Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,94

a bright red, skintight dress.

“Get in here, you two,” she said.

She glanced at Elisabeth’s shoes, but didn’t say anything.

They were whisked into separate conversations—Elisabeth into the crowd of women in the kitchen; Andrew into a throng of men seated around the dining room table, talking about sports. There was nothing sadder than men talking about sports. Why did they accept it as their only form of communication with one another?

A bar had been set up on the kitchen island. There were paper napkins printed with Christmas trees, plastic cups, and several open bottles of wine and liquor.

Elisabeth fixed herself a gin and tonic. She said hello to the Laurels, and half a dozen other women who looked like them, whom she hadn’t met before.

“What about you? Do you have the Elf on the Shelf?” said a woman wearing jingle-bell earrings.

Elisabeth searched her memory for what that was.

“Her son is too young,” Debbie said. “He’s just a baby.”

“Well, trust me,” the woman continued. “That elf will be your best friend in a few years. My kids act like angels when they think he’s watching and taking notes for Santa.”

Elisabeth remembered now. Her friend Pearl at her old job had told her about this.

The Elf on the Shelf is the perfect introduction to life in a surveillance state was how she’d put it.

“You girls make motherhood so difficult for yourselves,” said the one older woman in the group. She wore a black dress, too tight for her sagging midsection. “We never would have dreamed of setting up a doll in a different pose every night to amuse our children. Or as a way to get them to behave. We just threatened to spank them and that was that.”

Elisabeth stared at her.

Then Stephanie grabbed her and pulled her over.

“Elisabeth!” she said, drawing out each syllable. She was already drunk. “I’d like you to meet my bestie. My ride or die. My mom.”

The older woman smiled and rolled her eyes in faux embarrassment. “Hi there. I’m Linda.”

Like Stephanie, she seemed extremely proud of herself for no apparent reason.

Elisabeth took a deep breath. She was being judgmental, harsh. She pinched herself. Banana banana banana.

“Elisabeth has a brand-new baby,” Stephanie said.

“That itty-bitty waist, and you’ve got a brand-new baby,” Linda said, admiringly. “Very impressive.”

“He’s not brand-new,” Elisabeth said. “He’s seven months old.”

“How are you finding the baby stage? It was my least favorite part of motherhood, if I’m honest,” Linda said.

“I love it,” Elisabeth said.

“When do you think you’ll have another? It’s the most fun, having two,” Linda said. “Watching that sibling bond happen right in front of your eyes. Though it’s true what they say—after the first, your mind is gone for a year. After the second, it’s gone for good.”

Stephanie and Linda laughed. Elisabeth wondered what their minds had been like to begin with. She wondered why so many people felt it was their job to insist that women have more children, while simultaneously pointing out how terrible it would be when they did. She poured herself more gin.

The doorbell rang.

Stephanie flitted off to greet another guest. Linda launched into a story about a fight that was brewing at her church over whose grandchild would portray Baby Jesus in the Nativity play.

“My friend Judy and I have a quiet campaign going to get her grandson, Dylan, in there. He’s an angel. Those blond curls you just want to eat.”

Elisabeth missed Gil. “My son has those curls,” she said.

“You should see this kid they’re planning on using,” Linda said. “He has a strawberry birthmark and eczema.”

She said eczema as if it were the plague.

As soon as an opportune moment arose, Elisabeth excused herself.

She walked into the living room alone.

Stephanie had two Christmas trees as tall as the ceiling, covered with blinking lights. Why two? An attempt to be as showy as possible?

The Laurels coordinated their outdoor holiday decorations. They all hung big rainbow-colored bulbs on their bushes, and enormous prewired wreaths over their garage doors. But no one told Elisabeth and Andrew, who had purchased tiny white lights online, and a puny wreath from the Boy Scouts when they came door-to-door. Their house looked shabby, half done, compared with the sea of bright colors and lit-up snowmen and the actual sleigh pulled by eight plastic reindeer on Debbie’s lawn.

A week ago, the Laurels had invited Elisabeth to a Christmas cookie exchange, which entailed baking ten dozen of one kind of cookie, then meeting at Pam’s with nine other women who’d done the same,