The Groaning Board

Anthony. Do
you hear me, Anthony? Mommy says—”
    Anthony finally let go, and Wetzon
gathered Izz in her arms. “Thank you,” she said quickly.
    “I hate you!” Anthony screamed at his
mother. “I wish you were dead!”
    The mother returned to her phone.
“I’m sorry, Claudia, but some people around here think dogs are more important
than children.”
    “Some dogs,” Wetzon countered,
raising her voice, “have better manners than some children. Children who
torture animals grow up to be serial murderers.”
    “Here, here!” Madge Alter, a retired
schoolteacher and one of Wetzon’s elderly neighbors, caught up with Wetzon.
Madge was carrying a bag of groceries and another bag, from which protruded the
leaves of a flowering plant. “I don’t know what’s happened to parents these
days. They don’t teach their children manners and never reprimand them when
they misbehave.”
    Wetzon set Izz down on the sidewalk
and fell into step beside Madge, who was heading back home.
    “They have wonderful plants at the
farmers’ market, Leslie.”
    “What did you buy?” Wetzon peered
into the bag. A spicy fragrance wafted up from the plant.
    “A perfectly beautiful azalea,” Madge
said. Her face was deeply etched, but her cheeks were plump and pink and her
eyes were bright and kind. She’d often invited Wetzon to fast-walk with her
around the reservoir early in the morning. Wetzon had demurred. She liked to
walk solo. “I love azaleas. They have such a nice clovey perfume, don’t you
think?“
    “They do. I read somewhere that
they’re poisonous, though.”
    Madge said, “I shouldn’t think so,
but, of course, I don’t eat them.” She waved Wetzon onto the elevator first.
“After you, dear.”
    Madge got off on four, leaving
Wetzon, in the welcome silence, free to wonder about azaleas. This whole
business was so bizarre. When she got back to the apartment, she unleashed Izz,
gave her fresh water, then called Micklynn. It was just after ten.
    “I was just going to call you,”
Micklynn said, breathing heavily into the phone. She sounded sloshed. If she’d
started drinking early, which she probably had, she’d be falling-down drunk by
noon.
    “How has the taping been going?”
    “Oh, fine. Really. I don’t know.”
More heavy breathing.
    “I think we ought to get together.”
    “I’ve just started to work on Hem and
Min’s party. A.T. will be here at twelve.”
    “Get in a cab and meet me at the
Starbucks in the Barnes & Noble on Eighty-third Street. It won’t take
long.”
    “Half hour,” Micklynn mumbled.
    Wetzon slipped her wallet into a
fanny pack along with tissues, lipstick, and a comb, and raced out to do her
fast walk down Columbus from Eighty-sixth to Sixty-sixth, then over to Broadway
and up to Eighty-third Street. The whole world was out on this beautiful May
morning. If she didn’t run into anyone she knew, she could do the walk in a
half hour.
    Luck was with her. Thirty minutes
later, she was stretching her muscles against B & N’s facade.
    After checking the coffee shop and
not seeing Micklynn, Wetzon went into the book stacks. The store wasn’t that
busy on an almost summer Sunday. Everybody who was anybody was beginning to
make the trek out to the Hamptons or Westport, where Smith had her weekend
house.
    In the science section she found what
she was looking for: a concise encyclopedia of plants. The book on poisons she
found in the medical section. She took both books back with her to the coffee
shop, where she spotted Micklynn sitting at a table in the rear, hunched over a
latte. The coffee-tinted milk was running over the sides of the mug.
    Wetzon waved to her and stopped at
the counter for a decaf. There were only four other people in the coffee shop,
three women, old friends, happily planning some kind of trip. The other
individual was a girl with beads in her nose and lower lip, gold hoops lining
the outside of both ears. She sat alone reading The Celestine Prophecy.
    Wetzon set the books on the table,
sat opposite Micklynn, and took the agreement she’d prepared from her handbag.
“You said you were going to call me?”
    “I was going to call you?” Micklynn
looked blank, depressed and ill. “Did I say that?”
    “Yes. If you still want to work with
me, I’ve brought a letter agreement for you to sign.”
    “I don’t remember,” Micklynn said,
frowning. “Here, I’ll sign it.” She scrawled her signature on the agreement
without reading it and