Free Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman Page B

for being the only people in the theater who hadn’t rushed the exits at the intermission. Over dessert she congratulated Peter on his sexual prowess. I believe her exact words were, “Juliet says you’re the best lover she’s ever had.” First he turned red, and then green, and then kicked me under the table.
    “Oh, honey,” Stacy had said to my blushing boyfriend, “get used to it. Juliet and I tell each other everything. And I mean, everything.”
    I think for a while Peter deluded himself into thinking that it was just Stacy, my best friend, who was privy to all my most intimate secrets, but when he came upon me comparing severity of menstrual cramps with a woman standing in front of me in line at the health food store (she introduced me to red raspberry leaf tea, a truly miraculous substance), he had finally to confront the ugly truth. I can’t keep my mouth shut. He knew before he even suggested the opposite that I was going to tell all my girlfriends, and my mother, that I was pregnant.
    “But what if you have a miscarriage? Are you really going to want to have to call everyone and tell them that you’re not pregnant after all?”
    “How long have you known me?” I asked my husband. “If I have a miscarriage, I’m going to be on the phone crying to every single one of my friends anyway. You can’t get emotional support unless you let people into your life.”
    He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “But not Ruby or Isaac, right?”
    “Of course not,” I said, and wondered exactly how long it was going to be before I slipped up and mentioned it in front of them. Wasn’t Ruby bound to ask why it was that I was spending so much time in the bathroom, throwing up?

Seven
    T HE next morning, Al and I met in the parking lot of Isaac’s preschool. We were heading almost two hours north of the city, to Ojai, and I was running late. When Al pulled up, I was still trying to wrestle my son’s shoes onto his feet.
    “Problem?” Al asked, jumping down from his truck.
    “No,” I said, gritting my teeth and shoving a squirming foot into a Hot Wheels sneaker.
    “Wrong foot, Juliet,” Al said.
    I shook my head and scowled at him. “I know that.” I crammed the foot into the shoe and tugged the Velcro strap tight.
    “It hurts!” bellowed my son.
    “Well, of course it hurts,” Al said. “It’s the wrong foot.”
    I grabbed Isaac’s Barbie lunchbox, a hand-me-down from his sister that he, for some reason, adored, and opened my arms to my son. “Jump up, buddy,” I said.
    “The kid’s shoes are on the wrong feet, Juliet,” Al insisted again.
    I held up Isaac’s legs and waggled them at Al. “No, only one of them is. He’s wearing two left shoes.”
    Al laughed and shook his head in disgust. “You let your kid out of the house with two left shoes?”
    I made a face. “No, of course not. I told him to go get sneakers. And he did. He got one Hot Wheels sneaker and one Thomas the Tank Engine sneaker. Left ones.”
    “And you didn’t
notice
?” I knew what he was thinking.
Jeanelle
would never have made such a mistake. When his girls were small, Jeanelle always made sure that they had the right shoes, and the right clothes, and the right weaponry for any situation.
    I shrugged. “Ruby was having a freak-out about her hair. I braided it
wrong.
Again. Because, apparently, I am the worst mother in the kindergarten. Or maybe in the history of kindergartens altogether. Anyway, by the time she stopped screaming, I was grateful just to get out the door. I didn’t notice his shoes until just this minute.”
    “I don’t
want
to wear two left shoes,” Isaac wailed. I kissed his round cheek, the only part of him that still retained that baby softness.
    “Stop crying, honey. We’ll check and see if the teachers have a pair of shoes you can borrow for the day.”
    By the time I got back from signing Isaac in, putting his lunch in his cubby, and helping him put on a pair of chartreuse Chinese