The Wives by Simone Gorrindo

Author:Simone Gorrindo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

THE MAKING OF THE GROG

January 2015

The evening of the Ball, I found Rachel at her en suite bathroom mirror, leaning over a spread of glittery eye shadows and discarded tissues, her bump pushing against the counter’s edge as she applied mascara. We were supposed to be leaving in twenty minutes and she was still in sweatpants. Andrew and I had arrived fully dressed, him in his formal uniform and me in a long blue gown with a sequined bust. Dan was ready to go, pacing around the dining room with a beer in his hand. After he’d gotten back from deployment, the beautiful brick house had gone into foreclosure, and the price had dropped into their range. They’d been living here now for a month.

“Are you sure we have time for my makeup?” I asked her reflection. “I can just slap on some mascara and blush.”

Rachel put the mascara wand back in its sheath and blinked. “I didn’t work at the Clinique counter for nothing. Sit down.” She turned toward me and pointed at the closed toilet seat.

I did as I was told and she took a seat on a wooden stool across from me, studying my face. It was a strange, almost nerve-racking sensation, to have her inspect me so closely. We spent so much time together, but how often did we really look at each other?

“I don’t have anything as olive as your tone, but I’ll figure it out,” she said, going to work, turning around and grabbing different pots and tubes and brushes from the counter. I had no idea what she was doing; it was all Greek to me. But I loved the feeling of the soft bristles against my cheek, and now that she had a task, her fine-tuned attention was soothing.

“So, the new neighbors, huh?” she said.

I sighed. “Yep.” That’s all it took to make her laugh. After she and Dan had moved, their house had sat empty for a month before a new family moved in. I miss you guys, I’d texted Rachel, along with a photo of their pickup truck parked on the front lawn.

Oh they’re legit Georgia, she’d written back. Parking on your lawn ten feet away from a perfectly good driveway was a neighborhood tradition that Andrew, Dan, Rachel, and I had never been able to make sense of. The family across the street appeared to be multigenerational: a man and woman, their daughter, I guessed, and their daughter’s baby. The daughter looked like a teenager, and the man and woman, though weathered, were still fairly young. I guessed they’d probably had the girl when they were teenagers themselves.

About a quarter of the houses on our block were occupied by Black families; the majority of the rest, white. These new neighbors were white. I’d seen the girl sitting on the porch smoking a cigarette with the baby in her lap, looking bored as hell, her straight dark hair hanging in her face. Yesterday, when I’d pulled into my driveway, she’d been sitting there while her father was out working on his car.

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