Mrs. Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2018 by Caitlin Macy

  Cover design by Lucy Kim

  Cover photographs: mirror © Giona Bridler / Gallery Stock; wallpaper © Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Author photograph by Deborah Copaken

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  First ebook edition: February 2018

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  ISBN 978-0-316-43417-1

  E3-20171219-NF-DA

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Mrs.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Caitlin Macy

  Newsletters

  For Jeremy

  To anyone else she was defiance; but she knew that it was only going on. You just go on.

  —John O’Hara, BUtterfield 8

  Mrs.

  Chapter One

  Look at you in your fur! You were so smart to wear it!”

  “It was my mother’s. I never wear it. I really never do. But today I just thought, Why not? ”

  In the cold, the mothers gathered outside the school. One after another, like children being summoned in a schoolyard game, they came battling off of Park Avenue into the leeward hush of the side street.

  “…sick the whole time, all five of us.”

  “…quit over the phone…”

  “…got to be kidding me…”

  “…torn ACL the very first run of the very first day…”

  “…Doug will only ski in March.”

  “Called me up—said she wasn’t coming back from St. Lucia.”

  It was January, the first day back after Christmas break—freezing out, with a surprisingly cutting wind. When Gwen Hogan, standing at the outer remove of the crush of mothers, turned her head to look up the block, the cold hit her cheeks and went right through the hood of her parka, making her temples ache.

  Not that she minded—not in any nonphysical, existential way. You had to earn spring, after all.

  “…something to be said for the tropical Christmas…”

  “…Tom’s mother’s camel-hair coat. A gift certificate to Best Buy…”

  “Yup, yup—do the reverse.”

  “…because I don’t need snow at Christmas. I like it, but I don’t need it.”

  “…paid her the entire summer while we were away. If I had known—”

  The school, St. Timothy’s, was a brick-and-limestone town house with a mansard roof on East Sixty-Third Street. It had been built at the turn of the nineteenth century as the rectory of the church that was just around the corner. By the turn of the next, it was no longer clear whether St. Tim’s the Preschool was still Episcopalian, or even Christian. (If pressed, the administration would have copped to the denomination before the religion; Christian suggested Jesus a little too pointedly for this parent body.) The building itself had been ceded bit by bit, at first, by rooms and then by floors, until this past decade when it was given over entirely to the widely desired, deep-coffered preschool.

  The front door was of a heavy-paneled forest green on which a brass knocker in the form of a lion’s head snarled menacingly. Above the door hung the school flag, whipped every which way today by the wind. On a quieter morning you could see that it had a white cross on a red background. Gwen Hogan kept her eyes on the flag, watched it flutter and snap. Me? Oh, no—I was just thinking about what to make for supper! was the response she kept at the ready, should someone take pity on her for standing alone and address her. In her mind she was always having to set potential empathizers at ease. In fact, they never materialized—these kindly souls who would feel themselves implicated in her solitude—although she was occasionally mistaken for Lally Stein’s au pair, to whom, it was true, she bore a passing resemblance (the ponytail and the youthful, makeup-less face; the jeans and running shoes).

  “It’s not about the money! I just can’t get over the selfishness of it.”

  “Well, I refuse—”

  “We refuse—”

  “Ron refuses on principle—”

  But one was never to learn what it was that Ron’s moral code had prompted him to reject, for at that moment, a violent gust assailed the women. “Agh!” They cringed; gloved hands flew protectively to girlish faces. Really! This weather was unbelievable! When the wind died away, a ripple of laughter went down the line as the women gave in to the giddiness anyone feels in the face of such brief, surmountable challenges that never actually interfere with comfort.

  “Well, I’m glad I wore fur today! I’m glad I dragged it out!”

  A taxi pulled up, and before the women even turned, they knew who would emerge from it—who among them would risk being late for pickup on the very first day back. Sure enough, she unfolded the almost excessive length of herself till she stood, nearly six feet tall, in an ankle-length black-and-tan shearling coat and a fur hat: Philippa Lye. Gwen hadn’t seen the hat before, wondered briefly if it was a Christmas gift. Its fluffy gray-brown flaps framed Philippa’s face becomingly: those cheekbones, unconciliatory in the extreme; the arrogant jutting triangle of a nose; and then—as if to give it some wanted thematic contrast—the large, watchful brown eyes. Watchful—in a woman who, for so many reasons, you’d think wouldn’t give a shit. Her hair, which fell to her shoulders from underneath the hat, was chocolate-Lab brown; Gwen privately felt it made suckers of all these dyed blondes.

  “He says I owe him money,” Philippa announced, her voice just loud and insistent enough to carry over the wind. A couple of the nannies, who waited on the east side of the school, closer to Park, looked over at her, keeping their expressions vague, and then looked away. Cravenly, Gwen Hogan also veiled her expression; she couldn’t afford to get
involved any more than the nannies could.

  “The driver, you mean? Well, what does the meter say?” said Ann DeGroat, detaching herself from a conversation about limestone versus soapstone countertops.

  “Yes—what are you implying?” said Betsy Fleming, rubbing her upper arms to keep warm as she joined Ann. “He’s trying to cheat you?”

  “That’s the thing.” Philippa sounded amused. It was the other women who moved and spoke impatiently, attempting to get to the bottom of things on her behalf. “The meter’s broken! He said I should estimate.”

  “Sir! Sir!” This was Emily Lewin, a former prosecutor, taking on the cabbie.

  Philippa went on without rancor: “I take this cab every day. It never costs more than twelve. Twelve with tip. He’s very angry with me. I don’t have any more. I gave him everything I have.” With that, she turned her coat pockets inside out—an irrelevant gesture had she carried a handbag, but, in typical fashion, Philippa Lye seemed to have walked out of her apartment with nothing but the coat on her back and the hat on her head.

  “That’s not the point,” Betsy said, sharing an exasperated glance with Ann. “We can give you money.”

  The taxi driver, who had been leaning out the window following this exchange, began to yell, accusing Philippa of things.

  Gwen still hung back so as not to be the one who loaned Philippa money if it came to that, for the others all could—indeed, would be thrilled to have her in their debt. She watched Philippa watching the other women haggle over it, as if the scene, though of mild interest, were unconnected to herself. Gwen thought her beyond beautiful—no mere specific example, idiosyncratic in its variation on a theme, but the embodiment of some Platonic form that had always existed in her mind. Always, as with all things, meant since preadolescence. In a coincidence that would have mattered little to most of the women here but figured largely in her own thoughts, Gwen had known Philippa Lye’s face a long, long time—since she was eight years old, in fact. Consciously or unconsciously, for most of her life, Gwen had judged all other faces on how they compared to it.

  “Exactly how much did you give him?” Ann DeGroat persisted.

  “Fourteen, I’m sure, because I had a dollar in coins and I gave him every penny.”

  Betsy groaned— “You paid in change?” —but Emily went on the attack. “Look, sir!” She leaned into the driver’s-side window. “It’s clear that, in fact, you’ve been overpaid for this trip!”

  Decades before New York had made its queer claim on her life, Gwen had been in Girl Scouts with Philippa’s younger—plainer—sister, Rosemary, in Nautauqua, Massachusetts. Hard to imagine such a humble pursuit and place could have any connection with as exalted an event as pickup at St. Timothy’s in the aughts. To be fair, the Lye sisters were from Dunning, the next town over; the nicer town, with the pristine Main Street and the twin white steeples of the Congregational and Unitarian churches. Nautauqua, where the Girl Scouts met, had the traffic circle and the fast-food franchises. But still: thirty years ago, Gwen Hogan—Gwen Babineau then—had spent afternoons playing dress-up at the Lyes’ house—not so very many of them, for her friendship with Rosemary had limped along rather than taken off. Then again, it had limped along awhile, as if neither girl was willing to be the one to call a halt. What Gwen remembered most was the feeling of luck she had when Philippa—who everyone said was going to be a model and who was already in a newspaper ad for the local Ford dealership—having no better options on the particular day, would join them. Both Gwen and Rose lacked imagination. Philippa Lye created the fantasy and then took you along on it. Rosemary complained often, to their mother, but Gwen was tickled to be lady-in-waiting to Philippa’s queen, the long-suffering hairdresser to her movie star. When Gwen thought of Philippa over the years, hearing snippets about her success—catalogs and a magazine cover; a stint in Japan—she felt complacent, as one does when one’s own opinion is corroborated by the universe.

  Rosemary she thought of not at all.

  In a stream of disgust, the taxi driver gesticulated violently and skidded off. “It’s fine—it’s fine.” Emily put up a staying hand as she turned back to the group, though Philippa hadn’t yet thanked her. “It’s okay!”

  There was an impatience in Emily’s voice, as there often was when the women spoke to Philippa. They snapped at her more often than you would expect adults to snap at another adult. They seemed to feel it their due, though the impatience, Gwen had noticed, stopped short of harshness. No one yelled at Philippa Lye. Not for now anyway. One wondered what would happen if the money suddenly disappeared—if her husband’s bank fell prey to one of those rogue traders who were jeopardizing the bigger establishments. But one didn’t wonder long. Skinker, Farr was an old institution, its establishment nearly a century ago now less remarkable, Gwen’s husband, Dan, had informed her, than the fact that it had remained in the Skinkers’ hands through the 1980s, when most of the private banks were disappearing.

  Skinker, Farr meant something. Even the extremely rich hedge-fund wives—even Lally Stein and Belle Ostergaard—and their husbands gave the Skinkers a certain deference.

  One could snap; one could not yell.

  “How will you get home?” This was Betsy, who perhaps had been upstaged by Emily.

  “Oh, gosh—I don’t know!” Philippa caught Gwen’s eye. Gwen hid a smile because she, too, found the question ridiculous. “We’ll take the bus!” Philippa proposed. “Or even—walk!”

  But the mothers of St. Timothy’s didn’t, as a rule, do comedy.

  “Walk?” Looking alarmed, Ann gestured to the sky. “In this weather?”

  “Here, take a twenty.” Betsy reached into her purse, fumbled for her wallet.

  Ann was the quicker draw, from a shallower pocketbook: “Take mine. Take it.”

  A brief argument ensued over who would loan Philippa the twenty.

  “Just take both,” Emily decided. “In fact, you know what, I’m going to give you twenty too. You may need it.”

  “All right,” Philippa said gravely. “Thank you.”

  The women, looking pained by their own generosity, turned away with jerky, defensive movements. It was Philippa who stood, tall and unslouching in the magnificent hat. She reminded Gwen of a medieval bishop receiving patronage. She glanced happily at the bills as a child looks at money for candy—frankly counting—and crushed them into her pocket.

  * * *

  At twelve sharp, the green door swung inward. “Hello, hello!” Mrs. Davidson cried spiritedly, as if something unexpectedly pleasant had befallen her in the fact of these women waiting to collect their children. Beside her, Ms. Babcock, her assistant head—and henchwoman, so people said—might have been delighted as well, or she might have been filled with extreme loathing at the sight of the mothers, which she covered up with a kindly smile. The women surged forward as the ceremonial handing-off of their excuses for existence began. Mrs. Davidson cried, “I have Virginia DeGroat! I have Willie Haskell!”

  On the tailwind of another gust, as the names continued, one final mother blew in. Why, it was the new mother! Ah yes. Everyone, turning, having forgotten her entirely, observed her with curiosity: the New Mother. Her daughter had started just that morning, a rare midyear admittee. Coffee conversation after drop-off had concluded that strings must have been pulled or, rather, lines yanked, cut, and resealed. Nobody got into St. Tim’s midyear. Short but not petite—trim and muscular, in fact—she was darkly attractive. In giant sunglasses and hustling, though not in a panicked way, more as if she enjoyed the challenge of the clock, and with her arms heavily laden with shopping bags, the New Mother swept down on St. Tim’s in the same wildly high-heeled pumps she’d been wearing at drop-off. Minnie was her name, was it? Minnie Something? “Like the mouse?” Emily Lewin had asked her provocatively. “Yes!” had come the disarming reply. “My mother loved anything Disney, and she named me after the cartoon!”

  She looked good-humored as she flipped her sunglasses up and gl
anced around. Her manner, as if in imitation of her name, was congenial in a giggly, little-girl sort of way. Here—here, they all felt—was something new. She didn’t seem to notice that the mothers, who were keeping an ear cocked for their children’s names, were all glancing at the labels on the shopping bags and turning back to one another with raised eyebrows. Most people would have stowed them at home or in a waiting car. The New Mother—Minnie—was apparently ignorant of these subtleties. Or perhaps—the idea presented itself uncomfortably—she was simply uninterested in them? Gwen stared at her shoes, unable to believe a person could actually walk in them. They must’ve been four inches high, the metal heel spiked to a fine and frightening point, as if the point she made by wearing them was far beyond ambulatory. But walk she did—triumphantly, weaving confidently through the crowd, her shoulders thrust back, her balance as light and careless as if she were in the old running shoes that Gwen herself wore. And that was the only way to wear shoes like that, thought Gwen, who, despite the fact that she took no time at all with her own appearance, could be exacting about others’. In shoes that high, any telltale hunch of the shoulders, slump of the back, or grimace, and you looked—well, you looked like a prostitute at the end of a long night.

  “Philomena Stein! Lila and Dickson Dilworth!”

  In the middle of the calling of the names, a curious little side drama began, apparent only to Gwen, because she habitually hung back. The New Mother went straight up to Philippa, of all people—and introduced herself. “Philippa? Philippa Skinker? I’m Minnie Curtis.”

  But Philippa was the sort of person who might not answer even a direct address if she didn’t feel like it. She looked vaguely at the woman as she went on, recounting some tenuous connection.

  “I have Peter Felekonaides! I have Emma Eliot! I have—” Mrs. Davidson hesitated for a second, and stolid Ms. Babcock, lips as wooden as a dummy’s, might have been feeding her the name: “I have Mary Hogan!”

  Gwen made her way to the door, took Mary by the hand, and accepted the unwieldy pile of construction-paper collages Ms. Babcock delivered smugly. “Some artwork you’ll want to take home and display.”