When We Were Friends (3 page)

It was dark inside and smelled strongly of cloves; chimes and stained glass hung from the wood-planked ceiling, and the tables were buried in more odds and ends than you’d ever think could fit on a table. I restrained myself from dodging behind the first available shelf, which was not something Diana Ross would ever do. Instead I lifted my sculpted chin, curled my pouty lips into a smile, and strode to the front counter with the words already formed in my head. And found a baby.

“I’m looking for Ms. Gristler,” I told it.

The baby stared back solemnly from its carrier. I flushed and backed away.

And then from behind me, “Can I help you?”

Her voice. I turned. I not just turned, I turned with triumphant superiority, in an eighty-carat-engagement-ring-wearing sort of way. “Why, Sydney Beaumont,” I said. And showed my teeth.

“Lainey? Lainey Carson? Wow, gosh. I mean gosh.”

The shock was perfect, exactly how anyone would react at the sight of Diana Ross in an occult shop, and I felt my shoulders loosen. “This is such a weird coincidence. What’s it been, ten years? Fifteen?”

Sydney nodded, shook her head. “More than that I guess.” She smiled widely at me, then pulled me into her arms. And there I was, my chin on her shoulder, my face pressed against the side of her head. I just stood there. I couldn’t figure out what else to do.

“Well it’s amazing to see you!” she said, pulling away. The happy surprise in her widened eyes had become something fake, like the put-on surprise of the newly anointed Miss America when the first runner-up is called. “You look amazing, Lainey. You haven’t changed at all.”

“You either,” I said. I’d hoped she’d look awful, worn and wrinkled or pocked with adult acne but she looked great, her hair in a strawberry-blond bob, her buttoned shirt tucked neatly into her jeans to emphasize her waist and strain just perfectly around her maybe-silicone chest. Age looked even better on her than youth had, the kind of woman you could picture in an Oil of Olay commercial,
I’m thirty-six …

“You’re here browsing?” I said. “Pretty snazzy stuff. I love these earrings!” I lifted a card at random, a pair of pentacles, five-pointed stars, approximately the diameter of my palm.

“I work here, actually. I’ve been here for about a year, behind the counter and taking orders and inventory, all that.”

“Oh! Oh …” I made my voice trail off, letting Sydney hear the slight derision in my tone. The tone said loud and clear,
Look at this! Who would’ve expected you’d end up as a cashier in a dusty shop whose only customers are witches!
“Well I’m here to see Ms. Gristler, if she’s around. She said to come by this morning.”

“You’re here to paint the mural?” At the counter the baby gave a
startled-sounding “Ah!” and Sydney glanced quickly at it, then turned back. “You know I read about you a couple years ago, in the
Gazette
. They were talking about actual canvas paintings though, right? Not murals.”

The
Gazette
article had been my one brush with fame. They’d photographed samples of my work, and I’d immediately gotten calls from people interested in buying them or seeing what else I’d done. That “fame” had lasted less than a month—which I guess made it only
pseudo
-fame—but in that month I’d imagined that I’d finally be able to stop worrying about the cost of good toilet paper and the timing of shoe sales.

“Murals pay the rent,” I said. “Not too many people buy abstract portraits from unknown artists, but I do still get calls sometimes from galleries that want to show my stuff.”

“Guess I always knew you’d become an artist; you were so damn talented. A friend of a friend actually has one of your paintings in her living room, these little girls—I think they’re girls—at the beach? I recognized your signature.”

I remembered that painting, tried to picture it in someone’s home. It always gave me a little thrill when I sold a painting or finished a mural, knowing some stranger would see it every day, and looking at it would briefly enter a world that used to reside only in my own head.

“Anyway, Sara told me there was somebody coming to show their work, but she’s not here.”

The baby’s voice rose to a whimper and then a full-fledged wail, and as Sydney turned toward it, waving distractedly at me in apology, I saw it. The scar, a pale white indentation that looked almost like a vein line. I looked down at the scar on my own palm, then made a fist as Sydney walked past me to the counter. She plugged a pacifier into the baby’s mouth with the indifference of someone stuffing bread crumbs into a turkey.

The baby was wearing green overalls printed with ducks, had orange hair and a tiny snot-filled nose. I tried to deduce its sex, but came up blank. “It’s yours?”

“Her name’s Jacqueline and yeah, she’s mine.”

I gazed at the baby, feeling a pang. Starting a family, having a baby, seemed so straightforward to everybody else. Something they always assumed would happen and so accepted without surprise or gratitude once it did. Me, I would’ve celebrated every day.

Sydney traced a finger over the baby’s shirt cuff and gave a distant smile. “She’s mine at least for now. David’s trying to say I’m unfit, but that’s just because it’s the only way he could think of to spite me for leaving him. You remember David? David McGrath?”

I nodded slowly. “He was cute. And rich, right? The McGrath financiers.”

“Which made him promising in high school, but now it doesn’t mean squat. We started dating after the ten-year reunion and we got married within a few months, which I can tell you is not ever a good idea.”

So Sydney was divorced, beautiful Sydney a divorcée with a baby, which really was worse than never having been married. Divorce tainted you, made you moldy around the edges. “Probably not.” I smiled brightly. “Although with my husband, I knew I wanted to marry him within a few minutes.”

Her lips twitched as she glanced at me. “You got kids yet?”

“Kids? Well no, not yet.” I watched the baby suck furiously at the pacifier, her carroty hair mashed crooked against one side of her head, making her look somewhat demented. “But we’re trying for them, Keith and me.”

Keith was a man I’d dated for six weeks, the longest-term relationship I’d ever had. I’d met him in SoHo, over the couple of months I’d lived away from home. He was—at least aesthetically—perfect: dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-souled. He’d lived in a studio that used to be a warehouse, complete with cement-block walls and a garage door entrance. And with him I’d become someone completely different, exactly what I pictured in my head when I said the word “artist”: leather-jacket-and-eyeliner-wearing, red-wine-drinking, four-letter-word-using. After our first kiss he’d said he loved me, and I’d been sure I was in love with him too.

But then, two months after I’d left home, Star overdosed on Xanax and called me to say goodbye. I dialed 911 and raced back to Virginia, realizing within minutes after seeing her shrunken form in the hospital bed that I couldn’t ever leave again.

Long-distance relationships are impossible for dark-souled artists; they need immediacy, daily dosings of passion. And even as we both cried over the phone about how much we missed each other, I’d known it was the end. But after I’d reverted back to my non-leather-jacket-wearing real self, I’d still thought about him for years, imagining what our life could have been.

“He’s an architect,” I added, looking down at my rings, hoping Sydney’s eyes would follow. Until I noticed a chip in the engagement ring, exposing the white plastic underneath. I tucked my fists under my arms.

The baby began to cry around the pacifier, her lips thin and quivering. Sydney made no move to comfort her, so I found myself setting my portfolio on the counter so I could lift her, delighted at my own audacity, feeling a bright swell of pleasure at her weight against my arm.

“We’ve been trying for about six months,” I said, “since we first got married. We both love kids so much. He’s an architect like I said, and he gets me to paint murals if his clients want them, after his houses are built. All kinds of weird things people want, rain forests and manatees, and paintings of their dead cats. And he’s built us, Keith did, he built us a pretty little ranch up in the farmland near Norfolk, with a room for the baby once it comes.”

The conversation was so weird; not just the lies which were planned out, but the distracted look in Sydney’s eyes. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but I’d wanted some reaction,
something
, maybe admiration or even a little jealousy considering I had a fake husband and Sydney had nothing. Look who ended up with a happier life, I was trying to say. But instead it all sounded like giddy rambling.

Jacqueline raised one arm, and when I tucked her against my shoulder she swung that arm round to open and close her hand against the back of my neck, like she was trying to soothe me. At the
feel of her tiny hand, my eyes unexpectedly started to sting. I pressed my cheek against the top of her head. “It’ll be such a sweet room,” I said, “murals on every wall, an antique dresser and crib. I can already picture it exactly in my head.”

“Sounds nice.” Sydney watched the baby as I rocked it foot to foot. “It’s great you’re so creative. The most I could think to do was paint Jacqueline’s room pink, which she probably thinks is such an insult.” She flashed a quick smile. “So Sara’s not going to be here, like I said. But she’s letting me look at your work and make a decision for her. ’Specially because I’m the one who’s going to have to be working next to the thing all day, she wanted to make sure I could stand it.”

That was the problem, why it seemed so wrong, because Sydney didn’t care. Here I was trying to orchestrate every movement, every word, but to Sydney it all meant nothing. No apology, no discomfort at all. Those years we’d been friends were just some old-bad memory she’d left behind.

“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead and take a look. First’s the toy store.” I rubbed at Jacqueline’s back, watching Sydney’s face as she scanned the photos, looking for at least some sign of admiration. “Cat in the Hat chasing after the Things. And then’s the kitchen store and the Sweet Shoppe, and I also put some sketches in back, of ideas for here. I was thinking a Druidic scene on one wall, fairies and smoke and people in dark hoods, and then another wall with a night scene, planets and stars and all that.”

“Sounds great,” Sydney said, scanning through the portfolio too quick, closing it and handing it forward.

“Thanks.” I tried to reach for it and almost dropped the baby. I grappled with her for a moment, feeling the damp on my shoulder, tears or drool, then reluctantly handed her to Sydney. Sydney slung Jacqueline over her arm like she was a wet towel, and Jacqueline stopped crying as if appalled. “So Ms. Gristler will give me a call?”

“Sure,” Sydney said nonchalantly, meaning, probably, that I wouldn’t get the job. When I always got the job; I was the best around at what I did. Except Sydney must have other reasons for turning me
down, which was kind of gratifying in its own way. “She has your number?” she said.

“I think so. It’s the same number I had when we were kids, my mother’s number. I’m staying there for a while, me and Keith both, because Star’s been having a hard time. Keith’s so good about it all, though.”

“That’s great,” Sydney said. “Maybe we should get together sometime, drinks or something, reminisce about the good old days. I’ll call you.”

She had no intention of calling, obviously. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling to show I wasn’t stupid. “I’d rather you didn’t actually,” I said. “I love my life now, it’s pretty much everything I ever wanted it to be, so I’d rather not muddy it with the past.” And then I strode out the door, nearly tripping on a loose nail. It was only outside that I noticed how wildly my heart was pounding.

I drove home with my portfolio on my lap, trying not to replay every word. I’d always thought the idea of closure was just some psychological bull, but now I could feel the jarring of un-closure, like I was just hanging in midair from a marionette string still tied to those two awful years. I could pretend it wasn’t there, but it didn’t let me get off that easy. I could create a new life, grow past it, but every once in a while something would happen to tug on that string, a whisper at a party that might or might not be about me, a man who didn’t call after a first date, my thighs chafing together when I walked, and that string pulled me right back into adolescence. I had the feeling that if I didn’t cut it off, and soon, I’d end up just like Star, locked away because everything outside the window could grab you and pull you back into the things you didn’t want to remember. By the time Star was my age she’d been married and widowed and had a kid, but still she couldn’t escape that pull of fear.

Back home, I brought the hair scissors into Star’s room. “Something pretty this time,” I said. “Layers maybe.”

Star studied my face intently. “Something happened.”

“Nothing happened, absolutely nothing. It was great seeing Sydney; she wants to get together for drinks.”

Star raised her eyebrows. “She wants something from you. Get me my cards.”

“Christ, Ma, what the hell? You think there’s no reason for her to want to spend time with me? You don’t think much of me, do you?”

“That’s not it, I just don’t think much of Sydney.” She reached for her deck and handed it forward. “Shuffle.”

I took the deck, stuck it into my back pocket. I should’ve done that a long time ago, crept in here while Star was asleep, jammed the deck in my pocket and sat on it, rubbed my butt hard against the floor. The cards were so old they’d have to crumble eventually.
Well look at that
, I’d say.
How weird
.

“Listen,” Star said softly. “God has a plan for you, you know that, right? I made up a chart for you when you were born, and I’d never seen such a thing, your sun signs, your triads. I’ve never been so excited as when I made up your chart.”

“Guess I’ve been pretty disappointing so far.” I made my voice light, but I meant it. She knew I meant it.

She took both my hands. “You haven’t fulfilled your destiny yet is all. But I think soon, the universe’ll lay it on out for you. You don’t have to go out looking for your destiny, it’ll find you.”