The Friends We Keep (21 page)

58

 

To use a tired but apt expression, the bloom was off the rose.

This, of course, was inevitable. No relationship can avoid the introduction of reality, unless it ends with a tragic parting (I'm thinking of Romeo and Juliet here.) in its infant days. While the disaster at the nightclub was the defining moment, the turning point, the truth was that for weeks Jake had been getting on my nerves.

That ridiculous ambush in the hallway of Sophie's apartment! And I just couldn't stand how he always missed a few hairs when he shaved and how he never finished a cup of coffee without reheating it five or six times. I hated the fact that there were no wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. None.

The truest words ever spoken: Youth is wasted on the young.

Still, the sex was great so I stayed on, in spite of Jake's faults, and in spite of the fact that I kept finding myself thinking of John.

Life can be cruel.

First of all, I felt bad about the way I'd behaved that night at the theater. There'd been no reason for me to be so obnoxious. After all, John did provide the tickets and did offer to pay for dinner (if throwing a credit card at the bill equaled an “offer”). As it turned out, I threw my card on top of his and we split the bill.

Another thing was bothering me: I couldn't figure out why I'd told John about Jake. I thought about my motives, I did, but couldn't come up with a plausible reason for “sharing” that bit of personal information. You would almost think I wanted to make John jealous but that was totally ridiculous.

Anyway, I wanted to apologize to John but the thought terrified me. I imagined his gloating grin and self-righteous lessons in proper behavior.

Maybe, I thought, it was best to simply go on as if nothing had happened. Eventually, the bad feelings would go away. I was sure they would. Bad feelings always go away. Sometimes you have to force them to leave but they do, eventually. Eventually.

59

 

One o'clock in the morning and I was staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, obsessing. Vanessa. Cat. Cheryl. Kelly. Cathy. The others not worth a mention.

And Eva.

Eva. Why had she told me about her juvenile lover? She'd thrown the information at me, like it was supposed to hurt me or at least make some sort of big impact. Could it possibly have been to make me jealous?

Ridiculous. But how had she wanted me to react? Just the way I had—with disdain and mockery? Or had she wanted me to pretend I wasn't bothered by the news that she was having sex with a kid?

I wondered: Had I tipped my hand by behaving badly? Did Eva suspect that I was interested in her, in spite of her being such a pain in the ass?

I threw off the covers and stomped to the kitchen. It was clear. I was spending way too much time with women. Look what had happened to me. I was lying awake at night desperately trying to analyze every little bit of a conversation, just like I'd witnessed my sisters doing throughout their teen years. “What do you think he meant by ‘I like you'? Did he mean, like-like or just, you know,
like?
”

I stared into the fridge and wondered why the hell I was even in the kitchen. More adopted female behavior, late-night eating to dull the misery of a lousy love life. Clearly, I was becoming a disgrace to my sex. Somebody, I thought, should stage an intervention.

I slammed the fridge shut and stomped back to bed. I grabbed the remote off the nightstand and flipped madly through all nine hundred stations, looking for an old
Dirty Harry
movie, or maybe something starring Al Pacino, something masculine and gritty, a film in which guys took action instead of whining and worrying.

But all I could find was a Lifetime movie about a single mother with a violent five-year-old son and a boyfriend whose patience was wearing thin.

I turned off the television in disgust. Maybe, I thought, I should just scrap the idea of finding Ms. Right—and the idea of having any sort of relationship with Eva other than the purely antagonistic one we seemed to have now.

Being alone, I knew.

60

 

Eva told me she was tired. John told me he'd been thinking of catching a movie.

“But we haven't seen each other, all three of us, in a while,” I'd argued. “We won't make it a late night. Just a quick dinner.”

Eva finally relented, but only, she told me, to stop my “whining.” John, too, finally agreed, I think because he hates to disappoint the people he cares about.

We met at Marino's—John's favorite restaurant had become one of mine, too—at seven and I swear, it wasn't two minutes after seven before I noticed that something was up. Or different. Or—wrong. Both Eva and John were acting all awkward. Eva shot a glance at John; when he looked her way, she looked away. John shot a glance at Eva; when she looked his way, he looked away. Eva dropped her napkin, the kind of thing she never does. John spilled water on his silk tie, the kind of thing he never does.

Oh, yes. Something had happened between them, I was sure. But what? Sexual tension could account for the change, but not entirely. More likely, I thought, they'd had a particularly bad fight and hadn't gotten around to making up.

Well, I thought, I guess it's up to me to play good hostess and put the guests at ease. And maybe, in the process, one of them would drop a hint that would help me figure out what was going on.

But conversation was dull, no matter what interesting topic I introduced—Jake, real estate, the carpeting I was thinking of getting for the bedroom. “Oh,” I said finally, desperately, “I saw this great movie on TV the other night. It was called
The Seducer
. And it was about this man who goes to these amazing lengths to seduce old rich women—”

“I wonder,” John interrupted (unlike him), “if other primates keep secrets or employ deception in their social life. I'd like to know the answer to that.”

My eyes shifted quickly to Eva, then back to John. I tensed, half-expecting a paranoid response from Eva and a cutting reply from John.

But when Eva spoke her tone was thoughtful. I relaxed just a bit.

“If humans are the only ones to lie, cheat, and steal—all forms of deception—does that mean that success as a species depends, at least partly, on the capacity for unethical behavior?”

“Of course not,” I said. “That can't be right.”

Eva shrugged, not convinced.

“I should ask my nephew Scott,” John said. “He's really into animals. If he doesn't know the answer he'll make it a project to find out.”

“So he can educate his old uncle.” Eva smiled a bit to soften her words. John smiled back, though not exactly at her.

“Kids love teaching grown-ups. Jake would downright gloat when he knew something I didn't. Then again,” I added, “so would Brad, so in this case maybe it's something he got from his father.”

“People rely too much on genetics to excuse or explain their weaknesses,” Eva said in her usual forceful way. “They say: ‘My mom is overweight so of course I'm overweight and there's nothing I can do about it.' I say: ‘Yes there is. Put down the fork and pick up the medicine ball.' There's a fatalism at work there I just can't stand.”

“Fatalism,” John said, “or laziness. Or, in some cases, maybe a fear of changing so much that you become unrecognizable to your family, even to yourself. Changing so much that you no longer belong in the world from where you came.”

“You mean,” I said, “that some people fall back on what they know—their family, for instance—because they're afraid of success?”

“They're afraid of outgrowing their parents' world, which was their childhood world. They're afraid of having to find a new life, a new tradition. They're afraid of cutting ties,” Eva said.

I considered Eva's words. I'd tried to raise my son to be unafraid of challenge and change. Had I done enough? Too little? Well, I thought, time alone will tell if Jake will surpass his parents' achievements. Time alone will show the places Jake will go, maybe places I couldn't imagine myself ever going. That thought scared me. Someday I might lose my son to a world in which I was a foreigner.

“Change isn't always a good thing,” I said. “Sometimes it's best to stay put.”

Eva gave me her patented look of exasperation. I ignored it.

“It's true that some people let the past hinder them from growing,” John said then. “But I like to think the majority of people want to transcend the limitations of their family and early environment.”

“I certainly did. I certainly do.” Eva paused before adding: “Sometimes I think my sister aspires to be less than what my parents hoped she would be. Can you aspire to failure?”

“Maura hardly sounds like a failure,” I noted. “She's married and has a family.”

Eva looked chastened (unlike her). “Yes, well, I didn't mean a ‘failure,' exactly.”

“You meant that you see more potential in her than she does in herself?” John asked.

Eva gave John another small smile. “Yes. Exactly.”

What, what, what was going on? I wondered again.

“Brad's boss at one time was this superintelligent man with several degrees in business. He was nice, too, involved in the community, all that. And his wife was just as nice. She taught philosophy at the university. Anyway, both of their sons got involved with drugs and dropped out of high school.”

Eva shrugged. “You can't blame the parents. Everyone is responsible for his own life.”

“But what about children who fall apart?” I argued. “Legally, morally, they're the parents' responsibility. Are children really capable of making smart life choices? Anyway, my point is that these two boys had parents who were achievers and, really, I met them, they were lovely people. So, what went wrong? Maybe the boys had some genetic deficiency or something that made them, I don't know, more like an uncle who wound up on the streets.”

“I'm afraid the nature/nurture argument is one neither side will ever win,” John said. “And I, for one, am not qualified to expound on the subject.”

I expected Eva to jump on John's last remark, to twist it into an insult, to say something like,
“You're not qualified to expound on any subject more difficult than twirling spaghetti around a fork.”
But she didn't.

Yes, something had happened between Eva and John. Maybe, I thought, they need a few minutes alone.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I'm going to the ladies' room.”

61

 

I hadn't seen John since the night I'd behaved like such a jerk. I'd been waiting for the guilt to go away but it hadn't gone anywhere. In fact, it had dug itself deeper in my brain, or wherever it is guilt resides. Now, sitting face-to-face with him, I knew an apology was necessary. An opportunity came when Sophie went to the ladies' room.

“I—”

“Look—”

John gestured for me to go ahead. I steeled myself for his mockery.

“Look,” I said, “about that night at the theater.”

“Yeah.”

“I acted like a bit of an ass. I guess I was in a bad mood or something. I'm sorry.”

John nodded. “Yeah, I'm sorry, too. I guess I wasn't in the best of moods, either.”

I was shocked. John had apologized. His expression was sincere. Where was the gloating, the moralizing?

“Truce?” he asked when we had looked silently at each other for a long, strange moment.

“Yeah.” My voice sounded a little wobbly. “Truce.”

I'm not sure what might have happened if Sophie hadn't returned to the table at precisely that moment, because I had the odd conviction that I was going to lean across the table and kiss my old friend. Or that he was going to lean across the table and kiss me.

“I'm back!” she announced unnecessarily.

“There you are,” I said stupidly.

“We missed you,” John said ridiculously.

Just then, John's cell phone rang—well, it vibrated, John being the sort to always turn the ringer off in public places.

“Damn,” he said, when he'd snapped the phone shut. “Sorry. I've got to go. Emergency.”

“I thought only doctors got called away from dinner,” I said lightly.

“Yeah, well, you thought wrong.” John took a few bills out of his wallet and laid them on the table. “Let me know if I owe more.”

“Poor John,” Sophie said when he'd gone. “He works so hard.”

“He likes it,” I said. And then: “I admire him for it.”

Sophie shot me a glance.

“What?” I asked. “I can say nice things about him, too.”

“I've never heard you say anything good about John.”

I shrugged in a way I hoped appeared casual. “Well, there isn't all that much nice to say.”

“Well,” Sophie said, reaching for her menu.

“I'm in the mood for a steak,” I said. “You?”