Promises to Keep (13 page)

“Oh God!” Steffi holds her stomach. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts!”

“You two,” Honor says as she joins them. “You’re still giggling just like you did when you were girls. What are you laughing about now?”

“We were just imagining Dad going into therapy,” Steffi says.

“And how does that make you feel?” Callie says again, in a smooth low voice, and even Honor starts to laugh.

“Do you mean that’s something he’s considering?” She is stunned.

“Not before hell freezes over,” Reece says. “They’re just being silly.”

“It’s a shame.” There is sadness in Honor’s eyes as she waits for the girls to stop cracking up. “I’m sad for him that he can’t be here for his own daughter’s birthday party. We’ve been divorced almost thirty years and he still can’t be in the same room with me. I’m sorry for him. I just . . . it just seems that he’s missing out on such a lot by being so rigid.”

“But that’s Dad,” Steffi says. “He’s as stiff as a poker.”

“Really? Still?”

“Well . . .” Callie cuts in. “You have to admit that Eleanor loosened him up a bit.”

“Was that the last wife?”

“One before last.”

“You both liked her, didn’t you? You thought she was great for him.”

“She was. But all the spiritual stuff and meditating got a bit much for him. She was really laid-back though, and every time he’d have a shit fit about something she’d just tease him. I was really surprised when they split up,” Steffi says.

“Surprised? Eleanor was devastated. She didn’t see it coming at all.”

“So why did they split up?”

“I think Dad just got increasingly irritated with her way of life. In the beginning it was new and exciting, but after a while? Not so much. He said if he never ate another veggie burger again for the rest of his life, it would be too soon.”

“Veggie burger? Your father?” Now Honor starts laughing again. “You mean, she made him give up rare steak?”

The girls nod.

“Well no
wonder
it didn’t last.”

“And she said he had to stop drinking too. One time I was there she found a bottle of Scotch he’d hidden in the office and she poured it down the sink in front of him. I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel.”

“Oh my goodness.” Honor shakes her head. “She’s a braver woman than I am. That Hiromi was a drinker, though, wasn’t she?”

The girls catch each other’s eye and shudder with horror at the memory of Hiromi.

“Let’s just try to forget about Hiromi,” Steffi says.

“You wouldn’t mind if Walter were here?” Reece asks.

“Goodness, no. Not at all. I haven’t seen him since Eliza was born, but it’s all water under the bridge. And look, between the two of us we produced these two beautiful girls. What would be the point of hating him now?”

 

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Reece taps his glass with a spoon until the clinking brings a quiet to the room.

“I know we’re all going to go in to dinner in a moment, but I have a few words to say before we go in. First, I want to say thank you to all of you for coming and sharing this special night with us.

“Lila and Steffi, you have created a feast of feasts, and despite our unexpected guest, Fingal, stealing the pâté”—he shoots Eliza a grin—“a little bird told me about that . . . everything is delicious and, best of all—thank you, ladies—healthy! And Lila, thank you for introducing Ed to our lives—he seems like an excellent fellow and we look forward to celebrating many more happy occasions with him.

“Honor, we couldn’t be happier that you have driven all this way to be with us—our celebrations are never the same without your warmth and love.

“Kim and Mark, thank you for sharing this night with us. I love that our daughters are such good friends, but mostly, Mark, I thank you for changing our life.

“And last, but by no means least, the woman we are celebrating today. My beautiful, talented, gorgeous, grumpy wife.” Reece looks down at Callie with love, as she nudges him and rolls her eyes.

“But seriously, these past eleven years have been the happiest of my life. I never dreamed that I would find someone as wonderful as Callie, and I wake up every day feeling blessed that I have a relationship that is still so filled with love, and wonder, and joy, that I truly do feel like the luckiest man in the world.

“And the other reason we are celebrating today is not just that it is Callie’s birthday, that she has reached the ripe old age of forty-three yet doesn’t look a day over thirty-five, but that we have almost reached four years.”

Reece’s voice turns serious, and his eyes take on a watery sheen as he stops and swallows.

“I know we are not supposed to be celebrating until the five-year mark, but I know we’re going to make it. Almost five years ago, as you know, Callie was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a hard battle, and the scariest thing we have ever been through, but with the help of amazing doctors—Mark”—he and Mark exchange a tearful nod—“and the entire oncology team at Poundford Hospital, we got through it. Callie was declared cancer-free, and next month will mark the five-year all clear.

“I never thought that cancer could bring good things with it, but I can tell you this: I never thought that our marriage could be better than it was during the first few years, but I have learned that it can always be better. Cancer taught me what love is. It taught me how to appreciate. It taught me never to take a damn day for granted, that every day that we wake up together, strong and healthy and filled with love, is a day to be cherished.

“I want to thank my wife, Callie, for being the best wife, the best mother, the best daughter, the best sister, the best friend and the best patient any of us could ever ask for. She is the love of my life, and I wouldn’t be the man I am without Callie standing by my side. Callie? I love you.”

And everyone in the room gratefully pulls a tissue from the pack Honor happened to have in her bag.

“M
orning!” Lila sings as Reece stumbles into the kitchen.

“Hey.” Reece has never been particularly good in the mornings, not helped by the amount of alcohol he consumed the night before. “Where is everyone?”

“Your mom took Eliza out to the diner for breakfast—she said it was a weekend tradition, Ed’s in bed reading the papers, Steffi took Fingal out for a walk, and I’m making breakfast.”

“You’re the best,” a sleepy Reece says, bending down to give Lila a kiss on the cheek, then reaching up to the medicine cupboard.

“Hangover?” Lila grins.

“Only minor. Callie’s got the big one.”

“Shall I make her some coffee?”

“That’d be great. I’ll take these up to her and I’m sure she’ll be down in a minute.”

“Let me take it up. It’s not like I’ve never seen your wife in pajamas before.”

 

Callie and Lila should not, by rights, have been friends. Callie was skinny, pretty, one of the popular girls, and Lila was not.

But the great thing about Manitoba Summer Camp was that who you were at your high school didn’t matter; the minute the buses or, if you were geeky, your parents, drove you past the giant totem poles at the entrance, camp became the great equalizer.

Girls who were used to being queen bees at their high schools were suddenly out of their depth in this camp where no hairdryers were allowed, no weekly mani-pedis, no makeup (although they all sneaked eyeliner, lipgloss and blush into their trunks).

And the girls who were ignored the rest of the year had a chance to come into their own—and would beat the princesses at kayaking, field hockey and soccer.

Lila was last to arrive. As usual, her parents had insisted on driving her themselves, her mother alternately turning her head and telling Lila how lucky she was to be going to camp, and how much she’d love it, and perhaps she’d do some sport and lose a little weight, and wiping tears from her eyes and wailing about how much she’d miss her.

Lila sat in the back, catching her dad’s eye from time to time in the rearview mirror, and they would exchange an eye roll and a small smile.

She got to her dorm to find almost every bed taken, her bunk mates already touring the camp, and only one bottom bunk left. Her face collapsed in disappointment. This was her first year at camp—her mother had refused to relent in her previous years when all her friends went off to camp, although with hindsight she knew her parents had struggled to afford luxuries such as these—and she had romanticized visions of how it would be.

Part of her vision involved seeing herself as queen of the bunk. She would have the prime spot—top bunk, command central, from which point she would amuse, entertain and, in general, feel the love.

Bottom bunk in the corner of the room did not have quite the same feel.

The door burst open as Lila and her parents stood there, Lila reluctant to even put her stuff on her bed, as the others had done. In the doorway stood a tall, skinny girl with a huge smile.

“Hey!” she said, as if Lila were an old friend.

“Hi,” Lila offered cautiously.

“I’m Callie. You’re the new girl, right? Lila? Everyone took all the best beds but I was hoping you might swap with me. I love being cozy and in the corner, and I love bottom bunks. Can we swap?”

“Where are you?”

Callie pointed to the best bunk in the room. The top bunk, slap bang in the middle. The bunk, in fact, of Lila’s romantic imaginings.

For that entire summer Callie swore that she did love the bottom bunk, but months later, when they were pen pals, she admitted that she felt horrible that Lila, as the new girl, should have the worst bed in the place, and that she hated the bottom bunk, but she didn’t regret it because otherwise they would never have become best friends.

It was perhaps an unlikely friendship. The suburban Jewish girl from Long Island and the native New England yankee who lived a few miles down the road.

“I’m supposed to be a day camper,” Callie had grinned, “but I begged and begged and begged, and eventually my dad gave in.”

“Even though you live five minutes down the road?”

“Yeah. And I have this baby sister who is adorable, but I just needed a break from the whole babysitting stuff.”

“You babysit?”

“Sure. All the time. But I just kind of needed to be a kid, you know?”

“I know,” lied Lila, who had felt like she was thirty-five years old since the day she was born.

They wrote to each other every winter, were inseparable every summer. When they graduated from high school they went to different universities—Callie to Brown, Lila to SUNY Binghamton—and after university they roomed together in New York in a great loft downtown, where, although they had separate bedrooms, nine times out of ten they would end up falling asleep on Callie’s great big king-size bed, a gift from her father.

Everything seemed to revolve around Callie’s bed when they were in New York. Friends would come over and everyone would crawl onto the bed, swiftly renamed the Magic Carpet, with bottles of wine, food, magazines.

People would come and go; some would fall asleep and wake up there the next morning. When Lila thinks back to those days in New York, as she is doing now, she can only picture one room: Callie’s bedroom.

Marriage and children always change friendships. For a while, after Eliza was born, Lila was terrified she had been replaced with the burst of new friends from Callie’s Mommy and Me group.

One weekend she came up to Bedford to stay—Eliza must have been two—and Callie took her to a playground where the rest of the group were meeting.

She introduced Lila as her best friend, but Lila saw that these women knew Callie better than she expected; they were part of her daily life and there was an easy intimacy between them of which Lila, suddenly and shockingly, felt jealous.

They knew more about Callie’s life, her present life, than Lila did. They talked about preschools, and babysitters, and other mothers—things that Lila couldn’t possibly understand. She grudgingly confessed her jealousy later that night, and Callie burst out laughing.

“You will always be my best friend,” she said. “No matter who else comes and goes.”

The thing with Callie was that everyone wanted to be her best friend, and because she was so easy, and open, and loving, and warm, everyone thought they were. And in some respects it was true—Callie had always had the unique ability to light up every room into which she walked.

After a while, as Eliza grew up and Jack was born, Lila stopped minding all these other people. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Callie was always surrounded by these girlfriends and Lila stopped being jealous, because there was just no room for it; she saw how much they loved Callie, what wonderful friends they were.