Friends Forever (10 page)

“You may be sure now, but you don’t know what will happen later. Look at Izzie’s parents, and you and Dad,” he said directly to Marilyn. “Now Dad’s a mess, and you’re married to someone else and having more babies.” She didn’t tell him that his father had been a mess before she divorced him. She could see that Billy needed to express his feelings, and she felt bad for him, and for a moment as though she had betrayed him by getting pregnant. He was a senior in high school and nearly eighteen years old, but he was still a little boy.

“I’m sorry you’re upset, Billy,” she said softly, and tried to reach for his hand but he wouldn’t let her. He said nothing until they stood up to leave, then he strode out of the restaurant and waited for them at the car. And as soon as they got home, he went to Gabby’s, without a word of congratulation to Jack or his mother. He looked like a storm cloud, and Jack found Marilyn crying in the kitchen a few minutes later, rubbing her stomach. The end of the meal had given her terrible indigestion.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked as he walked in and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry Billy took it badly. He’ll be okay. I guess in a lot of ways he’s still a kid.” She nodded and clung to her husband. The last thing she had wanted to do was upset Billy. He’d been through enough with the divorce, and all the pressure put on him by Larry. “He’ll be fine when he sees them. It’s an adjustment, and he’ll be in L.A. anyway.” Jack was hugging her and rubbing her back when Brian walked in with a curious expression.

“So do you know what they are yet? Boys, girls, one of each?” He looked as though he was ready, and his mother and stepfather laughed and turned to smile at him.

“We’ll let you know as soon as we do,” Marilyn promised, relieved to see him so matter-of-fact about it. “Any preference?”

“Of course,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Two boys. Jack and I can teach them to play baseball.” Brian was already liking his role as older brother, and he exchanged a knowing look with Jack.

“You can teach girls to play baseball too, you know,” Marilyn reminded him, as Brian rolled his eyes again, helped himself to a cookie, and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Girls are such dorks.”

“You won’t always think that,” Jack said confidently, and after that they turned off the kitchen lights and went upstairs. Unlike his older brother, Brian had taken their announcement extremely well. Billy had felt it as a personal affront, and that night he said as much to Gabby, who thought it was going to be cute to have babies to play with, twins, whenever they came home from L.A. Billy looked unhappy when she said it, and the next morning Marilyn found two empty beer cans under his bed. She didn’t say anything, and decided to give him some slack, but it wasn’t reassuring, if he was responding to stressful situations by drinking beer. She didn’t want him to turn out like his father, but two beers were not enough to panic about yet. She told Jack about it, and he suggested they keep an eye on Billy and try not to overreact, and she agreed.

Thanksgiving at the new Norton-Ellison household was a lot happier than it had been the year before. Both of Jack’s boys joined them, as did Gabby. She helped Marilyn set the table, and Jack had had the entire meal catered by his restaurant, with two waiters to serve them and clean up afterward. All Marilyn had to do was sit down and eat, and the dinner was delicious. It was a traditional Thanksgiving meal, and everyone was in good spirits, except Billy, who said nothing. Jack’s boys tried to engage him in conversation about playing football for USC, and Billy gave them short, terse answers and retreated to his room after dinner with Gabby. He surprised her by taking out a bottle of tequila and pouring shots for each of them. He had been hiding the bottle in a drawer in his dresser. Gabby looked shocked when she saw it, and refused the drink.

“That’s not cool, Billy,” she said softly. “I know you’re upset about your mom having a baby, or two of them, but getting drunk isn’t going to change anything.” Except his scholarship if he got caught.

“I’m not going to get drunk on one shot. I don’t care about my mom and her babies, and it’s Thanksgiving, for chrissake.” He had never spoken to her that way before, and when she refused the shot glass he handed her, he drank hers too. She had seen him get drunk before at parties, on beer, but she had never seen him have a serious drink, or do it because he was unhappy, not even during his parents’ divorce. It had only started once his mother had decided to marry Jack.

“You can’t do that when you’re in training,” she reminded him with a look of disapproval.

“Don’t tell me what I can do, and don’t be such an old lady,” he complained, and for a minute he sounded just like his father. Gabby was upset about it and left a few minutes later. Marilyn was surprised to see her leave so soon. But it had been easy to see that Billy was not in a good mood. It had almost ruined Thanksgiving dinner for her, except that Brian had been so sweet, and so was Jack. But Billy made it clear that he was not willing to share in their happiness. They told Jack’s two sons about the twins before dinner, and they were surprised but pleased. They hoped it would be two boys too.

She found the two used shot glasses in Billy’s underwear drawer on Monday morning, when she put his laundry away, and the bottle of tequila when she dug a little deeper. She felt her stomach turn over as soon as she found them, and called Connie immediately, and told her what she’d found.

“Shit, I don’t want him to turn into an alcoholic like Larry. I think he’s been drinking ever since Jack and I got married. And now he’s upset about the twins, so he’s doing it again.”

“That’s not a good enough reason,” Connie said, sounding unhappy at her end too. “I found a bottle of vodka in Kevin’s closet this weekend. He’s been sober since rehab, and he’s an adult now. I could say something, but he’d accuse me of snooping. He’s twenty-four years old, he’s a man living under our roof. But if he starts drinking again, his life will go right down the tubes. Mike wants him to start working with him now, and come to work full time when he graduates. But Kevin hates construction work, and he never likes working for his father. Mike is tough on him—he thinks it’s good for him.”

“I swear, sometimes I think they’re trying to kill us,” Marilyn said with a sigh, and Connie laughed. But it wasn’t funny to either of them. They both knew only too well that their sons’ futures were at risk. And Billy had so much at stake now. All his dreams were about to come true. “Let’s just hope it’s a bad phase and they’ll get their shit together soon. Are you going to say something to Kevin?”

“Mike’s going to talk to him tonight and lower the boom. He’s going to tell him that if he wants to live here, he has to stay sober and work for him in his spare time. And if he doesn’t like it, Mike says, he can move out. So it’s showdown time around here. What about you and Billy?”

“Billy is in training. He’s not supposed to be drinking. Maybe he just has ‘senioritis.’ Everyone says that their kids go nuts for a while, once they get accepted into college. For Billy, the pressure is off now till he gets to USC. Unless he flunks out of school. I’m going to keep a close eye on the drinking.”

“Me too,” Connie said, sounding discouraged. She had been convinced that Kevin was home free, and the bad days were over. Now she wasn’t as sure. Kevin was definitely at risk, of using drugs or booze, and getting lost along the way. After all, he had very nearly gone to jail, and in a similar situation, the next time he would. She was less concerned about Billy having a couple of beers and a shot of tequila in his bedroom, although they weren’t happy about it, but there was no denying that kids Billy’s age drank from time to time, even good kids. But Kevin was no longer a kid, he was a man.

There was good news and bad news during Christmas vacation. Connie and Marilyn ran into Michelle at the manicure salon one day and were horrified by what they saw. She looked frighteningly thin. There was no denying that she was anorexic, and when Marilyn finally got up the guts to mention it to Judy, she said they had been to the doctor that week, and Michelle had just started outpatient treatment at an eating disorder clinic. Judy was very upset about it. Marilyn was relieved to hear that Michelle was in treatment.

The best news of the season was that on the day before Christmas vacation, Andy got the letter he’d been waiting for from Harvard. He had gotten in on early decision, in pre-med, and it came as a surprise to no one but him. Izzie let out a scream that resonated down the halls when he told her, and Sean and Billy picked him up and carried him on their shoulders, while Gabby grinned. He was a hero to them, and all his teachers were elated for him but not surprised.

He called his mother in the office to tell her, but her cell phone was on voicemail, which meant that she was with a patient or delivering a baby, so he sent her a text to find whenever she was free, and he got hold of his father between patients. He sounded busy, but pleased with the news.

“I’d only have been surprised by anything less,” his father said calmly. “You didn’t really think they’d decline you, did you?” Robert sounded amused at the thought, particularly since he had gone to Harvard too. And with Andy’s grades and test scores, Robert considered him a shoo-in. Only Andy himself had been deeply anxious about it, and hadn’t slept well in weeks. But Andy never let it show. The only one whom he had confided in about his nervousness was Izzie. He had had nightmares about not getting accepted, on early decision or ever, and being banished by his father as a result. His mother would have forgiven him and understood, but his father never would. He had always expected the 4.0 GPA that Andy always delivered with ease, although sometimes it wasn’t as easy as Andy made it look.

“Thank you for helping me with my application essay,” Andy whispered to Izzie as they left their last class of the day. “I think that’s what got me in.” He was grateful and relieved.

“Are you insane?” Izzie looked at him in amazement. “With your grades and scores, you think my help got you in? Andy Weston, wake up! You’re practically the genius of our class.”

“No, silly, that would be you. You have one of the best analytical minds of anyone I’ve ever met. You even make more sense than my parents, and they’re both really smart, and my father writes books and is considered brilliant.” Izzie knew his father’s books were successful, but she had always considered him a cold person. She liked his mother a lot better.

“Trust me, you’re a genius, and you’re going to be a terrific doctor one day. Any ideas about what you’re going to specialize in?” she asked him as they left school.

“Probably research. I hate seeing people in pain. And I’d never want to make a mistake that cost someone their life. That’s too much responsibility for me.” After twelve years in school together, one thing she knew about Andy was that he never wanted to hurt anyone, in deed or word. He was a very thoughtful, cautious, caring, compassionate human being, and Izzie admired him enormously. Although she loved all of them in her group, he was the friend she respected most. And now he had gotten into Harvard on early decision. She was thrilled for him.

She was going to finish her own applications over Christmas vacation. Her first choice was still UCLA, and she was excited that Gabby and Billy would be in L.A. too. She just hoped that she’d get in. Most of her other choices were back east, at schools where she really didn’t want to go, although one of them was Boston University, and now Andy would be close by at Harvard, so there was some comfort in that. She hated to think of all of them going their separate ways in six months, and she hoped that they would always see each other and come home for holidays. She knew they all really meant it when they said they were friends forever, and she hoped their lives would cooperate to help them stay that way.

But if Andy got good news, Izzie got bad news over the holidays. Her father came home with a new girlfriend, and she could tell instantly that this one meant something to him. No other woman since her parents’ divorce really had. Her name was Jennifer, she was a social worker he had met at work. She had gone to Columbia and come to San Francisco two years before Jeff met her, and she was thirty-eight years old. Jeff was fifty-five. They had a seventeen-year age gap that Izzie thought was ridiculous. Jennifer was a nice woman, and she could see why her father liked her. She was smart, pretty, she had a great body, and a good sense of humor, and she looked about twenty-five years old. He took Jennifer and Izzie out for a Mexican dinner in the Mission, and Izzie realized that she spoke fluent Spanish, and had grown up in Mexico, because her father was a diplomat, so she had a little touch of the exotic about her that made her even more appealing. She was smarter and more sophisticated than anyone Jeff had gone out with, and Izzie recognized instantly that she was a serious threat to the peaceful life she had shared with her father for the past five years. She saw her mother every once in a while, but Katherine was spending most of her time in New York now, for the corporation she worked for, and all pretense of joint custody had gone out the window. And Izzie liked her life with her father exactly the way it was.

After dinner, Jeff took Jennifer home, then came to see Izzie in her room. She had been talking on the phone to Gabby, and she hung up the minute her father walked in.

“So what do you think, Iz?” he asked, about Jennifer, and Izzie hesitated before she spoke. She wanted to be careful about what she said. She didn’t want to hurt her father’s feelings, but she thought Jennifer was too young for him. She had mentioned at dinner that she wanted to have children, and Izzie had nearly choked. As far as she was concerned, her father was much too old to start another family, at least she hoped so.

“Don’t you think she’s a little young, Dad?”

“Not really. We get along very well.” He didn’t look worried.

“How long have you known her?” He had never mentioned her before, until she suddenly appeared. But there had been stars in his eyes every time he looked at her during dinner. It scared the hell out of Izzie. Jennifer was a major threat to her.