TODAY IS MAID’S day. Not at our house, of course. At Margot’s—5 Kensington Drive. In the gilded and gated neighborhood Kensington Place.

I know this because two months ago on a frosty winter morning, I was parked outside the gates, and a weathered minivan, wheezing puffs of exhaust, had trundled to the entrance of the neighborhood. That’s how bored I’d become in this small town. The driver, a middle-aged woman with frazzled hair, lowered her window and stabbed the keypad. The gates swung open and I trailed the minivan inside.

I had sat, idling, outside the gates a few times before, hoping to get a glimpse of Margot’s house, but never had the courage to follow in, say, a gleaming Jaguar, or a Mercedes. But I somehow felt inconspicuous drifting behind the minivan in my five-year-old Toyota Highlander.

I already knew the address (another perk of small-town life: phone books still get dropped at your doorstep, and sure enough, all Margot’s contact information was reliably listed under Banks), and I shadowed the van as it coasted through the parklike neighborhood. Immaculate, curving streets with bleach-white sidewalks.

Golf course–green lawns the size of small estates rolling out from enormous, newly built mansions with rooms fanning out like accordions. A glittering pond anchoring the center of the neighborhood, rimmed with willow trees combing the wind, and a fountain in the center of the pond shooting water orgasmically toward the sky.

* * *

—

THE MINIVAN PARKED at the lip of the curb just outside Margot’s house, and I slowed my SUV and found a spot under a giant sycamore across the street a little ways up.

The woman lumbered out with cleaning supplies and scuttled toward the house. Margot opened the hulking wooden front door and they disappeared inside.

I had seen both an aerial and a street view on Google Earth, but somehow, the house was even more magnificent in person. A sprawling, Mediterranean-style villa. The stucco painted a creamy white and trimmed in reds and yellows. Climbing fig hugged the exterior, and a pair of black Mercedes as sleek as seals rested in the drive.

I sat with the heater roaring, the seat warmers toasting my ass for a few moments before I drove off.

Today, I don’t have to do that. I hook up my phone to the computer, and while my photos are uploading, I head to Facebook, to Margot’s profile.

I know I shouldn’t. I should be working on my blog first thing in the morning but I’m having a hard time getting motivated with it lately. I don’t have a ton of traffic yet, or followers on Instagram, so sometimes it feels like I’m slinging posts out into the abyss.

Unlike in the magazine world, there’s no real gratification, say, from a published article or finished edition. Also, there are no deadlines to meet, no one to answer to.

Just five minutes, I tell myself. And then I’ll get to work.

Margot’s made it easy for me; she even has an album titled “Our Home” and I click through the photos and look through acres of rooms with gleaming floors and glittering chandeliers. Breathtaking, yet chilly. Even the children’s bedrooms are too magazine-shoot perfect—not a toy on the floor nor a doll out of place. The boy’s room looks ripped from a Ralph Lauren catalog, and I can see the trail of his future mapped out in the navy-blue-and-white-plaid color scheme: private school, Ivy League, Wall Street next, or perhaps law school.

Next up, the master bedroom. Creamy whites and taupes. Sensual. The king-size bed is dolled up with satiny throws and looks like a sumptuous gift waiting to be unwrapped.

I close out of her photos and go to my feed.

The first post that pops up is from Erin. A cute pic of Mattie playing in the creek. I click the heart button, leave a comment:

Adorable!

Another post from Erin:

Don’t forget, tomorrow the food bank will be accepting canned goods.

I click “like” and scribble a note on a sticky pad to gather canned goods.

6

I FIRST DISCOVERED Margot on Facebook shortly after moving back. Via Erin. Even though Erin is an earth mama through and through and doesn’t care much for the socialite scene, because of her volunteer work, she sometimes runs in the same high-society circles as Margot.

A few days before Christmas, Erin was tagged in a splashy post with twenty or so other women. A post about a Christmas party—specifically a “Mommy and Kiddos Dance”—benefiting the local children’s theater.

Almost instantly, my eyes found Margot in the lineup of all the women and kids in the group.

She was dressed in a black, one-shoulder evening gown with a slit up the leg so high it reached the top of her thigh. A diamond choker clasped her neck, and her dark hair was smoothed back, shiny as a new penny.

I found myself drawn to her, my eyes studying her sculpted thigh, her slender wrist. But more than anything, it was her expression that jolted me. Her fuck-me eyes, but also, while everyone else was flashing giddy grins, Margot’s mouth was pressed into that same smirk she wears in nearly all the other photos I’ve seen of her. That smirk of irreverence that lets me know she is different from all the others in the photograph.

I took a sip of the chardonnay I’d been nursing all evening and swiped through the comments. The first was Erin’s:

That was SO fun! Mattie had a blast!

Followed by a stream of others that echoed Erin’s sentiment:

Yasssss!

We should do this every year!

SO fun!

Then one from Margot:

Ladies, paleez. There wasn’t enough booze in the joint to make the night bearable.

I grinned. I noticed her comment had racked up the most likes—nearly forty—and that people were still hitting the “like” button while I was looking at it.

I dragged the cursor and hovered over her name, which in and of itself sounded beguiling: Margot Banks.

I clicked on it. But her profile was set to private. A locked door. The standard Facebook message glared at me beneath her profile pic:

To see what she shares with friends, send her a friend request.

But I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

All I could gather from her profile were scant biographical details:

Age: Thirty-eight. Three years older than me.

Birthday: August 20.

Friends: 3,121. Jesus.

Her profile pic: Margot in oversize shades with the tease of a smile curling on her lips. Her arms wrapped around a dashing man. I clicked on the photo. The caption simply read: “Me and the hubs.” The person tagged in the photo was Jed Banks.

I knew of that name, not because I’d ever met Jed, but because the Bankses are Mapleton royalty. The local library, for one, bears their family name.

I clicked on it; his profile was public. But clearly untended, like those of most males his age. Just stale birthday wishes to him from last fall, none of which he ever replied to.

I scanned through a few of his photos. Dark, wavy hair, olive skin. Roman-god handsome. Every bit as much of a scorcher as Margot.

I headed back to Erin’s page, dug around, and found a handful more of mutually tagged posts with Margot.

One from last Easter at the Piney Woods Country Club. A ladies’ luncheon.

The sun-soaked dining room filled with women of all ages, sitting at long tables adorned with pink and yellow tulip bouquets. Margot sumptuously dressed in a white sundress dotted with red poppies, her expression exuding an air of boredom.

The comments section was ripe with the usual:

Fun, fun, fun!

Lovely day, Ladies!

And also sprinkled with some religious comments:

We serve an awesome God!

He is risen!

Then Margot’s:

Yes, fun. But if one more person in this godforsaken town tells me to have a blessed day, I’m going to commit ritual suicide.

I nearly spit my wine out reading that, I laughed so hard.

This very thing had actually become an in-joke between me and Graham. “And how many times were you blessed today?” he began to ask me shortly after we moved here.

“Was it this rabidly religious when you lived here before?” he asked me.

No, no it was not. It seemed that in the past twenty years, the town had gone full-tilt-boogie fanatical. Jesus signs in front yards. Perfect strangers inviting us to their Sunday church services under the guise of “being led by the Lord to ask” us.

So when I read Margot’s comment, she felt simpatico.

I found myself looking forward to checking Facebook to try and catch posts she was tagged in. And thinking about her more and more, wondering about her life, which seemed so much bigger than my own. And yes, digging her name out of the phone book and locating her house. It wasn’t envy, though; I didn’t want to be her.

It was so much more than that. I wanted to be near her. For her to notice me, too. The idea of it took my breath away. It became powerful and even consuming.

7

Saturday, March 17, 2018

WE’RE BACK HOME now and I’m carrying an almost-asleep Jack to his bedroom, his warm face lolling on my shoulder, his thumb plugged into his mouth.