Eliza Starts a Rumor(26)

Alison had been lying around all night, obsessing over the posts about the affair. She was poring through the comments, looking for clues. She’d hoped it was just in Olivia’s head, but the more she thought about the situation, the more she felt like something wasn’t right. The whole thing was making her crazy.

Alison was a good friend to have, both virtually and in the flesh: the kind of straightforward person who tells it like it is, even when you may not want to hear it. She had just met Olivia, but still she couldn’t help but feel protective toward her. She had tried some of the most difficult cases in the state and seen how easy it was for people to lie. If Olivia’s husband was lying, she wanted to catch this guy and take him down.


Hi! There was a notice for a class called Intersectional Embodiment. I was too scared to even take the flyer!

HA. That does sound frightening. Did you try the muffin?

Yes. It was wicked good—as promised. You could have warned me about the receptacle thing though. The guy behind the counter was pretty harsh.

Ha! I know. I once asked him for a straw for my iced coffee and he acted like I had murdered a dolphin right before his eyes. I hate the whole straw thing.

Same. And I hate when people say “clean food.” I mean where did that even come from?

I think it’s from Fight Club. And sorry for talking about Fight Club!

LOL—too funny.



Jackie was psyched that he had made her LOL. If she didn’t think he was a woman, he would definitely suggest they meet at the Café Karma Sutra. “I can bring the receptacles,” he would say, probably making her LOL all over again. He took it further:


The bulletin board is kind of like a virtual Fight Club, no? Did you see that cheating post? It pushed me right out of the number one spot.



Though trained to be the picture of discretion, Alison was bursting to talk about her day with someone who would get it.


You have no idea what happened to me today.

What?

I can’t.

Yes you can, it’s like Fight Club, remember.

I shouldn’t.



As she typed, she knew she was going to. She was usually a vault, yet here she was gossiping. Soon she would be watching the Real Housewives franchise, she thought—she had always secretly wanted to.


You can totally trust me.



Jackie forgot for a moment that he was misrepresenting himself.


OK. I’m usually not such a yenta, but I met a woman today who read it too and thinks she’s the one being cheated on. She completely lost it in the middle of Karma Sutra.

That’s horrible.

I know, right? I feel awful for her, just awful. And to make matters worse, she has an infant!

No way. What a douchebag!

Exactly. If it’s true and it really is her husband, then I’d bet it’s been going on for a while. The post says he followed her here. If it’s him, the timeline suggests he was cheating throughout her pregnancy and childbirth.

Maybe he’s one of those serial cheaters. I know some guys like that at work. Total tools. Or maybe she’s imagining it.

Maybe. Those new mother hormones can make you think crazy things, remember?



He remembered having all sorts of irrational worries when Jana was born. Checking the batteries in the baby monitor almost daily; resting his hand on her sleeping back in the middle of the night to make sure she was still breathing. Though he knew his struggles weren’t estrogen induced, he answered with a warped sense of honesty.


Yes! It was awful.

It’s weird though. From the outside it would look like she had the perfect life and that I must be struggling on my own. But it’s really quite the opposite.

It may feel good now, to be in control of your own life, but take it from me, being a single parent can be very lonely.

Well, it doesn’t have to be forever. I’m sure I’ll have a relationship again. With better birth control! Lol.

I guess Zach’s dad is not in the picture?

Nope. Not at all. Like the song says—It’s Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody.



Jackie was happy to hear they were singing the same tune, though he knew it was selfish of him. He had wondered about Alison’s relationship status. It was left blank on her Facebook profile. He had done his due diligence after the first time she reached out. She wasn’t a big poster on Facebook like some people, but not as lame as he was. Aside from his profile picture of Jana as a baby, his page consisted of a few people leaving yearly birthday messages that he never even acknowledged. From her profile he knew that Alison was thirty-eight, a partner in her law firm, went to Wesleyan for undergrad and Harvard for law school. Her page was somewhat political with articles and photos regarding immigration policies and nativism mixed with a spattering of similarly pointed political cartoons from the New Yorker and the Atlantic. The photos of her were mostly group shots at company outings like baseball games or the occasional benefit or black-tie event. She was very pretty and seemed tall. Jackie loved tall women. He loved being able to look a woman in the eye.

He had mentioned his connection with a woman in the group briefly to Lee and Skip when he filled them in on the thrashing he had taken for the tampon post. They had both laughed at him.

“What I like most in a woman is her unavailability,” Lee jokingly imitated Jackie.