Olivia Goldsmith - Young Wives

Michelle knew she was a survivor, the lucky one, satisfied with her life, stable in a time of instability. Up and down the block marriages had failed, families had split, and houses had gone up for sale. Not hers. The two things she knew for sure were that her friendship with Jada had survived during all of the upheaval, and that her own marriage was secure.

It hadn’t always been so perfect here. When she’d first moved in, she’d been a little lonely. Then she met Jada. Every morning for the last four years, since Jada moved in, the two of them had been walking what people in the neighborhood called “the circuit,” following the curving route of the old suburban streets at the fastest pace they possibly could with a dog in tow. They’d been religious about it, forty minutes of walking, no matter what, and Michelle believed that Jada found the habit as comforting a way to start the day—and lose some weight—as she did. It was the only time they gave to themselves, and it bolstered both of them. At first they’d only talked about the kids, their school, that sort of stuff. But then when Michelle’s mother died, they talked about that. And Jada had told stories about growing up. Finally, Michelle had opened up about her own lousy childhood. They’d been best friends since then. They gossiped about the neighborhood. And recipes. And clothes. And all the other girl stuff. Now, since this problem with Clinton had surfaced, they talked about that.

It was a luxury Michelle hadn’t had since her school days. Since her marriage she’d been so busy with Frank and the kids that she’d lost touch with the gang back in the Bronx. She stretched her long legs and walked down toward the Jackson house. She could see Clinton, but not Jada, moving around the kitchen. Michelle took a deep breath, enjoying the crisp air, and started back toward her house. She got to the edge of her property and waited while Pookie sniffed the leaves, admiring her house.

Michelle took pride in her home. She kept her house, her body, her children, and her life neat and clean and regular. She looked down at Pookie. The dog was a purebred cocker spaniel, not like one of the mutts that were always getting run over down home. “Right, Pookie?” she asked out loud. The dog looked up and cocked his silky head. “Let’s go in,” Michelle said, and the dog turned toward the front door light.

Jenna was out of her bath by the time Michelle got back inside and she went in to clean up the kids’ bathroom. “Hey. What’s this?” she asked Jenna, and pointed to the full bathtub, which was just starting to drain.

“Come on, Mom!” Jenna said. “I’m not going to drown. It’s too cold to wash in two inches of water.”

“You know the rule,” Michelle told her. “No baths higher than the tape.” She pointed to the red line she had affixed years ago to the inside of the tub, along with the nonskid rubber stick-ons she’d glued down to the ceramic bottom. It was hard to get the dirt out from their edges but it was worth it. Most fatal accidents occurred in the home.

“Mo-o-o-om.” Jenna stretched the single syllable out until it was an aria almost as long as Tony singing out Maria’s name in West Side Story .

“Most accidents happen in the home,” Michelle told her eleven-year-old daughter for what, conservatively, had to be the three-thousandth time. She followed her daughter into Jenna’s perfect bedroom—a room Michelle would have killed for when she was eleven. “I’ll give you ten minutes for VH1—no MTV—before you have to shut off the light,” she told Jenna.

“Won’t I get to see Daddy before I go to bed?” Jenna asked, ready to pout. Trying to be more like a teenager every second.

“No, sweetskin. He’s working,” Michelle told her, and watched the glower of disappointment bloom on Jenna’s perfect pink face. Michelle knew just how she felt. The Russo women—Jenna, Michelle, and Frank’s mother Camille—all adored their Frank.

“Daddy might be taking us all out to dinner on Friday. And then it’s the weekend.” Frank never worked on the weekend. He was a really attentive father, and both Frankie and Jenna worshipped him. “Look, Daddy’s been working very hard for us lately. Let’s bake him a cake for tomorrow. Okay?”

“Yes!” In a second, Jenna turned from sulky preteen to delighted child. “Can I frost it all myself? And can I lick the bowl?”

A sugar promise did wonders in attitude adjustment, Michelle knew, but she wasn’t a total pushover. “You can frost it alone, but you have to share the bowl with Frankie,” Michelle told Jenna for what also must have been the three-thousandth time. She looked at her watch. “Now just five minutes of VH1. Then lights out.” Jenna smiled, snuggled under her quilt, and sighed. Michelle knew she’d be sleeping in less than three minutes and made a mental note to come back in after straightening out the bathroom to shut off the TV.

She wiped up the splashes, put two washcloths up to soak, then picked up and refolded three bath towels (Two children and three towels? It didn’t add up.) She Soft-Scrubbed the sink and Windexed and wiped the mirror. Frankie, she noticed, had remembered to put his dirty clothes in the hamper (good) but he’d also thrown in one of his little Nike Airmax sneakers (bad—there would have been chaos before breakfast). Michelle left the bathroom, its towels hung, its tile gleaming, and looked in on Frankie, who had already tossed off his quilt. She put his sneakers beside the bed, covered him, and kissed his sweet, high forehead—just like his father’s. Then she shut off the TV in Jenna’s room. Jenna murmured something in mild protest from her bed, but the lure of sleep was too strong. Jenna held Pinkie, the toy rabbit she’d had since she was a baby, in a stranglehold that was her precursor to sleep. When she turned toward the wall, Michelle smiled.

Then she went into her bedroom. She got out her best silk nightgown, took the Joy perfume bottle from the bureau, and went into the bathroom she shared with Frank. She began to run a bath but first, carefully, hung the shimmering gown over the shower door so the folds would fall out. Then she looked into the mirror.

Michelle smiled. She was taller than average: she liked to say she was five-foot-eleven, though she was really only five-ten-and-a-half. Frank was her height, but he liked her tall. Way tall. So she always wore heels, except on her walks with Jada. Height helped her—it made her look much more attractive. But she admitted she was good-looking. She’d been lucky—she’d gotten the pert nose and strong jawline of her Irish heritage without the really narrow mouth. In fact, her mouth was so full that it made her self-conscious. In school girls had made fun of her—calling her “fish mouth” and “trout”—but the boys had flocked to her.

She shook her head and her hair gleamed, but the roots…. She’d have to make an appointment to touch up her blond color. Her complexion could carry off the lightness. The only disadvantage she had was her skin; it was so delicate it showed every change in her mood by flushing or paling, but also—if she wasn’t careful—wrinkling like the poppy petals she swept off the patio all summer. Michelle perpetually slathered on creams and potions. Even with them she knew she had less than a decade left before the lines, a tiny network of wrinkles, kicked in. Oh, well. She still looked good.

With the steam from the bath filling the room she could look into the reflective glass and see herself as she’d been at twenty-one, a decade ago, and it didn’t seem as if there had been a lot of change for the worse. Maybe her highlights were helped along just a little bit, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Okay, her waist had expanded from her pregnancies, but only by an inch or two. She peered at herself, her green eyes moving along her mirrored form. Her breasts … well, they had also expanded from the pregnancies, which was good—at least it made her waist look smaller. She pulled her sweater off and admired herself. Not bad. She allowed herself a smile. In an hour Frank would be home and admire her even more. She reached over her head to do up her hair—but just for now. Frank liked her hair down in bed. And she liked Frank to get what he wanted, as long as he wanted her .