It was Ellie’s turn. They tied the blindfold — really just an old bandanna — around her head, spun her around, and handed her the bat. Her first couple of swings caught nothing but spring air. Her third swing landed, but it was only a glancing blow, not enough to matter. It wasn’t until her fourth swing that she did any real damage to the … what was it, hanging from the Smithton’s tree branch? A horse? A large dog? The piñata, that’s what it was, and Ellie’s blow ripped a hole in its side and sent the other children scurrying for candy.
Margaret Smithton took off Ellie’s blindfold and handed the bat to the nearest child, Clayton Burgess, who was not really thinking about candy, thinking only that he would do some real damage to the piñata and the other kids would be proud of him.
The Smithtons offered their yard for this event. Margaret Smithton asked to host, relished the opportunity to be the center of attention. Her husband, Gerald, couldn’t have cared less, and might make an appearance if he could be torn from whatever had captured his attention up in their home office. There were rumors about Gerald and Margaret, that all was not as perfect as it seemed, but the party would make everyone forget the rumors for the time being. Stacey hated hosting parties, and was all-too glad when Margaret Smithton offered, even though it was Stacey’s kid, eleven-year-old Jeremiah, whose birthday was being celebrated.
Stacey pitied the poor piñata, hanging forlornly from the Smithtons’ tree branch, a gaping hole in its side, spilling its innards. Stacey would turn fifty before the week was out, not that she’d broadcast this fact, and not that fifty was all that old. She’d been almost forty when she had Jeremiah. Her daughter Dara, now away at college, was a more respectable nineteen.
She couldn’t take her eyes off Margaret Smithton. She seemed so self-assured, so confident. She had a pretty face and a figure honed by thrice-weekly trips to the gym. She wasn’t yet forty and didn’t work. Gerald made plenty of money doing whatever it was that he did. If anyone was skipping out it should have been Margaret, as attractive as she was. Gerald was nothing to look at. Of course, he had more opportunities, with all of his travel, which he said was for work. Margaret had her personal trainer. What a cliché that would be.
Stacey pulled her mind back to the party. Why was she even having these thoughts? Did it speak to something lacking in her own relationship? That’s what her therapist would say, if she still had one. “Don’t worry about the money,” Tommy had said. But she quit seeing the therapist anyway, using the money as her excuse, when in fact it may have been something else. She was happy with Tommy Abernathy, she reminded herself, and had been for years, ever since they met in college. Though they talk about a seven-year itch. What happened at year twenty-five? Did the itch just go away? Or did it get worse with time?
***
She had worked at the elementary school until Jeremiah was born, teaching first graders. There was a point where she thought this would keep her young, though she grew tired of their sticky fingers and snotty noses. So she “retired,” she said to spend more time with her own children. Dara was nine, and Stacey was sure things wouldn’t be as bad with her as some had said. And she thought, mistakenly as it turned out, that it would be easy to return to work. The school would take her back, or there would be others. There were times, and today was one of them, when she felt used up. She hated being retired and not yet fifty. The other wives looked so young.
Tommy had “Abernathy’s.” Back at Granite, everyone thought he would go a different route, into college housing maybe, or some other uninspiring administrative job. He had fooled everyone by working his cafeteria job into a restaurant career. Stacey thought he was spending an awful lot of time there, though she supposed that was the nature of owning your own restaurant. There were a lot of young waitresses, however, and there were times when she worried about them. The other mothers teased her about what might go on in the walk-in. It was cold in there, they said, but not that cold.
Stacey had kept her looks and her figure. A few extra lines in her face, maybe, but nothing her expensive face cream couldn’t mostly take care of. Plenty of the other mothers had gone to seed. Carolyn Schwartz, for example. Fat, now, though Stacey knew you weren’t supposed to say “fat.” Stacey would have bet Carolyn looked nothing like the wedding picture perched on her mantel. She didn’t need that piece of birthday cake she was attacking with such gusto.
But did it really make any difference, a few extra pounds or a few more lines around the eyes? They were still women. Did their husbands, with their own guts expanding and their too-small belts trying their hardest to rein in the rolls of flab, even notice? Did they still have sex with their wives, or did they give it up to entertain younger models, girls with pretty faces and flat stomachs and perky breasts that stood out as if immune to gravity?
Stacey wasn’t like the mothers she saw at Margaret Smithton’s party. There was her age, for one thing. For another, her college experience was different from theirs. Hers was all about orifices, orifices that she herself didn’t explore (much), but that she allowed to be explored by others. Men, mostly. There was a time when this would have earned her a reputation, a slur. Especially among the other girls. Or maybe she got called those names at Granite, and it was just that Stacey didn’t notice, or didn’t care, or didn’t travel in the circles where getting called names would be noticed. Then why did she do it? Status? To stand out? To separate herself from the masses?
It was a liberated time, or was supposed to be. Masters and Johnson, Kinsey, The Hite Report. Stacey knew of them more than knew them. Other than The Hite Report, she hadn’t read them, but she knew about them, knew they legitimized her interests. The Hite Report said that seventy percent of women couldn’t climax from intercourse alone. She was glad she belonged to the other thirty percent.
She had only one real friend: her roommate, Lily, and Lily would never have called her names or questioned her lifestyle. When it came to support, Stacey had given more than she had received, and had shown Lily unflagging support, even when she accused Stacey’s then-boyfriend of rape. Stacey broke up with him then, though who dumped whom remained an unanswered question. It wasn’t long after that that she started “seeing” Tommy Abernathy. Boring, maybe, or one-dimensional when it came to certain things, but reliable and in most other ways a good man. And now look at him now, with his own restaurant. Who would have thought?
Yet Stacey missed … something. Tommy Abernathy was nothing if not attentive, but he spent an awful lot of time at the restaurant.
Stacey could easily pass for thirty-five or so, maybe even younger. She was better-looking than other women she knew who were that age. And then there was Margaret Smithton. She began to think that Margaret’s thrice-weekly gym outings weren’t for Gerald’s benefit after all. If Gerald could do as he liked, then Margaret could, too. Stacey made a point to get to know Margaret better, to find out what her secret was.
***
Dara called.
“Hi, Mom,” Dara said. Stacey steeled herself for what would come next. It was never about school and never as cheery as it first sounded. The closest they had come to an academic conversation was when Dara couldn’t get into a course she wanted, and she sought Stacey’s opinion on a substitute.
Dara wasn’t at Granite College. It wasn’t money that caused Stacey and Tommy Abernathy to send her to the U, or wasn’t just money. Stacey had been concerned about the reputation Dara might inherit at Granite. Even so, most of their conversations were about boyfriends.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “What’s up?” Stacey thought she’d detected tears. “You’re crying.”
“I think Gabe dumped me.”
It happens, Stacey thought. Especially at college, when there were so many other options. Get over it. “Oh, honey,” she commiserated. “I’m so sorry. But Gabe isn’t the only fish in the sea.” It wasn’t that she expected Dara to never connect with a boy. It was more that she got so serious about each one. “Maybe it’s time to move on.”
Eventually: “Thanks, Mom.” Was that sarcasm in Dara’s voice? “I’ve got to go.” Which was just as well, as Dara never listened to Stacey anyway, and Stacey wanted to call Margaret Smithton.
***
They sat across from one another in a coffee shop, a place called “The Filter.” There were plenty of other coffee shops to choose from in town, though most were run by big chains. These Stacey avoided. Stacey suggested the only one that was not a chain, run by an older couple that had so far resisted being bought out. They were at a point in their lives where money was less important. They were also at the point in their lives where the rigors of running a coffee shop were getting to be too much to handle. Word had it that they were planning to move somewhere warmer, somewhere closer to their daughter. Word had it that they would turn the coffee shop over to their son. He lived with them, and was at a point in his life where money was still important. He would sell out to a big chain. Oh well, Stacey reasoned. Such is life.
Margaret Smithton settled in across from her, dipping her teabag in and out of her mug. Of course she had chosen tea, some herbal variety without caffeine. Stacey, like always, had chosen the house coffee, and put into it more cream than it needed. Margaret Smithton would have been perfectly happy at one of the chain coffee shops. They would give her a better chance to be seen. Stacey looked around “The Filter.” All the other tables were vacant. The chain place across the street was full. No matter, Stacey thought. This would give them a better chance to talk.
Stacey looked across the table, and thought she was seeing a younger version of herself.
“How do you do it?” Stacey asked once they finished with smalltalk.
“How do I do what?” Margaret Smithton asked.
“You know.”
“You may have to be more specific.”
After a few more back-and-forths like this, they landed on the topic Stacey wanted to land on.
“He started it,” Margaret said. He meaning Gerald.
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“What are you asking?” Margaret wanted to know. Her tea continued to be untouched. “Oh, my God! You’re thinking of doing it, aren’t you? You’re thinking of cheating on Tommy.”
“Maybe.”
“But why? He seems perfect.”
Stacey shrugged. “It’s not like he hasn’t.” She realized she was blaming her own tendency toward infidelity on her husband. “So, how do you do it?” she asked again.
“I just stopped saying no,” Margaret said. She blew on her tea, which couldn’t have still been hot. “They came to me. I just stopped pushing them away.”
Them. So there was more than one. That may work for you, thought Stacey. You’re still in your early thirties, and beautiful. With me, it might take a little more work. She looked out the window. Men, and women, but mostly men, walked by in their suits on their way to work. Would one of them be the one? And if so, Stacey thought, how?
The conversation turned to safer ground, recipes and so on. Eventually they stood to leave, Margaret first, claiming she had to get to one of her volunteer things. She took one last opportunity to talk Stacey out of what she was planning to do. “Don’t do it. Tommy seems perfect,” she said again. “You’ll drive him away.”
***
Stacey sat at a bar. There were only so many bars to choose from, and she wasn’t sure why she’d chosen this one. Goldilocks logic, she decided. Close enough, but not so close as she would be recognized.
She had told Tommy she was going to a school thing, and her excuse was plausible enough that he asked no questions. She was always going to school things. Keeping her hand in, she said.
She didn’t dress for a school thing. Stacey wore her tight-fitting blue dress, the one that showed off just the right amount of cleavage. She prided herself that the dress still fit.
She mostly watched. It’s not that she wasn’t hit on — she was, several times — it was more that she wouldn’t let her standards be lowered to the level of the men who were hitting on her. She remembered what Margaret Smithton had said about no longer saying no. Was this what she meant? On the drive home she thought about what she’d tell Tommy about the school thing she was supposed to have gone to.
The road Stacey took on her way home went by a river, and though it was dark she stopped beside it to think. Stacey had never been the meditative type, and she wasn’t going to become one now, but she had some things to sort out.
There was a bench where she stopped, put there to commemorate some couple. Was she doing what she was put on the earth to do? Some women were doctors, scientists, explorers, politicians. All Stacey had ever wanted, as far back as she could remember, was to get laid. Even while she was teaching, she had lusted after the younger male teachers. Was this it? Was there more?
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the women who became doctors, scientists, explorers, and politicians wanted the same things she wanted, and chose their careers to give themselves something else to think about. Or maybe they weren’t attractive enough to members of the opposite sex. And it wasn’t just the opposite sex. Stacey couldn’t keep up with the alphabet soup of identities people claimed these days.
Why were these things so defining? There was a time when Stacey’s college thesis question was whether men and women could be just friends, without the sexual tension. The answer was clearly NO, though it was no longer about just men and women. It could be women and women, or men and men, or whatever combination was possible. People were drawn to other people. That was the biological imperative. It was the same for everyone. Some were just more aware of it than others.
Stacey watched the river. There were two ducks where the water flowed but stilled near the far bank, an eddy behind a rock. A mating pair, meaning they would have ducklings. Having ducklings was their raison d’etre.
She thought she saw a third duck. Did that mean a duck threesome? Stacey had never done it with more than one person. Stacey saw another duck swim out from behind reeds. Order was restored.
Stacey grew tired of watching the river, or the ducks. She grew tired of sitting. She decided she was not the meditative type. Time to get on with her life. She went back to her car and drove home.
***
Stacey went to a different bar — she didn’t know the name of this one either — but it had the same result as the earlier bar. She even wore the same dress, the blue one with the plunging-but-tasteful neckline. And makeup, which she never wore. She thought mascara made it look like someone had punched her, which may have had more to do with the way she layered it on than it did with anything inherent in the mascara.
She saw a lot of men she wanted to have nothing to do with, and a lot of men who would like nothing better than to have something to do with her, but kept their distance. Maybe they were scared. Or shy. Maybe she was giving off a leave-me-alone vibe.
She left early, or at least early for a bar. It wasn’t even ten yet. The ice cream in her freezer called to her, but she resisted for the sake of her still-attractive body. She scrubbed off what she could of the makeup, took off the blue dress, hung it carefully in her closet, and put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. They felt good, more like her. Home felt good too, but not as good as it might have felt if her trip to the bar had been successful. Which wouldn’t necessarily have meant taking the blue dress off, though with the right guy she was open to that. Stacey hadn’t worn any underwear, so the blue dress could just be pushed up, had she met the right man, which she hadn’t.
Thinking about underwear got her thinking. In college, she had kept that knife in her underwear drawer. Where was that knife today? It didn’t matter. What did matter was the guy she bought it from. Ian. And how would she find him?
Maybe he would have a website. There were supposed to be millions of them, so why not one for Ian? Stacey used Google, which was still new then, and felt very advanced doing so. Sure enough, she found him — Iansknives.com, with a picture of him holding one of his knives. She was sure it was him. He had cut his long hair and trimmed his beard, and maybe looked older, but otherwise had the same features she remembered. And he was nearby. His website had all of his contact information — phone number, email address, physical address.
Stacey would call. She thought about writing him an email, but decided that would be too impersonal.
She called. A woman answered.”Who should I say is calling?” Was it his wife? His assistant? Both? She sounded young, anyway. Younger than Ian would be.
“Tell him it’s… it’s… a client. An old client.” She didn’t like how that sounded. “A former client,” she corrected.
Silence. She was put on hold while the assistant went to see if Ian would take the call. The silence lasted forever.
“Can I help you?” Ian’s voice. Older, maybe, but unmistakably his. She hung up. She would go see him.
***
There were any number of ways to have sex. Over time, Stacey had learned about them all. But Stacey had her preferences, and they were pretty tame compared to what some people thought up. To the extent she had a kink, it would involve having sex outdoors, and she hadn’t done that in years. She didn’t even like doggy style. She’d only done it twice, both times with that French guy, in his tent, one time with the flap open, so people could see in if they happened to be awake. (They weren’t.) Did that count as outdoors?
Though she’d done oral sex, on the receiving end and the giving. She liked the receiving end better.
She tried to remember if she and Tommy had ever had sex outdoors. Once or twice in the shower, maybe, but everybody did that, so that hardly counted as a kink. She and Tommy were pretty vanilla. They stuck to their bed, when it was dark out, and only once or twice did she even get on top. (It was supposed to give her more control, though she just felt more self-conscious with him looking up at her.) Everything else was pretty standard missionary position. Plus oral sex on occasion, usually her giving it to him when she wasn’t all that interested. It did the job, and quickly.
Tommy Abernathy, she told herself, was not very sexually adventurous. That was fine, as she had married him for his other qualities. He was faithful to a fault. And a good father, taking Dara to all of her games and practices and tolerating her years of moodiness better than she herself did. Stacey thought Dara was less moody around her father, or hated him less. (She couldn’t rule out a sexual attraction, which she had read about in a parenting book.) Tommy even had a decent body, until he started to get heavier. But then, didn’t all of the men in her neighborhood put on a little weight? Wasn’t that the nature of suburban men, to have bellies that hung over the handles of their lawn mowers, until they gave in and hired immigrants to cut their lawns for them, resting their bellies on couches while they watched sports? At least Tommy’s belly didn’t hang.
Now that their nest had started to empty, who could blame Stacey for wanting something a little more adventurous, a little more exciting?
***
So here she was, on the phone with Ian, and at a total loss for words.
There were steps to follow. First she had to make sure she had the right Ian.
“Ian,” she said. “Is this Jade Farm Ian?”
“Who’s calling?” he said. He sounded annoyed.
“My name is Stacey. You may not remember me. I bought a knife from you at Jade Farm a long time ago.”
There was silence on the other end of the call.
Then — “Of course I remember,” he said. She wondered if this was just something he said whenever he got a crank call, or if he really remembered. “You were on a field trip.”
“Yes.” Her confidence lifted. He wouldn’t have said that unless he really remembered. “I thought I might stop by.”
She suggested a time. “Friday then? Let’s say 5:30?” She had checked his hours. He closed the shop at 5:00 on Friday, and maybe they would have to go someplace else to talk. A bar, maybe. There were several near his shop. Alcohol would help for what she had in mind.
“Good,” he said. “See you then.”
“It’s a date,” she said, and promptly wished she hadn’t put it that way. She hung up, and started breathing again. Stacey had never done anything like this before. She had three days to get ready. And three days to think of what she would tell Tommy.
***
It turned out that part was easy. She didn’t have to tell Tommy anything, as he was busy with work. Stacey may have imagined him in the walk-in with a waitress, but having it off with a waitress in the walk-in was the farthest thing from his mind. It was nearing the end of the week, and people wanted to get paid, so Tommy had to do payroll.
It was a thankless task, but one that had to be done if you ran your own restaurant. You couldn’t expect people to work for free. Most of the wait staff were working at the restaurant to pay for college. They would soon move on, becoming lawyers and doctors and making a lot more than Tommy Abernathy would ever make. Most of the rest of the staff — the dishwashers and line cooks and salad people and so on — were from some other country, and sent a portion of their earnings “back home.” Vietnam now. It used to be Brazil, and it was weeks before Tommy figured out that they weren’t speaking Spanish. He himself knew a little Spanish, though he knew no Vietnamese. It sometimes felt as if he were working in another country. At least the waiters spoke English.
He would much rather be working the line. Standing there cooking stuff. That would be better than what he was doing. Anything would. He hated payroll. He hated anything that involved working at a desk.
There were times he wanted to go back. Not to his decision to work with food instead of running a dorm, but to a time before he’d opened his own place. Opening his own place may have surprised a lot of people, but to Tommy it was a logical next step.
Owning his own place had been Stacey’s idea. “Why don’t you open your own place?” she said. So he did.
“Abernathy’s” thrived. Packed every night. And every night really meant every night. At first, Tommy tried to stay closed on Mondays, but people demanded it stay open all the time.
“You’re leaving money on the table,” Stacey said. This was true, though some things were more important than money. Like peace of mind. Besides, even on Mondays Tommy would sit at the home computer working, schedules and whatnot. There was always something.
“Serve leftovers,” she said, and he did that too, filling Monday’s menu with things that were left over from the weekend. Fish chowder made from uneaten monkfish, or meatloaf. Still, people came. They needed a place to go.
Stacey worried that she had created a monster. She couldn’t get Tommy and some faceless waitress out of her head. Never mind that her husband was not so inclined. Never mind that he was too busy. She was certain that he was cheating on her, so she decided to get even.
***
They decided on a bar near Ian’s store. She arranged a sitter for Jeremiah, put on her blue dress, then decided that was overkill and changed into black slacks and a beige cashmere sweater top that she hadn’t worn in ages and had a few wrinkles. No moths had gotten to it, thank God, and it still fit, but it was tighter than she remembered. She decided that would be okay. The knife was somehow still in her drawer, having followed her from place to place. Of course it didn’t just follow her — she had kept it for some reason. She took it out, felt its heft, and pocketed it.
She arrived early and walked around the block so she wouldn’t be first. She entered the bar only when she saw him go in.
“Hey,” she said when she approached his table. He looked her up and down quickly, then gestured with his hand for her to sit and join him.
She had a vision, and it was based on something that had really happened. She and Tommy had gone to get ice cream at a place near campus, and as they were leaving there was an explosion, then a flash. “The dorm,” Tommy said, and started running. It turned out not to be the terrorist attack he had feared, but a troubled student setting off a bomb just to see if he could. A one-off. But in the moment, he didn’t know. He ran toward the dorm, toward the explosion. He felt responsible, like a captain going down with his ship.
How had she missed this, this fundamental part of becoming an adult? Tommy wasn’t with some waitress. He was working. That was what real people did, people who weren’t the Margaret Smithtons of the world. Maybe there was something else, something more. Even at her age. Especially at her age.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. She stood, reached into her pocket, put the knife on the table, and left.
Richard Bader‘s short fiction has been published by the Rkvry Quarterly, Boudin, and NPR, among others. He was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize.
Mountain Jay Books 