Introduction

Marjorie Moore always wants more—and as a result, often feels she ends up with less. Forever searching elsewhere, she is consumed with wanting, or in her opinion, needing. Feeling trapped by her town and her family, she escapes through shopping, pill popping, and fantasizing about a possible affair with a friend from high school. Her credit card debt “forces” her to sell prescription drugs—which she secures at her receptionist job at the local hospital—to her dysfunctional friends. As her web of lies at home and work unravels, Margie struggles to become present in her own life.

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Excerpt

PROLOGUE

When Marjorie Moore emerged from the dark cocoon of her mother’s womb, suddenly bathed in a sea of light, the fresh air against her skin making her tiny body tingle, she was sure she’d felt a primitive sense of pure freedom. It was high noon on August 16, 1978, and a real scorcher. People say it’s impossible to remember but Margie swears she does; maybe she dreamed it, but it’s a vision, a feeling, locked somewhere deep in her subconscious.

Days before, she had become claustrophobic as the space inside her mother’s belly grew tighter and more cramped. When she made her exit—and her grand entrance—she let out a terrific scream, not because of the warm, cozy place she had left behind, but in order to test her strength, her independence, the power of her lungs. When she had proven her point, her face relaxed into a calm, contented expression, revealing her full cherub lips and the gleam of a smile in her eyes.

As she looked on curiously while the doctor clipped the umbilical cord, she could not foresee that she would be chained to circumstance, emotionally bound long after the physical connection was cut. Of course, her perceptions were primal and her newly-formed mind was not yet cognizant enough to register any of this, other than the whisper of a memory.

The next thing she felt was being swaddled by the sun, brilliant beams stretching down to her as she was carried out of the hospital in a second-hand car seat, the sweltering Texas heat toasting her face and hands nicely after the overly-cool air conditioning in the stark hospital room. Of this there is a photo somewhere, but she is sure she can remember the pleasure she felt being placed into the car, as soothing as a sauna, while her parents drove her home to their modest double-wide trailer house.

Everyone had said she’d had the most adorable laugh as a baby, enveloping her body and soul like a little seizure. It delighted her aunts, her neighbors, and her mother, who’d captured it on Super 8 film. But as she grew, more often she cried, becoming more unsatisfied, more demanding with each passing year. Her parents told her the first word she learned was not Momma, not Dadda, but “more.” As she developed into a young child and then an adolescent, Margie had wanted—had needed—more, and as such, often felt she ended up with less.

So when exactly did she begin to discern that she had drawn the short end of the stick? Was there a certain moment in time when she began to feel that what she had wasn’t good enough, and therefore neither was she? When she grew fearful and insecure?

Was it when as a two-year-old she recognized that something wasn’t right with the glazed look in her father’s eyes? That during those times, which was often, he was rough and unpredictable, and that when he stumbled and slurred she didn’t feel safe. That her mother would shout at him, send him to bed, and then speak extra softly to her, holding her a little too tightly. That although it was her father who wasn’t in control, she was the one who felt unstable. That she had loved him deeply, since birth, but as she grew older had learned not to trust him entirely.

Or maybe it was when she cried in hunger only to have a wet washcloth stuffed in her mouth to suck on. Or worse, when her brother came along later, and they stuffed a washcloth in his mouth, invoking the sour taste, making her nearly gag at the memory. When they left the room she would dig through the cabinets for cereal, and feed him what she could find: cornflakes or small bits of bread torn off from a stale loaf. Not knowing what solid foods he was capable of eating, she always sat with him until he swallowed the last bite and normal breathing resumed.

Or it might have been in the nursery at church. When some of the volunteer helpers—godly women, no less—looked at her in discernible disgust when she was dropped off with an already dirty diaper. She wondered how old she might have been, probably at least three; old enough to be potty-trained, according to the ladies, and also old enough to feel flushed with humiliation. Poor kid, they said, doesn’t deserve this. Disgusting, irresponsible, they snickered among themselves. Trashy. Margie didn’t yet know what these words meant, but her mind held onto the words to replay back to her when she did know, and wouldn’t let them go even as an adult.

She has a clear memory from when she was about seven of her parents buying her a brand-new doll for her birthday. But instead of the pretty one she had asked for, it was a knockoff with a disturbing frozen smile poorly painted on its cheap plastic face, and as such Margie purposely left the doll outside as thunder loomed and lightning cracked, abandoning her in the rain. She left her there all summer, at the base of a scraggly pine, until she was covered in dirt and mold, small sprouts shooting up from her lumpy arms and legs. Hoping, probably, her parents would find the doll and see a parallel. When that never happened, and she herself rediscovered the discarded doll, she felt bad about what she’d done. Yet Margie instinctively blamed first her parents—for buying the wrong doll in the first place—and then the storm for the damage done.

As a child if she could have looked into the future, she might not have liked what she would see. Might have been disappointed, once again, and on a grander scale. And if it had been possible to peer further, to look more closely, she would see it was in her fortieth year that her life would change—though not at all in the ways she had originally hoped.

JANUARY (CH 1)

Margie was scrolling through her Facebook feed killing time while nursing a glass of cold red wine, two shrinking ice cubes bobbing around within, clinking against the edges when she took a gulp. Still slightly pruney after a long bath, she was on the sofa in her bathrobe waiting for Jack and the kids to return from a movie. She was annoyed by the feed, slightly irked that no one was sharing anything of interest. In fact, it was probably sheer boredom that was stirring up a restless energy within her, an energy with a dark edge, its persistence making her contemplate popping a pill. She certainly had plenty to choose from in her medicine cabinet, with even more stockpiled in bottles and baggies in the back of her nightstand, to restock, refill or replace the ones in the bathroom on an as-need basis.

She immediately reprimanded herself. Ambien and Xanax were sleep aids, not to be used for pure pleasure and the dreamy high it would produce—and before the kids came home—well it was unthinkable. But she had thought it. Her day, now evolving into evening, had been tedious and tiresome, a combination that created an itch she couldn’t seem to scratch, gnawing at her insides, which must be why she was having this sudden desire for a drug. It was probably nothing more than a passing craving. Yet she wondered if this yearning was an indication of addiction, or as she often told herself, she was only using the pills to deal with her horrible insomnia. Yes, it was early, not even nine p.m., but she knew she would suffer from it later, as many women did. So it could be considered a treatment, even preventative, and therefore completely harmless—and totally normal.

Just then a Pinterest picture posted by a friend caught her eye and captured her attention, overpowering and then purging the thought of meds from her mind. It was a gorgeous chandelier made of multicolored glass, or was it beads? She zoomed in to see. She was the master of enlarging an image to the perfect point just before pixelation, whether it was to analyze a friend’s newborn baby to decide if it was actually cute before commenting, to search for crow’s feet to see how well a companion was aging, or to hone in on an important detail such as this. Now she leaned in towards the screen, straining to see, then pulled back hoping to regain focus, too comfortable—and too stubborn—to admit she needed her reading glasses. She found the light fixture funky, bohemian and chic, and unlike anything she’d seen. She liked what she saw, and clicked on it to pin it to her own page.

When Margie had first begun to see Pinterest pins infiltrating her Facebook feed, she was a little peeved. And the more she clicked around on her friends’ pages, the more irritated she became. Not at their greedy desire and unapologetic consumerism; that she could relate to. The truth was she felt robbed. After all, she had invented the concept, had already been pinning things for years, cutting out pictures from magazines—things she wanted, things she needed—and taping them up in intricate collages all around her house.

Take her kitchen, for example. A large section of the entryway wall was covered with overlapping images of her ideal kitchen, photos she had painstakingly chosen from various interior design magazines: Town & Country, Architectural Digest, and her personal favorite, Elle Decor. The montage included stainless steel appliances, a country-style cooking island, multi-colored mixing dishes—even though she rarely cooked—and a premium-grade Italian cappuccino maker.

She had taste—that much was clear—even if she was limited as to what she could do financially. The clippings were the first things visitors would see when they entered, like makeshift wallpaper on the once-white walls, before actually stepping into the dining area. She would show guests what it was supposed to be like, tell them that she was frustrated, apologizing for the imperfect aspects, the disarray, like she did when her new friend Katie had come over for the first time six months ago.

“I’m sorry about the unfinished cupboards. We want to paint them white eventually, and mount the paper towel holder, of course. I mean it’s a work in progress, obviously. But look, here are the pendant lights I want to get and this is my dream sofa, and I fully intend to purchase each and every item in these photos, but progress has been slow...for monetary reasons,” she had explained.

There was nothing terribly wrong with the house to an outsider’s eye. It was a big two-story house on a smallish plot, sandwiched between many others with similar façades, the entire block seeming to share the same brick supplier. The focal point was a grand front door with etched glass in the center, somewhat showy and yet somehow not as solid as one would imagine. Crossing the threshold, guests would enter the great room, an open living area with high ceilings and a partial view of the dining room and kitchen, and a hall that led to two bedrooms and a bathroom, with an oversized jacuzzi tub wedged in where its photo had once existed. ?

Upon closer inspection, one would find that more effort had been put in to the exterior than the interior, with no crown moldings and not much detail, the walls mostly undecorated other than the random collages scattered throughout. The upstairs had that much-lived-in yet unfinished look: carpet worn but doors unpainted, with round holes where knobs should be, and included a guest bedroom, currently being used for storage and unpacked boxes, a cluttered laundry-office-weight room, and a toy-strewn play area for the children.

Yet somehow their toys still made their way into all the other rooms, stuffed animals dropped mid-way down the stairs, a baton angled across the bathroom floor, tiny plastic building blocks left scattered in the living room. How she despised their sharp edges. As she made her way now to the kitchen counter to refill her wine glass she stepped on a bony Barbie doll, snapping its head off. She scooped up the body parts and brought the whole bottle back with her to the couch, to avoid injuring herself on the next trip, knowing she would need to refill again sooner rather than later. As she struggled to pop the head back on she felt herself growing more irritable, fully aware that a pill would solve that problem instantly. She looked at her watch; shouldn’t the movie be over already? She felt trapped in her head, trapped in her home—even trapped on the couch—and as such she continued to sit and stew, the tender arch of her foot throbbing.

No, Margie hadn’t envisioned living in this incomplete house, in an incomplete neighborhood. She lived in Prairie Mound, a suburb of a suburb, near the suburb where she had grown up—but farther away from, rather than closer to, Dallas itself. When she married Jack he had just finished building the house, and he refused to move—even though he knew she didn’t care for the area. She had imagined herself living downtown, or in some bigger city altogether. She considered herself a city girl at heart, but had never really had the chance to prove the theory.

It seemed to her that in the ever-expanding outer limits of the metroplex, the only criteria of a town was having a newly built highway leading to an intersection with a Starbucks and a supermarket. And some of the highways intended to connect the outer ‘burbs were left unfinished—missing the integral entrance and exit ramps and forsaken in a field—due to lack of funding, she assumed, or lack of interest.

One of the abandoned freeways nearby cut across the barren landscape and then rose up to a sloping incline, perhaps intended as an overpass, and ended abruptly in the middle of nowhere, at a height that would be a deadly drop, a backhoe up and left behind with its arm outstretched toward the sky. Sometimes when she saw it, it gave her the eerie feeling that she herself was incomplete, that her life had somehow been suspended mid-flow, and that she too was reaching for something.

Marrying Jack after only a short period of dating had felt wild and spontaneous at the time, though in hindsight she could see that it just sort of happened. She had dated better-looking men, but he had an animal magnetism that the others had been lacking. She met him when he was mowing the lawn of her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, with whom she had moved in two years prior. After Jack cut the grass each month while the almost ex was at work, they cultivated a relationship over cold lemonade on hot summer days. He was a good listener, and she gave him an earful.

Margie’s relationship had been in decline; she had recently learned that her boyfriend had cheated on her.

“It was with Darla, you know, Darla Dingwall, that slut-puppy who used to work at the Blockbuster in high school? And she used to be a friend of mine. I mean, what a two-faced bitch!” Margie had said. In such a small town they knew many of the same people. “Why would he choose her, of all people, with her painted-on jeans—her nickname used to be camel-toe, I kid you not. Well, it’s insulting on so many levels.” She laughed loudly to lighten the mood. But Jack seemed to sense the pain behind her eyes.

“What an asshole. He’s a complete idiot,” Jack had said.

Jack had a warm smile and wide-set blue eyes—royal blue, loyal blue, his gaze solid and steady. His eyes angled down to a deep droop, sad but serious. Empathetic eyes. She found him stable and uncomplicated. She loved that his idea of a good time was sitting on the porch with a cold one listening to crickets. Her then-boyfriend’s idea of a good time, from what she’d been hearing around town, was drinking and clubbing into the wee hours and exhibiting trashy dance moves that included grinding up on other women.

Jack listened intently while she talked incessantly—but how he made her laugh when she let him squeeze a word in. She ended things with her ex on the same day things became physical with Jack. And when she fell into bed with him, she also fell into a life with him.

Jack had loved Margie’s laugh—how she threw her head back and cackled at full volume, full-force, her whole body shaking and convulsing; that even when the sound had tapered off, her shoulders still continued to tremor like an aftershock.

In the twelve years since they’d been married, she had realized that stable could also be construed as boring. And he had no doubt realized by now that her wild, uncontrollable giggle-fits were masking a woman with real needs. Needs he couldn’t always fulfill.

Jack worked for himself in his one-man landscaping company, called Manscaping, registered just before the clever pun took on another meaning. Margie sometimes teased him about the irony of it, with his hairy torso, dark coarse curls poking out above the necklines of his shirts. Jack took it in stride, said he enjoyed working with his hands, being out in nature, and having the whole of the outdoors as his workspace, the ultimate contrast to his home office-laundry-weight room.?

And he was a huge help with the kids, picking them up from school most days in his big beat up Manscaping van, its oversized lettering on both sides and roaring engine competing for attention in announcing its presence. A far cry from comfortable, she found riding in it jarring, unsettling, and she avoided it when possible. The shocks were so bad that it made her upper thighs jiggle and her breasts bounce; she often joked that she needed to wear a sports bra for a ride that rough. But the fact was, after a long day’s work when it was filthy, she could hardly force herself to get into that vehicle. It was endlessly frustrating because Jack and the kids often took the van to the local Dairy Queen on Fridays for an after-school snack and then sometimes went straight to a movie. She preferred her sedan, and of course she could always meet them there, but after a long week she often chose a bubble bath and glass of wine instead.

On this particular Friday night she chose the latter. After all, Margie worked hard too, checking patients in at the local emergency room, and she was particularly knackered this evening. Yet she found her work satisfying. She considered it her calling, and put in long days without complaining, offering a kind word to the sick who surrounded her. She had a propensity for small talk and a smile that was contagious. The lighter the subject, the lengthier the conversation. The more afflicted the patient, the more animated her laughter, until her shoulders quivered and quaked. Many of her conversations ended with “well, c’est la vie,” her catchall catchphrase that seemed to wrap up most of the chatter nicely. But even so, all that bullshitting and friendly banter took a lot of effort.

So she had soaked in the tub for almost two hours before settling onto the sofa. And that’s how she found herself surfing Facebook alone, topping off her glass of wine and adding ice cubes as needed, easier now that she had brought in the entire bottle, as well as a big bowl of ice. She knew serving red wine cold was frowned upon in some circles, but this was Texas for god’s sake, and even though it was winter, she was hot-natured—and besides, this was wine in a box, not a fine, aged Bordeaux.

She sulked, wondering if Jack and the kids were sharing a family-sized tub of popcorn. After all, she was part of the family, a key figure and an integral one: had she not birthed two of its members? Feeling left out, she contemplated where she could take them the following day in her sedan. The playground. The new rock-climbing wall in town. Screw it, she would drive them all the way to Disneyland! California, here we come…she imagined what a glorious road trip that would be.

The door flew open and high-pitched voices jolted her back to reality.

“How was it?” she asked. And then before waiting for them to answer: “I thought we’d go to Olive Garden for lunch tomorrow and then maybe a trip to the mall!”?

“Breadsticks! Breadsticks!” they chanted in unison, running circles around the living room, Aimee shimmying her shoulders in a very grown-up way.

Jack leaned down to give her a quick kiss, but it landed on her left nostril when she looked up from the feed on her phone, which she had glanced back down at out of habit. Lately their timing seemed a bit off.

She was glad she hadn’t taken a pill, one of her beloved benzos. She wanted to connect and catch up and needed to be focused. Yet even now as they chattered, she kept glancing sideways at the continual movement of the social media scrolling in her peripheral vision. So she set the phone on the coffee table face down.

“How was your day?” Jack asked her.

“Oh, it was pretty good, I guess. You know little Mitchell who lives down the street? His mom brought him in because he had a bad accident on his bike. His big toe got caught in the chain, and he was hollering and crying and carrying on—and then I could see why; his toe looked like a bloody pulp. I nearly lost my lunch signing him in—his toenail was ripped clean off!”

The family cringed in unison, the desired effect of any emergency room anecdote.

“Gross!” Oliver shouted, wound up because it was the weekend.

“Disgusting,” Aimee added, lip curled.

“That’s why I always tell you two to wear tennis shoes on your bikes and scooters. It was awful; it just looked so painful, bless his little heart…and his big bloody toe!” She tried to get a laugh from the kids. She got a giggle from Oliver, but he was the easy one.

“Sounds nasty,” Jack said.

“Believe me, it was. But never mind…was the movie good?”

The kids talked over each other trying to describe what, frankly, sounded like a lame plotline, interrupting each other to add to the story. It was another superhero movie, and honestly, Margie wondered how many of those they could continue to make. She feigned interest, saying “uh-huh” in all the appropriate places, but she personally couldn’t stand these action movies, and it was an animation to boot. Knowing how the high-pitched, over-exaggerated voices and silly jokes would have grated on her nerves, she looked at her empty wine glass and knew she had made the right decision. She was relieved to see she hadn’t finished off the entire bottle and poured the rest for Jack.

And anyway, weren’t they getting too old for kids’ movies? Maybe not Oliver, at six, but surely Aimee was at ten years old. She preferred foreign films herself, Amélie being one of her favorites, and in all honestly, one of the few she’d had the patience to finish. As they began to describe extraneous details and argued over specifics, she was drawn to her phone, trying to pick it up so subtly that no one would notice.

Eventually they fell silent, sensing they’d lost their audience.

“How did the new job go, Jack?” she asked, realizing the room had grown quiet.

“Oh my God, the Martins’ place is really over the top…fancy schmancy. It’s in Wildwood Hills, so you can imagine. They have a fountain out front fit for a king, or a mobster—hell, maybe they are in the mob; you never see this kind of money around here. I had to go through the house to the backyard during the walk-through and it was dripping in gold...kind of showy, really. It looked like they were bleeding money.”

“Must be nice,” Margie said, but then regretted it. She’d meant it to be funny but it came out flat.

“Well, like I said, the house is gaudy in my opinion, but it’s a big job for me. And the landscaping can stand to be improved—Margie will you put that damn phone down—and they have a budget to work with, for once, so I can actually design something cool.”

“Well you’re good at that.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t hear what you said.”

“Oh, I said, you’re good at that.”

“Yeah, well, I guess we’ll see…are you really taking the kids to the mall tomorrow?”

She nodded.

“You know you’re gonna be fighting crowds on a weekend—everybody and their dog will be there. Well, in any case, don’t overdo it.”

He turned and went upstairs and the kids were off playing in their room so that once again she had the house to herself. Which she really didn’t mind at all.

She thought about their home, and the issue of taste, and how lucky she was to have a naturally refined aesthetic. Yes, she had grown up poor, but somehow she had always had an inherent flair for fashion and an upscale sense of style when it came to her house and herself. From furniture to fashion, from fries to kissing, she was especially taken by all things French, even inspiring her babies’ names. She spelled Aimee exactly as they did in France, confusing the locals, and chose Oliver, which sounded so charming and seemed the perfect name for someone forced to wear berets as a toddler.

She would have preferred being called Marjorie, which was her given name and sounded sophisticated, like royalty, she thought. Resentful of her parents shortening it to Margie, a fatty’s name when in fact she was not, she had made better choices for her own kids.

Regardless of having a hardy name from the heartland, when she saw the movie Amélie, Margie realized her looks could pass for Parisian: big eyes the color of rich caramel and full, pinkish lips. Not that she considered herself as pretty as Amélie herself—but she felt sure she was better looking than many of the supporting actors. Her skin tone was a bit lighter than some of the women she saw on the screen, but with a summer tan she would fit in perfectly on the streets of Paris, especially with her highly-developed sense of style, underappreciated in these parts.

Yet she knew her looks could also be considered all-American, the girl-next-door type: cute but not beautiful, a little button nose shared by half the South—cheerleaders and country bumpkins alike—perfectly shaped but in no way aristocratic, and full, rosy cheeks supported by strong bone structure. At forty, she was still attractive. Always had been, judging from the amount of male attention she’d received over the years, having had a string of serious boyfriends from the time she was fourteen.

Her hair was still voluminous and healthy, adapting and molding to any style from the Meg Ryan to the Jennifer Aniston to whatever was the latest trend. Born blonde, it had darkened to a mousy brown, but it held color incredibly well—absorbed it, radiated it—from rich reds to golden blondes to auburns. Her children had inherited the perfect combination of her thick hair and Jack’s dark color, and she took pride in each family member’s impeccably groomed head. Even poor Jack’s, whose was balding rapidly, his already large forehead forever expanding. She instructed him to have the hair that was left cropped closer and closer to his scalp.?

Margie didn’t think she was being shallow, it was just that she took her looks seriously, because secretly she felt appearance was just as important as congeniality in her line of work. She wanted to look put-together to offer a subtle reminder to the saddest souls, those suffering the most in society, that they would eventually—hopefully—be well and healthy, and that they too could aspire to look fresh and attractive. She privately hoped her lively personality, light scent, lip liner and luminous hair might reinforce their will to live.?

Nice hairstyles were important enough to be clipped out and taped to the bathroom mirror. Although at first she fought Pinterest, she finally broke down and created an account—after all, she invented it—and took it a step further, spewing out page after Pinterest page from the office printer at the hospital, registering patients when it was busy, registering items she wanted off the internet when it wasn’t. She carried the images home in her briefcase, bought for this very purpose, to put on the appropriate wall. Cutouts of clothes were plastered on the outside of closets, while actual clothes were crammed to capacity inside. The kids, always immaculately dressed, had so many outfits that they overflowed into Jack’s closet, eventually overtaking it completely. His items were moved to a rack in the laundry-office-weight room, which is where he spent more and more of his time.?

With the closets overflowing, clothing littered the floors, especially in Aimee’s princess-themed room, which was actually Oliver’s room, too. When Oliver became too big for his crib, he moved in with her, and while Margie had big ideas for redecorating, she never got around to it, although plenty of pictures of dinosaurs and race car beds were taped to the side of his princess bunk. In truth both kids were quickly outgrowing all of the motifs.

When Margie and Jack fought she would let the kids sleep with her in the queen-sized bed, a comforting way to get back at Jack. So sometimes it was he who would find himself sleeping with the princesses in the Disney diorama, stuffed into a single bed lying underneath Ariel, whose larger-than-life image covered the comforter. ?

However, she and Jack usually shared a bed, and it was calling to her now, the wine making her sleepy. Or maybe it was the pre-sleep nightly pill that was beckoning, suggesting she extend the buzz she was feeling. She looked in on the kids who had fallen asleep at odd angles, turned out their lamp and headed upstairs, where Jack was still watching YouTube tutorials in his office. She kissed his forehead and told him she was turning in. Which she did, after taking a sleeping pill.

She was glad she would be able to sleep in a bit in the morning. And she needed her beauty sleep. How she wished the pill would kick in; just thinking about her meticulous weekday routine that started at five o’clock in the morning exhausted her. Each morning Margie jumped directly into the shower, scrubbing herself hard with a loofah, cursing the fact that she couldn’t have her caffeine because she couldn’t stand Folgers and they still hadn’t bought the Italian cappuccino maker that she desperately needed. She always lingered under the hot water, washed and conditioned her crowning glory, and shaved her armpits and legs, never skipping a day. Unable to tolerate stubble, she only wished Jack had the same level of hygiene. She dried thoroughly, spastically, with a towel, before squatting in the bow-legged position she assumed to blow-dry her landing strip of pubic hair. Taught as a teenager that this prevented yeast infections, she had done so ever since.

All this before fixing her hair and applying makeup, putting cereal on the table, and then tending to the children just as closely, putting high-end products in Oliver’s hair and sculpting Aimee’s into tight pigtails. Where oh where does the time go, she wondered aloud almost every morning. ?

So she relished her weekends, reveling in the lightness she was feeling right now as all those stressful thoughts from the week dissipated, a weight lifting off her shoulders until she was lifted along with it, as the tight ball of tension morphed into an Ambien-induced cloud upon which she now floated.

The alcohol and drug cocktail allowed her to sleep, and deeply, until nine the next morning. But once she had showered, bathed the children, picked out an outfit for herself and her son, found shoes for Oliver and a headband for Aimee, it was suddenly mid-afternoon and they were running late. Aimee was of course old enough to choose her own clothes, but this was one of the things that delayed them as she was encouraged and then forced to change before reaching optimum color-coordination. In order to make it before they stopped serving lunch, Margie had to drive rather recklessly, flying down the four-lane highway to a nearby suburb, the “Children On Board” sign suction-cupped to the back window flapping wildly against the glass. By the time they finished their pasta and splurged on dessert, the sun was setting.

There are simply not enough hours in the day, thought Margie. She had originally planned to go to the Galleria downtown, the high-end three-story mall offering dramatic views of the oval ice-skating rink in the center lit by glass skylights high overhead. She felt it would be a good family activity for winter, and had envisioned them all skating together hand in hand when they finished shopping. Luckily she hadn’t mentioned it because there was no time for that now with afternoon traffic, so she settled on a more local, if run-down, mall, which only required driving through several adjoining parking lots.

Time and money were the two things Margie never seemed to have enough of. But she did the best she could, and pulled out two crisp five-dollar bills for each of them to spend in the arcade, or however they liked. ?

“Thanks, Mom!” Oliver said.?

“Awesome,” Aimee added. ?

“You two stick together and let’s meet back right here in one hour at this dried-up fountain. Okay?” Kids were so easily amused, she thought.

This mall was built in the eighties and still seemed to house some of its original occupants: Spencer’s Gifts, 5-7-9, Bakers Shoes, Wicks ’N Sticks, The Foot Locker—franchises she thought had gone out of business years ago. She headed for Dillard’s, inarguably the nicest department store in the decrepit shopping center.

She perused the purses, spotting a Coach handbag she had taped up on her nightstand. She noticed some Diesel jeans that she had clipped out of Lucky magazine just last month and was tempted to try them on, but instead went to the children’s section; she felt less guilty when she overspent on them. She found a few matchy-matchy outfits that she just had to have, asking the saleswoman if she could hold them for an hour. This was a technique she had taught herself, to take a pause, to circle the store a few times or shop elsewhere and see if she still wanted—no, needed—the items. The answer was usually yes.?

As she made her way to the main aisle, a display caught her eye. Upon approaching, she noticed a woman with a bouffant hairdo standing behind a table topped with pretty packages. The product being pushed was bubble bath, called Luxembourg Gardens—and came from France. The aroma was divine: jasmine and sage and other rich fragrances that smelled just how she imagined the heavenly scent of the streets of Paris. Her excitement grew when she noticed a jar of tiny pencils next to a small notepad on which you could enter to win a raffle—an all-expense paid trip for two to Paris—with each purchase.?

At ten dollars per bottle the price was right. She thought three would be a good number, one for her and each of the kids. Then she realized five would be better: she could give them to her mother and mother-in-law. Margie thought about Jack in the spa tub, bubbles in his hairy chest and she smiled to herself and picked up another box.

The possibility of going to France was making her hands sweat, her heart race, and to the saleslady’s dismay, Margie placed her six boxes back with the others, adjusting them just so. She backed away from the table, avoiding eye contact, and stuttered that she would be back, probably.

She began to pace the perimeter of the store once again to clear her head. She pictured herself sitting in an outdoor cafe, nursing expensive wine and eating escargot. She’d always wanted to visit the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa. The woman wasn’t attractive; she was very plain, butt-ugly in fact, and she thought about the makeover she would have given Mona if she’d had the chance—but that wasn’t the point. She knew there must be something special about the painting and wanted to see it up close with her own two eyes. ?

And she would go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, just about the most beautiful structure she had ever seen. On TV not long ago she had watched a travel show and was amazed by its scale and fascinated by the fact that there were kiosks and gift shops in each of the four leg bases.

When she was younger she had longed to travel. She had big dreams that took place elsewhere, in places she had heard about from friends or seen in movies. For as long as she could remember, she had wanted to go to Paris. If not Paris, Prague, or Peru. The actual destination didn’t matter so much, as long as it was anywhere but here. She had wanted a change of scenery, an adventure, an escape. Still did, as a matter of fact.

Being married with two children, she often worried that she had missed her window. Her kids were a great source of satisfaction and she found motherhood fulfilling—in the sense that she had very full days and their needs filled all of her time. Sadly the family ended up vacationing in Florida year after year, while there were so many other places she yearned to see: Cabo, Bali, Mali, Milan, places she knew the names of even if she couldn’t necessarily locate them on a map.

She had tried to save up for exotic vacations, unsuccessfully, wondering how other people always managed to have money for expensive trips. Her problem, which she felt could also be considered a skill, was that she knew a bargain when she saw it. She wasn’t one to pass up a Victoria’s Secret sale—four pairs of panties for thirty dollars rather than thirty-five dollars, and the fact that she needed twelve pairs only added to the savings, plus a couple of cute nighties (for around the house), as well as sexy lingerie (for Jack). At the cash register the totals always surprised her. But she had never been good at math, being a much more visual person, and well, she appreciated the finer things in life, which was just another reason she needed to go to Europe!?

She would not make that mistake today, and decided then and there she would buy no other items, not the clothes for the kids and certainly nothing for herself, instead focusing on the matter at hand: directing her energy and money toward increasing her chances. She lost count of the times she had circled the store, but in terms of the product, ten wouldn’t necessarily be too many, in fact ten wasn’t nearly enough when it came to the odds of winning; she was sure this was a national campaign. Twenty chances would be better and thirty even better, and since she could give them as birthday gifts she would actually be saving money for months—maybe even years—to come. Yes, thirty would do. She circled back to the table, and very matter-of-factly, very calmly, spoke to the saleswoman, then systematically filled out the thirty forms. ?

“Oh, my! You are my best customer by far today, darlin’,” the woman beamed beneath her helmet of hair. Three hundred dollars, plus tax. Her tired eyes lit up; she obviously worked off of commission. Margie collected the children and they all three were overloaded with boxes to carry out to the car and put into the trunk. She told them not to tell their father, because these were going to be given as special gifts—and one would be for him!

Upon arriving home, she snuck the boxes into the spare storage room. Jack was surprised when she came back empty-handed, looked relieved. Later that evening she googled Luxembourg Gardens, keeping the screen out of Jack’s view. She found the grounds breathtaking. Paths rimmed in well-manicured wildflowers exploded with color. It was full of marble fountains—much nicer than the moldy, crumbling concrete structure at the mall!—and elaborate European sculptures, the likes of which you would never see in America. The French appreciated art and beauty. The contoured shrubs and topiaries certainly would have impressed Jack if she’d dared show him. But instead she felt a little guilty, closed her laptop, put the whole event out of her mind, and headed to bed.

When Jack turned in soon after, throwing an arm around her midsection in a semi-spoon and giving her a loving squeeze, the guilt wouldn’t subside and was in fact compounded by more guilt as she lay there waiting impatiently for him to fall asleep. She then slowly got out of bed, careful not to wake him, closed the bathroom door, gently opened the cabinet so it didn’t creak, and popped not one but two pills.

Again she began to question whether her usage had gotten worse, whether the cravings had always been this strong, and whether the amount required to serve their purpose—eradicate negative thoughts in order to allow her to sleep—was increasing. Now and then she took two pills when she needed them to kick in quickly, and she reassured herself that she had done so when necessary for years. So in that sense, it wasn’t getting worse; it had always been that bad, which she considered good. In fact now she began to feel good all over, peaceful, blissful and she easily transitioned into pleasant dreams of Paris. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

• Does Marjorie Moore seem a sympathetic character in the first chapter? Why or why not? Does she become more, or less, sympathetic to you as her year unfolds? As a flawed protagonist, did she have enough redeeming qualities to make you root for her and if so was there a turning point when you began to empathize with her?

• Do you think the bookending of Margie’s life with her birth and old age enhanced the story?

• Were you sympathetic to Margie’s misadventures? Could you relate to any of her issues?

• Do you think Margie is a narcissist? Why or why not.

• Does Marjorie qualify as an addict, in your terms? If so, to what is she addicted? How does she overcome her addiction? If you do not believe she is an addict, how would you describe her? Do you wrestle with addictions or searching for escapes in your own life?

• What needs does social media (Facebook, Pinterest) serve in Marjorie’s life? Do you believe others are telling the truth on social media? Are you tempted to show only the best side of yourself on social media, to create a different identity or brand? And if so, what effects do you feel this attitude has on society?

• Would you say that Marjorie and Jack have an exceptionally good marriage, a troubled marriage, or a typical marriage with ups and downs? Is there a case to be made for all of those descriptions at different times?

• The past haunts Marjorie, and she struggles to let go of the trauma she endured as a child. Do you think we as adults are ever capable of leaving our childhood behind?

• One of the major topics in the novels is Marjorie’s pursuit of happiness by purchasing goods. Do you think our society has become more consumption driven with the advent of the internet? Do you find consumerism and the need for instant gratification to be a problem in America?

• Paris represents something intangible and yet longed for in Marjorie’s life. There is a saying, getting there is half the fun, or the journey is better than the destination. Yet it can be unhealthy to yearn for unattainable things, to be in love with the fantasy. What do you feel is the right balance between these attitudes? When does desire and longing become unhealthy?

• What function do you think the turtle pond episodes served in the story?

• The underlying theme of the book is mindfulness: focusing on one’s awareness of the present moment. Is this something you consciously practice? Is it something that comes easily to you or something that takes effort? What activities and sensory experiences—sights, sounds, smells—bring you joy in the moment?

• Do you think being happy is a choice? And that this mindset and outlook can be adopted or learned? Has this novel caused you to reexamine your values and attitude in any way?

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