Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (10 page)

And why should they focus a single ounce of concern on her? She hadn’t lost a husband—her relationship with Bob was solid
and sexy and wonderful. She wasn’t going blind—she could see quite well that she had five grown, successful children, a razor-thin
but strengthening financial security, and a sturdy if somewhat life-battered house. The embarrassing truth was that it was
her internal scaffolding that was collapsing, the foundations of her identity cracked and surging in an inner upheaval that
flummoxed and embarrassed her. She hadn’t summoned this, she didn’t trust it, and she was only marginally beginning to understand
it herself.

The last thing she wanted from her two grieving friends was pity.

“Eight euros a head,” Judy said, as they approached the entrance to the tower. “Buck up, you two. Me and my aging knees are
going first.”

She would regret this later, she knew she would. She creaked up the narrow, circular steps to La Galerie des Chimères, every
step causing new pressure on what she’d decided to label her “sports injury.” Fortunately, Becky lagged a bit behind because
the tower was dim and the ancient worn stairs uneven. After the first misstep Becky seized Monique by the waistband and proceeded
with exaggerated care. The delay gave Judy a moment to catch her breath in the open air while she waited for Monique and Becky
to finish the climb to the gallery.

She leaned on the stone edge, supposedly to better see the gargoyle glaring down at the front courtyard, the one with the
face like a dog, a beard like a goat, and a single horn sticking out of his forehead. Monique and Becky came up behind her.
It gave Judy some comfort to hear them breathing hard from the effort too.

“Wow.” Monique took in the whole sweeping view of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. “Lenny should have put
this
on the list.”

“Instead of Le Jules Verne? No way.” Judy’s gaze drifted to the Left Bank of the Seine, to the most iconic structure in Paris.
Lenny had chosen two Parisian experiences for his bucket list: One was below ground at the famously creepy catacombs. The
other was well above: At a Michelin-starred restaurant on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. “I can’t believe you snagged
reservations to that place. When I was here last all I saw getting into that elevator were women in pearls and furs.”

“Well they’ll have to make allowances for three women who’ve been living out of their suitcases.” Monique grimaced a little.
“And did I mention that our reservations are at nine thirty p.m.? That was all I could get when I emailed three and a half
weeks ago.”

“How fashionable,” Judy said. “I’ll try not to faint in my consommé.”

Monique added, “At least we’ll get an eagle’s-eye view of the nighttime City of Light.”

“Well,” Becky said with a laugh, “I hope the food is awesome too.”

With a little start Judy remembered that nighttime Paris would be nothing but streaks and blobs of light for Becky. And then
Judy wondered how long it would be before realities like that stopped taking her by surprise.

“Would you guys mind?” Becky pulled the top of her sketch pad out of her daypack. “The stonework is fabulous here. I want
to get it all down in pencil now so I can create it with fondant later.”

“Sketch away,” Monique said. “Judy and I will linger and have a little chat.”

Judy kept her gaze fixed on the horizon. Becky, with a hasty clearing of her throat, skittered away very quickly for a vision-impaired
woman. Judy suddenly felt like one of her dogs at the vet, backed up and quivering in a corner.

Judy said, “I thought you worked in the NICU, Monie. Not in the psych ward.”

“Relax. I just want your advice.”

Judy didn’t believe that for a minute. Monique was using the back-door technique, asking one innocuous question so that Judy
would drop her guard. Judy recognized the technique because she was the one who taught it to Monique for use against a certain
guilty, unsuspecting teenager. Judy cast about for a work-around and then remembered the awkward, truncated phone conversation
Monique and Kiera had had while they waited to switch trains in Luxembourg. “If you want my advice, Monie, it’s this: Just
stop calling Kiera. Text her instead.”

“That’s not the advice I was looking for.”

“Text works like an emotional filter. It gives a sense of safe distance.”

“Duly noted. But Kiera will be leaving in a year—”

“All the more reason to perfect the technique. If you text her, she doesn’t have to dread the look on your face, or the tone
of your voice, and she’ll be more likely to—”

“I’ll be an empty nester when she leaves,” Monique interrupted, her eyes narrowed as she gazed at the hazy horizon. “And I
thought, with you experiencing this situation right now, maybe you could give me a tip or two on how to prepare for it.”

“And you’re asking me this because I’m handling this life transition with such grace and aplomb?”

“Listen.” Monique sighed. “If your choice was between complete mental collapse or obsessive landscaping, well, I suppose you
chose well.”

“There’s nothing wrong with mums on the front porch. Or a nice circle of begonias at the base of that cherry tree.”

“Keeping up with the Merrills has become a very expensive sport.”

“The truth is, having an empty nest sucks.”

“This from you, who once told me that when the kids were finally out of the house, you and Bob were going to have sex on the
kitchen table.”

Judy blushed, thinking of what she and Bob had done after coming home from dropping Audrey off at the airport. “I cannot be
held responsible for what I say under the influence of multiple eggnogs at the Hendersons’ Christmas party.”

 “Judy, it’s not like all your kids have moved out permanently.” Monique leaned against one of the stone pillars that framed
their view of Paris. “Audrey and Maddy are going to come back every vacation. They’ll be back in the summer. It seems like
kids live in their parents’ house through their twenties these days.”

“Have you seen any of my boys lately?”

Jake was living in Dubai, working at the embassy, practicing his Arabic. He’d already told her he planned to stay there over
the summer—depending on the overall political situation—and she couldn’t stop her heart from racing at the news. Robert now
lived in Omaha, working for an insurance company. He was so grateful for the employment after an eleven-month job search that
he refused to take a vacation day to come see his parents on Thanksgiving. And Michael lived happily in Seattle working for
Microsoft, already talking about spending Christmas there with his growing group of new friends.

“Boys are different,” Monique said. “Even Becky says so. And after Maddy graduated, she came home and lived with you last
summer.”

“For four weeks and two days. As soon as her apartment became available in Boston, she was off to ‘settle in.’” Judy tightened
her jaw. She would not unload her issues on a widow who was about to send off to college her one and only daughter. “Kids
grow up, become independent, and they leave home, Monie. It’s that simple. They leave mothers behind to stand dazed and wonder
what the hell just happened.”

Mothers who’d dedicated their lives to wrangling popsicle sticks and toilet paper rolls into Native American wigwams, herding
entire muddy teams of ten-year-olds from sports to Dairy Queen, and pacing the kitchen praying for the curfew-breaking teenager
they are convinced is bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere.

Mothers who didn’t yet realize that a parent’s last duty was to stand and wave as those children skip away to their own lives,
taking with them a hefty chunk of her own.

“You know, when Bob left the newspaper,” Judy found herself saying, “the company threw a big party for him. There was champagne
and the usual rubber chicken dish. There were long, loopy speeches and a pile of gifts. The company celebrated his time there
and then sent him off into unemployment.”

“It was still terrible they let him go.”

“The newspaper business is volatile these days. It happens. At least they gave him a good send-off and a gold watch.” She
felt a heat prickle through her, the onset of the sweaty discomfort. How she hated the new unpredictability of her own body.
“Like Bob I’ve worked myself right out of a job, too. I’ve been forced into unemployment. Except with no party and no gold
watch.”

Judy scraped the toe of her shoe against the leaf litter gathered by the edge of the wall, frustrated and embarrassed by that
overly simple explanation. A party wouldn’t unravel the complicated knot of her emotions. It wouldn’t ease the creaking of
her knees. It wouldn’t bring back her period, which, as of last week, she’d skipped for the second month in a row. But it
would have served as a demarcation of some sort: A ritual to separate before and after.

She’d hoped this vacation would be that marker. But she’d yet to feel the seismic shifting within her, the emotional sign
of change.

“You know,” Monique said, “if you work this analogy to its natural end, you’d realize that after he was let go from the newspaper,
Bob soon found a new job.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“There’s nothing stopping you from looking.”

“Eighteen effing applications.”

Monique started.

“Every single potential employer turned me down cold.”

Monique stuttered. “When did you start this?”

“January.” She managed an airy little shrug and took some comfort in Monique’s surprise. “Hey, with professionals like Marco
given furloughs, I can hardly complain. It took Bob eight months to find his new job, and it pays less than the other. And
I made ridiculous limitations when I started my search. I didn’t want to work retail because that meant working weekends and
holidays and summers, which are the only times my kids might possibly visit.”

“What a sneaky thing you are. I didn’t even suspect.”

“I started local, searching for nine-to-five office work. Everyone kept asking me if I knew all kinds of word processing programs,
and spreadsheets and databases and PowerPoint, and all those things that my kids did for me.”

 “You’re looking in the wrong places. You should teach preschool.”

“Not without a degree in education. And I can’t possibly add another tuition bill to the ones Bob and I are already staggering
under.”

“A teacher’s aide, then—”

“Requires training too. The ability to handle kids and a clean criminal record are apparently not enough these days. So here
I am, still unemployed. Apparently no one wants to hire an unskilled, dried-up, washed-out homemaker.”

Monique made a tsking noise. “The market has spoken, Judy: You’re utterly useless.”

“Just kick me to the curb.”

“Bundle you up like old newspapers.”

“Right up on the old garbage heap.”

She’d spoken fluent French and German when she was young. She’d worked for the Children’s Fund at the United Nations. She
had a job she had to wear heels to, a boss who liked the proposals she wrote up, and skills that were valuable to a greater
cause. The job had been a singular bright light during a difficult transition in her life. Now standing in this gallery watching
the tourists swarm below, Judy struggled to parse out the French.

Voilà, les chimères.

Après vous, je t’en prie.

Ça va bien?

“You’ve raised five amazing kids,” Monique said. “They’re in school, employed, self-sufficient. You should be proud. I forbid
you to take this so deeply to heart.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Tell me how I’m supposed to feel.”

A sudden rush of emotion overwhelmed her—frustration and helplessness and something else, some rippling anger she was sure
was hormonally induced. Of course she was proud of her kids. She’d be proud of her kids no matter what they did. Any mother
would. Even the mothers of serial killers must have something they were proud about, because a mother was a mother and thus
loved unconditionally.

 “I should come with a warning.” Judy pushed away from the wall. “Beware the Bitch. She’s Menopausal.”

“My fault,” Monique conceded. “I should know better than to spout platitudes. Some of the meanest things people said to me
were platitudes, and they made me furious.”

“You, furious? In what blue moon was this?”

“Lenny’s funeral.”

 “Monie, at the funeral you were practically catatonic.”

“Numb,” she corrected. “I was
numb.
But I was taking hits by the dozens. Someone would say, ‘he’s in a better place,’ or ‘at least he’s not suffering anymore,’
or—the worst—‘you’re young, you’ll fall in love again.’ People would actually look me in the eye and say things like that
while my husband lay dead in a coffin right beside me.”

Judy felt vaguely unsettled as she searched her memory, sure that she’d mouthed one if not all of those same platitudes. With
growing guilt she turned back to the view, sinking her elbows on the stone. Her gaze drifted to the benches by the hedge.

“See that long stone bench right there?” Judy pointed to the left side of the courtyard. “It was in that exact spot that I
was dumped by Thierry.”

She remembered every detail of the moment. The slant of the sun cutting across the courtyard. The air that smelled so strongly
of lilies. The strap of one of her sandals had broken, and it had made a sore spot on her foot where she’d hastily sewn the
strap together. Thierry’s hair was pulled back and tied with a little piece of shoelace. She loved that neck, the little hairs,
the vulnerable paleness of it. She’d resisted the urge to touch it, to nuzzle it, as he smoked a filterless cigarette.

He’d hunched over, breathing the smoke deep, avoiding her eye.

Monique nudged her over so she could plant her elbows on the stone sill right by Judy’s side, their shoulders touching. “We
could have gone anywhere in Paris today,” Monique murmured. “We didn’t have to come to a place that held bad memories.”

“You misunderstand. I chose this place intentionally.”

“Masochist.”