IN HER
2017 DEBUT The Garden of Small Beginnings,
Abbi Waxman tackled
widowhood and grief with wicked honesty. Readers
fell in love with Waxman’s
ability to
wring
humor from a
sober situation, and the Lorelai
Gilmore-esque widow at
the
center of the story. The book,
an
Indie Next
selection, became a cult favorite
among independent
booksellers, and was
featured in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Elle.com, and Woman’s World, among others.
In her second novel, Waxman again dares to take a dark situation and make it funny. In OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES (Berkley Trade Paperback Original; April 3, 2018), she captures the hilarious havoc one affair wreaks on an upper middle-class LA neighborhood.
For Frances Bloom,
driver-in-residence of
her local carpool
crew,
school
dropoff is a chaotic if not predictable affair. Until
one of Frances’s steely-eyed kindergarten charges sends her
to retrieve forgotten school supplies.
That’s when Frances stumbles
on her friend
Anne Porter— perfect,
impeccable
Anne—having a 9:00 am
quickie
with
a younger man who
is definitely not her husband.
The affair
exposes, to comedic effect, dormant
insecurities, neuroses, and
strife in the neighborhood. As the carpool
line-up unravels one gossip session at
a time, the novel
alternates between the perspectives of
the four families
involved: the down-to-earth, level-headed Blooms; the seemingly perfect
Porters;
the eccentric lesbian
couple Sara and Iris; and
the mysterious Hortons, hiding a sad secret.
Waxman, a former ad copywriter,
wields pitch-perfect
dialogue,
capturing how the chaotic aftermath
of the affair plays
out across the block behind closed doors, in scenarios alternately
tender and preposterous. It
will all lead up to the portentous
return of Anne’s boyfriend, in a final plot turn that tests the
carpool
crew indelibly and forces their reliance on each
other into
alarming perspective.
Waxman’s bubbly skewering of
her
characters’ idiosyncrasies coupled with her irrepressible humor sets OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES apart from
typical
suburban satire.
Life in
the
carpool lane will never be the
same.
_________________________Excerpt:
Frances pulled into the elementary
school lot and Ava got out, sighing as if she were a fourteen-year-old
Victorian child disembarking for her day down the mine. She pulled open the
door and swung her arm wide.
“Medium-size children may now escape. Mind
the gap, and watch out for speeding moms on cell phones.”
The children had already unbuckled and
piled out, high-fiving Ava as they passed her. Kate stopped, and Frances turned
to see what was up. The little girl’s face was a study in conflict.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
Kate looked at Frances, and her chin
wobbled.
“I left my toilet roll tubes at home.”
“Oh.” Frances looked at her eldest child. Ava
shrugged, looking back inside the open minivan.
“They aren’t in the car.”
“Oh, OK.” Frances smiled at Kate. “I’m
sure the teacher will have lots of extras.” She herself had, over time, sent in
three thousand toilet roll tubes. For all she knew they were building a
particle collider out of them, or an accurate re-creation of the New York
subway system. Let’s hope they didn’t use the obvious choice for subway trains.
“No, I have to have my own
ones.” Kate’s eyes were filling with tears, her shit-fit indicator was dropping
to DEFCON 3. “It’s for the class project. Everyone else will have them.”
Frances weighed her options. On the one
hand Kate was only six, and would not only survive but would forget the trauma
of not having had toilet roll tubes. But on the other hand, she was a member of
the Yakuza-esque organization known as Miss Lollio’s First Grade Class, whose
members fell on the weakest like wolves on a lamb. Forgetting to bring toilet roll
tubes and having to borrow some was a Noticeable Event to be avoided at all
costs. It wasn’t on the level of peeing oneself, of course, it wasn’t going to
give rise to a nickname you couldn’t shake until college, but it wasn’t great.
“My mommy put them in a bag, but she
forgot to give them to me.” A note of accusatory steel had entered her voice.
Frances gazed at the little angel, whose mother had been heard calling her
Butterblossom. Kate’s eyes had gone flat like a shark’s. She knew she would get
what she wanted, the only question was when. I am younger than
you, old lady, her eyes said, and I will stand here
until age makes you infirm, at which time I will push you down, crunch over
your brittle bones, and get the toilet roll tubes I need.
“Alright, Kate. I’ll go back and get them
after I drop Ava, OK, and bring them back to school for you.” Frances knew she
was being played, but it was OK. She was softhearted, and she could live with
that.
“Suckah . . .”
Ava headed back to her seat, shaking her head over her mother’s weakness, a
weakness she loved to take advantage of herself.
“Thanks, Frances!” Kate beamed an enormous
smile, turned, and ran off—the transformation from tremulous waif to bouncy
cherub instantaneous. Behind her in the line of cars, someone tapped their
horn. OK, the brief honk said, we waited while you dealt with whatever mini
crisis was caused by your piss-poor parenting, because we’re nice like that,
but now you can get a move on because we, like everyone else in this line, have
Shit to Do. Amazing how much a second of blaring horn can communicate.
Frances waved an apologetic hand out of
the car window, and pulled out of the gate.
She dropped the other kids and was back at
Anne’s house in a half hour. Having carpool duty wasn’t the onerous task the
other parents thought it was: All three schools were close to home, and all
four families lived on the same block. As Frances ran up to Anne’s door she
looked over and saw her own cat, Carlton, watching her. She waved. He blinked
and looked away, embarrassed for both of them.
She knocked softly on the door, but no one
answered. Maybe Anne had gone back to sleep. She turned the handle and pushed
open the door, peering around. Yup, there was the bag of toilet roll tubes. She
grabbed it and was about to shut the door again when she saw Anne lying on the
floor, her face turned away, her long hair spilling across the rug.
“Anne! Holy crap, are you OK?” But as she
said it her brain started processing what she was really seeing. Anne, on the
floor, check. But now she’d turned her head and Frances realized she was fine.
In fact, she was better than fine. Frances had instinctively stepped over the
sill and now she saw that Anne was naked, her face flushed, a man between her
legs, his head below her waist.
“Shit . . .” Frances
dropped her eyes, began to back out, “Sorry, Anne, Kate forgot her toilet roll
tubes . . .” Stupidly she raised her hand with the Whole Foods
bag in it because, of course, that would make it better, that she’d interrupted
Anne and Charlie having a quickie on the living room floor. It was OK, because she
was just here for the toilet roll tubes. Nothing to see here, move along.
The man realized something was wrong,
finally, and raised his head, looking first at Anne and then turning to see
what she was looking at, why her face was so pale when seconds before it had
been so warmly flushed.
Frances was nearly through the door, it
was closing fast, but not before she saw that it wasn’t Charlie at all. It was
someone else entirely.
Frances closed the door and heard it click
shut.