

“What! How’d you do that?”

“It just walked away.”

It took the girls a minute to figure out what she was talking about.

“Your husband,” Roseanna said.

Grace nodded.

Cecilia shook her head. “No shit. When did that happen?”

“January second. Screwing me over was his New Year’s resolution, I guess.”

A waiter arrived with a tray of pale orange shots and set one in front of each woman. He pulled a pack of matches out of the folds of his toga and lit the shots. Low blue flames danced on the surface of the liquor.

“Don’t forget to blow ’em out before you drink ’em,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of mishaps.”

Roseanna smiled. “Remember when Dannie accidentally lit her hair on fire while she was smoking a cigarette in the girls’ bathroom?”

“What did she expect?” said Cecilia. “She used so much hair spray, her hair wouldn’t have moved in a hurricane.”

“Come on,” Dannie said. “My hair wasn’t any worse than anyone else’s. In fact, I remember Grace getting hers tangled in the volleyball net in gym class. It had to be at least a foot high.”

They all laughed.

Grace ordered a margarita and another round of shots.

The waiter walked away, his tight little butt all but peeking out from under the toga.

Dannie propped her chin up on her hand. “Those look like my sheets he’s wearing.”

“You wish,” Cecilia said.

Grace pulled a bunch of pictures out of her purse and passed them to Roseanna.

She’d found them in a shoebox along with the dance card and tiny pencil from her prom, a football homecoming program and the hunk of yarn she’d used to wrap around her high school boyfriend’s class ring.

“Oh, God. I remember this skirt,” Roseanna said. “I couldn’t get one thigh in there, now.”

“Sure you could,” Dannie said. “It would be a little tight, though.”

“Ha-ha.” Roseanna passed the pictures to Cecilia. “Hey, remember when we used to play truth or dare in study hall?”

“Yeah. I think Mr. Montrose almost had a heart attack,” said Cecilia. “You’d always dare me to lean over his desk to ask him a question.”