Other People's Houses(14)

“No, but what if I did?”

“I thought about that before I told you. I decided the risk of you suddenly changing completely after twenty years was smaller than the risk of me suffering a panic attack because I was keeping a secret from you.” Diane had pushed Jack out of the way and was now all up in Frances’s beak, demanding attention. Frances looked around her at Michael, and smiled at him.

He looked surprised. “You don’t keep anything secret from me?”

“Apart from my exact weight and the location of my secret chocolate stash, no.”

“A different stash from the third drawer in the laundry room?”

“Shit.”

“I’m an idiot. Now you’re going to move it.”

“Yes.” Frances paused. “Why, do you keep lots of secrets?”

“Of course. Some on purpose, and others just because you wouldn’t be interested. I’m not sure those even count as secrets.” He pushed down one of his socks and scratched his ankle. “I think we need to Frontline the dogs again.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t be interested? I have a very quiet life, most things are interesting. Try me.” She pulled on Jack’s long, soft ears, gently. He let her. It was symbiotic: He let her pull on his long ears like a toddler with a baby blanket, and she fed him and told him he was wonderful. And occasionally remembered to put flea medicine on him.

Michael gave it some thought. “OK, I never told you that Bob Adams got a divorce.”

A colleague from work she barely knew. “You’re right, that’s not all that interesting. Why?”

“His wife left him for her cats. Apparently she wasn’t satisfied with the six she had and wanted number seven. He put his foot down and said it was him or the cats, and she chose Pussy Town. Either he grossly miscalculated and is brokenhearted, or he won the war by losing the battle. He certainly didn’t seem all that sad about it.”

“I bet his new place will be much less fluffy,” Frances said.

“Oh, he kept the house. She took the cats and moved into a cat-positive commune in Northern California. When I said Pussy Town, I meant Pussy Town. That’s what it’s called.”

Lally reappeared. “I’m ready now. You can read to me now.”

“OK.” Frances got up and looked over at Michael. “If that is your idea of a boring secret, I want to hear all of them.”

“No, the whole point of secrets is keeping them. And none of them has anything like the human interest or feline backstory that that one did.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. That one was genuinely weird. I would have told you and about eight other people that story.”

“Can I be the judge?” Lally took Frances by the hand, looking up at her.

Frances grinned at her. “Sure, baby.”

“What is a judge?”

“Someone who decides things other people can’t agree on. Time for bed, OK?”

Lally went to hug her dad. He pulled her onto his lap and snortled in her ear, making her laugh. She curled up and giggled, and for about the nine hundredth time Frances wished she were small enough to curl up on some big person’s lap and be completely safe.





Seven.


Down the street, Anne was getting ready for bed. Outside the bathroom door she could hear Kate and Charlie laughing, as Kate explained something arcane about Pokémon, and Charlie pretended to get everybody’s name wrong.

“Isn’t that what Pookachoo does?” he said, causing Kate to click her tongue in amused irritation. “Isn’t Claptrap a chocolate type? Or is it a popcorn type, with attacks like saltypop, and deadly kernel?”

Kate burst into giggles. “Daddy, there is no such thing as a popcorn type, and you know that! You watched the show with me THIS MORNING before school.”

“Was that what that was?” Charlie sounded incredulous. “I thought that was an educational show about Japanese animals.”

“They’re made up!”

“They are?”

Anne used to find these exchanges endlessly touching. She’d fallen in love with Charlie for his whimsy, as much as his charming good looks. He seemed like a proper grown-up on the outside: well dressed, whip smart, a successful patent attorney and partner in his firm. But he was secretly about nine years old and still found farts, slipping on things, and silly hats hilarious. He loved to play with the kids, which was good because Anne had always had a hard time relaxing enough to enjoy it. She had found having small children utterly terrifying, convinced they were going to choke to death on something or drown in the bathtub or spontaneously develop dengue fever. Now that they were bigger and a little more robust she could relax more, but she still found herself contemplating their loss far more than she would have liked.

The affair had proved to be an effective antidote to fear, which was unexpected and, of course, ironic. When she found herself thinking about the pain of losing her children, the fear of making a mistake that led to their harm, the overwhelming sense of misplaced responsibility, she would just think about Richard. Think about his hands, his hair, his eyes, his desire, and let the physical arousal she felt blow right through her panic. She knew where she was with him; she was being naughty, she was being selfish, she was risking it all, and it confirmed her secret belief that she was a very bad person who never should have been given children in the first place.