I stayed up much later than usual, pretending to be engrossed in a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, while I deliberately didn’t pay attention to my phones—landline and cell laid out on the coffee table, side by side with military precision. But no matter how much I pretended I wasn’t listening for them, that I was fully engrossed in the
Battlestar Galactica
movie I’d seen at least seventy times before, they failed to ring.
On Thursday, I started to get angry. I sat at my desk and pretended to concentrate on work-related things, but really I was spiraling into a dark, breathless sort of rage.
Who had asked Amy Lee to step in and appoint herself the moral authority? The
grown-up
? Were we all supposed to forget the eight thousand ridiculous things she’d done in her lifetime, most of which I’d witnessed
without
the same response? Who was she to sit in judgment of other people?
Once I opened that floodgate, the rage poured on out.
It cast a wide net.
Whatever with Georgia and her
“I can’t.”
You’d think being sliced into pieces by our mutual friend might have produced a little bit of solidarity.
I
had raced directly to Georgia’s side during the latest Stupid Boy crisis, at six in the freaking morning.
I
had been prepared to stay there for however long it took. Just because Amy Lee was suddenly too good for friends in need, it didn’t mean I was. Just because Amy Lee would prefer to stay out in Somerville with her
house
,
practice
, and
husband
, that didn’t mean I wasn’t available should Georgia need me. Why was I being punished for Amy Lee’s behavior?
Unless, of course, Georgia was mad about the Henry thing, and if she was? Then maybe I was the one who
couldn’t.
I could see being upset. I’d lied, after all. I could stand to do some groveling for that. And in truth, I should have been up front about things as they happened instead of waiting to be caught. But it wasn’t as if Georgia had had us camping out at Henry’s door any time
recently.
As far as I knew, she’d been over her Henry crush going on five years now. Was she really going to end our friendship over a never-requited, never-consummated college-era crush?
I thought about Henry, too. Finally. And, at first, reluctantly.
I was humiliated for exactly twelve seconds and then I thought that
actually
, he could go to hell and take his
“I don’t think so”
with him. What an ass. The man stood in a hallway and basically presented me with a point-by-point analysis of the reasons why it was okay for him to be into me and then, when I could have actually used him, he bailed on me. If that wasn’t representative of my entire love life, I didn’t know what was. I couldn’t even call it a
love life
—it was just one pathetic relationship—or epic, fruitless crush, if I were to recall the embarrassments of my earlier twenties accurately—after another. I
aspired
to tragedy and heartbreak—my own relationships ended in whimpers and indifference.
Except for the only one I’d actually had recently, I reminded myself. I kept picturing that apologetic smile Nate had aimed my way at the caroling party. What did that mean? Was he apologizing
to
me or
for
Helen? Why had he called me
so many times
that night and then never again? Did he have any idea that it required nightly acts of near-Herculean will to keep from calling him again?
I didn’t know what to make of Henry, or what he thought was the pattern between us. I didn’t want to know. I was lost when it came to Amy Lee. In the woods over Georgia. The solution with Nate was simple: remind him how much he liked me and dislodge Helen’s claws from him. Mess cleaned up, just like that. Jilted girlfriends were only considered psychotic losers when the boyfriend had
really
moved on, after all. And
really moved on
did not include seven voice mail messages in one night.
The rest of them could all go straight to hell, I thought self-righteously. They were far too messy to deal with, and I didn’t know where to start. And in any case, I was
more than fine
without them.
T
he hyperactive holiday season in Boston, I discovered quickly, was not the greatest time of the year to be friendless.
My outrage faded to a slow burn as the days passed. After work every evening I’d wander around the city in much the same way I had years before, when I was eighteen and intoxicated by my sudden freedom. I’d fallen in love with Boston back then, and with Amy Lee and Georgia, all at the same time. The city was a monument to our friendship—there was hardly a corner in it we hadn’t imprinted with one memory or another. Nights we’d hung out in the Bukowski Tavern, for example, toasting dead authors with over a hundred different beers. Running wild on Lansdowne Street in our clubbing phase. Celebrating Patriots’ Day, or getting all kitted out in our Red Sox gear to root for the home team.
Helen was mixed up in there too, much as I’d prefer to deny it. The nights we spent trolling for cute boys when we were supposed to be studying. Shopping with Helen on Newbury Street and marveling at her seemingly limitless credit card.
First Boston had been our playground, then it was our campus, and soon after that it was our home. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like on my own.
Okay, that was a little overdramatic. I had other friends. It was just that they were weekend and occasional friends. If I wanted to spend more time with the other members of my larger social group, I was going to have to expend a whole lot more effort. I was going to have to make a lot of phone calls, start accepting each and every invitation I received—do the things you were forced to do when you wanted to expand your circle. I hadn’t had to do it in a very long time. The very
idea
of doing it filled me with a pervasive sense of
ick.
And, of course, even if I threw myself into it wholeheartedly, it would take ages to build up to the sort of friendships I had just (apparently) lost. You couldn’t transform a coffee-once-a-month friend into a call-me-every-day-maybe-three-times-a-day friend just like that. It took time. Caution. Patience. And in my circumstances, it would also require explanations about why, exactly, Amy Lee and Georgia were out of my life. I couldn’t face it.
And that was why, when I got home and allowed my nose to defrost, I called Nate.
I didn’t want to spend even one more moment sitting around, wondering what he was doing and why he wasn’t calling. None of those things seemed to matter any more. If he loved Helen, he wouldn’t keep having those
moments
with me, when he looked at me in ways she would hate. When he reminded me that he could count on me. If he loved her, he wouldn’t have called me seven times or turned up at my apartment that night.
There were all sorts of ways that someone could get trapped in a relationship that seemed like a good idea from the outside, but not so much from inside. Helen knew how to play games, so who knew what she’d used to entice him? And now he was stuck with her. He’d thrown me over so publicly and flagrantly—it had to be a matter of pride that his relationship with Helen last, right? It made sense. He was the one part of my incredibly messy life that could be cleared up with a simple, long overdue conversation.
With all of that in mind, it also made sense to call him.
I got his voice mail, which didn’t surprise me—I didn’t want him to pretend I was some random guy again. While I could see why he’d done it, it made me feel icky, the same way that old video for “Part-Time Lover” with Stevie Wonder did. It was all just gross. I was a fully grown woman, who was taking charge of her own destiny. Voice mail was much better. Voice mail, I could handle.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I really want to talk to you about what’s going on. We never talked about that night, and I think we should. I wish I hadn’t missed all your calls. I feel like there’s stuff we need to work out, don’t you? Call me.”
I was proud of myself when I hung up. Short and sweet. To the point. No hemming or hawing.
Go to hell, Amy Lee
, I thought with extreme smugness.
I can too be a grown-up.
A feeling that was confirmed, about an hour and a half later, when my cell phone rang. Nate’s name scrolled across my screen.
“I’m glad you called,” I said, picking it up.
“I bet you are,” Helen snapped at me.
I felt my stomach drop to the soles of my feet.
“Why are you calling me from Nate’s phone?” I managed to ask.
“Why are you calling my boyfriend?” she countered.
“You have to be kidding me.”
“You better leave Nate alone,” Helen hissed. “Don’t think I’m not wise to your little games, Gus. But you better remember that I’m not like you. I won’t sit back and watch it happen, do you understand me?”
“Are you
threatening
me?” I was flabbergasted.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do to babysit what’s mine,” Helen threw at me. “And if you think I’m going to—”
I heard Nate in the background then.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Is that my phone?”
“You want to tell me why you’ve been calling Gus?” Helen screamed at him. “She’s on the phone right now! You can tell us both!”
I just sat there, listening with the part of me that wasn’t frozen into place.
There was what sounded like a scuffle. Then Nate’s voice on the phone.
“I’ll call you later,” he told me, as Helen shouted something (happily) incomprehensible in the background. Then he hung up.
And for the first time since she’d walked away from me in that hallway out in the country, I entertained the possibility that Amy Lee might have a point.
My life was completely out of control. My best friends had stopped talking to me. I was, apparently, embroiled in a love triangle, except the only
embroiling
I’d been involved in recently had been with someone else entirely. Henry thought I was a nutcase, with good reason if I was honest with myself, and my mind kind of skittered away when it landed on
that
land mine. I suspected I had just made things a lot worse with Nate.
All of this, and I was turning thirty in less than a month.
I looked around at my apartment. At the dorm decor and the books all over the place as if a library had exploded nearby and I’d stockpiled the remains. The mismatched furniture I’d rescued from curbs and dumpsters across the city. I dreamed of showplace houses—hardwood floors and eat-in kitchens, but I figured that would happen … someday.
Nothing in my life indicated I was ready to put aside my childish things. I loved working at the Museum, but a steady, good job didn’t exempt me from all the other ridiculousness in my life. I thought it was perfectly reasonable to talk shit about Henry. I was always willing to leap from zero to total dramatic outrage at the slightest provocation, because I always had before and it had, until recently, been fun. I spent entirely too many hours thinking of ways to push my friends’ buttons, just for my own amusement. I behaved like a teenager on a WB show after sleeping with someone. I wanted my ex to
pay
for dumping me even as I wanted him back, and I played absurd mind games with the woman he’d left me for. The one I was furious with for betraying our weird, twisted friendship though I had no qualms plotting to do the same if I could.
For all intents and purposes, I might as well be the same excitable twit I’d been when I was twenty-two.
Why was I such a
baby
?
I sat on the couch mulling these things over until light began to creep in the windows. I dozed then—but it was more of an exhausted coma than any restful, peaceful slumber.
I woke a few hours later, immediately cranky and with Linus panting directly into my face from about an inch away. I shoved his head away from me, and ignored the little dance he did when he realized I was awake.
“No,” I told him. “Go lie down.”
He ignored me, taking up one of his toys in his mouth and shaking it ferociously in my direction. Even my dog rejected my authority. Even he suspected I was failing miserably in the
grown-up
department.
I swung up to a seated position and scowled around the living room.
I was, I realized, going to have to do something about the way I lived. It was like that Rilke poem I’d taped to my walls in college: “
for here there is no place/that does not see you. You must change your life.
”
The phone rang again then, and I groaned as I fumbled around to look at the caller ID. But it wasn’t Helen, ready for round two. It wasn’t even Nate, the way I sort of expected it to be.
It was Georgia.
“Oh,” I said into the receiver without bothering to say hello, “are we talking on the phone? Because I got the distinct impression you were giving me the silent treatment.”
“I’m sorry,” Georgia said in the same tone of voice. “Let me check my voice mail for all the calls you made to me—oh wait. You didn’t make any.”
“Which one of us threw up her hand—
very
daytime talk show, by the way—and said ‘I can’t’?” I demanded.
“I meant I couldn’t talk about it
then
,” Georgia said with a sigh.
“I’m telepathic this week,” I told her. “But not last week, so I must have missed that. Sorry.”
Georgia sighed again, more pointedly.
“Do you want to get some breakfast or not?” she demanded. “It’s fine if you don’t. We can just hang out on the telephone and be snotty to each other. We can talk about Henry. Totally your call.”
I sighed even louder than she had.
“Fine,” I said. “Give me forty-five minutes.”
We met in a place near Georgia’s condo. I found her sitting at a corner table of the small café, her hands cupped around a huge mug of coffee. She had her usually big and vibrant hair scraped back into a severe ponytail, and seemed to be practically vibrating with tension. I thought that boded ill.
“I can’t even talk about how cold it is,” I announced by way of greeting. I was also hoping to distract her. I began unwrapping myself from my layers and layers of winter wear. I draped my scarf, extra sweater, mittens, and hat on the back of my chair and sat. “I don’t understand why I live here, when I happen to know there are places with no snow, ice, freezing rain, or nights that start at like 2 p.m.”
“Because none of those places are Boston,” Georgia said with a shrug.
I nodded at the simple truth of that, and ordered myself a bottomless latte from a passing waiter. Neither one of us spoke until it appeared before me. I didn’t look at Georgia as I stirred in five packets of Splenda. When I did, she was shaking her head at me.
“What?” I asked.
“How can you put anything that sweet into your mouth?” she demanded. “Ugh. I think it would trigger my gag reflex.” She put a hand to her throat. “I think it already has.”
“I don’t understand the whole
I can only drink black coffee
thing,” I countered, eyeing her mug. “I bet those are the same people who will only read tedious, obscure novels because they think it makes them more intelligent. When really, they just read a boring book. Same with coffee. Why choke it down black and bitter when it can taste like dessert instead?”
“Maybe I just like the taste of it without a pound of sugar and six gallons of cream, because it’s
coffee
, not
coffee ice cream.
” She raised her lawyerly eyebrow at me.
“Maybe you do,” I said, raising my own librarian eyebrows right back at her. “But that’s just your
taste.
It doesn’t make you a
better person.
I can’t stand people who assign moral judgments to personal preferences.”
Georgia considered me for a moment. “I think that’s your way of talking about Henry,” she said. “And we’ll talk about that, believe me. And I guess we’re going to have to talk about Amy Lee, too.”
“I haven’t heard from her,” I said, watching her face. I was terrified I’d see pity or something there, which would indicate they’d talked to each other and were leaving me out. The way they had once, years ago, in a different fight I would have said I’d forgotten about. But she just pursed her lips slightly, and shook her head.
“Neither have I,” she said. “That’s a little extreme, even for her, but there’s something I want to talk to you about first and if I don’t do it right now I’m not going to do it at all.”
“Oh God,” I moaned, setting my mug down with a thud. “Are you breaking up with me too? Because I was much better with the silent treatment. I was perfectly content to convince myself that you were really busy, or held up in court, or buried in some document production somewhere without cell phone service—”
“I hooked up with Chris Starling,” Georgia blurted out, cutting me off.
That hung there for a moment.
We stared at each other, and it was hard for me to imagine that I could look any more shocked than Georgia did.
“But I thought …” I shrugged helplessly.
“I know!” she groaned. “I don’t know what happened to me! I was still upset about Jared, and I was so angry about the Amy Lee thing and your secret Henry thing, and we were in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he smiled at me in that way he does and I thought
Gandalf eyes
and boom!”
“Boom?” I echoed.
“The next thing I knew we were half naked in his hotel room.” Georgia let out a shaky breath. “I’ve become a cliché. I hooked up with the boss. If I’d done it at the office party, I could be the laughingstock of the office as well. Not like it matters. I can pretty much kiss my dreams of a partnership good-bye.”
“Wait,” I said, reeling. “How did you get from half naked to your partnership? What are you talking about? You have to tell me
what happened
!”
So she took a fortifying sip of her (dark and bitter) coffee, straightened in her seat, and told me.
Georgia had been out of her mind when she left for Scranton that Monday morning. She was emotionally unprepared to deal with a week in some city she wasn’t sure she could find on a map. She was furious with Amy Lee, hurt that I had kept secrets from her, and all of that piled on top of the humiliating breakup with Jared.
“If you can even call it that,” Georgia sniffed, “which I’m not sure you can, because that presupposes a ‘relationship’ and I’m not sure that mess qualified.”