Meg Michaels was a married mother of two. She drove a Volvo; she worked part-time as a counselor of underprivileged youth; she read books to her daughter’s second-grade class every Tuesday morning at 10am. This morning, the third Tuesday in April, Meg called the secretary at William Jefferson Elementary School and explained that a slight cold would prevent her from reading aloud today. After she accepted Miss Martha’s wishes for a speedy recovery, she hung up the phone and got in a bubble bath. Meg Michaels did not have a cold.
After soaking in jasmine-scented water, carefully shaving her legs and underarms, and exfoliating her face, Meg stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a worn bath towel. She remembered when she'd opened these towels at her wedding shower. She had felt a little peeved at her great-aunt Charlotte for buying them; they were Pepto-Bismol pink when the gift registry clearly stated the color scheme of the bathroom was to be cream and forest green. For a few years the offending linens had stood at the bottom of the stack in the bathroom closet. After her first child was born, a son with a inclination for pooping the moment he was removed from his bath, they came in handy; Meg didn’t care if the towels were ruined, and used them to swaddle wet, squirmy, defecating Daniel. By the time his sister, Bonnie, came along, the importance of the color palettes in the crowded, neglected, toy-strewn house had lessened in comparison to the importance of diapers, ear infections, and stain removal and the soft pink towels (faded by bleach and sunshine) were just more body mops in the rotation.
As Meg reminisced she applied seldom-used makeup to her gently aging face. It was a good face, especially for a woman in her mid-thirties who rarely slept more than six hours a night and never applied sunscreen. There were lines at the corners of her eyes, but the eyes were large and an enviable shade of green; her nose was nicely formed; her lips were a little thin, true, but her teeth were even and white, thanks to her husband, who worked long, profitable hours as a cosmetic dentist. Her hair was plain brown, but thick and wavy, and longer than most of her soccer-mom friends’. When Meg finished her face, she toweled her hair and left it to air dry. She walked, nude, through her empty house to the guest room. Reaching high into the closet, she pulled out a pink-striped bag and dug through the tissue paper to reveal a black, lacy bustier and matching panties. She sat down on the bed, nervously smoothing the lingerie on her freckled thighs. The clock on the nightstand shone 9:57; she had a half an hour to change her mind. Meg stepped into the panties and pulled the bustier over her head. It was corseted, flattening her slightly rounded tummy and pushing her breasts up. She looked critically at her reflection in the mirror. Her cleavage looked good; pregnancy and two years spent breastfeeding hadn’t done too much damage. Her waistline was not terrific, but the boning on the bustier held her in. Her legs were long and a little skinny. Turning around, she noticed a few spider veins lining the back of her knees—a consequence of too much weight gained during her second pregnancy. All in all she looked good for a woman who ate Happy Meals for dinner twice a week. She took a deep breath. Meg wasn’t going to change her mind. And her husband would never see her in the new lingerie.
The first time she met Nate Dickens she was covered in Beanie-Weenies. She stood in the school cafeteria, juggling a hot lunch, her purse, a stack of children’s books, and two cartons of milk. Meg had stopped suddenly to avoid a kindergartner who was running (thinking of monkey bars rather than potential roadblocks) to the playground. When she stopped short, her purse slipped off her shoulder and landed in the middle of the cafeteria tray, splattering hot dogs, beans, applesauce, and peas down the front of her J. Crew button-down. She was standing stock-still, bewildered and about to cry, when a man of just below-average height and with a slight pot belly took her tray from her and handed her a stack of paper napkins.
