Soft piano music plays from the parlor as Dahlia hovers in the foyer. Her pink lace jacket is distinctly out of style. Her auburn hair is not ineptly styled, but Poppy is eyeing the white streaks with an affected air.

            “They’re all in the parlor,” Poppy says. “The other ladies are already having their biscoff. It’s fat free,” she adds.

            Dahlia’s shoulders curl forward over her unshapely form. “That sounds wonderful,” she says, eyes darting.

            Poppy exchanges a look with Daisy, who is idling by the door the parlor, holding a bottle of red wine in one hand and a bottle opener in the other. “You can open it,” she says. Dahlia passes Daisy without looking her in the eye.

            “Give her plenty,” Poppy mouths. Daisy laughs and jabs the metal tip of the bottle opener into the cork. “You know I’ll try,” she says.

            Haydn’s sonata in C plays from the radio on the sideboard. “I love this one,” Daisy gushes. She’s holding another bottle of wine, and wrestling with the cork. She’s finding it a lot harder to open than the first two. “It’s so happy.”

            “Almost too happy,” Dahlia mutters.

            All twelve women raise their well-carved brows. “Why would you say such a thing?” Petunia asks, giggling, her cheeks as red as her scarlet dress. Petunia hasn’t had too much to drink, but even when sober she can seem as tipsy as Poppy’s great-aunt Norma Jean. Poppy herself doesn’t mind a drink, but she’s not easily drunk. She keeps trying to force a glass or seven on Dahlia, but the dowdy little woman won’t budge. Dahlia’s been holding the same glass for the past hour without taking a single sip.

            “What are you, a teetotaller?” Petunia trills.

            There’s only scattered laughter—they all remember the Prohibition days well, and so the joke seems out of date. But all of them enjoy any words even lightly mocking Dahlia. They have no other reason to invite her to their parties.

            Shortly before six, just an hour before Poppy’s husband comes home and all the women will clear out, the doorbell rings.

            “Oh damn, I hope it isn’t Lobelia,” Daisy says, giving a dramatic groan.

            “Oh, don’t say such a thing!” Petunia titters.

            “I’ll be right back,” Poppy says. “If you hear me giggling nervously, you know who it is.”

            Seconds later, a loud, forced giggle rings through the hall and into the parlor. Daisy turns up the radio.

            “How does she know whenever we’re having one of these? I’ll hope she’s brought her Joe McCarthy jacket, ” she says. This time, the laughter’s stronger than scattered.

            Lobelia follows Poppy into the parlor, grinning widely. She’s got a bright red stain on her purple cardigan and her makeup has been applied with an amateurish flair, her dark eyes surrounded by a yellow-white eyeshadow that makes it look like her eyes are glowing like a cat’s in the dark.

            “Hello,” she says. “So sorry I’m late.”

            Daisy turns down the radio. “What was that you said?” she asks. “Lovely little concerto, but I suppose it’ll have to wait.”

            “I just said hello,” Lobelia replies. “How are you doing, Dahlia? I haven’t seen you around recently.”

            Petunia giggles.

            “Fine, thank you,” Dahlia says, looking up.

            “I heard your daughter eloped with that man from Kittney’s,” Lobelia says.

            “My, you didn’t mention that,” Daisy exclaims. “Kittney’s? Like the prison?”

            Dahlia doesn’t answer. Her face has paled so deeply one might have thought she was about to faint.

            “Oh my,” Petunia says. “Do you know—do you know what he was in for?”

            “My daughter didn’t mention,” Dahlia whispers.

            “What was that you said?” Daisy asks, turning off the radio entirely. Brahms vanishes from the room with a resounding click.

            “I’m feeling rather sick,” Dahlia says.

            “Why don’t you take a little fresh air, then?” Poppy asks.

            “I think I’d like that,” Dahlia says. She smoothes her skirt unnecessarily. “I think I’d like that,” she says a little more loudly, and stands.

            “Lobelia, would you mind joining her?” Poppy asks.

            “Kicking me out that quickly?” Lobelia asks. She hasn’t even taken off her cardigan yet. Poppy hasn’t offered to take it. Dahlia looks equally unsettled, beginning to eye the stain on Lobelia’s cardigan with a newfound disgust.

            Petunia giggles again.

            “We’ll being seeing you in a minute,” Poppy says. “Feel better, Dahlia.”

            The sentiment is echoed emptily throughout the crowded parlor.

            The street is well-lit, and warm for a fall evening. Dahlia is trying not to look Lobelia in the eyes. “Isn’t that house a real eyesore,” Lobelia says, beaming, pointing at a square white clapboard just like all the others on the neat, clean street: complete with stained oak planters in the windows  and well-coiffed hedges, a whitewashed fence and a gleaming mailbox. “A little slice of Levittown,” she adds, shaking her head.

            “It’s not so bad,” Dahlia says.

            “Yes, well the son’s addicted to laudanum, so it’s ugly to me,” Lobelia says.

            “How does that make the house ugly?” Dahlia asks. “Just because he’s got—got troubles? Just one person in the house, having troubles, that makes a house ugly? Does that make my house ugly, because my daughter—my daughter—” She stops abruptly.

            “Oh, that’s not how it works,” Lobelia says. “You make your house a pretty little thing. Your Mr. Moechtegern makes your house a pretty little thing.”

            “He’s a good man,” Dahlia says, glad for the change of subject.

            “Yes, he is,” Lobelia says. “You should feel lucky.”

            “Are you ever lonely?” Dahlia asks. “You know—”

            “Being an old maid?” Lobelia asks. “No. I don’t want a husband. I’ve got my nieces and nephews if I ever feel like I need youth in my life, and I have my brother if there’s ever any furniture I just can’t move myself.”

            “Why did you have to bring up my daughter in front of everyone?” Dahlia asks.

            “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lobelia says. “I didn’t know it would affect you so. I was hoping to garner some sympathy for you. Hadn’t they been running you ragged again?”

            “Why do you always show up when you’re not invited?”

            “Because I worry about you, darling,” Lobelia says. “Why do you go to their silly parties in the first place?”

            “Because they invite me,” Dahlia says.

            “But do you really want to go?” Lobelia asks.

            “Well—it’s the thing to do.”

            “There’s another one of those phrases that means just nothing at all. What do you mean, it’s the thing to do?”

            “Exactly that,” Dahlia says. “Because I should.”

            “But why?”

            “They’re good women, Lobelia.”

            “Has Daisy ever said something to you that wasn’t nasty? Has Poppy ever given you a kind word?”

            They are almost back at the house now, and Dahlia is once more trying not to look Lobelia in the eye. “The only person who gave me an unkind word today was you,” Dahlia replies petulantly. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to be sociable. I need a drink anyhow.”

            “Don’t drink too much,” Lobelia calls. “I’ll see you next week.”

            Dahlia doesn’t respond, but reenters the house without a backwards look.

            “Oh, hello, Dahlia,” Poppy says. “Are you feeling better?”

            “Much.” She looks across the parlor, taking in all of the sarcastically sympathetic expressions that face her own. “Lobelia had to head home,” she adds.

            “Well we’ve just been putting away the tea and things now anyway, as my husband will be home soon,” Poppy says. “So if you—”

            “I wouldn’t mind helping tidy up at all,” Dahlia says, a strange vengeful confidence coming over her.

            “Oh,” Poppy says. “Alright.”

            Dahlia takes her time, and so it’s nearly seven by the time she finishes drying the last of Poppy’s plates, having insisted on washing them by hand—and Poppy with her fancy new dishwasher too.

            “Alright, I’ll see you next week,” Poppy says, taking the dish towel from Dahlia. “Thank you very much for helping out—very much appreciated—” she begins unabashedly herding Dahlia over to the front door.

            “Have you seen my jacket?” Dahlia asks.

            “Your—your jacket?” Poppy looks murderous. “I’ll find it—one moment darling—the weather’s nice, you can step outside if you like—” She hurries back into the house.

            Dahlia doesn’t step outside. She plants herself by the front door, tracing a badly manicured finger over a picture frame attached the wall. A younger, prettier Poppy stands next to her well-built husband, looking up into his eyes, while he stands behind her with his arms around her hourglass waist and smiles, looking down his wife’s dress with a soft warm gaze.

            The front door opens. Dahlia leaps away from it, surprised. The same well-built man in the picture, just a little grayer (his hair is a smooth black in the colorless picture, but Dahlia can see now it is brown spotted with gray), enters. When he sees Dahlia his expression hardens. “Who are you?” he asks.

            “I’m Dahlia Moechtegern, a friend of Poppy’s,” Dahlia says, extending her hand. “I assume you’re Mr. Freeman?”

            With a painfully disguised shriek, Poppy stumbles into the foyer clutching a jacket Dahlia knows not to be her own. “Here,” Poppy says, “I’ll see you another time—good night—” She pushes Dahlia towards the door.

            “Who’s this?” Poppy’s husband demands.

            “I told you, I’m—”

            “A neighbor,” Poppy snarls, and shoves Dahlia out of the door. “Dropped off the mail—what a dear—I’ll see you later, Rose, have a nice evening—”

            The door slams and Dahlia barely catches the sound of a agonized shriek as the door is vigorously locked behind her. Dahlia stands on the porch for a minute, staring at the ugly tweed jacket Poppy has handed her, and listens hard.

            There are no other sounds from inside the little clapboard, unexplained and otherwise. Dahlia considers knocking and asking for her jacket, but all of her adrenaline-fuelled vengeful spirit is gone, and she leaves the house alone.

            The street is still well-lit, and still warm for a fall night, but Dahlia would have liked her jacket, and the one Poppy gave her is at least three sizes too small. She wraps it around herself as best as she can and sets off down the street. It seems to look different from when she and Lobelia were walking down it together earlier. The houses seem even starker against the tree-less, polluted sky, like neat little white teeth sticking up into a black throat, every hedge a trembling gum. The house Lobelia had pointed at earlier seems especially jagged, a little white tear in the vast black of the sky. Dahlia stops and stares at the house intently, hoping to see something of what Lobelia had said, but in the end, she determines it is just like every other house on the street.

            And then she sees the eyes.

            Two yellow glowing eyes, round like saucers with black, almond-shaped pupils, beam out at her from inside the hedge. They seem to be expanding and contracting with no more force than that which the wind affords them, but their movement is almost hypnotic. Dahlia stares at them with perverse curiosity.

            Then the eyes blink, and with just that one movement, the spell breaks, and Dahlia now wants nothing more than to get away from the eyes as fast as she can—but her feet feel glued to the ground. She is frozen solid like a garden gnome—a plump figure dressed in ill-fitting clothes, set out only for amusement. Why can’t she move? Why is she glued to the ground?

            It occurs to her suddenly that glue is made from dead horses, and if she is feeling glued to the ground, then she must be standing on the dead body of a horse, unmoving. She is attached to a dead horse that is attaching her to the pavement—what is pavement made of? Rocks? Coal? She doesn’t know. She should know these things.

            The eyes continue to stare, and Dahlia begins to feel she cannot stand it any longer. But as long as she can’t move and the eyes don’t move, she must bear it, mustn’t she? What else is there to do?

            With that the eyes begin to move. They rise like puppets on strings, and she can see the strings, too; they are gray like Lobelia’s stringy hair. They are long and slimy and greasy and gray, not silver but black-and-white-speckled, and Dahlia feels as though she might vomit if she keeps looking at the strings, so she looks down, just as the strings begin to jerk their puppet eyes upwards.

            When Dahlia’s eyes settle on the eyes once more, she sees what she did not see before. The string does not merely look like Lobelia’s hair, the string is Lobelia’s hair. The two yellow eyes belong to Lobelia herself. She must have been waiting in the bushes all this time, Dahlia realizes. She must have been waiting to scare her for the past hour.

            How cruel of Lobelia! How cruel people are! Dahlia thinks of her daughter. Her daughter must have spoken to Lobelia before she left. That must be why her daughter left, because Lobelia convinced her to. Dahlia would never have raised such a flighty and unreliable woman. Dahlia’s progeny is not the sort to fly away with a felon. Lobelia must have convinced her to do it, so that she could embarrass Dahlia in front of Poppy and Daisy and Petunia and all the others! That’s it. She has figured it out.

            The earth gives a sudden rumble, and Dahlia knows it is of course Lobelia’s fault, though why, she could not have said—her feet slip out from under her, sliding her around in the horse’s intestines, and dump her face-down on the ground. Dahlia squeezes Poppy’s ugly tweed jacket so tightly her knuckles turn white and somehow, the sky goes lighter.

            Dahlia blinks vaguely and rolls over. Lobelia’s glowing eyes peer down at her.

            “That was quite a tumble,” Lobelia says. “I suppose you’re not the teetotaller Petunia thought you were. Are you alright?”

            Dahlia struggles up to her feet. “Oh my,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall. I think I just tripped—don’t worry, I’m not drunk. I just tripped.”

            “I can drive you home,” Lobelia says.

            “No, it’s alright, I think I’ll walk,” Dahlia says, and turns away. “My house is just around the block.”

            “I’ll walk you home, then,” Lobelia says.

            “I—alright, then,” Dahlia says, and they walk around the block in silence. Dahlia reaches into her pocket and pulls out her house key before they’ve even reached her house.

            “Well, here we are,” Lobelia says when they really have reached the house. “Nice garden you’ve got here—is this all your handiwork?”

            “No, it’s all Mr. Moechtegern’s,” Dahlia says, and immediately after saying so wonders why she has just referred to her husband of twenty-four years by his surname. The only person she knows who calls him Mr. Moechtegern is Lobelia.

            “He’s very talented,” Lobelia says. “I see you don’t have hedges, just flowers—very nice.”

            “Yes,” Dahlia says. “Well, have a wonderful evening. I’ll see you another day.”

            “Yes,” Lobelia says, and Dahlia lets herself into her house.

            Her husband is sitting in the kitchen, cutting up magazines and listening to the radio. A Haydn sonata in C is playing.

            “I hate this one,” her husband says. “It sounds like it’s trying too hard. Could you change the station?”

            “I could,” Dahlia said, “but I won’t. I love this one.”

            “Why?” her husband asks.

            “I just do,” she replies. “Could you hang up my jacket for me?”

            “Alright,” her husband says, and she hands him her old tweed jacket. He gets up to go put it away in the closet for her. She can’t even remember when she bought the thing, but it’s warm and fits her well. Every woman, she supposes, has a jacket that’s warm and fits perfectly well, but is so ugly and old she would never admit to owning it. Dahlia fetches her apron and turns on the faucet. The sink is full of dirty dishes, even though her husband had promised this morning to do all of the dishes before she came home that evening from her lovely ladies’ tea.

            “Men,” she laughs to herself, and sets to work.

– Lara Katz