The Wrong Family(16)
She stared at the words. Rolled them around in her head, where they gelled together with his cryptic phrases at the park, the words in Winnie’s journal. “Day after day, it eats me.”
7
WINNIE
The dinner was tradition. Last year it was at Don and Malay’s, the year before that it was at the Parklands’, and this year it was the Crouches’ turn. Vicky Parkland called to confirm on Monday evening just as Winnie was getting home from work.
“Friendsgiving. You didn’t forget, did you? You did.”
“I didn’t,” Winnie said confidently. “This is me we’re talking about.”
She had forgotten.
“Yeah, you do live for a party,” Vicky agreed. “I just hadn’t heard anything and—”
Winnie rolled her eyes. Vicky was calling because she heard about Dakota. Today, Winnie was the tea.
“Things have just been...there’s been drama...”
She could hear Vicky walking into her bedroom and closing the door. Mack must be home, she thought. Vicky never gossiped in front of Mack, who thought it was crass. Winnie walked into her own bedroom; Nigel wasn’t home yet. She loved the way the room smelled: a mixture of wood polish, orange blossom, and her and Nigel. But today, as she stepped inside, she smelled something else—something she wasn’t used to smelling in their space. She hesitated on the threshold, looking around uncertainly. She’d made their bed this morning, arranging the throw pillows the way she liked them; now one of them was lying on the floor next to the nightstand. She walked over and picked it up. Could it have just fallen off?
And then she smelled that smell again. Yes, she definitely smelled something...musky. That was it, the distinct smell of sour body. Had Dakota come up here for something before he left? She clutched the pillow to her chest, sniffing the air like a beagle on the hunt. Winnie would ask him later; in the meantime, she opened one of her drawers, pulling out a dainty glass bottle, and squirted it four times into the air. The sweaty smell was gone, replaced by orange blossom. The cheap stuff never lingered in the air like the good stuff did. Call her a snob, everyone else did. The same went for this house. Nigel had wanted one of those crappy, cheaply built model homes, but Winnie had put her foot down; it was her money, after all. Now she lived in her dream home with her dream man.
“Okay, spill,” Vicky was saying. Winnie didn’t want to spill; she didn’t like when the tea was about her, but she’d forgotten Friendsgiving, and telling Vicky about Dakota would distract her from that.
She launched into the story after an eager “Spare nothing!” from Vicky. Hosting the damn thing had seemed like a good idea a year ago. Now Nigel was going to resent her even more.
By the time Winnie sat down at her desk, Vicky was in full advice mode. She half listened to Vicky’s story about her delinquent sister-in-law who always placed the blame on her brother Tommy when they fought. “...so really, Winnie, we don’t know the story, and Manda is probably overreacting.”
“You’re probably right,” she said.
During college, Vicky had a horrendous crush on Dakota, who was a freshman to her junior. She’d wanted to marry him “So we can be sisters!” When Dakota deflected her advances, Vicky had moved on to his roommate: Mack.
Winnie held the phone between her shoulder and ear and typed her password into her computer. She was thinking about the joints in the back of her underwear drawer, the ones that Dakota had got for her. She wasn’t usually a weed smoker, but lately, she was so stressed she felt like she was losing her mind.
“Have to go, V, I have a million things to do before tomorrow.”
“Okay, text me the deets.”
“Sure.” Winnie hated when Vicky said “deets.” She also hated that Vicky insisted on calling their gathering Friendsgiving just because Taylor Swift did it.
After she hung up with Vicky, she called Nigel straightaway. When he picked up, it felt like a great fist had grabbed her stomach and squeezed.
“Are you serious, Winnie? We just moved Dakota in. No.”
“Nigel, they planned their trips to visit family around this. We’ve literally had these plans for a year. We can’t just cancel on them!”
“We can, because things happen. They’ll get over it.”
“I can’t believe you’re being so dismissive about this.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
“Okay...okay.”
Winnie felt the hands loosen on her stomach a little. “Okay...?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to fight about it. Just okay.”
* * *
Nigel was in a surprisingly good mood on the day of Friendsgiving. She was suspicious; was he holding back his irritation? Winnie had to remind herself that she was being negative with no real basis for that feeling. When she needed supplies from the store he volunteered to go: “What my baby wants, my baby gets!” he called on his way out the door.
His errand gave Winnie time to get herself ready. She shot upstairs to do her makeup and slip into a dress she’d bought online for the occasion. She had always wanted to be the most interesting person in any room. She’d gone to great lengths as a child to stand out; once, at thirteen, she’d chopped off her waist-length hair during one of her parents’ dinner parties, announcing to a room of her father’s coworkers that she was done with blatant sexism. A few years later, during her emo phase, she’d fed right back into that blatant sexism and paid one of her brother’s friends to tattoo the words Sweet Girl on her upper thigh. And late into her teenage years, Winnie had decided that sex wasn’t a big deal at all and freely slept with whomever she felt she had a connection with, all this during her self-professed “hippie stage.” Now that she was a grown-up, Winnie felt like she was still playing a role—a more grounded and responsible one. She recycled voraciously; grew her own organic vegetables that she fed to her perfect child and smart husband; had gay friends, Black friends, West Indian friends, and—more recently—a trans friend. Winnie volunteered, always kept spare dollars in her purse for the homeless, and kept her tight-knit group together by being the peacemaker. When Winnie came downstairs, Nigel had come back, and he was whistling.