Cuppa Sugar

Gossip is the cardio of suburbia.

The gaggle of housewives couldn’t help but chit, chat, and chin-waggle, sometimes in the neighborhood grocery store itself, gathering by the end caps of the squeezable toilet paper. The culprit would occasionally make eye contact with one of them and even wink.

Wink! Just think!

The women were well accustomed to the occasional handyman whose van might linger a little too long on a sunny afternoon. A housewife’s life can become numbingly routine. Wash the breakfast dishes. Start the laundry. Look out the window and see an appliance truck at the Smiths’ house. Take Ginger for a walk. Collect the mail. Was that van still there? Yes, it was. How long does it take to fix a bum dryer, anyway?

Maybe (just maybe) they’d write down the number from the paneling because perhaps their dryer had been acting a little funny lately and maybe they had a drum in need of tightening.

But this was different.

When the little red MG began showing up in front of the Robinsons’ house, the neighborhood women set the phone lines ablaze. Cars come and cars go, but no doubt about it: Charlotte was having an affair with Buddy, the wavy-haired blond checker with the tennis tan and the well-toned thighs. That foreign sports car chilled in the driveway of the lanky brunette, as if it owned the place.

There were ways to engage in an affair that could be forgiven, or at least overlooked. Ways to add spice to a humdrum life while the men were at work playing kissy-face with their nubile secretaries. But this was out in the open, with no subterfuge. No caution. That cherry convertible was a slap in the face to human decency.

The hens clucked. The ravens cawed. The songbirds told secrets to each other on top of the picket fences.

“This has got to stop,” snipped the widow on the corner. “What sort of society have we become when folks start to have…?” she couldn’t even say the word ‘sex.’ “…relations… RELATIONS… in the daylight.” Estelle favored polyester pantsuits in Easter Egg colors and had her cranberry curls shellacked into place each Wednesday afternoon at Al’s salon. She hadn’t enjoyed “relations” much when Edgar had been alive, and she didn’t miss them now that he was dead.

“But what can anyone do?” asked her neighbor Trixie when they met over the backyard fence as they adorned their clotheslines with freshly laundered sheets and Y-fronts. Trixie’s husband was a traveling salesman. She was one of the neighborhood women who almost always seemed to have an appliance in need of a missing screw. Sometimes she felt as if Estelle was talking about her.

“We can let Char know we know. Maybe she thinks she’s being discreet. But she’s not.”

“And what would be the point?” Trixie pressed on. She was curious not only for Char’s sake but for her own.

“Shame,” said the widow, and Trixie’s cheeks went as pink as the widow’s favorite polyester pantsuit.

Later, over lemonade with Marla and a petite blonde everyone just called “Honey” because her given name was Hildegarde, they ate little iced teacakes and dribbled crumbs onto the brick patio. Tiny birds chirped as they marked their treasures.

“It’s crazy she thinks we haven’t noticed,” Marla said, trying to hide her jealousy behind righteous indignation. She’d always had a thing for Buddy, had batted her mascara-drenched lashes to the best of her ability, but she didn’t even remember how to properly flirt anymore. That’s what happens when the head of the cheerleading squad marries the captain of the football team. Bertram treated her like one of the trophies in his case, only taking her out every so often to give her a half-hearted buff and a polish.

Internally, Marla was beside herself that Char had landed Buddy first.

“What’s crazier is that I don’t even see her anymore,” Honey said. “We used to go to the swimming pool together sometimes. But lately, whenever I’ve called, nobody answers.” Honey’s husband was a handyman himself. She sometimes wondered in whose driveway he was parking his van.

Lemonade turned to spiked lemonade which turned to straight-up gin.

They drew straws to decide. Little red cocktail straws that Trixie had left over from their latest party. The one where she’d served electric-orange fondue and everyone had oohed and ahhed over her famous Bundt cake. Once the guests had gotten a little toasted, there had been a round of charades that turned quite risqué, and afterwards there were stories about which husband had gotten up to no good with which wife on the bed of coats in the spare bedroom.

The answer to that question was “several.”

Marla was the one to knock on the door to ask for a cup of sugar. The women didn’t have a better plan than that. Just go knocking when the MG was parked out front. Knock and confront.

This will show her, she thought with bitter glee. Because maybe a conversation like this would drag the dark into the light. And perhaps Buddy would be parking his car in front of her own house…

Yeah, this will teach her, Marla thought, knocking harder, and then Mr. Robinson opened the door.

She craned to see past him. “Your wife…” she tried. “A cup…” she said next, holding out her measuring container like Oliver for some gruel. And was that Buddy the blond checker in no shirt lounging on the sofa? And was that the smell of hamburgers cooking and no women in sight?

“I needed a cuppa sugar,” she stammered. “For a Bundt cake. Is Charlotte here?”

Kev said, “I thought you knew.”

“Knew?”

He gently took the cup from her and beckoned her inside. She followed him into the kitchen, feeling awash with confusion. The place looked different from the last time she’d been in. More, what was the word? Masculine?

“Char moved out two months ago,” he said as he handed her a cup of sugar.