“Listen, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” March says, and she tells the saga of the rental car, which has already been towed back to town. “You are a true friend. I’m grateful.”
The surprising thing is, March means it, and she never thought herself capable of such sentiments when she and Susie were girls. They were thrown together because their fathers were partners, but they hated each other all the same. For two years solid they refused to speak even the simplest phrases to each other, not even “Pass the sweet potato pie” at Thanksgiving dinner. Now, of course, neither can remember exactly why they’d constructed their wall of silence.
“It was because you were an idiot,” Susie says as she does her best to clear out the cab of her pickup. Aside from the dog hair, there are files and stray bits of paper and dozens of maps.
“Actually it was because you were a know-it-all,” March shoots back. “And you still are.”
They both have to laugh at this. Susanna is a reporter for the local newspaper, The Bugle, and in fact, she does know everything that’s going on in town. She knows not only how much old Mr. Judson got for his land up at Olive Tree Lake, but also that he refused to sell to Hollis at an even better price, although he allowed Hollis to take him out to dinner in Boston and send him a crate of vintage Chablis. Not that she would ever mention this bit of business to March; nor the fact that half a dozen women in town are so crazy for Hollis they would walk out on their husbands or boyfriends and abandon their real lives if only they were asked.
Why, Susanna Justice has acquired more information than most people would have room for in their heads. She knows what the school committee budget will be next year, and that the animal control guy, Bud Horace, is too much of a softy to pick up stray dogs. In all of this jumble, there are plenty of facts she could have done without knowing. Who died last night at St. Bridget’s Hospital, whose husband gets nasty when he has too much to drink at the Lyon Cafe, who was found in a parked car at the rest area on Route 22, with a gun between the seats and a suicide note taped to the glove compartment.
“Honey, all you have to do is squeeze me and I give out worthless information,” Susie always says.
She even knows when the sales take place at Laughton’s Lingerie Shop (every January and July, second Saturday of the month) and how much the jelly doughnuts cost at the Bluebird Coffee Shop (fifty cents). She’s always learning something new, and it has recently come to her attention that Ed Milton, the chief of police, kisses with his eyes closed and looks like an angel when he sleeps. Some information, however, she’s been aware of all her life; it’s old news. For example—that her old friend March Murray wouldn’t know good luck if it came up and slapped her in the face.
“You think you’re so hot living out in Palo Alto. Well, for your information, Eileen Singleton is retiring on Tuesday after forty-three years of work at the library.”
“Oh, gosh,” March says. “Stop the presses.” She winds her long hair into a knot, which is kept in place with a silver comb, one that she cast herself. She and Susie are wearing similar silver bracelets, among the first March ever dared to try. What started out as a hobby has become more and more rewarding, both financially and artistically.
“That’s nothing,” Susie says, brushing at the dog hair stuck to the one dress she owns that’s sober enough to wear to a funeral. Susie has cropped blond hair and gray-blue eyes and black is definitely not her color, dog hair or no. “You want real news? Mr. and Mrs. Morrisey are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Jane—remember that bitch?—to some guy they don’t think much of who’s got a job with the DPW in Gloucester and is really cute. I saw him at the engagement party and double wow. He probably will be a problem. Halfway through the party, he asked me for my phone number. Everyone has to invite me to everything, you know, if they want a mention in The Bugle.”
“That’s because you’re a superior being,” March says.
“As are you,” Susie says. “Hence our friendship.”
Gwen, who’s been listening in and who now struggles to climb into the cab of the pickup in her extremely short skirt, cannot believe how ridiculous her mother and Susanna Justice are when they get together. Susie comes out to California once or twice a year, and they’re just as stupid on the West Coast as they are right here. “You are both so mature,” she says disdainfully.
Gwen’s tiny black dress isn’t the only reason Susanna Justice and March shut up and stare. Gwen is wearing gloopy black mascara and has moussed her hair so that it spikes up in the front, like a little bed of nails. Wait till she tells her friend Minnie: There I was, trapped like a rat, with the two of them giving me fashion attitude. I couldn’t get away, I was trapped, I tell you, trapped in a way no human being should ever be.