a klepto phase. She had piles of bras and underwear in her room with the tags still on them that she’d stolen from Victoria’s Secret. “It’s so easy,” she told them. “You just bring a bunch of stuff to try on in the dressing room, and then you wear it out underneath your clothes.”
Sometimes if she grabbed the wrong size or was simply feeling generous, she’d dole the stuff out to the girls. Claire never wanted to take any of it, since it felt like stealing once removed, but Lainie didn’t seem to have a problem with it. “What?” she’d always say. “It’s not like we stole it.”
The fact that they’d lived with Jackie as their evil ruler for all of junior high was hard to believe. Harder to believe was that they stayed friends with her throughout high school, where her power was diminished a little bit when it became clear (as Molly Morrisey so accurately pointed out) that she wasn’t very pretty; but whatever power she lost, she made up for by always being the one to take beer to parties in her backpack, to be unafraid to talk to boys. She was not to be trusted.
Jackie had married a boy from high school, Mike Albert, who was a roundish guy with glasses and a fuzzy stare. He’d been friends with all the cool kids, even if he was a little on the periphery of the group, and Claire figured that this was very important to Jackie, that she had probably bullied him into dating and then marrying her.
As they pulled into the driveway at Jackie’s house, Claire said, “I can’t believe we agreed to this.”
“Of course you can,” Lainie said. She turned off the car and the three of them sat there for a moment. “Come on, we’ll get drunk and it won’t be so bad.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT I HAVE two under two,” Jackie said. It was probably the twentieth time she’d said it, but who was keeping track? She sounded so pleased with herself that she almost couldn’t stay seated.
“I’m so glad we’re doing this,” Jackie said. “And I’m so glad you guys get to see my house. Don’t you love it?”
The girls just nodded and looked around. Clancy was eight months pregnant and was sitting so far back on the couch that it looked like she’d never be able to sit up again. Claire didn’t envy her, having to stay sober this weekend. Clancy and her husband had just moved to Long Island. “It’s really boring,” she answered, when they asked her how it was. “I mean, I know we had to do it. We were running out of space and we would have had to put the baby in a drawer or something, but still. You can’t order any takeout past like eight thirty, and it’s just really boring.”
Erin and her boyfriend, James, had just bought a new place in Brooklyn. She showed them all pictures of the huge new loft, and when she left the room, Jackie leaned forward. “What does James do?” she asked. “I mean, I know it’s just an apartment, but still it’s really nice.” Jackie was easily threatened. “I mean, I’d sooner die than live in Brooklyn. There’s a lot of immigrants there, you know. And gangs. It’s really dangerous.” Claire was almost positive that Jackie had never been to Brooklyn.
Jackie poured them all some more of the deep yellow Chardonnay from the huge bottle, unaware that they were all looking at each other. They’d begun to notice in the past few years that Jackie was definitely racist. At first, they’d thought she was just a little clueless, maybe had some bad timing or judgment with her jokes. But her comments kept getting harsher and way more embarrassing. “Don’t be a Jew,” she’d say, when someone tried to itemize a restaurant bill.
“Even my grandmother wouldn’t say that,” Claire whispered.
“Bets would totally say that,” Lainie whispered back.
“Okay, fine, but she’s like a hundred years old.”
They all took large gulps of the wine, which was tangy and bordered on unpleasant, but thankfully seemed to go down easier the more you drank. When Jackie went into the kitchen to get another bottle, Katherine picked up the empty one and said, “I think my great-aunt Janice drinks this. And she’s, like, the world’s cheapest person.”
The weekend went slowly. The next day, as they walked around the neighborhood and down a bike path, Jackie made an announcement. “We’ve decided to teach Emma to