The Guy Not Taken (25 page)

•   •   •

The second Friday in October, Alice rang the buzzer beside the purple door, then tightened her grip on Maisy’s shoulders, looking down the street, past the glass-littered sidewalk at her minivan, which she devoutly hoped would still be there when the playdate was over. The street didn’t fill her with optimism. Victoria’s building looked fine, but the house next door had graffiti painted on the boarded-up windows, and the house next to that had about half a dozen guys in puffy down coats sitting on a sagging couch on the porch, staring at the sparse traffic with hooded eyes while they bobbed their heads to the beat of the music coming from a radio on the windowsill.

“Hello down there!” Victoria called from a third-floor window.

“Hello up there!” Maisy said, giggling. Victoria opened the window and tossed down a key.

“Did you make it okay?” Victoria asked as she opened her front door.

“No problem at all,” said Alice, taking in the apartment.
The living room walls were buttercup yellow and the couch was draped in a cheerful plum-and-rust tapestry. A little radio played a tape of Kids’ Corner, and there was an aquarium where a television set might have been. “Come see!” Ellie said, grabbing Maisy and Alice by the hands and tugging them over to the fishtank, where fish in shades of silver and blue and orangegold swam around a tiny plastic treasure chest.

The girls played with wooden blocks on the living room floor. Victoria and Alice sat on the couch, drinking spicy tea and nibbling the sugar cookies Victoria and Ellie had baked that morning. After an hour, everyone went to the kitchen for lunch, where plants in painted ceramic pots lined the sunny windowsill. Alice sat at the table with the girls while Victoria stood at the stove in tight black jeans and a red tank top, flipping grilled-cheese sandwiches.

“I love your place,” said Alice, thinking what a contrast the cozy, sunny little nest was to her own too-big house, where each and every room, from the basement to the attic, was filled with expensive toys that Maisy had either broken or ignored.

Ellie slept in a tiny room where most of the space was taken up by the washer and dryer. In a wicker toy box at the foot of her bed, she had a little xylophone, a set of ABC blocks, a handful of books, and a box of crayons. That was all, and she seemed content. Certainly happier than Maisy ever was.
I should downsize,
Alice thought, plucking at a thread on her sleeve as Victoria slid quartered sandwiches onto purple plates. Get rid of all of the electronics that lit up and whooped and flashed when Maisy pressed the right color or letter, ditch the portable DVD player that had been their saving grace on long car trips, invest in a set of fingerpaints and some construction paper, a few well-chosen board books . . .

“Hey, baby.” The front door opened, and in came a man
who looked like Victoria’s twin brother—tall and pale, with intricate tattoos covering both of his forearms, a knit cap pulled low over pierced ears, and a slim silver bicycle hitched over his shoulder.

“Hi, Tommy!” Victoria’s face lit up as she leaned in for a kiss. Alice saw Tommy’s hand linger at the small of Victoria’s back, pulling her closer so that her hips bumped his. She swallowed hard. Had Mark ever touched her that way? Even before the saga of their infertility and the treatments, before sex had become something he’d scheduled into his Palm Pilot, before the baby? She wasn’t sure. Victoria patted her husband’s chest, pushing him gently away.

“We have company,” she said.

“Oops,” said Tommy with an amiable grin. He had traces of teenage acne on his forehead and beautiful teeth, perfectly straight and blindingly white. Alice wondered about his parents, back in Harrisburg, who’d presumably paid for the orthodontia, and whether they were shaking their heads over the baby their baby had had. The boy stuck out his hand. “I’m Tom Litcovsky.”

Alice shook his hand and murmured her name. Tommy cadged half a grilled-cheese sandwich, kissed his wife, and headed out the door.

“He comes home for lunch?” she asked Victoria.

“Well, technically. He never gets to, you know, stay and eat anything.” Victoria had never looked like more of a teenager to Alice than she did at that moment, when she smiled. “He says he doesn’t like to go too long without seeing me.”

“That’s so sweet,” said Alice.

“Sweet,” Maisy repeated, with her mouth full of grilled cheese.

•   •   •

“I don’t get it,” Mark said late one night in early November.

Alice rolled over. “Don’t get what?” she asked, even though she knew exactly what he was talking about. Mark had come home from work unexpectedly early that night, while she and Victoria had been making soup in the kitchen. They’d put the little girls to work dumping water in and out of a plastic mixing bowl at the sink while they chopped carrots and onions and gossiped about the other mothers in the group.

“Oh, hello!” Mark had said at the kitchen door, his gaze taking in Victoria’s hair (she’d added green streaks that week), her lip ring, and the elaborate tattoo peeking over the waistband of her low-riding jeans. He’d politely seconded Alice’s invitation to stay for dinner and, as they ate, he’d been on his best behavior, asking polite questions about Victoria’s neighborhood and Ellie’s toilet training. But once the table was cleared, Alice had spotted him in the kitchen running Victoria’s silverware under the hot water for longer than she thought was technically necessary, and he’d gotten Ellie’s name wrong twice.

“That girl,” Mark said. “What’s the deal?”

“The deal is, I met her in Mother’s Hour and I like her. What’s the problem?” Alice asked.

“Well, you have to admit, she’s a bit of a shock to the system.”

Alice shrugged. “I didn’t know that my friends had to follow a dress code.”

“It’s not just her clothes. It’s everything. I mean, Jesus, Alice, what is she? Nineteen?”

“So?”

“So what do you two have in common?”

“You mean besides our daughters, who were born a month apart in the same year?”

Mark sat up with a sigh, as if the conversation was exhausting
him. He flicked on the light and leaned against the headboard. “Yes. Besides that. Does she have an education?”

“She has her GED,” Alice said defensively. “She’s taking classes. She’s a wonderful mother. And I like her. I shouldn’t have to defend my decisions.”

“Okay, okay,” said Mark, yanking the covers up to his chin.

“I don’t complain about your friends.”

“My friends,” said Mark, “are not punk-rock Goth girls with lip rings.”

“No, they’re overweight executives in Dockers. That’s much better.”

“I’m going to sleep,” he said, turning the light off and rolling onto his side.

They lay in the darkness in silence. Five minutes passed, according to the glowing numbers on the digital clock, before Mark spoke again.

“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry. If you like her . . .”

“I do,” said Alice.

“Then that’s fine,” he said. He kissed her cheek and closed his eyes again. Lying there in the darkness, Alice remembered the way Tom had kissed Victoria in their postage-stamp kitchen that smelled of butter and toasted bread, the way his leather-cuffed hand had lingered on the small of her back.

•   •   •

Three weeks later, they were getting dressed for Mark’s firm’s annual holiday party. Maisy was shrieking in the family room (“Want my Mommy.
Want my Mommy
”) while the sitter—one in a series of high school girls who, Alice knew from experience, would never return for a second stint—fluttered ineffectually in Maisy’s orbit, offering toys that Maisy accepted only long enough to hurl at the sitter’s head. Mark was fastening his cummerbund. Alice was sweating, pierced by her child’s
screams and pinched by her control-top pantyhose as she pawed through her jewelry box for the sixth time, searching in vain for her diamond-and-pearl earrings.

“You’re positive you didn’t put them back in the safe-deposit box?” Mark asked for the third time.

Alice shook her head without bothering to answer. She’d worn them on Thanksgiving, and put them back in her jewelry box on the dresser rather than making the trip to the bank, knowing she’d be wearing them through the holidays.

“Check your coat pockets,” Mark suggested. Alice balled her hands into fists to keep from wrapping them around her husband’s neck and explaining, again, that she would never pull off a pair of expensive earrings—the one thing she’d inherited from her grandmother Sarah—and just shove them in her pockets.

“Well, never mind. You look fine without them. Let’s go.” They tiptoed out of the house without saying good-bye, knowing that farewells would only make the Maisy situation worse. In the car, Mark laid his coat carefully in the backseat, adjusted the vents so that the flow of warm air was to his liking, and casually inquired, as he backed out of the driveway, “Has Victoria been over lately?”

“Yesterday,” said Alice. She was distracted, fumbling through her beaded clutch on the off-chance that she’d put the earrings there. “Why?”

“Was she in the bedroom?”

Alice snapped her purse shut. “Oh, you have to be kidding me.”

Mark held up his hands defensively, then put them back on the wheel in the nine and three o’clock positions. “Just asking a question.”

“My friend is not a thief.” Alice blew a strand of sweaty hair
off her forehead and tossed her bag into the backseat. “I’ll find them,” she said. “They’ve got to be in the house somewhere.” But even though she spent the weekend combing the house—emptying her underwear drawer, peering under the bed, even using a screwdriver to remove the shower drain—the earrings never turned up.

•   •   •

After the final Mother’s Hour of the year, when Victoria asked if Alice and Maisy wanted to join her for a burrito after class, Alice made an excuse about having to return something at the King of Prussia Mall. For the next two weeks, there was no class. The Parenting Center was closed for the holidays. Victoria called once after Christmas. Alice saw her name on the caller ID and, feeling a strange, pinched feeling in her chest, let the phone ring.

On New Year’s Day, Alice left Maisy with Mark and ran out to pick up coffee and milk at the organic grocery store. She’d grabbed a basket and was headed through the produce section when Tate’s mother, Pam, a petite strawberry blond in fur-lined suede boots and a pearl-buttoned cashmere sweater, stopped her. “Did you hear?” she asked, raising her voice over the hissing spray of the misters that kept the eggplants and radishes glistening like jewels.

Alice shook her head. “Hear what?”

“Ellie’s in the hospital. She hurt her head—they think maybe a concussion—and broke her wrist.”

Alice’s hand rose to her mouth. “Oh my God! Is she okay? What happened?”

“Nobody’s really sure,” Pam said. “What I heard was that she fell in the kitchen.”

“Oh, God,” Alice said. She thought of Victoria’s kitchen, and the wooden step stool—another tag-sale find—propped in
front of the sink so that Ellie could play in the water while Victoria cooked.

Pam pushed her shopping cart behind the bins of onions and potatoes. “Listen,” she said. “I don’t mean to gossip, and I don’t want this to come out wrong, but I, well, a couple of us, we’re worried.”

Alice stared at her, her heart pounding.

“We’re worried about Ellie,” said Pam. “Remember that bump she had on her forehead?”

Ellie had had a goose egg back in November. She’d gone to her grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, Victoria had told the other mothers, and run smack into a glass door. “All our kids get bumps and bruises,” Alice said. Maisy routinely sported a puffy lip, a scabbed knee, or a smashed fingernail due to one misadventure or another.

“Well, you’ve been to their house,” Pam said, leaning one hip against the broccoli display. “Have you ever seen anything?”

Alice paused.
Victoria is a wonderful mother,
she wanted to say. But the words clotted in her throat and stayed there, and what she saw instead of Victoria’s warm little kitchen with the red wooden stool was the empty space in her jewelry box where her earrings had been, and Tommy’s hand lingering on Victoria’s back, and Ellie’s tiny finger pointing out each of the darting silvery fish in her tank as she told Maisy their names. “I . . .” she said.

Pam’s face snapped shut like a fan, and she gave a single, satisfied nod. “Right. We’ll be in touch,” she said.

•   •   •

Alice tossed her groceries into the passenger’s seat and stood in the supermarket parking lot, leaning against the door of her SUV with her knees shaking and her breath puffing out in the frosty air. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and left Victoria
a message. She said that she heard Ellie had fallen, that she was thinking of them, that she hoped they were all okay. She wanted to say
be careful,
or to find some way of telling Victoria about running into Pam at the supermarket, about Pam’s ominous
We’ll be in touch
, but couldn’t think of how. All the way home, Alice replayed the conversation with Pam in her head, berating herself. She should have spoken up. She should have defended her friend. Sure, Victoria and Tommy might be young, and their neighborhood wasn’t the greatest, but they were the most gentle . . . the most loving . . .

Her thoughts chased one another around her head all night. She tossed and turned, hot-eyed and sweating, kicking at the sheets, until Mark told her that if she didn’t stop waking him up one of them would be going to the couch, and he had a big meeting at eight the next morning so it wasn’t going to be him.

When she woke up, Alice’s head throbbed, and her eyes felt like they were full of invisible grains of sand. She loaded Maisy into the car and was driving her to the aquarium when her telephone trilled and she saw a familiar number flash on the screen. Her tires squealed as she pulled to the side of the road and snatched the telephone to her ear.

Victoria’s voice had none of the laughing lilt that Alice knew. “There’s an investigation,” she said.

Alice’s heart plummeted. “Who’s investigating?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“DHS,” said Victoria. “They need to examine her. To see if there’s a pattern of abuse.” She choked out a dry sob. “Alice, I swear to you . . . I swear to God, we never . . . nobody ever . . .”