Friday Mornings at Nine (18 page)

She began with a forkful of the polenta casserole, and Luke did the same. Both of them sampling it at the very same time. The flavors swirled around in her mouth, teasing her with their subtleties. The spices in the meat. The richness of the sauce. The multiple cheeses. She gave an involuntary groan and reached for her wine. It was the perfect accompaniment.

“I hope you know you’re ruining Franklin’s Diner for me,” she said. “I’ll never be able to order their Wednesday Night Italian Special again.”

He laughed, looking pleased with her reaction. “I’ve had the Chicken Vesuvio at Franklin’s. It’s not bad, but it sure as hell isn’t up to Buona Cucina standards.”

She remembered seeing the Buona Cucina version of Chicken Vesuvio on the menu when they arrived. It was a Chicago specialty, so she wasn’t surprised they had it. Having now tasted firsthand the unique combination of sides and sensational spices used in the Buona Cucina dishes, she could only imagine the way this restaurant would upgrade the Chicken Vesuvio to a gourmet level.

She fell into the reverie that sometimes happened when she envisioned a beautiful entrée, and she started detailing her thoughts to Luke. “I can almost taste the chicken, see it practically falling off the bone, the skin delectably crisp. The potato wedges are sautéed in extra-virgin olive oil, dotted with garlic and oregano, and white wine is added for a burst of flavor. A handful of green peas are tossed in at the end, accenting the otherwise earthy colors on the platter.” She broke out of her trance. “Right?”

He was staring at her, his mouth partway open, his warm brown eyes luminous. “That’s exactly right, Bridget. What else do you see?”

She shrugged but, with his encouragement, she soon found herself in another daze of food creation, telling him how she’d like to experiment with the polenta recipe—adding a dash of basil and several tablespoons of dried porcini mushrooms. “And wouldn’t it be interesting if we used veal instead of beef?”

They were working their way through the ravioli now, but he nodded at her in a way that made her certain she had his full attention. “I hadn’t thought it possible to improve upon these dishes, but my Italian mama would be giving you a standing ovation.” He exhaled and beamed a look at her that was two parts admiration, one part hunger. “I’ll bet your husband feels he’s the luckiest man in the world to come home every night to your culinary creativity.”

The comment skewered Bridget’s heart like a shish kebab. Thankfully, she had her mouth full of a perfectly al dente wedge of ravioli, so she wasn’t required to answer right away.

And she needed the time.

The thing was, whether it was intentional or not, Luke had taken a sideswipe at her marriage. She knew she couldn’t be so disloyal to Graham that she would be able to laugh aloud at Luke’s suggestion, but she, likewise, couldn’t bring herself to lie either and claim her husband was remotely appreciative of her cooking skills.

So she chewed slowly, smiled, then deflected the comment with a remark about how difficult it was to get kids to eat anything “adventurous.” But, thinking of Evan’s stomach upsets as well as Graham’s lack of interest in her “exotic meals,” she couldn’t help but frown. This was something Luke apparently picked up on, although he attributed her discomfort to only one source: Evan.

“Hey, how’s your little boy doing? Any improvement with things at school?”

“No, it’s not good. He’s a very sensitive kid. We’re trying to do what the teachers suggested—make sure he gets enough sleep, eats healthy meals, talks out his problems instead of internalizing his frustrations. Stuff like that. But I’m not sure how much it’s helping.”

She’d told Luke and Candy about her conference a few days after it’d happened, and both had been very sympathetic. Yet another contrast between the dentist and her husband, she couldn’t help but reflect, and with a touch of bitterness.

Luke was solicitous of her opinion and tried to suggest possible reasons for Evan’s behavior change (“Could it be a bully in his classroom? A food allergy?”), while Graham dismissed most of her concerns outright with lines like: “It’s just a phase” or “Probably growing pains.” His idea of
handling
Evan’s problem was to pat their young son on the head, tell him to “be truthful” and to “make sure to poop” when he needed to and “not hold it in.” Very helpful.

She didn’t mention any of that to Luke, although she admitted to having gotten another phone call from teacher Miss Welsh, and she explained that Evan’s siblings were going out of their way to, as Cassandra put it, “cheer up their depressed brother.”

“It’s sweet, the effort Cassandra and Keaton have gone to,” she told him. “It’s nice seeing them do something besides trying to torment their little brother.”

But she didn’t add that the recent sibling kindness had had an unexpected effect: She was a touch…jealous. There. She admitted it, at least in the privacy of her mind. Her older children couldn’t make Evan’s stomachaches go away, but they’d managed to make him laugh, which made her feel both powerless and a bit of a parental failure. She couldn’t even do the simplest things to help her baby boy. In fact, the only place she felt remotely successful these days was at Smiley Dental.

On that subject, though, it was almost as if she’d had too much success. “I wish you’d consider going to full time at the office,” Luke said. “Jim and I have been talking about adding more receptionist hours. Something you might be interested in?”

She’d heard rumors from Candy about this but hadn’t wanted to be presumptuous. “I don’t know,” she blurted. “I’m still adjusting to working part time.”

“Well, think about,” Luke said. “Keep it in the back of your creative mind. We could use more Bridget hours.”

She smiled. Oh, yes, she’d consider it.

They’d talked so long and eaten so leisurely that, when the time finally came for dessert, Bridget found she could be cajoled into splitting a treat with Luke. “Seriously. Two bites, though. That’s all I’ve got room for,” she told him.

“You say that now, but wait until you taste their
Bellissimo Tiramisù.
”

Bridget didn’t need to shift her imagination into overdrive on that one. Even at average Italian restaurants, there wasn’t much that could ruin the combination of ladyfingers soaked in espresso and rum and then layered with sweetened mascarpone cheese. She made some mention of the weight she’d gain from this luncheon, but he cut her off.

“No. A woman like you, with a healthy appetite and a good attitude toward delicious food, is a rarity. People—mostly women—they get all caught up in calories and nonsense. What’s a few extra pounds? If you usually eat reasonable portions of well-made food and enjoy the dining experience, you’re treating your body and your spirit far better than those myopic folks who stuff a meal—healthy or not—into their mouths without tasting it. Who deprive their bodies of something delicious and nourishing just because of some strange power play. That’s not good. And it’s not attractive,” he said, implying with a tilt of his brow that she
was,
as long as she didn’t dare turn down dessert.

Quite honestly, she wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so.

When it came, along with the two spoons Luke requested, he raised his wineglass and motioned for her to do the same. “A toast to world peace. May everyone dine as richly someday, and may they realize the sweetness of fine food is more powerful than the bitterness of human discord.”

They clinked glasses and drained the remainder of their red wine. As she was licking her lips, her empty glass still in her right hand, her spoon in her left—poised for digging into the tiramisù—her male
friend
winked at her. “You’d better do justice to your half,” he mock-threatened.

Giddy with the joy of the day and, perhaps, a little high on the rich scent of mascarpone, she threw her head back and laughed. And right at that moment, her laugh still floating in the air above their table, that couple from before—the one with the scowling lady—walked by again. They were headed in the other direction but, on this pass through, the woman didn’t just scowl. She stopped.

“Luke?” the forty-something woman said, her greenish eyes narrowing, her vocal tone chillier than a pint of Häagen-Dazs.

He saw her this time around. His only response to the woman—who’d handed a big box of leftovers to the guy next to her and had crossed her sticklike arms in front of her flat chest—was an expression of surprise and an exclamation. “Hey, Nancy. How’re you doing?” Luke raised his hand in greeting to the man in the business suit, who seemed preoccupied with figuring out a way to escape the restaurant.

Nancy’s male companion flashed a return wave at them, jauntily held up the Styrofoam box and then announced he needed to get the car from the parking garage.

After he’d scurried away, Bridget returned her gaze to the woman whose eyes were, if possible, even narrower than they’d been. There was something oddly familiar about her, but Bridget couldn’t place her. She didn’t think she’d ever seen this Nancy person before, but she couldn’t shake the fact that she felt she should know her.

“A long way from Glendale Grove just for lunch, eh?” Nancy said, directing her frigid remarks at Luke but eyeing Bridget’s hands as she spoke.

Bridget set down her empty wineglass and tried to inconspicuously lay the spoon on the white tablecloth, but it hit the dessert plate and clattered. Despite the noise, the woman kept focusing on Bridget’s fingers. What was up with that?

Luke said, “Yes, but Bridget and I needed to make a trek here. Bridget, this is Nancy. She’s Dr. Nina’s sister. Nancy, this is Bridget, one of our fabulous receptionists at Smiley Dental.” He grinned. “Plus, she’s an amazing cook in her own right. No one makes a chestnut ravioli like Br—”

The woman shifted away from Luke and stuck her bony hand in the vicinity of Bridget’s face. “I’m Dr. Nancy Brockman-Bertelstein,” she said, her words clipped and cold with a dash of smug. Bridget shook her icy hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met at the office, but I’ve seen your picture on the staff board, and my sister has told me about you.”

Bridget blinked at her. “Oh?”

“Oh, yes. Nina and I are very close. We talk a lot.” Nancy gazed at her coolly enough to convince Bridget the commentary hadn’t been favorable.

Bridget wondered, was she the problem or was it Dr. Luke? Had he taken out other staff members for lunch before? Did Nancy and Nina think he was, like, some kind of serial Italian food seducer? But, of course, she didn’t say any of this.

“So, you must know I’m part time, then,” Bridget mumbled. “And kind of new.”

“And married,” Nancy said, her gaze returning to Bridget’s fingers. Oh, her wedding band. That was what she’d been staring at.

“Yes,” Bridget said. “I am.” She forced a grin at the witch. “Are you a dentist, also?”

“A surgical gastroenterologist.”

“Ah.” No wonder she was so skinny. She probably dissected all her food before eating it.

Nancy bestowed upon them a pinched smile, which, to Bridget, looked more like a grimace. “Well, nice to meet you. Enjoy your—” She waved her palm at the sweet confection in the middle of their table as if it were a platter of live roaches. “Your dessert.” And with a parting glare in Dr. Luke’s direction, she floated away.

The encounter was almost enough to ruin Bridget’s appetite for the tiramisù, and that was saying something.

“Well, she’s, um, interesting,” Bridget ventured. “I didn’t know Dr. Nina had a sister. Do you know her well?”

Luke shook his head. “Not really. She pops into the office every once in a while. But she lives in Chicago, and I think she doesn’t much care for the untamed suburbia of Glendale Grove.” He laughed, forced a few spoonfuls of tiramisù on her (so spectacular!) and essentially played off the incident as if it were nothing.

But, try as Bridget might, she couldn’t shrug it off as easily. Not even after they’d left Buona Cucina Italia behind and Dr. Luke—he was definitely
Dr.
Luke again—had returned her to her vehicle and she’d thanked him profusely for the lovely lunch.

At heart, she may still have been a naive Catholic girl, but she knew being spotted by someone like Dr. Nina’s sister could present complications in her…her
friendship
with Dr. Luke. Innocent though it was. She knew the Who of the problem (Nancy!) and she suspected the Why (the woman despised her—what had Dr. Nina said?), she just wasn’t sure about the How, the Where or the When. But she figured she’d better be prepared for anything.

Friday, October 15

T
hey wandered into the Indigo Moon Café at varying times: Jennifer first, who privately clocked their arrivals and worked to slow her breathing—part of her never-ending quest to incorporate yoga techniques into everyday life.

She was followed by Tamara (two minutes later), whose mood had taken an optimistic turn on account of both seeing her son the prior weekend and actually having good sex with her husband—even if it had just been that once.

And, finally, Bridget raced in (five minutes after that), and she, too, found herself almost content, but not because of her family and certainly not because of her luncheon with Dr. Luke but, rather, because each member of their threesome seemed, oddly, okay.

Well, “okay” was the wrong word. It was more like “familiar.” Too often lately she hadn’t recognized her friends. They’d been distant, withholding. And so had she. But she didn’t sense the same degree of tension on the faces of the other two women that morning, so it felt like a return to old times. At least initially.

“It’s been a while since we’ve all been together,” Bridget said cheerily. “The fall’s been sort of stressful, so it’s…nice to be back again. How are you both doing?”

Jennifer inhaled, nodded, exhaled. “Good.”

“Much better,” Tamara said, reacting immediately to Bridget’s words. They were a reiteration of Jon’s comments about the difficulty of the past couple of months and, also, they offered a ready excuse for her less-than-charitable behavior toward her friends during much of that time. She wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to take it. “We went to see Benji over Columbus Day.”

Her friends exclaimed at this news with predictable enthusiasm and pressed her for details on the visit. For a few joyous minutes, Tamara reveled in playing the part of the proud mother again, as opposed to the depressed, pathetic and abandoned one.

She echoed Bridget’s sentiment of it having been a tough start to the autumn and she said, by way of subtle apology, “This past weekend was the first time I felt like myself since Aunt Eliza died. Or, really, since Benji left for Austin.”

Bridget smiled at Tamara, fully and genuinely, compassion flooding her rounded body, and her lingering apprehension slipping away. Like a UFO chaser, she
wanted
to believe. And, like a (kind of) good Catholic, she also
wanted
to forgive.

Tiny prickles of hesitation poked at that desire, of course, much like tiny freckles dotted the creamy skin on her nose. But just as she often tried to mask the freckles with a pat of powder, she likewise covered her niggles of disbelief with a cool film of determination and the protective coating of forced faith. She fervently avoided questioning Tamara’s sincerity in their friendship because she so actively wanted to avoid questioning her own.

Soon it was Bridget’s turn in the spotlight, however. Tamara, being unusually solicitous, asked about her family and inquired—almost gently—about her “work relationships.”

“Oh, the office was closed yesterday,” Bridget said by way of breezy evasion. “But things are going fine.” She reasoned it would take too long to explain about the restaurant visit with Dr. Luke and, anyway, it was just a fun lunch with a
friend
. There was nothing to report, right?

Instead, she launched into an explanation of what’d been going on with Evan. “I’m worried about him,” she confessed, because it was a safe admission. “I think the extra sleep is helping, though. I just wish he weren’t so sensitive to everything. That he was more of a Just Do It kind of kid and didn’t think so much.”

Jennifer, who’d often been accused as a child of being overly sensitive (her parents’ favorite method of dismissing her fears, in fact, until she’d learned to conceal her anxieties) and too much of a thinker in just about everyone’s opinion, nodded. She found this conversational turn very interesting indeed, but largely because of Bridget’s curious omission. Glendale Grove might be near Chicago, an anonymity-allowing metropolis, but at its essence, the suburb remained very much a small town. Bridget, sweet though she was, ought to have the sense to know she wasn’t invisible in it.

Jennifer repressed a grin as Bridget prattled on about the foods her son didn’t like to eat anymore and how he wasn’t himself in class. Jennifer had been at Franklin’s Diner the day before, picking up carryout for their dinner, and she had seen a very smiley, not-remotely-worried-looking Bridget slipping out of Dr. Luke’s car and into her own. But, hey, if Bridget didn’t want to kiss and tell about her adventure with the dentist (what did they do?), Jennifer sure wasn’t going to make her. They would have to drug Jennifer with a truth serum before they would be able to pry any real feelings out of her about her meeting with David.

Not that Tamara didn’t try.

“So, we never really got the details on the whole campus visit thing,” Tamara said eventually, getting comfortable on the vinyl cushion and taking a long swig of her latte. “Did seeing him again put things into perspective for you or did it just make you wanna jump his bones?”

“I did
not
jump his bones—” she began, but Tamara cut her off.

“Not what I asked,” Tamara said mischievously. “Did you
want
to?” Tamara had been pretty much fixated on the idea of bone-jumping lately, a problem that intensified for her whenever she saw Aaron working out in his yard, which had been the case the previous afternoon. Even reasonably good sex with her husband didn’t completely obliterate her desire to see their handsome neighbor with far fewer clothes on, and she had this recurring fantasy involving him wearing his tool belt and a pair of handcuffs….

“No,” Jennifer said, taking care not to speak too quickly. It wasn’t a lie. She may have found David attractive, even after all of these years, but she was still furious with him. And she couldn’t sleep with anybody who made her so angry.

“Well, what’d you two do down there? What’d you talk about? Spill.” Tamara had a persistent streak.

Jennifer halfheartedly obliged, giving a cool rundown of the places she and David visited and their ultimate decision to hold the reunion at the Vat Building. Jennifer knew the other two wouldn’t understand its significance, and she wasn’t about to enlighten them. “We really only talked about the locations,” she said, which was a sweeping falsehood, even by her standards of restraint. And there was no way in hell she was going to reveal the heightened degree of confidence sharing, the intimate questions asked and the frequently inappropriate commentary of their IM’ing sessions and phone calls since that day. Not a chance.

“Was it painful to be with him again?” Bridget asked, her voice tender, her soft hand squeezing Jennifer’s forearm. “Did he show any signs of regret at the way he’d ended your relationship?”

Jennifer bit the inside of her cheek. How much could she admit to before she’d find herself in danger? At what point would the level of disclosure be too high for her personal sense of self-protection?

“It was awkward,” she confessed, figuring she had to tell her friends
something,
“but I didn’t ask him for any reasons or explanations.”

Tamara huffed at her. “You had him right there and you didn’t ask? Jeez, Jennifer.
Talk,
would ya?” She massaged her forehead with both palms. “So, okay, maybe you weren’t feeling a huge connection with him, but did seeing him at least answer your question of wanting to test your marriage? Do you feel you made the right choice in moving on or are you still questioning that?”

To Jennifer, this inquiry showed that Tamara knew her Not At All. When wasn’t she questioning? With more ineptitude and appliance malfunctions at home à la Michael, and more impropriety and suggestiveness (to the point of near phone sex and sexting) with David, how could she decide anything?

She feigned a light shrug. “Maybe I’ll know more after the reunion.” Then, taking a page from Bridget’s book, Jennifer finally succeeded in shifting the conversational focus onto her family. “But I do know it’s tough being the mom of a teen. Veronica has been pushing a lot of buttons lately.” She told them about what’d been happening in Mr. Ryerson’s U.S. history class. About the two boys. About the Homecoming Dance, which would be held that very night.

“Veronica’s been doing all that?” Bridget said, her tone one of surprise. But Jennifer suspected this was more out of politeness than any real shock. Bridget had a spirited daughter of her own and had grown up with a couple of sisters. Bridget knew what girls were like.

“Oh, yes. She’s been behaving much better in class these past two weeks because we told her if Mr. Ryerson kicked her out, we’d forbid her from attending tonight’s dance. But she isn’t making life easy at home, and we just found out Tuesday that she’s not going to it with Tim anymore, the guy she’d liked so much she just had to join the Homecoming committee. No. Now she’s crazy about this new guy Erick.” Jennifer shook her head. “I guess he’s meeting her there. I think that way they figured they could avoid having to deal with Michael, me and our questions.”

In a stroke of hypocrisy so profound she’d stunned herself, Jennifer had actually had a conversation with her daughter last weekend about “figuring out who she really liked” and “needing to be honest” with both boys. And while Jennifer did not openly tell her friends this, both Bridget and Tamara were indeed thinking some variation of the phrase “Like mother, like daughter.” Tamara’s was a somewhat harsher and more judgmental version than Bridget’s, however.

For all of her renewed spirits after having seen her beloved son again, Tamara’s restlessness kept rising up within her and taking the form of silent jabs. She wanted to scold Jennifer on the freakin’ ridiculousness of not asking a guy she hadn’t seen in
eighteen years
why he’d bolted. C’mon already. Grow some bloody guts.

And then there was Bridget, who kept absentmindedly fondling the salt shaker at their table like it might change shape with just a little nurturing. Argh! Tamara was
this close
to blurting out a crude comment about giving it a hand job but, instead, she gulped her coffee, pasted a smile on her face and tried to behave.

Until fucking Fleetwood Mac came on.

“I hate this song.” She groaned. Loudly. “Turn. It. Off,” she commanded the Bose speaker levitating in the upper-left corner of the café’s ceiling and piping out its endless excrement of seventies music. Goddamn XM radio.

Not surprisingly, the song—“Dreams”—kept playing.

“What’s wrong with it?” Bridget asked, recognizing that, while it’d been overplayed to death and that Stevie Nicks woman looked like a druggie flower child in platform boots who’d been locked in the attic (kind of the way those crazy ladies in Gothic novels always were, and
they
always wore a lot of lace, too), there were far more annoying singers from that era. Like the Captain & Tennille. Or Debby Boone. Ugh. She’d take “Dreams” over “Muskrat Love” or “You Light Up My Life” any day.

“I have never been able to figure out what these lyrics mean,” Tamara ranted. “Not even after listening to this nonsensical song five million times.” She set down her coffee and squeezed her fists as if choking a couple of invisible offenders. “The only thing I’m sure of is that Stevie must’ve been having some pretty strong hallucinations when she was writing it. Listen.”

The second verse started and Tamara stabbed the air with a venomous index finger, shooting death wishes at the ceiling speaker. “Hear that? Here she goes again seeing ‘crystal visions.’ She
says
she keeps those visions to herself, but she doesn’t.” Tamara crossed her arms and struck a pose of pure irritation. “Her voice is scratchy. She has a serious enunciation problem. The words that aren’t slurred are depressing as hell. It’s a sucky song, and it should’ve been banned from all airplay thirty years ago.”

Jennifer shot her an impish grin. “Any further commentary?”

“No,” Tamara said. “The prosecution rests its case.”

Bridget bit her lip but didn’t suggest that, perhaps, Tamara had been too long in the company of her quick-tempered and often irritable lawyer husband. She set down the salt shaker she’d been toying with and was about to reach for the pepper when, in a most unusual display of contentiousness on Jennifer’s part, their quiet friend stated, “It’s one of my favorite songs from that decade, Tamara. What part of it, exactly, don’t you understand?”

Tamara blinked at her, then laughed. “I don’t understand
any
of it. Seriously. Start anywhere.”

And, to Bridget and Tamara’s astonishment, she did.

“I think it’s about resignation,” Jennifer began. “A woman is being told by the guy she loves that he wants his freedom. She senses his attitude toward her and their relationship—like other men she’d dated before him—is more indifferent than it should’ve been. That he feels he can get another woman whenever he wants one. But, in her opinion, he’s not thinking about the reality, not anticipating the loneliness he’ll feel in quiet moments later, if he allows himself to feel deeply. She’s been through this before and she knows. But it’s no use trying to convince him now. He’s set on leaving, so she’s resigned to the fact that she understands the situation better than he does. She sees with crystal clarity what he’s giving up, but she lets him go and lets go of the dream of their future together, knowing that one day he’ll recognize his mistake. But, of course, it’ll be too late then to recover their relationship.”

Bridget thought Jennifer was, perhaps, putting herself a bit too much into the lyrics.

Tamara, convinced she’d inadvertently found herself stuck in the middle of one of those horrible literary discussions where earnest young poets or songwriters tried to ascribe meaning to the works of their famous and often dead predecessors, said, “Gah!” and rolled her eyes at Jennifer. “What? Did you and Stevie get together for happy hour one night and lament your lost loves?”

Jennifer, drained from so much speaking, clenched her jaw. “You’re not required to believe me, but you
did
ask.”