Claire probably shouldn’t laugh. Martha is her friend, and she shouldn’t be tickled by something so vulgar. But she can’t help but react to the truth of it. Martha is very uptight at times, and her reaction to Jacqueline has been especially so.
“Sorry. If she’s your friend, I shouldn’t be so rude,” Jacqueline says, though in contrast to her words she seems delighted. She passes Claire a handful of napkins. “She brought me cookies the other day, but I think I unsettled her a little.”
“No, it’s all right,” Claire says, coughing a little. “I know what Martha is like unsettled. I can’t imagine she was very welcoming.”
Claire mops up her spilled tea, her lip caught between her teeth, focused entirely on making sure the surface of the table is clean, and when she’s finished she’s startled to see Jacqueline watching her with an intense expression.
“Do I have something on my face?” Claire says, reaching self-consciously for her purse and compact mirror.
“No, no. Your face is fine,” Jacqueline says. She moves as if to put a hand over Claire’s to stop her reaching, but she stops just short. Claire wishes she hadn’t. “Sorry. I’m only thinking that—you know, you’re very different, Claire.”
Claire’s stomach sinks. She thinks of her house, in all its dull normalcy. She looks down at her clothes—the plain blue pattern on her dress, her clunky brown shoes. Sheisvery different from Jacqueline. Jacqueline is calm, and confident. Jacqueline is effortlessly stylish and appropriately feminine. She’s everything Claire has never quite succeeded at being.
“Yes, I must seem dreary when you’re used to living in San Francisco,” Claire says, trying to sound light and airy. “I feel likea drab old lady next to you. You look like you walked out of Vogue Magazine.”
“Me?” Jacqueline says, leaning forward towards Claire with a frown. “No that’s not—I meant you’re different fromMartha.”
Claire’s brain stutters to a halt.
“Oh,” Claire says blankly.
It’s Jacqueline who now seems to scramble. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I—it’s in a good way. I met a lot of the people in this suburb at the party. And besides the partiers who took over my pool, they’re all either…well, there’s a certain—”
It’s odd, seeing Jacqueline flustered. It calms Claire down a bit.
“They’re all horribly boring?” Claire says. She’s usually tight-lipped about her opinions, but it slips out of her, eager as she is to impress.
To her delight, Jacqueline laughs. It lights her whole face up, and she visibly relaxes as Claire gets a glimpse of her uneven canines. “Yes, actually. I was trying to be diplomatic, but you took the words right out of my mouth.”
Making Jacqueline laugh, even for those few seconds, somehow becomes one of the proudest moments of Claire’s life. She wants to do itmore. She’s hungry for Jacqueline’s attention in a way she isn’t used to.
“My husband likes to socialize with the neighbors, but he avoids the swinger types. And as for me…” Claire pauses. “Martha is my friend, but she can be…a bit controlling, at times. You should see her at book club. She never lets anyone else choose the books.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jacqueline says. The corner of her mouth quirks. “You know, you’re the only person who’s really been nice to me since I arrived.”
“You seemed to be getting along just fine with Susan Wilson,” Claire says. The words feel a bit too sharp, but Jacqueline only hums, tracing a circle around the rim of her mug.
“Susan’s interest in me faded pretty quickly. I think most of the women in the neighborhood assume I’m here to steal their husbands.”
“Well, you can have Pete,” Claire says.
Her heart soars when Jacqueline laughs again. Can one translate a laugh onto paper? Is there some visual medium that can capture the way Jacqueline’s makes her feel?
“See, you’re funny,” Jacqueline says. “You’re quick. I wasn’t expecting to find someone out here so good to talk to.”
Claire is sure her face is glowing. Jacqueline’s attention is a hot spotlight, and one Claire doesn’t quite deserve—it doesn’t make sense for such a lovely woman to think Claire is interesting, to look at her like she’s a puzzle worth solving.
Claire can only hope that Jacqueline never discovers just how untrue that is.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Claire says, hiding her nerves in her mug. The tea is still so hot that it threatens to scald her tongue.
“I hope Pete appreciates you,” Jacqueline continues. “How long have you been married?”
Claire picks at the string of the teabag until it splits into tiny strands. “Eleven years. He asked me to go steady in junior year, and he proposed right after graduation.”
“High school sweethearts,” Jacqueline says. “Sounds idyllic.”
Now that Claire is saying it out loud to someone like this, it doesn’t seem idyllic. Here sits Jacqueline, who lives on her own, who throws parties without a husband, who provides for herself and drives a Mustang, and Claire hardly leaves the house unless it’s to walk to the supermarket or go to book club. She doesn’t even have a learner’s permit.
