Saint Valentine

Francie stole Caroline Singer’s Valentine’s Day stickers during the basketball game at last recess. It was Caroline’s fault, in a way, how she dropped the stickers on the ground next to her sweater, like they didn’t mean that much. So while the others argued a foul, Francie hung by the sideline and used the toe of her sneaker to slide the pack over from Caroline’s pile to her own. Then she bent down, pretended to tie her shoelace, and quickly slid the stickers under the hood of her sweatshirt. It was easy.

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When the bell rang, she scooped up her sweatshirt and bundled it tight so the stickers wouldn’t fall out. While the rest of the girls headed off to carpool, she stayed behind to watch Caroline’s face as she hunted for her treasure. Watching that face was like reading a book. Chapter One: Where were the stickers? Chapter Two: Gone. Chapter Three: The tears. Watching Caroline cry felt good. When the show was over, Francie ran to the gate and scanned the crush of cars.

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“Day nice?” Gabriella asked as Francie climbed into the backseat of the wagon. Gabriella was the latest au pair, from Brazil. Francie shrugged and stared out the window at the passing palm trees, whose skinny trunks reached high into the blue Beverly Hills sky. She didn’t feel like talking and knew Gabriella was just as happy to leave her alone. She only talked to Francie because it was her job.

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At home Francie raced upstairs to her room and shut the door. Carefully, she unwrapped the stickers from their cellophane packaging and spread them out across the smooth, hard surface of her desk. They were from Italy, in dark, smoky reds that reminded Francie of the Renaissance paintings she’d seen on the art museum field trip. The stickers were smothered with hearts—long hearts, squat hearts, curly hearts, bursts of tiny hearts—and they said amore instead of love.

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Caroline’s mother, Mrs. Singer, had brought the stickers back from her trip to Rome, and Caroline had showed them off at lunch that day. Francie wanted those stickers the minute she saw them, but it didn’t occur to her to steal them until that instant on the playground, when Caroline tossed them to the ground. Francie had never stolen anything before. Once, she wrote Fuck You, Amy in Marjorie Hempstead’s little sister’s spiral notebook on a Saturday afternoon, because she was jealous of Amy’s new bike. Amy had tattled right away, and when Mrs. Hempstead came running out of her house to yell at Francie, her red hair shook like windy grass. She threatened to tell Francie’s mother, but Francie didn’t think she followed through, because her mother never said a word. After a while Francie began sleeping through the night again, and everything returned to normal. Until now.

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Fingering the stickers at her desk, Francie thought about Caroline’s mother returning from Italy. She pictured Mrs. Singer coming off the plane, wearing her red wool coat, her eyes shining at the sight of Caroline after ten long days away. Caroline probably ran into her mother’s arms, and Mrs. Singer would have told stories about Italy’s big boot as she cooked spaghetti for the family. Over dessert, she handed out the presents, including the Valentine’s Day stickers for Caroline.

 

Everyone at school knew Mrs. Singer. She called the teachers by their first names and ran a lot of the PTA events, like Summer Squash Day and the Annual Bake Sale. She wasn’t fancy like Francie’s mother, but she had a pretty face with polished skin and straight, brown hair she wore in a ponytail. Francie’s friends snickered about Mrs. Singer whenever she turned up. They called her a “Stepford Wife” and “June Cleaver,” names a couple of them had picked up from their own mothers. Francie went along with them, of course.

 

Once, Mrs. Singer drove Francie home when the au pair before Gabriella didn’t show up at carpool. Mrs. Singer tried phoning Francie’s mother but couldn’t reach her, and Mildred, the maid, didn’t drive. It was humiliating. Caroline was in the car, and she and her mother were extra nice, like they felt sorry for Francie. Francie didn’t hang out with Caroline at school, but of course she had to talk to her, since Mrs. Singer was right there. Mrs. Singer had acted like she didn’t know about any of that, as if Francie and Caroline were good friends. Francie thought about that as she touched the stickers, careful not to smudge them with her fingertips, which were still dirty from the playground.

 

At four o’clock Francie heard the sounds of her mother coming home. The purr of the sedan in the driveway, the car trunk slamming shut, the click of heels on stone. Then the side door creak, the rustling of packages, and the murmur of voices as Mrs. Holloway gave instructions to Mildred and Gabriella. Francie knew her mother expected her to come downstairs, but she didn’t want to. Her stomach felt like one of those black holes that swallow everything in range and are denser than anything you could find on Earth. When her mother started calling her name, though, Francie slid the stickers into the top drawer of her desk and walked slowly down the staircase.

 

Her mother’s head was buried deep in the refrigerator when Francie inched her way into the kitchen.

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“Is that you?” Mrs. Holloway called out.

 

Francie’s throat felt tight, and she didn’t answer, afraid her voice would give her away. Her mother emerged from the refrigerator with a shiny purple eggplant.

 

“How was your day, sweetie?”

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“Okay,” Francie managed.

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“Wonderful.” Her mother’s voice bounced like a rubber ball. She handed the eggplant to Mildred, who set it on the marble island and gave Francie a faint smile. Francie also saw a bunch of asparagus and two packages of lamb chops. She hated lamb chops.

 

“I thought I’d make a lemon soufflé tonight. Come help me find a recipe.” Francie followed her mother to the breakfast nook and sat on one of the Hepplewhite chairs. She once heard her mother tell a friend that the cost of shipping the chairs from London to California had been “extortionate,” and ever since then they’d made Francie think of animals being slaughtered.

 

Her mother stacked several cookbooks on the table and handed a red-and-white binder to Francie. “You check this one.” Francie opened the binder and stared at the table of contents. All she could think about were the stickers inside her desk drawer, how dark it must be in there. A desire to confess was growing in her, swelling like one of those tiny dinosaurs you soak in water until it expands to ten times its original size. But her mother always said, “Right is right and wrong is wrong, and I know the difference like the back of my hand.” She’d even once remarked, “Sometimes it’s not enough to be sorry.”

 

“Mildred,” Mrs. Holloway called from the table. The maid, who was prepping the vegetables at the island, looked up nervously. “You have to trim the sides of the asparagus as well as the ends. I’ve told you that before.” Then she whispered to Francie, “Remember that.” 

 

Mrs. Holloway returned her attention to the cookbooks. The pages made a crisp, snapping sound each time she turned them.

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“Mom?”

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“Yes, darling.”

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“Do you know Caroline Singer’s mother?”

 

Mrs. Holloway squinted and said, “Isn’t she the one who’s always up at the school? Wasn’t she a bridesmaid at Mrs. Mulgrew’s wedding?” Mrs. Mulgrew was Francie’s teacher.

 

“I guess so.”

 

“It’s remarkable how a woman like that can’t find something to do with her time.”

 

The way her mother said “woman like that” surprised Francie. It sounded mean, which made her mother seem younger. Less like a mom.

 

“Why do you ask, Francie?” But Francie didn’t think her mother really wanted to know, and before she could answer, Mrs. Holloway tapped the open page of her book and cried, “This is perfect!”

 

The afternoon sun had escaped the clouds and was shining through the window, bathing everything in a warm glow. The light made Mrs. Holloway’s skin look especially pale, like the painted Madonnas at the museum. Like the Madonnas, too, her mother seemed golden and faraway and lovely, with whole villages and fields of barley floating beside her. Francie pictured a small bird descending from the sky with a message for her mother’s perfectly shaped ear. It sang, Francie, Francie, Francie.

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* * *

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The instant Francie stepped onto the curb in front of school the next morning, she remembered. Today, Mrs. Singer was coming to make handcrafted valentines with the class. It was bad enough that Francie had stolen Caroline’s stickers. Now, she would have to face Caroline’s mother, too. She turned back to the wagon, but Gabriella’s face stopped her: on it was a look of complete ordinariness, as if the day were no different from any other. “You okay?” Gabriella asked. Francie shut the car door and trudged as slowly as possible to Mrs. Mulgrew’s fifth-grade classroom.

 

Caroline’s mother arrived promptly at 11. Tammy Jaffrey, who sat on Francie’s left, elbowed her and mouthed “June Cleaver.” Francie pretended to laugh, but then she saw Mrs. Mulgrew shoot them a look, which gave her an excuse to stop. Caroline’s mother was talking about valentines at the turn of the century and holding up some swatches of colorful fabric by the time Francie worked up the nerve to look at her. She was wearing a red angora sweater that pulled tight across her chest and a red ribbon in her ponytail. Red for Valentine’s Day. Another time, Francie might have scribbled Tammy a snide note, but today she didn’t feel like it.

 

Mrs. Singer explained that each child would cut out a giant heart from pink, purple, or red construction paper, then decorate the heart with the materials she had brought in: strips of lace and ribbon, the fabric swatches, miniature appliqués, magazine cutouts, and scraps of wrapping paper and gold and silver lettering.

 

The students’ wooden desks were arranged in a horseshoe. Mrs. Singer moved slowly back and forth along its arc, stopping where needed to lend a hand or answer a question. Mrs. Mulgrew graded papers at her desk. Francie had selected purple construction paper for her valentine. She tried to concentrate on drawing a heart neatly on the paper, then cutting the heart out precisely, but her hands were shaky and her stomach felt as hard as an avocado pit. She couldn’t stop thinking about the stickers lying in the darkness of her desk drawer at home. She’ll know, thought Francie. Maybe everyone knew—it was possible that someone had seen her take the stickers on the playground—and people were just waiting for her punishment to be announced. Francie pictured Mrs. Mulgrew’s disappointment, the look of disgust on Mrs. Singer’s face. She remembered the hurt look in Caroline’s eyes after the basketball game, how good watching it had made her feel, and her cheeks burned with shame.

 

On her fifth swing around the horseshoe, Mrs. Singer stopped at Francie’s place. By now most of the kids had cut out their hearts and were decorating them. Francie was trying to swathe her heart with a square of beige lace, but the glue was oozing up through the spaces, turning the lace sticky and dark.

 

“The lace can be tricky to work with,” Mrs. Singer said. Francie didn’t look up.

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Thief.

 

“It might be easier to use a glue stick rather than the Elmer’s,” Mrs. Singer was saying. “Shall I get you one?” Francie nodded. She thought about the time Mrs. Singer drove her home and acted like she and Caroline were good friends. Just like she was acting now, as if nothing were wrong.

 

Caroline’s mother reappeared with the glue stick and a fresh patch of lace. Francie felt a jab at her left calf and cast a side-glance over to Tammy Jaffrey. Tammy, busily cutting strips of pink wrapping paper, silently mouthed, “Stepford Wife.” Francie ignored her.

 

“How’s your mother?” Mrs. Singer asked as she leaned in to smooth out the lace. She smelled of baked potatoes and Windex. Her hands were chapped, but the nails were lovely: clean, crescent-tipped ovals that sat like communion wafers on the beds of her slender fingers. She began to apply the glue stick. Her wrists had sharp, protruding bones on the outer edges. “See, Francie? Now, you give it a try.”

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Francie mustered the courage to look up at Mrs. Singer’s face, but she couldn’t think what it was she was supposed to try. All she could remember were the stickers, while her eyes, so wide with worry that Mrs. Singer asked her if anything was the matter, began filling with tears. Francie knew that if she cried right there, everyone would know the truth. Mrs. Singer would know and Caroline would know and Mrs. Mulgrew and Tammy would know and they would tell her mother. Francie jerked up from her chair, which scraped the linoleum floor as she disentangled herself. Freed, she ran to the door and darted out beneath the lit green EXIT sign, into the deserted hallway.

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Francie heard Mrs. Singer call after her, so she bolted ahead through the gray tunnel, tears falling down her cheeks. She kept running down the hallway, hearing the echo of Caroline’s mother behind her, until she hit a dead end. In her confusion, she’d failed to take the left turn past the science lab that would have guided her to the building’s exit, and now she found herself face-to-face with a wall of brightly colored handprints outside the kindergarten classroom. She leaned her back against the wall, sliding down until her bottom found rest on the concrete floor. She hugged her knees to her chest and rocked. Soon, Caroline’s mother was kneeling beside her.

 

“What’s the matter?” Francie heard real concern in Mrs. Singer’s voice.

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“You wouldn’t understand.” 

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“Tell me why you’re crying,” Mrs. Singer persisted.​ Francie looked up into her eyes, which were as warm as she had imagined them coming off the plane from Italy.

 

“You don’t understand. I’ve done something bad. Really bad.”

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“I’m sure it can’t be as bad as all that, Francie. Things rarely are.”

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“No, no, you’ll hate me. You’ll hate me,” Francie insisted, her voice urgent.

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“Of course I won’t hate you, Francie. What is it? Tell me.”

 

Francie looked up at Caroline’s mother, calculating the possibilities, assessing the risk. Then, her sobs let loose in full force, tears gushing faster down her cheeks, and she hurled herself against Mrs. Singer, wrapping her arms around her and burying her face in her chest.

 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Francie heaved, as Mrs. Singer hugged her back and tenderly stroked her hair. 

 

Later would come her mother’s lecture, a fair punishment, everything she knew her wrong deserved. But for now, in the empty hall outside the kindergarten classroom, there were only the gentle shushing sounds of Caroline’s mother and the soft, red fuzz of her Valentine’s Day sweater.