With Friends Like These: A Novel (37 page)

When Arthur got out of the taxi carrying flowers, I thought I’d have an acute myocardial infarction. I tried to overlook that they were gaudy red carnations and gold mums pumped up with baby’s breath, my least favorite floral filler even under normal circumstances. They appeared to have been coordinated with his jacket, which was as plaid as a bagpiper player’s.

“For you,” he said as I opened the front door. He handed me the bouquet. In his other hand he clutched a drugstore shopping bag. As he bent for an embrace, I looked down. Arthur was still devoted to his cowboy boots. He seemed to be breathing heavily, the evidence hanging in the frosty air. Perhaps he was as nervous as I was.

“You must be freezing,” I said. He stepped inside and handed his coat to me, revealing a fine-gauge cashmere V-neck in a flattering shade almost exactly like Benjamin Moore Purple Rain. I’d given it to him after I’d noticed that every sweater in his wardrobe was acrylic.

“You’re looking well, Jules,” he said. His voice lacked his usual glee. I liked regular Artie better than this dour stand-in.

“I’m a little pregnant, not stricken with TB,” I said, eyeing the bag he’d set down on the floor. “What’s all this?”

“For you.” Cereal on sale? Mouthwash? I pulled out a large Whitman’s Sampler in the familiar yellow cross-stitched box. “The two-pounder,” he added.

Nonna’s favorite. “You shouldn’t have.” He seemed glad he had; the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile. “We’ll crack it open later. Thanks—I’ll put these in water, and then lunch.”

I’d thrown together tuna salad and deviled eggs and defrosted a ciabatta from my favorite Italian bakery. I couldn’t predict the conversation, but I knew my life had expanded beyond the sunny lane of small talk. I seated Arthur across from me, to be on the lookout for signs of lying—excessive blinking or absent eye contact, perhaps. “What’s on your mind?” I asked, hoping we could get right to it. I had, after all, an appointment this afternoon that I did not want to miss.

Arthur filled his plate and sampled the tuna and eggs. “I’ve been doing some thinking,” he said, holding his fork aloft. He wasn’t wearing the pinky ring whose twin I’d left on the table at Picholine. I delicately salted an egg and brought it to my mouth, willing him to continue. “I want to be a stand-up guy here. What is it you’d like me to do?”

Jules’ Rule:
Let your opposition make the first offer, to state their terms, financial or otherwise
. “What is it you’d like to do?”

“Clear the air.”

“Clear away,” I said. “Ask me anything.”

“The first thing … I’ve been wondering …” He rotated his shoulders like a novice prosecutor warming up before a judge. “Let me rephrase. I really hope you’ll tell me … is, well … whether this pregnancy is something you’d been hoping for and, ah, planning, all these years.”

I wanted to cut his head off with the machete of truth. Did Arthur M. Weiner, with his inclination for stinginess and love handles, see himself as a stud service I’d utilized under false pretenses to conceive a child? Did he think I was the kind of woman who’d been longing for said child
since her first period? I stood up and started wagging my finger in his face.

“If I’d wanted to become pregnant—which, I assure you, I did not—I would have tried to have a baby years ago with … Never mind. Or I’d have conceived a designer specimen with the services of a turkey baster and a painstakingly selected sperm bank deposit,” I shouted. Why dog-paddle in the shoals of the gene pool? I’d have chosen a donor who was green-eyed, multilingual, an Olympic swimmer, a Nobel Prize winner, a chess champ, and an excellent salsa dancer, endowed not only with a fine set of the masculine basics but an elegant nose and sensuous lips, deeply in love with opera, poetry, and contemporary photography. “I assure you, I would have done this when I was twenty-nine, not thirty-nine.” I caught the double take. “Okay, forty-three. This event isn’t a feathery little tremor. It’s a nine-point-five disaster. Who the fuck planted this idea in your head? That flabby-assed neighbor? What’s her name?”

“Jennifer.”

“
Puttana
.” I was speaking so quickly I’d started to cough. To Arthur’s credit, he offered to Heimlich me, which I declined in favor of a back wallop.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. He cast his eyes toward the heavens. “Jesus, I certainly didn’t come all the way up here to upset you. Can we please have a do-over?” I drained my water glass, gobbled a hunk of ciabatta, and waited. “As I tried to express in the restaurant the last time we saw each other,” he said, “you’re like nobody else. You’re the only woman I want next to me in bed—or anywhere. The way you cook and kiss and do it. Even the way you make tuna …”

My secret ingredient is dill, and I add mayo spoonful by spoonful, judiciously monitoring the ratio of tuna to mayo. Plus it’s got to be Hellmann’s. With a shudder, I briefly recalled the case of the Miracle Whip, an unsolved mystery for these past ten years. Some call it salad dressing; I call it spackle. Talia wouldn’t have snuck the economy-size jar into our apartment, and Chloe bought only what I put on our list. My money has
always been on Quincy, daughter of Minnesota. I believe Miracle Whip is the state condiment.

“Go on,” I said. I wasn’t surprised that my mind had wandered—Arthur and I had covered this ground before.

“As far as the two of us go, well, we’re a pair,” he said. “It’s like we were raised in the same playpen.” I rested my chin on my hands and waited for him to continue. “But now, because of the … baby … there’s more to think about. In fact, all I’ve been doing is thinking….” He trailed off, and I’d be damned if I’d help him. “Anyway,” he concluded as he tapped his foot madly, “where I’m going with this is, you would make an incredible mother.”

I was fairly incredible at executing any number of tasks, but this was a compliment I had a hard time believing. “I guess I should thank you,” I said nonetheless.

“You’re welcome,” Arthur said, “but I’m not done. One of the things I like—I mean, love—about you is that you’ve never busted my chops about wanting to have a kid. Every other woman has started in with the baby talk by the fourth date.”

“I knew I was perfect.”

“But the thing is, I’m not,” he responded, somber and sedate. “I’d make a rotten father.”

You do crosswords in ink, compute baseball averages in your head, and know the lyrics to every Roy Orbison song. You have a fine baritone—I hear it in the shower. You’re gainfully employed. You don’t have a time share at the track. You’d be ten times the pop my old man was. Maybe I am motherly after all
, I thought,
the way my instincts jumped to Arthur’s defense
.

“I’ve never even let myself get a dog, no matter how much I love them,” he lamented. Wherever we stroll, Arthur stops to scratch the head of every passing canine. If the creature is a puppy, he practically sticks his tongue in its mouth while he rubs the ecstatic animal’s belly. Quite the show. “A child is such a commitment.”
Oh, really?
“I’d like to spend my life with you—I don’t want to lose you—but I don’t know about the fatherhood part.” He sighed and put his head down on his forearms.

Feeling no obligation to offer consolation, I grabbed the plates and headed into the kitchen.

Arthur got up wearily. Without talking, I started loading the dishwasher as he brought in the glasses and empty serving dishes. The tuna bowl was scraped clean. The kid inside me would have to go straight from the hospital to the Duke Weight Loss Center.

“Do you want me to make you coffee?” I asked. In my fury I’d already wiped down the counters and sterilized the sponge for four minutes via the microwave’s highest power setting.

“That would be swell,” he said as he came up behind me and circled my waist with his arms, pressing against me. His hands moved up to my tender breasts and lingered until I winced. They traveled to my neck. Softly he held aside my hair and murmured, “Jules, Jules, Jules, you always smell so damn good.”

I removed myself from the embrace and stomped to the freezer, where I kept the coffee beans. How many cups to brew? Who’d ever thought the answer to that question could reveal my position on a moral dilemma? I decided to go with one and a half. As I prepared the beans, the kitchen filled with the seductive aroma of Costa Rican dark roast. I started the coffee and turned around. Arthur had left the kitchen.

When I walked into the other room, carrying one mug of coffee, he was sitting on the couch. The Whitman’s Sampler was on the coffee table, its wrapping removed. Only Arthur, I thought, would have started in on it himself. “Want some?” he asked.

I’d never been a woman to say no to a bon-bon. I walked to the table, hoping that if he’d eaten a piece or two, it was the peanut clusters that make you wish you had a dental hygienist on retainer. I lifted the top of the box. One piece of candy was missing. In its place, dead center, south of a dark chocolate buttercream, north of a truffle, west of a nougat dipped in milk chocolate, and east of a white chocolate patty adorned with a pink doodad, sat an honest-to-God piece of jewelry. I was eyeball to eyeball with an oval amethyst the size of my thumbnail set horizontally in matte gold, cabochon style. It was a ring, perfectly purple.

“Chloe helped me pick it out,” Arthur said, galvanized with glee. I gave him a skeptical look, which encouraged him to continue. “She took me to this hole-in-the-wall on Forty-seventh Street.”

“But she never shops in places where she doesn’t pay at least retail.” I’ve never grasped the concept or the math, but being overcharged apparently makes Chloe feel as if she’s getting more for her money.

“The jeweler is Morty Rabinowitz. His wife is my friend June—she goes by Rittenhouse professionally. She’s the one who sent Chloe on a job interview, thanks to me.” Arthur was beaming. “Here, Mommy, put it on,” he said, lifting the bauble from its frilly paper wrapping.

He got down on one knee. “This ring says I’ll be there for you.”

  
Chloe

“We’re going to the liberry,” Dash said, stretching his arms toward me with a book in each hand. Jamyang had incorporated a reading hour into Dash’s routine.

“Lib
ra
ry,” I repeated. “That’s wonderful, sweet prince. Bring back some good stories.”

“Then the playground,” he said. “With Asher and Jack.”

“Who are Asher and Jack?” I directed my question to Jamyang.

“Nice boys,” she said. “They go liberry, too.”

“Why don’t you invite them back here to play one day?” I suggested. She nodded. Did that mean yes or no? I no more felt I could press her on this than correct her grammar and pronunciation.

“Ready, Dash?” she asked. For my son, she put on a smile. “Don’t forget your mittens.”

He giggled as he plopped himself into his stroller, put the books in his lap, and shot up his right hand for a high five. Who taught him that? I kissed Dash goodbye and waved them off, reminded yet again that any control I thought I had was melting away faster than jam on toast. I
looked out the window and waited until they’d turned the corner. I couldn’t start until they were safely out of view.

For the last week Xander had continued to be edgy, switching on his standard hail-fellow humor only when someone who wasn’t me was around. For her part, Jamyang was as inscrutable in my presence as always, but my suspicion was mounting by the day. I had to know what was going on.

Feeling like the intruder I was, I tiptoed down the short flight and stepped first into the bathroom directly outside Jamyang’s bedroom. The towels, embroidered with daisies, were folded in thirds and neatly hung. Next to the toilet were copies of
People
and
Glamour
, both from months ago. I snooped behind the shower curtain: Suave shampoo and hair conditioner, and a razor. Nothing special or incriminating. I opened the medicine chest. Most of the jars were foreign brands, presumably brought from her homeland, though I spotted Crest toothpaste, a bottle of nail polish in the vampy shade I’d seen on her toes, a rosy lip gloss, black mascara, and an eyelash curler. The only surprise was the stealth with which I was invading our nanny’s privacy. I could hear Autumn Rutherford telling me to stop before I’d completely debased myself, but I moved to the bedroom.