The Family Next Door(21)
With unusual decisiveness, Essie spun around, walked up Isabelle’s driveway, and knocked on the door. Quicker than she expected, it swung open. Isabelle was dressed in a red tunic with a matching scarf around her hair. Her legs were bare and her toenails, today, were teal green. “Hey, Essie. I was just getting ready for the neighborhood watch meeting.”
“Oh good,” Essie said, feeling relieved and also suddenly very suburban housewife in her jeans, button-down shirt, and ballet flats. “That’s why I was coming by. I thought I could walk you there.”
“Sounds great.” Isabelle smiled.
She had, Essie noticed, a spectacular smile. A familiar smile. She was trying to figure out why it was familiar when suddenly, a smell hit her. “Uh … is something burning?”
Isabelle cursed. “The pasta!”
Isabelle spun and bolted back into the house. Essie stood there uncertainly for a moment, then slowly trailed after her.
From some reason, perhaps the fact that Isabelle hadn’t invited her in the last time she visited, Essie had assumed the place would be a terrible mess—filled with boxes and unpacked suitcases. Instead she found it pristine. Brightly colored, oversize art hung on the walls, and the surfaces were dotted with eclectic designer-looking knickknacks. A headless mirrored mannequin stood in one corner. Essie peeked into an adjoining room that appeared to be a study, also spotless. Looking at it, Essie felt a stab of envy. This was how she would have liked to have lived.
Alas, Essie had children.
“Damn,” she heard Isabelle say from the next room. “There goes dinner.”
Essie followed the voice to a steam-filled kitchen, where Isabelle was emptying a congealed slab of pasta into the garbage.
“You haven’t eaten yet?”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. There’ll be nibbles at the meeting, right?”
Right on cue, Isabelle’s stomach gave a little whine.
“You need to eat,” Essie said. “There’s a great Thai place just around the corner.”
“But what about the meeting?”
Essie shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. She imagined she looked like an easygoing go-with-the-flow type who didn’t care that she was already running seventeen minutes late for the meeting. She liked looking like that type of person.
“All right. I’m assuming you’ll join me then?”
Essie felt a twist of unease. She’d RSVP’d to the meeting; it wasn’t like her to be a no-show. She pictured all the residents sitting around Ange’s plush couches eating cheese and crackers, Ange glancing at her watch.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
*
Two hours later, Essie sat at one end of Isabelle’s couch, happily pinching the stem of a wineglass. It was rare for her to drink alcohol during the week. With two small children and a fitness junkie for a husband, it just wasn’t something that occurred to her. But as she sat on Isabelle’s couch, it felt surprisingly right.
“That chicken cashew stir-fry,” Isabelle said, resting her pale, bare legs on the coffee table. Next to Isabelle’s feet were two empty plastic containers where their dinner used to be, and a wine bottle—the contents of which had been emptied into their bellies. “Best I’ve ever had.”
“Mmm,” Essie agreed. The neighborhood watch meeting would be well under way by now. Essie imagined the empty spot on Ange’s couch where she should be. For the first time in her life, Essie was a rebel.
“So,” Isabelle said, “was this better or worse than a neighborhood watch meeting?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Essie said. “It depends on how much grief Ange gives me for not showing up.”
Isabelle laughed, even though Essie wasn’t joking. Isabelle’s lips made Essie understand what people meant when they described a “heart-shaped” mouth.
Isabelle clutched a cushion to her chest. It was white silk with hand-painted fuchsia and aqua flowers across the front. It was the kind of item that Essie would have picked up in a store or at a market, but then put down again because she wasn’t brave enough to own it. Isabelle’s couch was teal velvet, and her coffee table had steel legs and a surface made of black and white mosaic tiles. A deep red Persian rug lay beneath Essie’s feet.
Essie thought of all the times she’d stood in boutique art galleries admiring a piece of modern art or an unusual sculpture. There was no doubt she was attracted to unusual art. Several times she’d even managed to justify the price tag (a birthday or anniversary present from Ben). But when push came to shove, Essie always settled for the muted, Pottery Barn–type wares that filled every suburban living room. She had a sudden urge to run home and throw out every piece of Pottery Barn furniture. This was the home she was supposed to have, she thought irrationally.
“So,” Essie said. “Tell me about yourself. I hear you work for a nonprofit. Which one?”
Isabelle lifted her glass to her lips, then put down it down again without taking a sip. There was a slight change to her eyes. “I work for the Abigail Ferris Foundation.”
“The Abigail…” Essie tried to think why that name sounded familiar. “Wait, Abigail Ferris? Wasn’t she the little girl who disappeared while riding her bike to school? Years ago, when I was a kid?”