Dead Ball Page 2

  Actually, Lainie thought Patty was pretty stupid for wearing that dazzling diamond ring to soccer practice. “Here’s why I think we shouldn’t tell her,” she said. “If we confront her with the news that her husband was out with another woman, she’s got only two choices. Either she puts up a brave front and lies her head off to save face, or she breaks down and falls apart and can never talk to us again because we know her husband is a putz. And that option would be no good because we’re teammates. She’s got to talk to us if we’re going to play together.”

  “In other words,” Sheila said, “you think that for the sake of the team we should keep the truth from her.”

  “Maybe Lainie’s right,” Angie added. “Maybe that lady is Arthur Cavanagh’s long-lost cousin.”

  “Cousins don’t have knockers like that,” Sheila said. “My cousins certainly don’t.”

  “That’s because your cousins—all two hundred fifty of them—are good Catholics who think plastic surgery is a sin,” Angie reminded her. She lifted her funnel-shaped glass to her lips and drank, then licked the salt from her lips.

  “We won’t tell Patty,” Lainie said firmly, “because we’re her friends and her teammates, and we don’t want to be the bearers of bad news. And if the whole thing is just an innocent get-together, there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Just for the record,” Sheila said, “if my husband was cuddling up to a bimbo at Olde Towne Olé, I’d want to know.”

  “Just for the record,” Angie countered, “I wouldn’t.”

  “Just for the record,” Lainie said, wishing that Roger could cheat on her because that would mean he was still alive, “remember last summer, after the game against Dedham, when the whole team went to that god-awful bar on Route Nine with all those sleazy drunks ogling us?”

  “I remember,” Angie said. “At my age, getting ogled is fun. At your age it’s probably even more fun.”

  “What sticks in my mind,” Lainie said, “was that we had a discussion about husbands, and Patty was in the group that said they’d kill their husbands if they ever caught them having an affair.”

  “I was in that group, too,” Sheila recalled.

  “So let’s not tell Patty,” Lainie said.

  “Yeah,” Angie agreed. “If she kills Arthur, we’ll lose her for the season.”

  Chapter Two

  DRIVING HOME, Lainie wondered whether Roger had, in fact, spoiled her. He hadn’t really been a saint. He’d had his share of flaws. He’d been lousy at fixing things; Lainie had been the household handyman. She’d been the Lovett who had to plunge her bare hand into the toilet tank to adjust the stopper, which was always cold and slimy with mildew. She’d been the one to hang paintings and change the storm windows and patch cracks in the driveway blacktop. Roger had been rough on the furniture, too, kicking his dirty shoes up onto the sofa or the coffee table so that her family room looked like a floor display in a Salvation Army thrift shop. It never occurred to him to rinse the sink after shaving, and a few times when she’d staggered half-asleep into the bathroom, she’d mistaken the little black bits of hair for ants and screamed that the sink was infested.

  He’d loved bad puns. He’d loved stealing tastes of food before it was served, and she’d nearly cut off his finger once when he tried to filch a sliver of turkey meat while she was still carving the bird. He’d doted on his decrepit BMW and refused to get rid of it, even when its engine developed the automobile equivalent of chronic bronchitis. At least once a month he would find himself stranded miles from nowhere, phoning Lainie and begging her to contact AAA and pick him up.

  A few blocks from her house, she passed the road that led to Emerson Village Estates, the new subdivision Arthur Cavanagh was developing. When she and Roger had bought their house in Rockford twenty-five years ago, the town had been mostly rural despite its proximity to Boston. Streets too narrow for SUVs had snaked past modest homes, small farms, the occasional horse corral, centuries-old churches, and a cozy town green.

  Soccer teams didn’t have to schedule the fields back then; Rockford had had more than enough open space to go around. But over the years, expensive subdivisions had sprouted in town like malignant tumors, a farm converted here, a forest decimated there. The town’s one-acre zoning guaranteed that no small houses would go up, because as urban sprawl oozed its way west, lots became too expensive to support anything less than mansions. The town’s population had grown by more than five thousand since Lainie and Roger had settled into their comfortable expanded Cape on the north side of town.

  She shouldn’t complain—the influx of new families with children meant her teaching job remained secure. But every time a new subdivision was built, Rockford lost a piece of its soul.

  The stratospheric price tags of the new mansions had caused the value of all the houses in town, including the Lovetts’, to appreciate. Yet the small local farms were pretty much gone, and old growth forests were dwindling in the region. Years ago, deer used to roam through those forests and avoid the roads. As the new subdivisions deprived them of their habitat, however, they’d ventured farther and farther into the settled areas of town. Driving home in the spring twilight, Lainie had to remain extra vigilant so she wouldn’t hit Bambi or any of his relatives.

  Nearing her house, she spotted Big Brad’s Lexus parked in her driveway. She eased past it and into the two-car garage. Karen’s car—another Volvo, bought used but still newer than Lainie’s—occupied the other bay. Lainie checked her watch. Almost eight o’clock. Whatever Karen and Brad might have been doing, they should be finished by now.

  She got out of her car, hauled her gear bag from the trunk and entered the kitchen. Television babble greeted her ears, followed by Karen’s voice: “Mom?”

  “Hi,” Lainie called toward the family room. She dropped her bag near the doorway and crossed to the sink to empty the water from her sport bottle. A rectangular baking dish sat soaking in the basin, filled with sudsy water.

  “We finished the lasagna,” Karen shouted. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  On a scale of one to ten, Lainie minded about a four. She’d planned on the leftover lasagna for tomorrow night’s dinner, although now that practice had been rescheduled, she supposed she wouldn’t have time for a leisurely hot meal tomorrow.

  Last year, when Karen and Randy had both been in college, Lainie had eaten whatever she’d wanted whenever she’d wanted, without having to plan out her meals. She ate well—food was one of her great joys—but her nest had been empty, not just of the little birdies but also of the big Papa bird, and Lainie hadn’t had to worry about providing berries and worms for anyone but herself.

  Now Karen had moved back in. She frequently insisted that Lainie didn’t have to fix any dinner for her, but then she’d rummage in the refrigerator and help herself to whatever was there.

  Having her grown daughter return home to live was odd. Karen didn’t like the arrangement, but her position as a bank teller didn’t pay enough for her to afford her own place. She hated the job, but what had she expected? Employers weren’t engaging in bidding wars for the privilege of hiring classics majors, even if they happened to have graduated from Middlebury College.

  Like Karen, Big Brad had moved back in with his parents after college, although sometimes he seemed to be living at Lainie’s home rather than his own. Lainie wandered into the family room to greet the kids. They were fully clothed but their legs were interwoven, Brad’s left, Karen’s left, Brad’s right, and Karen’s right, one on top of the other in a stack on the coffee table. Lainie ought to be used to their displays of affection by now. They were college graduates, in their twenties. Of course they were having sex. She just wished they were having it somewhere else, far away.

  At least Brad was a nice guy. An amiable lug, he’d majored in anthropology, a subject about as useful as classics, and he was currently working in his father
’s insurance agency. He swore he loved Karen and intended to marry her once he’d saved up a little money. Karen swore to Lainie that she loved Brad, too, but no way in hell would she marry him. “I’m not ready to get married yet,” she said. “I want to live a little first.”

  Big Brad extricated his legs from Karen’s and hoisted his linebacker-sized body off the sofa. “Hi, Mrs. Lovett,” he said with an ingratiating smile.

  “Hello, Brad.”

  Karen rolled her head back against the cushions and peered up at Lainie, viewing her upside down. “How was practice?”

  “Fine.” Lainie saw no need to explain that practice hadn’t happened at all and that she and Angie and Sheila had instead spent the past two hours consuming drinks and tortilla chips at Olde Towne Olé.

  “Grandma called,” Karen reported. Before Lainie could ask which grandmother, Karen elaborated, “Wasp Grandma.”

  Wasp Grandma was Lainie’s mother-in-law. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  Karen shrugged and smiled. “She said it was nothing important.”

  Nothing important meant that if Lainie didn’t phone her immediately, the woman would succumb to apoplexy. Lainie had thought her own parents were experts when it came to being deeply wounded by their children, but to her surprise, Roger’s Wasp parents made her histrionic Jewish parents seem like amateurs. Her parents aired their grievances in voluble whines. The Lovetts stewed and brooded. Lainie had learned, after twenty-five years as their daughter-in-law, that heat was easier to take than ice.

  “I’ll call her,” she said, then nodded at Brad, tacitly giving him permission to sit back down and lock legs with Karen once more.

  She returned to the kitchen, grabbed the cordless phone, and punched in her mother-in-law’s speed-dial number.

  The phone rang once. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Margaret. It’s Lainie.” She’d never felt comfortable calling Margaret Lovett “Mother,” let alone “Mom,” but Margaret had never given her permission to call her anything else. For most of her marriage, Lainie had avoided calling Roger’s mother anything at all. After he’d died, she’d started calling her Margaret, and Margaret didn’t stop her.

  “Elaine,” Margaret said. Lainie had never given her mother-in-law permission to call her that, either. It was her real name, the name her own parents used to trot out when she was in trouble. “Elaine, did you track mud through the house again?” her mother would scold. “Elaine, you said you’d be home by eleven and it’s now nearly midnight.” She supposed it was only fitting that Margaret used her full name, since whenever Lainie spoke to the Lovetts she felt as if she was about to get chewed out.

  “How are you?” Margaret asked.

  Lainie sank onto one of the kitchen chairs and raked her fingers through her hair. It felt dirty. She needed a shower. She had a stack of math quizzes to grade. She hoped this phone call wouldn’t take long. “I’m fine, Margaret. I just got in. Karen said you called.”

  “Yes.” Margaret spoke as if each consonant was a dear friend she was reluctant to part with. “I’m planning to book the club for Henry’s seventy-fifth birthday, and I wanted to make sure Randall would be home from school by the end of May.”

  “He should be.” Why her father-in-law had to mark his seventy-fifth birthday with a fancy affair at the Lovetts’ snooty club was beyond Lainie. Even after all those years as Roger’s wife, she’d never quite figured out the tribal customs of rich Wasps. Perhaps Big Brad, with his degree in anthropology, could explain it.

  “I don’t understand why Randall had to go so far away for college.”

  “Because it’s Princeton,” Lainie explained. Surely that was a good enough reason.

  “He could have gone to Harvard.”

  “He didn’t want Harvard. He wanted Princeton. And Princeton wanted him. Be happy for him, Margaret.”

  There was a long pause. Margaret must have heard her impatience, and the tinge of sarcasm in her tone. She was in deep doo-doo now. “Elaine, I’m very proud of your children. Both of them. Even though Karen is living under your roof like a teenager because she has that dreadful job.”

  “It’s not a dreadful job,” Lainie said, wondering why she bothered to argue with the woman. “The economy is tight. She’s lucky to be working.”

  “She should have gotten something better. What Middlebury charges—for the same amount of money, she could have gone to Harvard.”

  “She didn’t want Harvard.” Margaret and Henry lived in Cambridge. They believed the world—including the world of higher education—began and ended in their city. To this day, they couldn’t understand why Roger and Lainie had settled in the sticks of Rockford, when they surely could have found a nice house in Cambridge. Lainie had never had the heart to tell her mother-in-law that living that close to the Lovetts would have driven Lainie to acts of violence or perhaps severe narcotics abuse. “Anyway, Margaret, any day after May 20th should be fine with Randy. Go ahead and book the club.”

  “I will. It’s going to be a special occasion, Elaine. I want my grandchildren there.”

  “Of course.”

  “Does Randall own a suit?”

  No, but he had a perfectly respectable navy blue blazer and dress slacks. Lainie wasn’t about to invest in a suit for him when he still might grow another couple of inches. “I promise he’ll be properly groomed,” she said.

  “Very well. I’ll let you know once we have the date locked in.”

  “Great. I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “I’ve got to go, Margaret. Keep me posted on the plans.”

  “I will. Goodbye, Elaine.”

  Lainie disconnected the call and groaned. A fancy party at the club, surrounded by a bunch of Lovetts. Oh, sure, she was looking forward to it.

  That night last summer when the Colonielles had wound up at the sleazy sports bar and pondered aloud what they’d do if they’d ever caught their husbands cheating, she’d had nothing to say. Her husband—may he rest in peace—would never have cheated.

  But had she known that Roger was going to stick her with such a pain in the ass for a mother-in-law . . . If he weren’t already dead, she might have killed him for that.

  Chapter Three

  SHE HEARD THE news the next day in the faculty women’s room, just after she’d marched her class to the cafeteria for lunch. Although the faculty women’s room was at the opposite end of the building from the cafeteria, Lainie preferred it to the students’ lavatories. It remained clean all day and wasn’t filled with screeching little girls. Also, the toilets and sinks were installed at heights appropriate to full-grown adults. The first time Lainie had used one of the children’s bathrooms, which were located conveniently throughout the school, she’d nearly wound up with whiplash from misjudging the height of the toilet seat.

  Washing her hands at the sink, she tried not to wince at her reflection in the mirror above the counter. She really ought to work harder on her appearance, even if the only people she saw most days were ten-year-olds who didn’t care that she looked like someone their mothers might hire to clean their houses. Makeup was wasted on her, and a few silver hairs had recently threaded their way into her otherwise chestnut-brown mop, which hung around her face in a shapeless, but easy-to-maintain, arrangement that Marianne at Stellara Salon trimmed every eight weeks. During Lainie’s last few visits, Marianne had mentioned a wonderful coloring product she would be happy to use on Lainie’s hair to get rid of those silver hairs before they became “a problem.”

  Lainie saved the word problem for things like school budget cuts, ice storms, and pancreatic cancer. A few silver hairs did not constitute a “problem,” and she’d ignored Marianne’s hints.

  Maybe she should do something with her hair, though, something that would make her look younger than closing-in-on-fifty. Something with her wardrobe, too. Her closet was full of
apparel chosen because it was comfortable and machine washable, not because it was stylish. She ought to buy something new for her father-in-law’s birthday party. A chic, elegant dry-clean-only outfit would earn her a lot of points with Margaret.

  Sighing, she shook the water off her hands and glanced toward the door, which squeaked when it opened. In walked Nancy Van Doerr, the school secretary. Her eyes were bright and round, firing sparks. “Lainie! Did you hear?”

  “Did I hear what?” The only hot rumor that had blown past Lainie that day had to do with Matthew Belzig setting a new class record in a trendy computer game last night. The boys seemed to think this was pretty special. The girls remained unimpressed.

  “About Arthur Cavanagh.”

  Lainie resolutely made her face go blank. How had the news of Arthur’s indiscretion spread so quickly and all the way to the Hopwell School? She, Angie, and Sheila had vowed not to discuss what they’d seen at Olde Towne Olé last night. Had someone besides Lainie and her teammates spied him at the restaurant with his flashy blond companion? Had the couple been spotted at some other watering hole in town, or dining somewhere, or strolling hand in hand along the town green? Had Sheila broken her promise and spilled the beans?

  “What about Arthur?” Lainie asked blandly.

  “I am totally shocked,” Nancy said, her grave expression failing to disguise her glee at being the bearer of grim tidings. She crossed to the mirror and pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse. “I feel terrible for Patty. And her son. I mean, it’s just heartbreaking.” She slathered muted coral over her lips and then pressed them together a few times in a motion that reminded Lainie of Moby-Dick, Randy’s dearly departed pet guppy.

  “What happened?” she asked with feigned ignorance, warning herself to look totally shocked once Nancy told her what she already knew. It was hardly shocking news that men cheated on their wives. Not all men, not near-saints like Roger. But Lainie knew infidelity occurred in picturesque Boston suburbs like Rockford, just as it did everywhere else. Even she, who liked to assume the best of everyone, hadn’t been shocked when she’d seen Arthur last night. Aghast, yes. Disgusted, definitely. But not shocked.