Eliza Starts a Rumor(67)

He reached over and put the back of his hand on her forehead to see if it felt warm. She jumped a good foot in the air.

“I’m sorry, you startled me,” she said. Poor Luke, the most loving man she’d ever known, couldn’t even touch his wife’s forehead. It might be the time to tell him that I can’t leave the house, she thought, but they were both so tired, and she knew that he had to perform an early root canal the next morning. How can I bring it up now? It never felt like the right time.

What she didn’t know was that he wanted to delve deeper, to ask his wife what was going on. There had been hardly any intimacy between them all summer. He thought she was depressed because the kids had left. He felt it, too. He thought he should just give her time, not make her feel worse by throwing his needs into the mix, but it seemed like more than that. She literally jumped at the touch of his hand. And it hadn’t been the first time. Last week when he reached behind her and rubbed her shoulders, an act that usually caused her to lean in, she recoiled.

Eliza shut her eyes in an effort to go back to sleep, to cut her long, lonely day by an hour or two. She drifted off, but soon found herself in the middle of a nightmare. She opened her eyes wide, hoping to expel the awful images of her dream from her head. The pain that was once encapsulated in her memory felt as if it had metastasized and was now spreading throughout every cell in her body. She got out of bed with the feeling that no place was safe, went down to the kitchen, and put a pod of Kona coffee in the Keurig. She was thankful again for the bulletin board, thankful for the distraction.

Sitting at her desk, sipping her coffee, she looked out across the lawn to her neighbors’ house. It looked like no one was home; their cars were not in the driveway. She turned her attention toward the bulletin board. Truffles Goldstein, the shepherd/retriever mix, was still missing. She wondered if he were to run by her window right then, if she would have the courage to go after him. She doubted it. Just yesterday she noticed a woman in a blue sedan idling outside her house. From where Eliza stood it looked like she was crying. Her gut told her it was another situation like the distressed patient at Luke’s office. How many women had she spooked? She wanted to go outside and say “Can I help you?”; she even put on her sneakers, but she couldn’t do it.

At least, according to the comments on the board Truffles was thankfully alive and well.


I believe I saw the missing dog at the playground in Memorial Park. I called out his name, but he took off.


Truffles spotted at the parking lot behind the dry cleaners this morning. No luck catching him.



And today from the Goldsteins themselves, still desperate to get Truffles back:


Remember if you see Truffles, yell “Treat!” And don’t look Truffles in the eye. He’s very skittish. Thank you for helping to bring our boy home!



Eliza reattached the picture of Truffles, hoping to keep him fresh in people’s minds. She was a bit behind in approving new members and posts. She began with the posts. The first one she saw made her feel completely out of touch with this generation of mothers. As she read it, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.


My two-year-old is showing innate musicality. He is constantly banging things and I notice a distinct beat. Can anyone recommend the best drum set for preschoolers?



She wanted to suggest two wooden spoons and some pots but refrained. Last week a mother of a three-year-old was looking for a math tutor. She couldn’t wait for the comments. In her head she imagined a barrage of “What, are you crazy? Let a kid be a kid! Math for a three-year-old?” But, to her surprise, people responded with names of tutors and computer programs. She thought back to the torture of flash cards and times tables with the twins, and that was in elementary school. These poor babies, she thought. Maybe she was a dinosaur. Maybe those Valley Girls were right.

She was ready to give up and crawl back into bed, this time in front of a movie or a reality show, when the next post demanded her attention:


Dear Anonymous Adulteress,


I know who you are. We met when I was pregnant. What kind of woman sleeps with a pregnant woman’s husband? I’m coming to get you!


Anonymous Wife



“Oh my God,” Eliza said out loud. She wondered if she should call Alison or Olivia herself. She decided on Alison. Within a half hour, her doorbell rang. These women don’t believe in the phone, she thought as she looked in the mirror to see if she was in any way presentable. She looked like a hot mess.

“One second!” she yelled, whipping off her sweater and pajama top and throwing on a somewhat cleaner Wisco sweatshirt. A little better, she hoped. She answered the door with a smile and her best attempt at self-deprecating humor, “Would you believe I woke up like this?”

Olivia looked worse than she did, even with all of her youth and beauty. This poor girl, she thought. Both she and Alison had their babies with them; they were carrying them in their car seats as if they were baskets of fruit. Both had fallen asleep on the drive over. Eliza looked down at the sleeping infants and thought of her own babies at that age. Right there at arm’s reach, able to control everything and everyone they interacted with. She longed for those days.

“Do you want some coffee?” she asked, with a motherly smile.

They both nodded and followed her into the kitchen. Eliza pulled some homemade mini blueberry muffins out of the freezer and threw them in the microwave. She reached out to Mandy and before long they were all sitting around the kitchen table commiserating with Olivia.