She knew from experience that the Committee would escalate its recruiting efforts in the home stretch, cranking up the peer pressure, twisting the arms of reluctant volunteers. Liz opted for the time-honored strategy of cowardly avoidance — keep your head down, let the calls go to voice mail, and then, if pressed, claim you’d never gotten the messages. My machine’s been acting up; I really have to get a new one. No one would believe her, but so what? Summer vacation — that blissful season of amnesia and forgiveness — was just around the corner, everyone’s slate wiped clean until September.
Her plan might have worked if the call had come from Marilyn Tresca, the sanctimonious Volunteer Coordinator, or Ken Lorimer, the red-bearded blowhard who headed the Clean-Up Brigade. But the Committee was too smart to lob her a softball like that.
“Liz?” said the wryly apologetic voice issuing from the speaker of her answering machine. “Are you there? It’s me, Sally…”
Oh, shit, Liz thought. That’s not fair. Sally Cleaves was the one member of the Committee she actually liked. Their daughters had been playing soccer together for the past ten years, attending the same skills clinics and summer camps, carpooling to club practices and indoor matches. Liz and Sally weren’t friends, exactly, but they were better-than-average bleacher buddies, thrown together on countless autumn evenings, cheering for their girls, sharing umbrellas and blankets in nasty weather.
“I guess you’re not home,” Sally continued. “I’ll try you ag—”
Liz had no choice but to pick up the phone.
“I’m here,” she said, panting a little for effect. “I was just in the laundry room.”
“Laundry,” Sally commiserated. “It never ends, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Liz agreed, though she was thinking that it actually would, that in a little over a year Dana would leave for college, and Liz would have no one’s clothes to wash but her own, no one to cook for, no one to talk to at the breakfast table. It would just be herself, brooding in the empty nest, bored out of her skull. “How are you, Sally?”
“Good, pretty good. How about you?”
“Okay, I guess. Better than I was a few months ago.”
“I’m glad. I know it’s been a tough year.” Sally let a few seconds go by, marking the transition between small talk and business. “Listen, Liz, I really hate to bother you about the All-Night Party. I know how busy you are.”
“Not half as busy as you,” Liz countered. Sally was a patent lawyer who somehow managed to work full-time, raise three kids, serve on the School Board and Friends of Gifford Soccer, and run at least two marathons a year. Of course, she had a husband who loved her, so that made things a little easier. Or maybe a lot easier. Liz had no way of knowing how much of a difference something like that might make.
“Oh, I doubt it,” Sally said, her voice full of the warmth Liz had been so grateful for during the soccer season, the first one she’d had to navigate as half of a divorced couple. It was horrible, suffering through game after game with Tony sitting just a few rows away, his shoulders rigid with anger, acting like he didn’t even know her, like the mother of his child didn’t merit the common courtesy of a hello.
God, Sally had remarked one night, totally out of the blue. He’s a cold-hearted bastard, isn’t he?
Always was, Liz replied. From the day that we met.
“Anyway,” Sally went on, “we’re in a really tight spot, or I wouldn’t even bother you. You do so much already.”
Liz released a martyr’s sigh. She felt the all-too-familiar, almost-pleasurable sensation of buckling under pressure, surrendering to the inevitable.
“It’s okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
SHE ARRIVED at the high school a few minutes before midnight, making her way down the rumpled, confetti-sprinkled red carpet leading to the side entrance. It must have been quite a scene a few hours earlier — a swarm of well-wishers cheering and blowing kisses at the graduates as they paraded in, a fireworks display of flashing cameras — but right now it was desolate, just Liz and a bored-looking cop sitting in a folding chair by the metal doors, beneath a hand-painted sign that said CLASS OF 2011 YOU ROCK!
The cop had his head down — he was watching something on his iPhone — but Liz recognized him right away as the meathead who’d written her a ticket a few years ago for rolling through a stop sign on Whitetail Way. Just a glimpse of his Jersey Shore physique brought it all back to her: the way he’d ignored her when she tried to explain that her daughter was late for practice, and then his crazy overreaction when Dana attempted to get out and walk the rest of the way to the field, which was only a couple of blocks away.
Remain in the vehicle! he’d barked, placing his hand on the butt of his holstered gun. Dana was only thirteen at the time and barely weighed a hundred pounds. If you exit the vehicle, you will be placed under arrest!
And then, out of spite, knowing they were in a hurry, he’d made them wait in the car for what felt like an eternity while he checked Liz’s license and registration, a routine task that should have taken a minute or two at most. By the time he finally strutted over to deliver the ticket — along with a condescending lecture about driving more carefully in the future — Liz had had enough.
Just so you know, she told him, I’m going to be writing a formal letter of complaint to the police department about your rude and unprofessional behavior. And I’ll make sure the mayor gets a copy.
Go right ahead, he shot back, his face flushing pink beneath the bronze of his permanent tan. My name’s Brian Yanuzzi. With two z’s.
Liz never wrote the letter — Tony convinced her it was a bad idea, feuding with the cops in a town as small as Gifford — but she had cultivated a lively private grudge against Officer Yanuzzi in the intervening years, cursing under her breath whenever she caught a glimpse of him directing traffic around a construction site, or sitting in his cruiser in the center of town, monitoring the pedestrian crossings. He was such a vivid figure in her mental universe that she was surprised, and even a bit disappointed, by the bland friendliness on his face when he looked up from the phone, as if she were any other well-meaning taxpayer.
“Evening,” he said.
“Hi.” She made a point of not returning his smile. “I’m a volunteer?”
“Too bad,” he said with a chuckle. “Looks like you got the short straw.”
“Looks like we both did.”
“Least I’m getting paid.”
Liz nodded, conceding the point. She could hear music leaking through the closed double doors, the muffled whump, wah-whump of the beat, a girlish voice floating on top. She wondered if she might be able to get in a little dancing later on, if adults were allowed to join the fun. She hadn’t danced in a long time.
“So how’s it going?” she asked, not quite sure why she was prolonging this encounter with a man she actively disliked. It was almost as if she were giving him a second chance, holding out for a sign of belated recognition — Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you that lady… ? — some scrap of proof that she wasn’t as completely forgettable as she seemed to be. “Everyone behaving themselves?”