When I get home from the grocery with milk and bakery sweets, I am my best self. I sweep in, kiss Scott.
"What's that?" He points to the hoodie draped over my arm, hiding my damaged hand.
"I thought one of the boys might like it. Hale, actually. Since he got his hair buzzed, his head looks so cold in the morning." I kiss Scott again. Just a quick, soft lipped thing, but I'm already thinking more.
"What's gotten into you?" Scott laughs.
I slide the milk into the fridge and head to our room. "Come find out." I slink up the stairs. In the dark, he doesn't see the parts of me that would give me away. And when we're done, he's content. That's when he doesn't see me at all.
#
At the park the next morning, we get a walking lecture from Maria. The sky is brilliant, and the world smells brand new. I wish I could take notes, take her out to coffee, listen to her for hours. I know now not to do a google search on these things from my home computer, and she is giving us free, police adjacent, insider knowledge. I want to know how to not get caught.
As we complete our circle around the lake, Maria concludes we should all stay separate for a while. Easier to let the dust settle if we don't keep stirring it up with more contact. But I don't want this to end. Since Trump's election, I've been tormented by a current of low level despair, stress that makes me clench my teeth even when I'm doing something as numb as watching television. The churn of childhood memories I believed successfully buried, now coming up like graveyard mushrooms. Jeffery Epstein. Weinstein and Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer. They all remind me of my uncle, and then my mother. Because everyone knew, forever. Some part of me that is not who I am now, but also not quite that kid wearing My Little Pony panties, gives me this strangely coded message: They were all telling us one think, and fucking the other.
Keying that car? Maria preparing us to evade police questioning? Those are the only times I've come close to feeling OK again. And I can't lie; that moment Dan farted, unconscious and they had to call the ambulance? That was better than sex.
I send a psychic vibe out toward Aimee, hoping for another moment like that one when she grabbed my hand. Together, we could tell Maria that we have to stick together. We are smarter and tougher than Dan. I want to tell them about my revelation this morning, as I anxiously combed the local paper for news of a certain Truck Keying Bandit. How I'd found only the latest Trump scandal on every news outlet, even our local television news station: We can probably do anything. No one can look away from the circus.
But Aimee is only scowling at Maria. "Hey, is everything OK with you?" I ask.
"Look, this is stupid. I didn't put anything in Dan's drink, so don't try and scare me with some... barf bag your husband keeps in your garage. Test it. I don't care. Because there's nothing incriminating. So... bye." She hurries toward the parking lot.
I am gutted. And suddenly very glad I didn't tell them about keying 1DICK1's car. "Aimee, wait!" I call after her.
"It's OK. Let her go," Maria says, soft, next to me. This is what she wants. For us to go our separate ways. "Oh shoot. I got to get to work anyway."
#
I end up in an accidental caravan behind Maria's car on the drive home to our shared neighborhood. As we roll past Jenn's house, Dan is outside, mowing the lawn. Weird... for a weekday. Aimee's the only true SAHM, in between jobs until the baby's born. Most of the women in our neighborhood have flexible work hours. We are the ones who find a way to stay home with sick kids, or go to school recitals. Our middle school does shitty things dressed up as nice things, like Lunch With Your Kid Day, where, twice a school year, parents are invited to show up with hamburgers and pizza and take away subs to eat with their kid. Everyone can see whose parents can afford to take time off work, and whose kids eat alone.
I know the mothers in this neighborhood because we bargain with one another for carpools between the hours of 3:30 and 6:00, so some of us can work in an office while others of us work as chauffeur. It's a constant state of trade and bickering, and god help the family who gets stuck with Devonne Messer, because she's always breaking the schedule last minute, or asking you to cover for her, and if her kid gets sick and doesn't go, she won't take your kids either.
Because of Devonne, all of us moms keep an eye peeled for new carpooling opportunities. It's usually not the Dads, though, because they are strict 8-6ers. Which is what used to be 9-5 back when our parents were parents. Which does not fit with Dan mowing the lawn midmorning.
He waves at us, eyes squinting, sweat making him shiny. A friendly command: Hey, c'mere! Ahead, Maria hits her blinker and pulls to the curb in front of Dan's. I do the same, and get out of my car to get close enough to talk. Maria only rolls down her window. "How are you feeling, Dan?" she calls in a cheerful, perfunctory tone.
"Not great over here." His tone makes me guess he's about to reluctantly tell Maria her dog pooped on his lawn, and to please come get it. "Actually, Jenn's in the hospital."
"What?" I demand, Maria echoes me, gasping. He nods, raising a flat hand over his eyes against the sun. His expression falls into shadow.
"Yeah. She got this flu that's been going around. We had all those kids over for my birthday." With his free hand, he waves a vaguely accusing finger at first Maria, then me. "Any of your kids sick?"
"No." I wouldn't tell him if they were. Maria, my echo, from the open window of her car.
"Yeah. She couldn't keep much down for a few days. Got lightheaded. Went up to take a shower and BAM!" He raises his voice suddenly, and I jump, catching his flicker of satisfaction when I do. "Cracked her head right on the toilet bowl. Blood everywhere."
"Omigod," Maria says. "Dan, is she OK? When did this happen?"
But Dan will not be rushed. "Of course, I'm downstairs, making breakfast, listening to NPR on my earbuds, don't hear anything. She comes to, manages to get herself to the top of the landing and then... whoopsiedoo. I come over to see what the hell happened, and she's halfway down the stairs." He puts up his hands, as if to say, Whoa! Whoa! Taker 'er easy! "She's fine. I mean, she got stiches up on her forehead where she hit the can. That'll probably scar. And her right arm got a hairline fracture, so she can't do stuff for a while. They said she can come home today."
"Dan, when did this happen?"
"This morning! Right before work. I had to take the day off. Been cleaning up so she doesn't come back to the mess."
I know he did it. And lying to our faces, making us part of his story?! My car keys still in my hand, and I slip one between my fingers like when I keyed 1DICK1, and imagine what it would be like to jab it into Dan's beer belly. Would it be like stabbing a sausage – resistance with a pop as his skin let me in? Or cutting raw chicken breasts -- smooth all the way through? It feels like these thoughts should make me sick. They don't.
"Dan, I'm so sorry!" I say. This seems to be what he's been waiting for. He nods, shoulders slumping, absorbing sympathy.
"You know, I'm thinking, it's her good arm. Could you ladies start one of those casserole things? Like I know Jenn was going to organize one for Aimee, when she had her baby."
"...Sure," Maria says after a moment. "I could call around, tell people about the situation."
"Could someone bring one tonight? I hate to ask, but I don't know when she's getting back from the hospital." For him. I clench my keys until those fresh bruises on my hand scream. The casserole is for him.
"I can bring one," I try not to sound too eager, match Maria's reluctant, subdued tone.
"Not chicken, though?" He asks hopefully.
"I was going to go to the grocery today anyway," I lie. "I can leave something on your doorstep around five after I pick the kids up from sports."
I don't even realize I'm testing him until I find myself studying his reaction. Will the man recently poisoned in my presence trust food I bring him?
"OK, great." He steps back now, waving halfheartedly to the lawn mower. "I should probably get back to..."
"OK, Bye, Dan!" Maria calls, both fierce and cheerful, as she pulls away from the curb. I agree. I don't want to spend another second with Dan. But as I walk to my car, he follows.
"Hey, thanks," he says. Now that it's just us, he seems sincere, holding eye contact, at least for a moment. "You look.... good these days. Happy, I mean. What's your secret?" The good hits somewhere between him eyeing my hips and my breasts. That's when I know I'm going to kill him. The plan is already unfolding, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. As if, I think wildly, he is asking for it.
"You think so?" A quick glance around, but no witnesses mid-morning on a weekday. Curtains drawn, driveways empty.
"Definitely."
"Well, I'll drop off that casserole. If you're not here, I can leave it on the doorstep, or leave the door unlocked. I'll just come in and put it in the fridge." What are you doing, Oma? My mother shrieks. I don't know. Everything about him should make me want to get as far away as possible.
"Oh, I'll definitely be here." His wife is in the hospital! Doesn't he have to pick her up? Key, key, key between my fingers and I want to jab him so bad. I try to spin my passionate need for that into some semblance of what he might mistake for sexual attraction. It heats up the air between us.
"OK, I'll see you then." I say, trying to make myself into some cartoonish version of a sex kitten, imagining I wink at him, jiggling a body part or two as I turn on my heel. But in reality, I practically run from his yard. I can't really poison him. Jenn would be in the clear, but the casserole would become evidence, tested, and Maria would know I'd volunteered to deliver it.
The whole way home, my mother's voice whispers, What are you doing, what are you doing? As I pull into my own driveway, I realize although the words are exactly the same, the voice is morphing. It becomes mine, and I'm ten years old again, scared and confused and exposed. That first night my uncle came into my room. What are you doing?
I tell her, Making it right as I throw the car in park, cutting off the engine and sitting in silence. When I do that, both the adult part and the kid part of me go quiet.