“Did any of your teachers have tattoos?” Wendy asked Roy, and Shy was relieved.
He laughed. “None.”
Wendy was so good at compartmentalizing. She couldn’t be bothered about Shy’s possible boyfriend because she was focused on Shy’s crush on her Latin teacher, which was alarming, but perfectly harmless. Wendy was so capable, too. In a moment she’d be minding the clock, making sure the cookies weren’t burned. She never got so preoccupied with the unnecessary that she couldn’t function. Unlike himself. He hadn’t even gotten dressed yet and it was what, six o’clock? Meanwhile Wendy was running Fleurt. Before they were married, Wendy wrote a feature a day, supporting him through the writing of Yellow. She didn’t even insist on a big fuss of a wedding. They were both too busy. They did it at the Kensington and Chelsea registry office. It took fifteen minutes.
“Maybe you should take a pottery class instead,” Wendy told Shy.
“Instead of what?” Shy pointed at the oven and Wendy slid the trays in and set the timer on the microwave for eleven minutes.
“Table tennis.”
Shy clattered the mixing bowl into the sink and whirled around. “I’ve already signed up for it, Mum. I’m trying to get involved in things like you said. For college.”
“Did you know,” Roy interrupted, trying to dilute the tension, “that one of the best subjects to study at college as far as jobs and salary is pharmacology? The worst are education and social work, that sort of thing. There are too many of them and the pay is shit.”
He stopped talking. His wife and daughter were staring at him.
“I’ve become somewhat addicted to Google,” he admitted. “You can find everything on it. You just type in a question and loads of answers pop up.”
“Welcome to Earth.” Shy rolled her eyes and sucked the cookie dough off her fingers.
Roy rolled his eyes in response, a poor imitation. “I would never want to be your boyfriend.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Wendy watched the cookies spread and glisten in the heat, feeling left out in her own kitchen. Roy was completely absorbed with his new book. Shy was becoming a typical American teenager. They were both thoroughly stuck in.
“Pharmacology,” she repeated, and sipped her wine.
* * *
“Hey! Excuse me? That’s mine!”
Mandy froze. She knew if she put down the Farm to Front Door box it would be an admission of guilt. Instead, she clutched it to her chest and turned around to face her accuser, an auburn-haired man wearing a neatly ironed white shirt and navy-blue suit pants. Aside from the permanently wounded look in his sad eyes, he appeared to be the type of Cobble Hill resident who could afford to donate a few boxes of food to her cause.
“Um, I order from here all the time.” Mandy jutted out her chin in defiance. “I have a subscription. How else could I shop and make dinner for my family? I have MS.”
The man frowned as he approached her. He was tall but also sort of small. He peered at the box. “Yes, but I’m pretty sure the label says T. Paulsen. That’s me.”
Mandy squinted at the label, shifting into clueless mode. “Oh yeah.” She put down the box. “Sorry. Wow, what a screwup.”
T. Paulsen made no move to pick up the box. He shoved his hands into his suit pants pockets and looked over Mandy’s head, scanning the street with his wounded blue eyes. “Did my wife put you up to this? Elizabeth?”
Mandy was ready to go back inside. Scrutiny was not her thing. Neither was chatting on the street. Neither was feeling unkempt and dumpy next to a tall, skinny, well-dressed guy.
“Who?”
“Elizabeth Paulsen. The artist. She’s my wife.”
“Sorry. Don’t know her.”
“She’s close, I can feel it.”
As if things needed to get any weirder. Mandy did not enjoy conversing intimately with strangers.
“I was just picking up my dinner. Which turns out not to be my dinner. I better go call”—she glanced down at the box—“Farm to Front Door. Let them know they fucked up my order.”
T. Paulsen squinted at her. He flexed his fingers. “So this is not one of Elizabeth’s pranks?”
Go home, Crazypants. “Nope. I just got the wrong box. Sorry for the mixup.”
Mandy headed back down Kane Street. Never again would she round the corner for food boxes. She was only trying not to milk her direct neighbors dry. But they were never home and were quite possibly Russian spies. She could keep on milking indefinitely, helping out her country by starving the enemy.