Best Friends (57 page)

“That's not the point, Clare. The point is, I'm always mentally in some other place. When I'm with you, I'm thinking about Mary and the girls, and when I'm with them, I'm thinking about you. We're almost forty now, Clare. Don't you get it? We don't have our whole lives left. Statistically, we're over halfway through. And I want to live in the moment, I want to be totally . . . invested in whatever I'm doing at a given time. It's a philosophical issue for me.”

“Invested? Have you thought about how invested we are in each other? Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I always think of you. Last week I had a new patient call me a white bitch who enjoyed seeing people like her suffer, and you know what? I didn't fall apart. I listened to her, I talked to her, and when she left, we had an understanding. And I felt proud, because I imagined you there watching me the whole time. I never do stupid things when I think of you watching me. How can you say we won't see each other anymore? You'd be taking away a part of me. The good part of me.”

“Clare. You could have a normal life. You could love a man who loves you and could see you every day. Really see you, not just you imagining he sees you. You could get married again! I was wrong to even start this. It's my fault. I lie in bed at night and think, what am I doing? How can I do this to my family?”

“So I'm not your family. I'm the mother of your oldest daughter, but I'm not—”

“You divorced me, Clare, remember? You divorced
me.
”

“I'm not going to beg, don't think I'm going to beg.”

“I was too nice for you, remember?”

“You walk out that door, this is the end. I'm not going to beg!”

“Then stop begging!”

 

 

 

“ANOTHER GIRL!”

“You got to the hospital on time? I was worried.”

“Oh, fine. Piece of cake. Tiny hospital.”

“Is she cute? What's her name?”

“Shoshana Miriam.”

“Wow, that's a mouthful. How do you spell it?”

Sally spelled it. “The names are Hebrew. They're kind of my names. This is my baby.

“Love you,” she said when she hung up. I didn't respond for a second, surprised to hear those words. We used to say them all the time.

“Love you too,” I answered.

HE DID SOMETHING to me. He made me fully alive. His body up against me, penis insistent through his clothes, his hands barely touching me, running over my shoulders and down my arms as if he were stroking not me but the nimbus around me, so all the tiny hairs rose to meet him.

Unbuttoning my shirt, undoing my bra, a breast in each hand, barely. My nipples stood up.

I was a bridge arching. I was melting into the mattress. That little push, to meet him.

How could I give that up?

 

 

 

“ YOU AND MR. COTTON used condoms, didn't you? After you found out his diagnosis?” It wasn't really my business, but Cleve and I were friends now, and I could ask.

“Not consistently.”

I'd heard that story so many times. Still, it wasn't everyone who admitted it.

“And you know what?” Cleve said with a loopy smile. “It was worth it.”

My voice was surprisingly sharp. “Worth your life?”

Cleve didn't lose his smile. His eyes were open, but they seemed to be focused on a memory, not on me. “Larry couldn't come wearing a condom. Nothing we tried. So I let him come inside me without one.” Cleve's eyes met mine. “It was worth it. Know what I mean?”

I did know. I knew exactly what he meant.

 

 

 

“ IT ' S LOVELY, ” I SAID. November in Idaho, and the wind might have rattled the windows, but this was a house built not to rattle.

“It is.” Sally shook out the match and placed the fat candle on a dish. “Aromatherapy,” she said, taking a seat on the sofa. The sofa was low, with wooden arms like sticks, upholstered in a rust-colored, hempish fabric. Native American rugs were scattered across the blond wooden floor; the lamps were made of tubes of rusted metal. “I never thought I'd live in a glorified log cabin, but”—she waved her hand—“it fits. Peter's the one who's really crazy about it. He designed it, figured out the lighting, where to put the outlets, what size windows. It's his baby.”

The kids were in bed, mostly, in their beds in the two big rooms—the boys' room and the girls' room—that opened onto the balcony looking down on the vaulted living room where Sally and I sat. Linnea, the difficult child, was asleep on the floor beside us under a blanket, splayed out with a foot protruding, and Shoshana, the baby with the Hebrew name bigger than she was, curled on Sally's lap. I didn't know where Peter was. Out.

“Peter's been more friendly than he was the last few times I've seen him.”

“That was L.A.,” Sally said. “He's not jealous of you anymore. It's a relief to him that you're here. Now he doesn't want my attention.”

“You are pretty isolated up here”—they were halfway up a mountain— “and with neither of you working, well . . . What do you talk about after a while?”

“There's a couple down toward town who's been married sixty-one years. They bicker. But any couple who's been together that long, they know how to get what they need from each other. I always dreamed I'd have that long-term thing with somebody. That I'd be part of a unit.” She sighed.

“I'm not exactly part of a unit, either.”

“What's happening with you and Ted, are you two . . .”

“It's ending,” I said. “I can feel it.” And then, quickly, so she wouldn't ask me more: “You're not feeling like your marriage is doomed, are you?”

“It may be.” Sally's gaze shifted to Linnea and she dropped her voice dramatically, as if the sleeping child, barely two years old, could possibly understand her: “There's someone else.”

Her melodramatic way irritated me. “Oh, come on,” I said out loud, casting my eyes toward the arched front windows, “where in the world would you meet another guy up here?”

Sally's eyes pooled with hurt. “Not me. Peter. He's found an abandoned wife. On the other side of the mountain. She lives in one of those cedar-shake houses.” One of the firetraps, Sally was saying.

No wonder she was agitated about me and Ted. “Are you sure?”

“Ninety percent. She's married to one of those computer millionaires who flies back and forth to Seattle in his private plane and leaves her here to fend for herself. She's cute. Young.” Sally's mouth twisted on the word. “We befriended her, all of us. Peter and I felt sorry for her. She's been here for dinner I don't know how many times. But not anymore.” Sally paused and looked at me. “Her name's Laurie. He's become quite a hiker, Peter has.”

“Oh, Sally.”

“He told me last week she wants children. You know what I thought?
What the hell are you doing talking about children with Laurie, Peter?
He doesn't make a penny anymore. It's all me, what I got from the law firm and Daddy's business.” She turned to me with an anxious look: “Do you think I'm getting fat?”

She was a little heavier. I'd seen her, as she cleaned up in the kitchen, eating leftover food with her fingers off her children's plates. “Oh no, Sally,” I said, “not at all.”

“She's very thin. Fit.”

It was almost too painful to see the self-doubt in her face. I rubbed my hands together to warm them and watched the candle flicker on the low table in front of us. Linnea stirred, cried out, stuck her other foot out of the blanket.

“Dreams,” Sally said, bending over to tuck the blanket around Linnea. “At least she doesn't wake up anymore. You know what I realized? Linnea doesn't like being held. She's better if I just tighten the blanket.” Sally pulled Shoshana closer to her, looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen, then turned her gaze to mine. “Clare? You should let Ted go. It's wrong what you're doing.”

I dropped my eyes from hers back to the candle, felt my face burn. “I know, Sally.”

“It's wrong. There's a reason the Seventh Commandment forbids adultery. Fornication is one thing, but adultery! In adultery, there's betrayal.”

“Don't forget that Mark Petrello ran around on me,” I said. Lavender, I remembered. He came home smelling like lavender.

“But you and Mark Petrello didn't have children!” Sally burst out, passionately enough that Shoshana stirred on her lap, flexed a tiny arm, and waved a fist in the air, as if she were seconding what her mother was saying.

“Would it really make a difference if Peter moved out on you?” I said. “You're the one who does everything with the children.”

“But he's their father,” Sally said quietly. “And besides, Laurie's husband will never put up with it. She's his possession.”

“What's he going to do, hire a hit man?”

Sally gave a quiver, brought her hand up to shield the baby's ears. “I just want Peter back home,” she said in a prayerful voice. At that very moment Peter came in, stamping his feet in the mudroom off the kitchen.

“Racoon-a-rama at Laurie's,” Peter called. “Even got in the kitchen. I had to chase one out with a yardstick.” He moved through the kitchen shedding clothes: a jacket to a hook on the wall, a sweater to the back of the chair, his boots to a mat in the corner. He had shaved his goatee; his wispy hair was groomed now, slicked back from his forehead. “God, it's like a palace over there. Way too much house for two people. Usually one people. Laurie feeds the raccoons, that's the problem. She's got to quit. I told her that. Can't be a soft touch!” He moved from the kitchen into the glow and fragrance of the candle, and I noticed that his face looked flushed and handsome: for the first time, he struck me as sexy, as a man in his prime, while below him, closer to the light, Sally was a dour lump. “She needs a place more like this one,” Peter said, eyes aglow, and I thought then of Ted and Mary, how Ted must have looked exhilarated, wild, coming home from his visits with me—from even our chaste exchanges of Aury.

“I'm glad you're home,” Sally said, lifting her chin to look at him, and I swallowed a hard knot in my throat, knowing that she'd reached me, that I'd think of that timid and beseeching gaze the next time I saw Ted.

 

 

 

SID'S NEW NURSING HOME had rocking chairs and plaques with messages in the lobby; the aides, instead of white dresses, wore ankle boots and white pants, their underwear showing through. When Sally and the kids and I arrived, Sid was being cleaned up; from the door to his room, I caught a glimpse of back and buttock, and an unmistakable whiff of stool. “Hold on a minute!” the aide called, pushing the door shut with her foot.

Ezra sighed and slid down the walll. “Bo-ring,” he said, his new word. He found kindergarten bo-ring too.

The twins found an empty wheelchair and started pushing it around. Linnea screamed, possibly in happiness.

The door popped open. “He's all spruced up!”

We crowded into the room. The aide stood on the far side of the bed behind Sid, like a 4-H'er posing behind her prize chicken.

Barbara went to the head of the bed and peered at her grandfather's face. “What's that in his eye, Mommy?” she asked. There was a bit of sleep on an eyelash; the aide wiped it away with a wet washcloth.

“I'm Rose,” the aide said to Sally. “I was on nights, but I'm new on days.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sally said. “Any problems?”

“Oh no!” said Rose. “He's a real doll baby.”

Joshua had clambered up onto a chair beside Sid and, before anyone noticed him, tossed a small rubber ball aimed at Sid's open mouth. Gabriel screamed with laughter.

“Oh no no no,” Sally said in a horrified tone. “This is your grandfather, Joshua. Oh, we would never hurt your grandfather.” The ball had glanced off Sid's cheekbone and bounced to the floor.

“A real doll baby,” Rose repeated. “He don't give us no trouble at all. Nice and quiet. What did he do?”

Sally, mouth open, didn't speak for a second, so I obligingly rushed in. “He was a magazine distributor,” I said.

“Oh.” Rose smiled. “Those little trucks. I heard you all were from L.A.”

Sally and I both nodded.

“He has a nice face,” Rose said. “Nice smooth forehead.” She patted it. “Not a lot of worries these days, eh, Sidney?” She straightened up and turned to Sally, her voice proud. “We turn our people every two hours. No one ever gets bedsores here.”