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  “That sounds—that sounds so yummy,” Jude admits, imagining her hands and feet being caressed and massaged with hot cream, whatever that was. It sounded sensuous and just right, the antidote to all that ailed her. Again she thinks, Why don’t I do these little things?

  “You look troubled, sweetie,” says Heidi, encouragingly.

  “Me? Oh, no, I’m fine, really.”

  “Slam going away again, you say?”

  “Oh, yeah, he’s leaving on Saturday night.”

  “Saturday night? Why not Sunday?”

  “He gets terrible jetlag. He needs an extra day before he can function at meetings. I mean, at the power level he wants to.”

  “Mm hmm,” said Heidi, reaching into her bag to pull out a thermos of her special chai. “Do you have some nice mugs?”

  “Well, I have lots of mugs—”

  “You really need earthenware to bring out the aromatics.”

  “Is that the same as ‘aromas’?” Jude really wanted to learn.

  “No,” says Heidi, her hands busy in preparation. She rolls the thermos in her hands, clockwise and then counterclockwise.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve added not only cinnamon and clove but also cumin. And a touch of black pepper, to tease out the sweetness of the agave.”

  “I have these gorgeous Wedgwood cups from England—”

  “This is not Earl Grey, sweetie,” Heidi admonishes, giving the thermos a final roll and a sharp shake, up and down.

  “Let’s go inside now; I’ll look around your cupboards.”

  “No!” shrieks Jude. The house had not been cleaned for several days. The housekeeper had called in sick yesterday. If only Jude had known that Heidi would come over to comfort her!

  “Don’t be silly,” says Heidi, striding inward. When she reaches the kitchen, she stands there pensively, hands on hips like a general surveying a recent rout, dead troops aground for miles in each direction.

  “OK. I’m staying here today and helping you out. You sit, I’ll find something to put the tea in, we’ll talk, and then you’ll watch me clean. I love it! You’ll be doing me a favor.”

  “Fine,” says Jude, surrendering. “But Hattie is coming in tomorrow. It’s no big deal.” Hattie used to come in every day in the better days. Now, she was always coming in “tomorrow.”

  “Is this the last view you want Slam to have of his lovely home? Off he’ll go to a nice hotel in Italy. The kind with polished wood and ancient carpets. Huge beds you can bounce a coin off. Do you want him to look back and think about dirty dishes and sticky cabinets?”

  “No, I don’t,” murmurs Jude, hanging her head.

  Heidi picks up a sponge, sniffs it, wrinkles her nose, then squirts some of Jude’s cleanser on it.

  “Not the right cleanser, not the right sponge, but it’s a start,” she says, wiping victoriously. Then she pours Jude a half cup of chai and commands her to taste it.

  “Good, right?”

  “Mm, yes,” says Jude, exhaling and even relaxing. Everyone should have a Heidi, she thinks. She had never had a sister, but this was probably what it would be like. They brought you tea, wiped Skippy off the cupboard, and asked you why you were sad. So you told them.

  Jude Spills Some Beans

  Actually, it is Slam that I’m a—a little bit, you know, sad about,” says Jude, forgetting for a moment Delaney’s assertion that her mother was a witch, and not to be trusted. The little smile on Heidi’s face doesn’t help.

  “Slam, your husband, you mean?”

  “Yeah. I’m sort of worried that—”

  “That what?”

  “That, you know—that he’s having an affair.”

  Did you ever think of getting a life? thinks the busy, industrious Heidi. Then you wouldn’t worry so much all the time. True, her own husband, Daniel, didn’t work anymore, which admittedly was a problem to be solved ASAP. He had been a high-achieving assistant principal at an English-style boarding school nearby that featured cold showers in the morning and punishing hours of rugby.

  One day, Daniel Kunst had kindly and innocuously answered the text of a depressed boy in the eleventh grade. Someone had misinterpreted the exchange, and his career had toppled. Now he spent most of his time at the local golf course, pretending that he had retired and was living the good life. Growing his hair and piercing his ears (and then one eyebrow) had not dimmed the pain and the shame, even as these acts seemed to annoy his imperious wife. Perhaps he had even written that text in the same spirit—the spirit of breaking all rules and boundaries.

  Heidi was beginning to wonder if Daniel’s bag of clubs was merely a getaway excuse to avoid her. Did he have a lover? Probably not, she concluded, her good sense returning. She knew that he still wanted her. They had sex three times a week, like it or not. And they both enjoyed the closeness of being a happily married couple. But it was hard to be with a man with lost ambition.

  “Heidi? Do you think he is?” Now it was Heidi who was not paying attention. Jude was usually the one guilty of those lapses. Maybe it was the summer heat.

  “What? Do I think who is what?”

  “Do you think Slam is having an affair? He’s always traveling, and you know how men are.”

  “No, I actually don’t know how men are.”

  Heidi was not a student of literature the way Jude was; still less did she read the tabloids, which were so full of love’s drama.

  “Well, they have their needs,” Jude patiently explains. “And of course so do women, it goes without saying.”

  “Needs? You mean sexual needs?”

  “Yes, and Slam and I don’t really—I mean we rarely—”

  “Really? Rarely?” Heidi’s face displays the consternation of a chef asked to cook the tuna all the way through, mixed with a touch of wild glee.

  “Well, now and then, naturally. But he’s really tired, the hours, the jetlag and everything.”

  “Hmm. I’ll give you one tip. Men like the smell of licorice and pumpkin. Not together, of course. I’ll make you some fenugreek/aniseed cookies and pumpkin tartlets. Feed them to him, one a night, just before bed.”

  “Well, I can try it, I guess.”

  “It’s like a love potion. He’ll be on you like an animal.”

  “Is that what you do with Dante?”

  “Is what what I do with whom?”

  “Daniel. You know, make him the special foods, maybe toss in an aphrodisiac ingredient, I don’t know, oysters?”

  “Dear Jude, it’s all I can do to keep my man’s hands off me! Phew!”

  Jude stares at Heidi, shamefaced. She has revealed a private secret, and Heidi’s simply boasted. She’ll have to balance this conversation. With a great act of will, she straightens her shoulders and asks, “And how is Dant—Daniel’s job search going?”

  “Oh, it’s fine. He’s in great demand,” Heidi retorts, keeping her lower lip from drooping downward into a sad face.

  A week later, on Slam’s return from Italy, Jude tries the aphrodisiac cookies. Dressed in black baby-doll pajamas and wearing hot-pink mules with marabou puffs, she watches as her husband eats them all.

  “Wow!” Slam says. “These are absolutely decadent!”

  “You like them?”

  “I’ll say!”

  Standing in front of the fridge, he flushes them down with cold milk straight from the container. He looks macho doing that, hoisting his libation, chugging victoriously.

  Together, silently, they walk into their bedroom.

  Jude goes into the bathroom for one last mirror check. She perfumes her hair and fluffs it. She puts a little body cream on her shins so they shine, and a dab of cellulite lotion on the backs of her thighs. Turning off the light, she swings the door open dramatically.

  Even with the bedside lamps on, Slam has fallen into a deep and restful sleep, shoes and all. Worse, he has fallen on the diagonal, so that there is no room for her.

  Sitting on the corner of the bed, Jude watches her husband
for hours. At about two in the morning, his pelvis starts to rock in a familiar way, and he moans as though in pain. Suddenly, he shouts loudly, in Italian, “Ahime! Ahime!”

  Twice.

  Then he is still.

  After a moment to absorb the scene, Jude wakes her husband, shaking him roughly, practically screaming in his stuporous ear:

  “Is there any room for me in this bed? Move!”

  With a kindly smile, still mostly asleep, Slam hauls himself over to the designated side.

  “Night, carina,” he murmurs, lips smacking as though he tasted something, or someone, delicious.

  More Beans Spilled

  Did you try them?”

  “What?”

  “My special aphrodisiacs? The cookies with the fenugreek and the tartlets with the—”

  The two women sit outside in Heidi’s garden. The automatic sprinklers hiss and whip efficiently. Under the shade of a Japanese maple, Heidi has arranged a lovely tea service for herself and Jude. An abundant white peony sprawls in a vase, sitting on a French bistro table with mosaic inlay.

  “Yes. Slam loved them! He loved them!” says Jude, too brightly.

  “They really worked?” Heidi has not actually tried these treats on anyone. She experiences mixed feelings again. She wants to believe in the power of her concoctions—and the volume of sales she might have—but she never wants Jude Ewington to be any happier than she herself can be. Which is not very happy at all.

  “Worked like a charm. Seemed to make him really horny. I mean, he couldn’t get enough. Phew!”

  “Good girl!” says Heidi, adjusting the slant of her cherry Adirondack chair.

  “No, Slam gets all the credit,” says Jude, her mouth trying to hold a neutral expression. “Every bit of it!”

  “I’m working on something else now. Care to try?”

  Jude imagines Heidi’s intimidating kitchen. Typically, pots bubbled on all six burners, and both convection ovens were going at full blast.

  “Sure—what is it?”

  “I’ve set out a couple trays to cool. Give it about fifteen minutes, and we’ll go in. It’ll sell out in a day, I can feel it.”

  “OK, sure. What’s the market?” she repeats.

  “It’s untapped, and it’s bottomless. Guess.”

  “Ummm—children with disabilities?”

  Jude can’t believe she said that. After telling Heidi too much about her private life with Slam, she was surely not going to talk about Davey again. Her son was getting odder by the day. It was summer, and yet the boy stayed in his room whenever Joey was not there, which increasingly was most of the time.

  Joey was going back to boarding school in September. Was his twin the only friend Davey had? There had been other friends over the years (Jude remembered a Chinese chess-playing boy who’d since moved away, and in fourth grade a pudgy girl with a lisp), but none had lasted, and in the rough sociological divisions of high school, Jude worried that her son would not fit in anywhere. For better or worse, there was no kid like Davey.

  “Disabilities, yes, I know what you mean,” Heidi was saying, the word delicious in her mouth, as though she was saying “delicacies.” With a keen and cruel swiftness, she had thought of Jude’s peculiar son.

  “Are you suggesting that I might find a culinary remedy for shyness?” she continues. “Awkwardness? Anti-social personality? Future Unibombers?”

  “What did you say?”

  “You know I’m just kidding, Jude.”

  “But maybe you’ve got something there,” says Jude, beginning to seethe on behalf of her son. “You might make something for kids who resent their moms, and who secretly, I don’t know, get fake IDs and use them to get wasted at clubs. Would that be profitable, too?”

  Jude surprised herself. How had she managed to say all that to Heidi? She had tried to aim her response into one that would wound her friend (as her friend had just wounded her), but not so blatantly that she could be clearly accused of it. What was happening to her?

  Writing to her long-lost love had opened some sluice gates, that was for sure. She loved whom she loved, and she hated whom she hated, and she was becoming impatient with all the hypocrisies one thought one had to endure.

  “Hmm—that’s an idea, actually,” says Heidi, with what seems like real admiration. “Something to make them less rebellious during the pubescent stage? I’ll give it some thought.

  “But you know, Jude, even though everything I make is micro-calibrated in terms of nutrients, I’m not into health, as such. I’m into making something fun and yummy-yummy.”

  “That is exactly what you do, and so well,” says Jude, relieved to get off the unspoken topic of their children. “Everybody knows that!”

  “Yeah, the people do know it, and I’ve just about saturated that market, so I was actually thinking beyond the human market.”

  “Beyond?” Is Heidi talking about warlocks and wizards? Would she come out at last and admit she was a sorceress?

  “Did you ever notice how many animals there are around here, Jude? Not just pets, cats, dogs, birds, but horses, for example?

  “I just stopped by this place right near here. You know, Angel-Fire? For kids to get riding therapy? Take a look at this brochure,” says Heidi, dropping it into Jude’s hands as though she were a process server.

  “Look!” she repeats.

  “Yes, yes, I’m looking,” says Jude, resentfully unfolding the brochure. Yes, she is starting to hate Heidi. She can’t stop herself. The perfection of all her surfaces, the industriousness, the sniping about marriages and children.

  “Horses eat, too, right? I mean, there is even an expression, ‘to eat like a horse.’ But what do they eat? Their diet is dull. Hay and oats, you know? Why not make something they’d love, to use as treats for this training thing?”

  “That’s so interesting,” says Jude, still wishing failure on her friend. She was one step shy of showing her all of Delaney’s stories. That would shut her up.

  “Yeah, it is interesting. That’s why I have this brochure. I’ve got dozens of others, from other farms and suppliers. But this one, actually—I’m showing this to you for a reason.”

  Jude can’t imagine what in the world Heidi thinks she knows about pets, particularly horses. She herself has never trusted animals, having grown up with cautious parents who felt that dogs were for biting, cats for scratching, and horses for throwing you to the ground and hurting your back beyond repair.

  “I—I come from a different background from you. I know nothing about sailing, skiing, riding, Heidi.” She tended to lump these all together as pastimes for people like Heidi, each requiring a special outfit and parents who ideally were WASPs.

  “Yes, I figured as much,” her friend retorts. “I’m not talking about you exactly. Look carefully at the wording here. It’s a place for developmental therapy. That means it’s for children. Children in need.”

  “But what—”

  “OK, I’ll spell it out. I’ve actually been noticing this for years, but I’ve been trying not to—”

  Heidi stops herself. She does not want to ruin their bond. Jude is her closest friend, and she hers, even if they don’t like each other. Even now, Jude was drinking her peppermint tea, and Heidi knew she was savoring each sip. The glazed celadon cup was hand-thrown, a gift from a Zen-loving client. Jude was reliable in her way. She was not only a neighbor—she was an appreciator. Heidi knew that Jude loved the peppermint tea and the glazed celadon cup that contained it. Heidi knew that life itself was made out of such containers—such tea and such cups.

  “You’ve been noticing what?” Jude blurts angrily, interrupting Heidi’s benevolent musing about the sanctity of well-served beverages. Jude is scared that Heidi was about to cross a line, and that she, Jude, will have to cross one, too. She does not want to see Davey as others see him. Up to now she has deflected those others and seen her son only through her own eyes, the loyal, loving, and generous eyes of a mother. Why would Heidi want
to change that?

  “This is hard, Jude. This is not easy for one good friend to tell another.”

  “What is?” says Jude, her voice flat.

  “It’s your son, David.”

  So there it was, Jude thinks, out in the open. “Oh, I know, he should get out more,” she says quickly. “But I don’t think he’d like this kind of thing, if that’s what you mean. This horse thing.”

  “Jude, we’ve known each other for a while, right? I know your boy. He’s always been quiet.” Heidi’s voice is soft and conciliatory. “That’s all right,” she continues. “Not everyone can be a man’s man. Not everyone can be good at sports and all that stuff.”

  “Right,” says Jude, tentatively.

  “But now that he’s entering his teenage years, and with Joseph away from home, you have to look out so that he doesn’t turn into a real—a real weirdo.”

  For a moment, Jude can’t speak.

  “What do you mean by such a horrible, reductive word?”

  “Well, my daughter, Delaney, you know?”

  Yes, the daughter whose main writings consist of joyous plots to poison you, Jude thinks. To zap you like a roach.

  “Yes,” she says, powerful in her unshared knowledge. “Your daughter, Delaney. What are her insights into this matter?”

  “Well, she’s been watching David with great interest. They were in the same Spanish class. She talks about him all the time, in fact.”

  “David’s very advanced in Spanish. He happens to be nearly fluent.” That’s why, Jude thinks triumphantly, he’s a rising sophmore, and Delaney’s a junior, and yet they’ve tested in the same level.

  “Oh, nothing wrong with his language skills, I’m sure. But Delaney’s watched him, not only in class, but in the cafeteria . . .”

  Jude knew full well that Davey ate in a peculiar way. If you gave him a hamburger with French fries and peas (restaurants did not do this, add the peas, but mothers sometimes did), he would first eat all the peas, one at a time, each sphere pierced on a fork tine. Then he would eat his French fries from smallest to largest, dipping the tips into the circle of ketchup. Only then would he eat his hamburger, slowly and methodically. Each bit had to have the same amount of ketchup, lettuce, and tomato.