The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (36 page)

“I'm sure,” I say. “Well, no, I'm not sure. But I'm willing to take the risk.”

“Then let's go do this. Here's your letter of notification to terminate his representation. Here's his letter of obligation to provide his accounting to the independent auditor. Here's the notification of independent appraisal. Here's the…”

She hands me letter after letter to sign. I marvel that in the time it took me to bribe her kids to get out of bed and dressed, she completely magicked about thirty legal and official-looking documents into being.

“I owe you like one billion dollars in legal fees, don't I?” I ask her when I finish signing.

“The nice thing is, if he really is cheating you, he'll have to pay my legal fees. If he doesn't, you owe me a shit-ton of babysitting. Which I'll need because I just heard you sell me out for marriage counseling.”

“Deal,” I tell her. “Also, I need to borrow Natalie for an afternoon in March. Don't ask any questions.”

Renee looks up at me with that exasperated look in her eye, and for the first time in a long time, I don't see condescension or disapproval or disgust. I see her, doing her damnedest to love me, and most of the time, pulling it off.

*   *   *

Downtown, at Mitchell's gallery, I look at my watch, then at Renee.

“I'm scared,” I admit.

“You should be. This is kind of a nuclear option. From what I can tell, Mitchell's definitely been screwing you, but whether or not he's covered it up well remains to be seen.”

“It's the right thing to do, right?” I ask Renee. “To stand up for myself, demand what I know is right? I mean, put aside our shitty messes of lives, and our shitty attempts at friendship, and all the ways we've changed in the last ten years, and grown apart, or not grown at all. You're still the woman who dragged me to my mother's bedside. I'm still the woman who made your wedding dreams a reality. We still are people who do the right thing when we're called to, right? Even when it's hard.”

“If we weren't, I'd be in Belize right now under an assumed name.”

“So there it is. We're storming the castle.”

“No,” says Renee. “You're storming the castle. I'm sitting in the car. Don't forget this is also your boyfriend. You sleep with this person. You've got to go deal with that too.”

I blanch. Unbidden, two years of something—not love, but not outright conflict either—comes to my mind. I think of that apartment he just bought ostensibly for
us.
The way he gave me my first showing. His silver-tongued way of keeping me around every time I've tried to sneak out.

“Can't we just slip the papers under the door and run for it?”

Renee looks at me hard. “Yes. But should we?”

I do not answer. My vote is pretty clear.

“Get in there!” she says now.

I unbuckle my seat belt. Take the folder of legalese. Drag myself out of the car, into the street, onto the sidewalk, up to the gallery. The door is locked. I peer in and see …

“OH MY GOD MITCHELL!” I shout into the glass.

Mitchell is having sex with someone on that ugly chaise he keeps positioned in front of the gallery wall. Well, he's getting a blow job. It's bright outside and dark in there, but anyone capable of cupping her hands around her face to get a look at the art can see plain as day what is happening in there and it is incredibly
gross.

Mitchell hears me, starts, and puts his dick in his pants. The someone else is a very pretty girl who looks startled and maybe a bit stoned. He rushes to the door. “Lily?” he asks as he's throwing it open. What a strange thing, to hear my name on his lips.

“It's ten
A.M.
in the freaking morning on a Friday, you weirdo,” I say. Because of everything I just saw, for some reason the timing offends me the most.

“It's not what you think.”

I put my hands up, and remember what I'm holding. “First of all, I hope it is what I think. I don't want to be with you anymore and this conveniently removes all guilt.”

Mitchell's handsome face falls. “You're breaking up with me?”

I look up to the heavens for some kind of lightning bolt to strike. “Mitchell. Yes. Yes, I'm breaking up with you. I've found someone else. And so have you, apparently.”

“Who is he?” he asks. I try hard not to look down at his pants. Ick ick ick. And what happened to the, ah, servicing party in this affair? I look behind him but she's gone.

“It's a she, actually,” I say, thinking of Jenny's gallery. “And a he.” Because I'm definitely in love with Ben. “And an it.” That “it” being a town that isn't all real but isn't all fake either.

“Excuse me?”

I take a deep breath. “Okay, first, you're an asshole. That's a given. But I've been cheating on you with this wonderful man who I'm technically married to, so actually, it's him I've been cheating on, and that has to stop.”

“Lily, you're not making any sense. Listen to yourself.”

“And secondly, you're also screwing me out of my sales, and here are some documents that my lawyer tells me I need to hand to you and I'm also supposed to tell you our gallery agreement is terminated and you have fifteen days to provide all your sales records as they pertain to me to the auditor whose name is in that envelope. And”—I take a deep breath and prepare the words Renee taught me—“I'm supposed to say ‘per the terms of our initial agreement dated January 30th, 2014.'” I shove the envelope into his hands.

“This is insanity,” he says. “Pure insanity. You're hurt. I screwed up. I get that.”

And lastly, “Thank you, Mitchell, for helping me believe in myself as an artist and sorry about cheating on you. Okay, bye!”

I turn as fast as I can and run, actually run, to Renee's car. “Lily, wait!” calls Mitchell.

I jump into Renee's car. “Peel out or something!”

“What, did you rob him?” Renee asks.

“No! Should I have? No, I just I want to be dramatic.”

“Girl, when he looks over those papers, the drama will happen by itself,” she tells me, sensibly putting on a blinker and then slowly pulling away from the curb, while Mitchell runs toward the car, calling my name.

“Oh, Renee,” I say, watching him recede in my rearview mirror. “It went better than I could have dreamed.”

“I'm so glad. And I'm proud of you.”

I put my hand over hers on the steering wheel. “Do you want to move to Minnow Bay with me?” I ask her.

She smiles sadly and shakes her head. “I don't know what that town is all about, but it sounds pretty wonderful.”

“It is,” I tell her.

“Well, let me know how the public schools are,” she says with a good-natured laugh, and I know, right then, that as hard as things are for her right now, here in Chicago, she truly does want to see them through. “Are you going back there now?” she asks me.

I stop for a second. “Do you know what?” I say with a slow smile coming over my face. “I think I just might. Not forever, probably. I might have to follow a boy to California. But long enough to finish a painting I started.”

Renee looks away from the road and to me, just for a second. Her eyes are large. “You're painting something new?” she asks.

“Something beautiful. Something I believe in with my whole heart.”

*   *   *

I am not talking about
August Drought.
That painting needs only a few more brushstrokes here, touch-ups there, and then I will sign it and hand it over to Jenny. I am talking about something else. Something I conceived in my mind on the drive from Minnow Bay to Chicago, and can see as clearly as if it already exists. It is a pond. Frozen over. Freshly cleared of snow. About to be decorated.

Of course, when I was sitting there in Ben's truck, stuck in fantasy and fairy tales and escapism, I saw twinkling fairy lights and elaborate decoupage projects and a rink full of perfectly outfitted skaters, all moving in perfect circles, never falling, never even wobbling as they skated round and round. I saw a man and a woman holding hands, perfect in their steadiness. Unchanging.

Now the thought makes me laugh. It's not just silliness. It's not just trite, overdone hotel-room watercolor art. It's not even real. Ben is a hot-tempered fool. Jenny is a smooth-talking saleswoman. Colleen is a woman lost in longings and unfulfilled desires. And Minnow Bay is going broke and may fall apart before my very eyes.

Or it might, like the rest of us, find some way to persevere. It might shore itself up with a good ski season, and a few idiots ready to spend hours grooming an ice rink, and an artist reinvesting her profits into a good friend's festival, and a dot-com millionnaire getting sweet-talked into staying just a little bit longer, and maybe hiring a few dozen contractors to fix up his crappy lakeside shack to livable conditions.

It might just need, like me, like everyone, a little kindness, a little understanding, a few more months to skate by.

*   *   *

When I get to the commuter train station that will take me back to my car, I give Renee the biggest hug I can muster. She has to go to work and I have to go try to find
home.
Tears rise up and I hold back a sob.

“When are you coming back to visit me?” she asks me and, for the first time in a long time, I can tell she genuinely wants to know.

“Soon,” I tell her. “Whenever you need me to take Natalie to the American Girl Spa or Natasha to World of Raisins. In the meantime, stop buying stuff, okay? Maybe talk to a realtor, see if you can unload your place?”

She nods obediently. It feels so strange to be giving her advice.

My train rumbles onto the tracks. I hug her again.

“Renee, thank you for everything,” I say, because though we have covered so much ground in the last several hours, and come to understand so much, I know that this good-bye we are saying is more than two best friends spending a few weeks apart. It is a good-bye to the girlhood friendship I hung on to long after I should have let go. “I love you.”

The train is loud and I step on.

“I love you too. And I'm sorry,” she calls after me.

I turn back and start to shake my head no to her,
No, there is nothing to apologize for,
but then I stop myself. I don't have to be that person anymore, that girl who is never hurt, never angry, has never ever had enough. Instead I nod my head to her and mouth again, “Thank you.” The train pulls away. And I finally let Renee disappear from view.

 

FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER

“I can't believe we can come here whenever we want.” Renee has her arms wide, spinning like Julie Andrews in a dirndl. “This is what I've been waiting for my whole entire life.”

“I can't believe you've never been here before,” I say. “How long is the drive?”

“Like, maybe eight hours? I don't know. I slept a lot of the way because my parents are too boring to remain conscious around.”

“It's very sweet that they both drove down to move you in.”

“Sweet, or oppressive? Anyway, they're long gone now. We should be drunk already.”

“Are you going to be that kind of roommate?” I ask her warily, though I know by now that she's not. Since we moved in last weekend, we have done nothing, nothing, but talk to each other nonstop. Mouths full of Fruity Pebbles in the early mornings, chattering away. Two
A.M.
in our lofted beds, still yapping. The whole ride down here on the L, nonstop talking: life histories, family stories, dreams for the future, secret crushes and most embarrassing moments, and the best place to buy cheap ramen in the city.

“Are you going to be the other kind of roommate?” Renee asks me with a challenging smile.

“The lame kind? Maybe so,” I admit.

“Don't worry, I can be lame with the best of them. Look, it's our first Friday as college students and we're stone-cold sober and in an art museum. And it was my idea. So I can't be that much trouble.”

I look at her wickedly. “Do you think we could sneak booze in here?”

Renee nods twice. “I know we could.”

“Were you the bad kid in high school?”

She shrugs. “I was a little bad. My parents think I'm an angel. What about you?”

“I was the nerdy art student.”

“So, you're sticking with that persona, huh?” she says with a smile. “Oh my God, is that a real Picasso?” She rushes over to the Daley drawing. Chalk on wood. I always thought it was a little half-assed.

I shrug. “Sadly, it's not a persona. I would be a business major if it were up to me. The good Picassos are way upstairs, by the way.”

“I would never be roommates with a business major. Let's go upstairs. Do you know your way around?”

“Slow down. You're going to miss the Chagall windows.”

“Who can slow down? We are here to live, Lily! To take it all in! We are artists in the greatest city in the world!”

“It's only Chicago,” I say, because in the Midwest we are not allowed to talk about how awesome we have it.

“It's where our whole lives are about to start.”

I smile. That is exactly what my mother said this morning on the phone. “I think you are going to be an excellent roommate,” I tell Renee, not for the first time.

“You too. You know those sappy stories about people falling in love on the first day of orientation freshman year?”

I shrug shyly, thinking how I've just spent the summer fantasizing about that very thing, only to find the incoming class of our esteemed art school to be less promising in the straight male department than I'd hoped. “Sure.”

“Well, we're going to be like that, only with friendship. Which, when you think about it, is way better than getting boyfriends right away, because that means we can sleep around for the next four years before we get pinned down. Then we'll graduate, move into a huge loft apartment right downtown, make great works of art, fall in love with handsome bearded poets and musicians, and have a thousand children each.”