Sharp_Objects

Yes, sigh: my story on those poor little girls. Apparently she didn’t care that much, because she was quickly back to the ladies’ auxiliary and how scattered it had become now that Becca Hart (née Mooney) was activities director. Becca was a girl of midtier popularity from our days, who shot to social stardom five years ago when she snagged Eric Hart, whose parents owned a sprawling Go-Kart, waterslide, mini-golf tourist trap in the ugliest part of the Ozarks. The situation was quite reproachable. She’d be there tonight and I could see for myself. She just didn’t fit in.
    Angie’s house looked like a child’s drawing of a mansion: It was so generic it was barely three-dimensional. When I entered the room I realized how much I didn’t want to be there. There was Angie, who’d unnecessarily dropped ten pounds since high school, and who smiled demurely at me and went back to setting out a fondue. There was Tish, who’d been the little mommy of the group even back then, the one who held your hair when you threw up, and who had occasional dramatic crying jags about feeling unloved. She’d married a guy from Newcastle, I learned, a slightly dorky man (this in hushed tones from Katie) who made a solid living. Mimi draped herself over a chocolate-leather couch. A dazzling adolescent, her looks didn’t translate into adulthood. No one else seemed to notice. Everyone still referred to her as “the hot one.” Backing this up: the giant rock on her hand, courtesy of Joey Johansen, a gangly, sweet boy who’d sprouted into a linebacker junior year, and suddenly demanded to be called Jo-ha. (That’s truly all I remember of him.) Poor Becca sat amidst them, looking eager and awkward, dressed almost comically similar to her hostess (Had Angie taken Becca shopping?). She flashed smiles to anyone who caught her eye, but no one talked to her.
    We watched Beaches.
    Tish was sobbing when Angie turned the lights on.
    “I’ve gone back to work,” she announced in a wail, pressed coral pink fingernails across her eyes. Angie poured wine and patted her knee, stared at her with a showy concern.
    “Good God, sweetie, why?” Katie murmured. Even her murmur was girlish and clicky. Like a thousand mice nibbling crackers.
    “With Tyler in preschool, I thought I wanted to,” Tish said between sobs. “Like I needed a purpose.” She spat the last word out as if it were contaminated.
    “You have a purpose,” said Angie. “Don’t let society tell you how to raise your family. Don’t let feminists”—here she looked at me—“make you feel guilty for having what they can’t have.”
    “She’s right, Tish, she’s completely right,” offered Becca. “Feminism means allowing women to make whatever kind of choices they want.”
    The women were looking dubiously at Becca when suddenly Mimi’s sobs popped up from her corner, and the attention, and Angie-with-the-wine, turned to her.
    “Steven doesn’t want to have any more kids,” she wept.
    “Why not?” Katie said with impressively strident outrage.
    “He says three’s enough.”
    “Enough for him or for you?” Katie snapped.
    “That’s what I said. I want a girl. I want a daughter.” The women pet her hair. Katie pet her belly. “And I want a son,” she whimpered, staring pointedly at the photo of Angie’s three-year-old boy on the mantel.
    The weeping and fretting went back and forth between Tish and Mimi— I miss my babies…I’ve always dreamed of a big houseful of kids, that’s all I’ve ever wanted…what’s so wrong with just being a mommy? I felt sorry for them—they seemed truly distraught—and I certainly could sympathize with a life that didn’t turn out as planned. But after much head nodding and murmurs of assent, I could think of nothing useful to say and I ducked into the kitchen to slice some cheese and stay out of the way. I knew this ritual from high school, and I knew it didn’t take much for it to turn nasty. Becca soon joined me in the kitchen, began washing dishes.
    “This happens pretty much every week,” she said and half rolled her eyes, pretending to be less annoyed than bemused.
    “Cathartic, I guess,” I offered. I could sense her wanting me to say more. I knew the feeling. When I’m on the edge of getting a good quote, it seems like I can almost reach inside the person’s mouth and pluck it off their tongue.
    “I had no idea my life was so miserable until I started coming to Angie’s little