The Secret Desires of a Soccer Mom (10 page)

“Oh… Hi Carly.”

“Hi Paige… Paul…” She kissed my cheek and
then my husband’s. “I just got here.”

“I thought you were with Trudy?”

“She’s asleep,” Carly said, her voice hushed,
as if Trudy were snoozing right behind her on the floor of the grand entryway.
“She took a little something to calm her nerves. I’ll go back when the kids get
off school. I just realized that Doug was all alone. His sister is flying in
from Vancouver on Friday.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Well… he seems to be holding up. I’m sure
he’d love to see you. Come in.” Carly ushered us into Karen’s home. We stood
awkwardly in the foyer, both of us unsure of whether we should enter farther.
“Take your coats off,” Carly instructed. “I’ll go tell Doug you’re here.”

“Hold these for a sec.” I passed Paul the
plate of squares and slipped out of my heavy fall coat, hanging it on the
stainless steel coat tree. Karen’s denim jacket hung on one of the pegs. I felt
an involuntary shudder run through me.

Paul said, “I’ll leave my coat on. I don’t
think we should stay too long.”

Doug rounded the corner. He looked pale,
drawn, every inch the distraught husband. When he looked at me, his eyes welled
with tears. “Paige…” his voice was hoarse. “Thank you for coming.” I moved
toward him and enveloped him in the tight embrace of mutual sorrow. As we held
each other, I could feel his body shaking with sobs. Tears streamed down my
cheeks, wetting the sides of my hair and Doug’s collar. “I loved her so much,”
Doug whispered.

“Me, too,” I replied. At that moment, I
felt sure Doug’s grief was real. He had lost the woman he loved and he was
devastated. There was no way he could have had anything to do with Karen’s
death. But when he pulled away from me, I couldn’t help but notice that the
tears that had pooled in his eyes had dissipated, and his cheeks were dry.

Doug turned to Paul then. “Thanks for
coming.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Paul said,
awkwardly. “Umm… Paige made you these Rice Krispies squares.” He thrust the
plate toward Doug.

“Let me take those to the kitchen,” Carly
intervened.

Paul continued in a strained voice. “We
just wanted you to know that we’re here for you. If you need anything, anything
at all…”

“That’s right,” I squeezed Doug’s forearm.
“Anything… anytime… we’re here for you.”

“Would anyone like coffee? Tea?” Carly
offered.

“Oh no,” Paul said quickly. “We won’t stay.
We just wanted Doug to know that—”

“Actually, I’d love a cup of coffee,” I
interrupted. “If you’ve got some made?”

“I’ll put a pot on. It’s no trouble.”

“You don’t need to make coffee just for
us,” Paul protested. “Really, we should be going.”

“We’ve got time for a quick cup,” I said,
slipping my shoes off. I turned to Doug. “You don’t mind if we stay for a few
minutes, do you?” I realized I was being pushy, but I wasn’t about to leave
without gaining some information.

“Oh… of course not.”

“See?” I said to my husband who was staring
at me with angry eyes. “Doug doesn’t mind. Why don’t you give Carly a hand in the
kitchen?” Then, linking my arm with Doug’s, we moved farther into the house.

Doug and Karen’s home was incredible…
Really, it was almost what you’d call opulent. It had a similar floor plan to
most of the new homes in Aberdeen Mists, but the difference was in the details.
They had spared no expense: the floors were the highest-quality walnut, the
millwork was detailed and exquisite, and the fixtures were stylish brushed
nickel. As we passed the kitchen, I took in the glistening granite countertops
and rich, slate flooring. At the far end of the room was the door that led to
the attached garage. In a flash, I saw an image of Karen, lying alone in her
immaculate carport, the life slipping out of her. I shook my head to dislodge
the disturbing picture. At the same time, I released Doug’s arm.

I followed him into their formal living
room… actually it may have been their casual, family room. Both rooms were
impeccably decorated with lavish furnishings, expensive art and tasteful
knick-knacks. Having no kids, it was easy for Karen to keep her home pristine.
If she’d had the baby they had longed for, it would have been a different
story. At least one of their living rooms would have been slated for demolition—spit-up
on the couches, mountains of Cheerios crushed under the cushions, crackers
ground into the carpet… This thought brought a lump of emotion to my throat: my
friend would never have the frustrating, yet somehow fulfilling experience of
scrubbing her baby’s vomit off her sofa. But I forced myself to focus on the
task at hand. I had to get some details from Doug, and I had to get them before
Paul and Carly joined us with the coffee.

“So…,” I said, sitting next to him on the
plush divan. “Your sister is coming to stay with you?” I had to start with a
little
small talk.

“In a few days. She has to find someone to
take care of her kids.”

“It’s nice that you have family to be with
you during this difficult time.”

“Yeah…” He looked and sounded exhausted,
but still I pressed on.

“Umm… Jane mentioned that you had talked to
Karen before. . .” —I trailed off, unsure of how to phrase it gently— “…her
accident.”

“She called me in Chicago.”

“What did she say?”

“That she wanted to talk to me about
something when I got home.”

“Did she say what it was? Do you have any
idea?”

“Not really,” he sighed heavily. “She just
sounded a little down… a little blue. I thought it would be nice to surprise
her by coming home early. But when I got home. . .”A painful sob broke free
even as Doug tried to stifle it with his fist to his lips.

I leaned toward him and patted his knee
sympathetically. “When you got home, what? What did you see?”

“Just… Karen… lying there.”

“And she’d hit her head, is that right?” He
nodded. “Was there anything on the floor?” I did not mean blood, but quickly
realized that’s how it must have sounded. “Like, had anything spilled—oil,
maybe? Could she have slipped?”

“I—I don’t remember. I didn’t notice.”

“Could she have had a pre-existing
condition—something that could have caused her to black out and hit her head?
Something you didn’t know about?”

“Here’s the coffee!” Carly entered the
room, obviously making a conscious effort to sound upbeat. Paul trailed behind
her holding a plate of delicious looking apple muffins, and my slightly
squashed store-bought Rice Krispies squares. Idle chitchat ensued as we busied
ourselves fixing our beverages and loading snacks onto side plates, but soon,
the banter had been exhausted and we lapsed into an awkward silence.

“So…,” Paul finally said. “If you need any
help around the house… you know, any yard work or anything…”

“Thanks,” Doug murmured, staring into his
coffee cup.

“And don’t you worry about meals,” Carly
added. “I’ll make sure you’ve got plenty of food in the freezer to get you
through.” Doug gave her an exhausted smile of gratitude.

I opened my mouth, intending to offer to
clean his oven or scrub his toilets or make some other well-meaning gesture,
but what came out was something quite different. “So… what did the police say
about Karen’s fall?” Paul’s head snapped up and he gaped at me like I’d just
offered Doug a condolence blow job. Carly shoved a muffin in her mouth and
busied herself tidying the coffee tray. “I mean… the police were here, right?”

“They were here,” Doug replied. “They said
Karen’s injuries were consistent with a fall.”

“But they’ll do an autopsy?”

“Yes.”

“And if it turns up anything suspicious,
they’ll do a full investigation?”

“I guess so. I-I don’t know.”

Carly spoke. “I’m sure they won’t find
anything strange, Doug. Soon, you’ll be able to find closure and start the
healing process.”

“That’s right,” my husband agreed. “It was
just a terrible accident.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it kind of weird to just,
y’know, fall over—” Paul cut me off.

“We’ve got to be going,” he said, shooting
me a look. “Thanks for the coffee Carly. Doug, really, anything you need,
anything at all…” And with that, he hustled me to the grand entryway.

Out in the brisk fall afternoon, we walked
side by side in silence until we were an adequate distance from Doug’s house.
“What the hell was that?” Paul grumbled, not turning his head to look at me.

“What?” I kept my eyes forward as well.
This way, none of the neighbours would suspect us of fighting—a useful and
quickly-learned trick when living in a small, suburban community.

“All that stuff about the police and an
autopsy! How could you be so insensitive?”

“Come on, Paul. Don’t you think it’s a
little strange that Karen just fell over, hit her head and died?”

“It was a freak accident. They happen all
the time.”

“Well… Did you notice how Doug seemed so
upset, but he wasn’t actually crying?”

“Christ, Paige! Some people just aren’t
criers. What is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. “It just…”

“It just what?”

“It just seems a little mysterious to me,
that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, before you start playing
detective, you might want to consider other people’s feelings.”

I started to respond, but stopped myself
short. He had a point.

Paul was right: I’d been horribly
insensitive. God, Doug probably hated me now. Every time he saw me I was either
drunk and obnoxious, or rude and tactless. I vowed to handle the situation much
more delicately from now on. Yes, I still had my suspicions about the nature of
Karen’s death, but I would keep them carefully hidden going forward. And if the
police found nothing amiss after her autopsy, I’d let the whole thing go all
together. Although, the police had been known to be wrong before…

My first sensitive and caring gesture was
to spend some time with Trudy. Armed with a box of Safeway doughnuts, I rang
her front bell. There was no answer. I rang it again. Surely she wasn’t so
incapacitated by grief that she couldn’t shuffle over to the door? She had now
had four days to deal with the shock. I bent over and yelled through the mail
slot. “Trudy! It’s Paige! Let me in!” I heard a faint rumbling of movement
inside, and finally the door swung open.

“Hi!” I said brightly, trying not to flinch
at Trudy’s appearance. She didn’t look
that
bad, but she didn’t look
that good, either. Her face was drawn and tired, her eyes red and puffy. It was
obvious that her hair hadn’t been washed since she’d heard the news, and
judging by the pizza, spaghetti or some other tomato-based stain on her track
pants, neither had her clothes. “I brought you some doughnuts.”

“Come in,” she said, ignoring my tasty
offering and shambling back into the house. I trailed behind her until we
reached the family room, where Trudy deposited herself prostrate on the couch,
and pulled a yellow, floral comforter up to her neck. The piles of used
tissues, dirty tea cups and empty cracker boxes made it evident that this was
where Trudy had been spending the majority of her time. “So…” I took a seat in
an overstuffed chair across from her. “How are you doing?”

“I can’t… I can’t cope with this,” she
said, tears instantly seeping from her eyes. “It’s too much.”

“I know it’s a terrible tragedy,” I said
gently, “but we have to go on. Karen would have wanted us to go on.”

“Oh God,” Trudy wailed. “Karen can’t be
gone. She c-can’t be!”

“But she is… and we have to deal with it.”

“No!” she cried, reaching for a Kleenex.
“This doesn’t happen to people like Karen—so young, so sweet, so innocent… She
was such a special person.”

Trudy was talking about her like she was
some sort of martyr. Maybe if I told her about the hot sex she’d been having
with a certain Spanish barista, it would help her deal with the situation. But
I had already decided not to besmirch my friend’s memory. “She was very, very
special,” I said. “But sometimes these awful accidents happen.”

For some reason, this set Trudy off. She
lay her head down and wept like—well, like one of her best friends had just
been found dead in her attached garage. I moved over to her and stroked her
hair as she cried. “Let it out,” I murmured. “It’s okay.” Eventually, she
managed to compose herself, and reached around me for another tissue. “Listen,”
I said, “what time do your kids finish school?”

“Two thirty.” Emily and Cameron went to a
private school approximately twenty minute’s drive from Aberdeen Mists. Trudy
didn’t feel that the public system could adequately foster her children’s
innate creativity and cater to their unique learning styles. Theirs was an
alternative school where they didn’t get graded and they made their own
notebooks out of bark.