Friends Forever (2 page)

Another little girl walked into the block corner, only stayed for two seconds, and headed for the play kitchen nearby. She got busy with pots and pans and was opening and closing the oven door and putting things in the oven and the pretend fridge. She looked extremely busy. She had a sweet face and wore her brown hair in two neat braids. She was wearing overall shorts, sneakers, and a red T-shirt. She looked ready to play and paid no attention to the others, but all three were watching her as a woman in a navy blue business suit walked up to the little girl in the kitchen and kissed her goodbye. She had brown hair the same color as her daughter’s and wore it in a bun. Despite the heat, she was wearing the jacket to her suit, a white silk blouse, stockings, and high heels. She looked like she was a banker, or lawyer, or business executive of some kind. And her daughter looked unconcerned as she left. You could tell that she was used to not being with her mother, unlike the two boys, who had wanted their mothers to stay.

The little girl with the braids was wearing a name tag that said “Izzie.” The two boys approached her with caution after her mother left. The other girl had scared them, so they ignored her and left the block corner. No matter how pretty she was, she wasn’t friendly. Izzie looked easier to deal with as she kept busy in the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Billy asked her first.

“I’m making lunch,” she said with a look that said it was obvious. “What would you like to eat?” There were baskets of plastic food that she had taken out of the fridge and oven and arranged on plates, and there was a small picnic table nearby. The kindergarten at Atwood had great toys. It was one of the things parents always loved when they toured the school. They also had an enormous playground, a huge gym, and excellent athletic facilities. Larry, Billy’s father, loved that, and Marilyn liked the academics. She wanted Billy to learn something too, not just grow up to play ball. Larry was an astute businessman and a great salesman, and had an enormous amount of charisma, but he hadn’t learned much in school. Marilyn wanted to be sure that her sons did.

“For real?” Billy asked Izzie about the lunch order she had requested from him. His eyes were wide as he inquired, and Izzie laughed. All his childhood trust and innocence were in his eyes.

“Of course not, silly,” Izzie chided him good-humoredly. “It’s just pretend. What do you want?” She looked as though she really cared.

“Oh. I’ll have a hamburger and hot dog, with ketchup and mustard, and French fries. No pickles.” Billy placed his order.

“Coming right up,” Izzie said matter-of-factly, then handed him a plate piled high with pretend food, and pointed him toward the picnic table, where he sat down.

Then she turned to Sean. She had instantly become the little mother in the group, attending to their needs. “What about you?” she asked with a smile.

“Pizza,” Sean said seriously, “and a hot fudge sundae.” She had both in the arsenal of plastic food, and handed them to him. She looked like a short-order cook in a fast-food restaurant. Then the angel in the pink dress and sparkly pink shoes appeared.

“Does your father own a restaurant?” Gabby asked Izzie with interest. Izzie was in full control of the kitchen and looked very efficient.

“No. He’s a lawyer, for poor people. He helps them when people are mean to them. He works for the ACUUUUU. My mom is a lawyer too, for companies. She had to go to court today, that’s why she couldn’t stay. She had to make a motion. She can’t cook. My dad does.”

“My dad sells cars. My mom gets a new Jaguar every year. You look like you’re a good cook,” the angel said politely. She was much more interested in Izzie than she had been in the boys. But even if each sex stuck together and had similar interests, they were in the same classroom and tempered each other in some ways. “Can I have mac and cheese? And a doughnut,” Gabby said, pointing to a pink doughnut with plastic sprinkles. Izzie handed her the mac and cheese and the doughnut on a pink tray. Gabby waited as Izzie helped herself to a plastic banana and a chocolate doughnut, and they joined the boys at the picnic table, and sat down like four friends who had met for lunch.

They were just starting to pretend to eat the lunch Izzie had fixed for them, when a tall thin boy ran over to them. He had straight blond hair, and was wearing a white button-down shirt and perfectly pressed khaki pants, and looked older than he was. He looked more like a second-grader than someone in kindergarten.

“Am I too late for lunch?” he asked, looking breathless, and Izzie turned to smile at him.

“Of course not,” she reassured him. “What do you want to eat?”

“A turkey sandwich with mayo on white toast.” Izzie got him something that looked vaguely like it, and some pretend potato chips, and he sat down with them. He glanced at his mother, who was just leaving the classroom with a cell phone pressed to her ear. She was giving someone instructions and looked like she was in a rush. “My mom delivers babies,” he explained. “Someone’s having triplets. That’s why she couldn’t stay. My father is a psychiatrist, he talks to people if they’re crazy or sad.” The boy, whose name tag said “Andy,” looked serious. He had a grown-up haircut and good manners, and he helped Izzie put everything away in the kitchen when they were through.

Miss June and Miss Pam were both in the classroom by then, and asked everyone to form a circle. The five children who had eaten “lunch” at the picnic table sat next to each other in the circle, no longer strangers, and Gabby squeezed Izzie’s hand and smiled, as the teachers handed out musical instruments, and explained to them what each one did.

After the instruments, they had juice and cookies and then went outside for recreation. The mothers who had stayed were given juice and cookies too, although Marilyn declined and said that even water gave her heartburn now. She could hardly wait for the baby to come. She rubbed her enormous belly as she said it, and the other women looked at her sympathetically. She looked miserable in the heat.

Gabby’s mother had joined Marilyn and Connie by then, and there were several other mothers sitting in small groups in the corners of the classroom. Gabby’s mother looked young and was very striking. She had teased blond hair, and was wearing a white cotton miniskirt and high heels. Her pink T-shirt was cut low enough to see some cleavage, and she was wearing makeup and perfume. She stood out among the other mothers, but didn’t seem to mind it. She was friendly and pleasant, and sympathetic to Marilyn, when she introduced herself as Judy. She said she had gained fifty pounds with her last pregnancy. She had a three-year-old daughter, Michelle, two years younger than Gabby. But whatever weight she had gained, she had obviously lost it, and had a fabulous figure. She was flashy but a very pretty girl, and the others guessed her to be in her late twenties. She said something about having been in beauty pageants when she was in college, which seemed about right, given the way she looked. She said they had moved to San Francisco from southern California two years before, and she missed the heat, so she was loving the Indian summer weather.

The three women talked about forming a carpool, and were hoping to find two other women to go in with them, so they’d only have to drive one day a week. Judy, Gabby’s mother, explained that she’d have to bring her three-year-old with her on her days, but she said she had a van she would use for carpool, so there would be plenty of room for all the kids, with seatbelts. And Marilyn apologetically explained that she might not be able to drive for a few weeks because of the new baby, but she’d be happy to after that, as long as she could bring him along.

Connie agreed to organize the carpool for them, since she had done it before for her son in seventh grade when he was younger. She had been hoping that Sean’s brother, Kevin, would take him to school in the morning, but their schedules were too different, and Kevin didn’t want to be bothered with his little brother, and had flatly refused to do it. So the carpool made sense for Connie too. It would be helpful to all of them.

After the children came back from the playground and were engrossed in story time, with Miss June reading aloud to them, the mothers were able to leave, with their children’s permission, and promised to be back when they got out of school that afternoon. Billy and Sean were slightly uneasy, but Gabby and Izzie were busy listening to the story and holding hands again. While out on the playground, they had agreed to be best friends. The boys had all been running around and yelling, and the girls had had fun on the swings.

“Did you hear about the meeting tonight?” Connie asked the other mothers as they left the building, out of earshot of the children by then. The others said they hadn’t. “It’s really for the middle school and high school parents.” She lowered her voice even further. “A sophomore boy hanged himself this summer. He was a really sweet kid. Kevin knew him, although he was three years older. He was on the baseball team. His parents and the school knew he had a lot of emotional problems, but it was still shocking when he did it. They’re bringing in a psychologist to talk to the parents about recognizing the signs of suicide in kids, and prevention.”

“At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about at this age,” Judy said with a look of relief. “I’m still working on Michelle being dry at night. She has accidents once in a while, but she’s only three. I don’t think suicide at three and five is a big issue,” she said blithely.

“No, but apparently it can be as young as eight or nine,” Connie said somberly. “I don’t worry about it with Kevin, or I haven’t, but he’s a pretty wild kid sometimes. He’s not as easy as Sean, he never has been. He hates following anyone else’s rules. The boy who died was really a sweet kid.”

“Divorced parents?” Marilyn asked with a knowing look.

“No,” Connie said quietly. “Good parents, solid good marriage, mom at home full time. I just don’t think they thought this could happen to them. I think he’d been seeing a counselor, but mainly for problems he had in school keeping his grades up. He always took things pretty hard. He used to cry whenever the baseball team lost a game. I think there was a lot of pressure on him at home, academically. But the family is very wholesome. He was their only kid.”

The other two women looked disturbed by what she said, but they agreed that the meeting wasn’t relevant to them, and they hoped it never would be. It was just sad to hear about it happening to someone else. It was unimaginable to think of any of their children committing suicide. It was hard enough worrying about accidents in the home, drownings in swimming pools, and illnesses and mishaps that befell young children. Suicide was in another universe from theirs, much to their relief.

Connie promised to call them when she found two more candidates for their carpool, and then they went their separate ways. All three were driving when they saw each other later that day and waved. Izzie and Gabby bounced out of school holding hands, and Gabby told her mother how much fun they’d had that day. Izzie’s babysitter picked her up, and Izzie said the same thing to her. Billy was clutching the football he had retrieved from his cubby when he came out. Sean asked his mother for his sheriff’s gun the moment he got in the car, and Andy was picked up by the housekeeper, since his parents were still at work, as they always were at that hour.

All five of them had had a great first day at the Atwood School, they liked their teachers and were happy with their new friends. Marilyn told herself that it had been worth the long, agonizing admission process. As she drove away with Billy, her water broke on the front seat, and she felt the first familiar labor pains, which heralded Brian’s arrival into the world. He was born that night.

Chapter 2

B
y the beginning of third grade, the five best friends had been bosom buddies for three years. They were eight. They were still in the same carpool, with Andy and Izzie’s babysitters pitching in when needed, and they often had play dates with each other. More often than not Connie O’Hara, Sean’s mother, would invite several of them to her house. Her older son, Kevin, was fifteen by then, and a sophomore at Atwood. He was always getting demerits or study hall for talking in class, or for homework he hadn’t done. And no matter how difficult he was to get along with, how much he fought with their parents, or how often he threatened to beat Sean up, Kevin was a hero to his little brother, who worshipped him and thought he was “cool.”

Connie loved having kids over, both Kevin’s friends and Sean’s. She volunteered for field trips and various projects at school, and worked for the PTA. As an ex-schoolteacher and devoted mother, she enjoyed her kids and their friends. And Kevin’s friends particularly enjoyed talking to her. She was as sensitive to the problems of teenagers as she was to those of her eight-year-old. She was known to keep a cookie jar full of condoms in the kitchen, where Kevin’s pals could help themselves, no questions asked. Mike O’Hara was equally great with kids, and loved having them in the house, and had coached Little League and been head of Kevin’s Boy Scout troop until Kevin quit. Connie and Mike were realistic about what their kids did, and were well aware of the experimentation with marijuana and booze among kids Kevin’s age. They discouraged it, but also knew what went on. They managed to be firm, protective, involved, and practical at the same time. It was a lot easier for them being Sean’s parents than Kevin’s, but Sean was a lot younger. Things were dicier at fifteen, and Kevin had always been more of a risk taker than Sean, who followed all the rules.

Sean was doing well at school, and his best friends were still the ones he had made in kindergarten. He had gone from wanting to be a sheriff to wanting to be a policeman, then a fireman, and by eight back to the police again. He loved watching any kind of police show on TV. He wanted to keep law and order in his life and among his friends. He rarely broke the rules at home or at school, unlike his older brother, who thought they were made to be broken. They had the same parents but were very different boys. And in the three years since Sean had started kindergarten at Atwood, Mike’s business had done extremely well, and he spent a considerable amount of time with both boys, doing activities with them. He and Connie were very comfortable financially. There had been a major construction boom, and he was the contractor that people were fighting to hire in Pacific Heights. It afforded the O’Haras a very secure lifestyle, they went on nice vacations in the summer, and he had built them a beautiful lakefront house in Tahoe two years before, which all of them enjoyed. He had a background in economics, but building houses had always been what he loved. He had set up his own construction company years before, and started small. And it had become one of the most successful private contracting firms in the city, and Connie had encouraged him from the beginning.