Big Little Lies(28)

But then Ziggy wouldn’t have been Ziggy. And maybe she wouldn’t have had any children at all. She remembered the doctor, his sad frown, just a year before she got pregnant. “Jane, you need to understand, it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for you to conceive.”
“Ziggy! Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy!” The front door flew open and Chloe, in a fairy dress and gum boots, came running out and dragged Ziggy off by the hand. “You’re here to play with me, OK? Not my brother Fred.”
Madeline appeared behind her, wearing a red-and-white polka-dotted 1950s-style dress with a full skirt. Her hair was pulled up in a swinging ponytail.
“Jane! Happy New Year! How are you? It’s so lovely to see you. Look, my ankle is all healed! Although you’ll be pleased to see I’m wearing flat shoes.”
She stood on one foot and twirled her ankle, showing off a sparkly red ballet shoe.
“They’re like Dorothy’s ruby slippers,” said Jane, handing Madeline the muffins.
“Exactly, don’t you love them?” said Madeline. She unpeeled the lid of the container. “Good Lord. Don’t tell me you baked these?”
“I did,” said Jane. She could hear Ziggy’s laughter from somewhere upstairs. Her heart lifted at the sound.
“Look at you, with freshly baked muffins, and I’m the one dressed like a 1950s housewife,” said Madeline. “I love the idea of baking, but then I can’t seem to make it a reality, I never seem to have all the ingredients. How do you manage to have all that flour and sugar and, I don’t know, vanilla extract?”
“Well,” said Jane, “I buy them. From this place called a supermarket.”
“I suppose you make a list,” said Madeline. “And then you remember to take the list with you.”
Jane saw that Madeline’s feelings about Jane’s baking were similar to Jane’s feelings about Madeline’s accessories: confused admiration for an exotic behavior.
“Celeste and the boys are coming today. She’ll hoover up those muffins of yours. Tea or coffee? We’d better not have champagne every time we meet, although I could be convinced. Got anything to celebrate?”
Madeline led her into a big combined kitchen and living area.
“Nothing to celebrate,” said Jane. “Just ordinary tea would be great.”
“So how did the move go?” asked Madeline. “We were away up the coast when you were moving, otherwise I would have offered Ed to help you. I’m always offering him up as a mover. He loves it.”
“Seriously?”
“No, no. He hates it. He gets so cross with me. He says, ‘I’m not an appliance you can loan out!’” She put on a deep voice to imitate her husband as she switched the kettle on, her ponytail swinging. “But you know, he pays money to lift weights at the gym, so why not lift a few boxes for free? Have a seat. Sorry about the mess.”
Jane sat down at a long timber table covered with the detritus of family life: ballerina stickers, a novel facedown, sunscreen, keys, some sort of electronic toy, an airplane made out of Legos.
“My family helped me move,” said Jane. “There are a lot of stairs. Everyone was kind of mad at me, but they’re the ones who never let me pay for movers.”
(“If I’m lugging this freakin’ refrigerator back down these stairs in six months’ time, then I’ll—” her brother had said.)
“Milk? Sugar?” asked Madeline as she dunked tea bags.
“Neither, just black. Um, I saw one of those kindergarten mothers this morning,” Jane told Madeline. She wanted to bring up the subject of the orientation day while Ziggy wasn’t in the room. “At the gas station. I think she pretended not to see me.”
She didn’t think it. She knew it. The woman had snapped her head in the other direction so fast, it was like she’d been slapped.
“Oh, really?” Madeline sounded amused. She helped herself to a muffin. “Which one? Do you remember her name?”
“Harper,” said Jane. “I’m pretty sure it was Harper. I remember I called her Hovering Harper to myself because she seemed to hover about Renata all the time. She’s one of your Blond Bobs, I think, with a long droopy face. Kind of like a basset hound.”
Madeline chortled. “That’s Harper exactly. Yes, she’s very good friends with Renata, and she’s bizarrely proud about it, as if Renata is some sort of celebrity. She always needs to let you know that she and Renata see each other socially. ‘Oh, we all had a marvelous night at some marvelous restaurant.’” She took a bite of her muffin.