With Friends Like These: A Novel (15 page)

“I’d have been here twenty minutes ago, but I had to wait for a turtle to cross the road,” she shouted.

“Then you met our closest neighbor,” I answered as we hugged and I took the bags. They were promisingly heavy. “You made good time.”

“Particularly considering I brake for antiques stores. Remind me to show you my clam basket and the Bakelite I got for nine bucks.” She was speaking at full gallop, which Quincy does only when excited. “And my taxidermy. What’s a home without its own raccoon?”

“Is this all for your new apartment?” I asked.

The grin on Quincy’s face switched off. She put down the bag in her arms and pulled out her cell phone. “That reminds me, I need to make a call.”

“Good luck with reception,” I said as I left her outside. “It comes and goes here, not unlike the sun.”

I carried the bags to the kitchen and began unpacking. Miniature croissants, seven-grain bread, a five-dollar jar of mustard, that expensive sweet cream butter, plums, nectarines, olives, almonds, bottles of pinot grigio, and—appropriately enough—quince jam. I was putting the wine in the refrigerator when Quincy walked into the kitchen and sat at the Formica table, an upgrade from when Abigail and Big Tom pledged their troth to Walmart. I’d put out sugar cookies from the best and only bakery in town and tall glasses of cold lemonade, made the way Abigail had taught me, with plenty of sugar syrup and juice from real lemons. Quincy pressed her glass to her forehead before she dug two pills out of her bag
and gulped them. She finished her drink in nonstop swallows and looked around.

“Can I steal that cuckoo clock?” She’d recovered her smile.

“I’d like to smack it. It’s come here to die.” I loved that Quincy was the first to arrive. I didn’t see enough of her alone, and she’s a woman who listens and weighs what you say. “After you’re settled in, I thought we’d drive to town, pick up donuts for breakfast, then go for lobster.” I grabbed her duffel. “Come.”

At the top of the landing, Quincy stopped to study a densely hung collection of family pictures: Tom and his sisters and brothers celebrating summer by sailing, canoeing, napping in hammocks, climbing trees, roasting hot dogs on sticks, and holding up fish longer than their arms. In the corner I spotted a new addition, Henry waddling on the beach, his face obscured by a large straw hat, a shovel in one chubby paw and the other grasping Tom’s hand. I saw Quincy look at the picture, poised to say
aw
.

“Theoretically, you have your choice of bedrooms,” I said, not wanting to linger at this shrine to family fecundity, “but don’t get too excited.” I led her to the front room on the second floor. “This is where I’d thought you’d stay—it’s got a view of what we call a beach.” I pointed to a moonscape of black rocks. “I figured, given Chloe’s habits, you’d be happiest here.” Chloe requires postapocalyptic darkness and a white-noise machine, and even then she often spends hours each night reading. She’s no one’s idea of a roommate. “You could share with Jules.” The room had two frilly canopied double beds, yet Quincy didn’t even walk to the window to look at the sea before she said, “Let’s see the other bedroom.”

It was half the size, with a single bed. She stretched out and slowly sank. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“There’s one more bed, out on the sleeping porch. If it turns cold you’ll freeze your tush off, but one thing we’re not short of here is blankets.”

“Show me.” We walked across the landing and I pushed open the screen door.

“I love it,” she said, though I wasn’t sure what there was to love: the
bed and view were far better in the big room. Yet she staked her claim by dumping her duffel on the floor.

Quincy’s decision puzzled me for the rest of the afternoon, while we took a swim and planned menus for the next few days. I waited for her to explain. She didn’t. I decided to take it to the next level, trying first my version of subtlety. “Hey, maybe I was imagining it, but when we were together a few weeks ago there seemed to be some friction between you and Jules.” She ducked it. Later, at the lobster pound, I, Talia the assault weapon, fired point-blank. “What the fuck is going on with you and Jules?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

I jabbered about Henry, which carried us through dessert. We drove home and changed into our pajamas, but I wasn’t tired. The air was too sticky, the crickets too vociferous, and my psyche too worried about when I’d get around to rewriting the essay about Henry along with June Rittenhouse’s project. I’d started the pitch five times, but each attempt sounded like dreck. I was getting more agitated at the house, which made me even less capable of finding an edgy tone.

“What do you say I open some wine?” I asked.

“I’d say pour,” Quincy answered.

I pulled out a sauvignon blanc. I wouldn’t know if it was flinty or fleshy, only that it was ice cold and cost less than ten dollars at Trader Joe’s. We sat side by side in the screened porch off the front of the house, the bottle between us on a rickety wicker table next to a flickering citronella candle. I’d poured us each a second glass before I worked up my nerve. “I have to talk to you,” I said.

“I thought that’s what we were doing.”

“I’m feeling guilty about something.”

“It’d better be good.” Her tone was lilting and mischievous, as if she was expecting to hear that I was running off to London with Eliot, my married boss. I turned to her. Her symmetrical face, with its elegant, narrow nose, was framed by shaggy hair she cuts herself. I’ve always liked that Quincy doesn’t take herself too seriously, nor is she quick to judge. I
wouldn’t be able to have this conversation with Jules, who would give me advice before I’d even uttered a clause.

The words stuck, suddenly, in my throat. Friends don’t steal friends’ jobs, especially when the friends are going to start a four-day love fest. I wanted to talk about how I was sandbagging Chloe, but I didn’t know this Talia, and couldn’t explain her, with or without Mean Maxine translating. Quincy was pinning me down with her cat eyes. I defaulted to the misdemeanor. “Tom wants to pull all sorts of strings to get Henry into private school.”

“That’s what you’re feeling guilty about?” She scrunched up her face. “Yay, Tom. If I had a child …” Here she took a long, audible breath. “I’d want him to go every summer to these obscenely expensive camps they have up here and, of course, the best possible school.”

“It’s not only that I feel like a phony trying to get my kid into a private school, a school that, by the way, we can’t afford.” I squirmed. Even this was harder than I thought. “Chloe and Xander want the same school for Dash, and … there aren’t many spots. We’re competing against them.”

She refilled our glasses. “Who says you’re competing? Maybe both boys will get in.”

Quincy had no reason to be familiar with the evil politics of private schools. “Or not. Let’s say Dash gets in and Henry doesn’t. I think I’d despise Chloe, or at least Tom might.”

Quincy took some time before she spoke. “You think it’s Henry who will get in, not Dash, and Chloe will be crushed.”

I would never second that out loud, but Henry is older than Dash and Tom and I are fairly certain he might be the world’s most brilliant child, even if I’m too superstitious to admit this. I shrugged.

“These things happen all the time, friends going against friends.” Quincy smirked—yes, that’s what it was—then broke into an unreadable chortle.

“I don’t want to go against Chloe,” I, the towering hypocrite, proclaimed.

“You two should be able to discuss this.”

My chutzpah kicked in. “Like you could chat girl to girl with Jules about whatever it was that made you all twitchy when we had dinner in Westport?”

For the next twenty minutes Quincy spilled out an annotated play-by-play. If I was following her, she’d found an apartment so perfect it sounded airbrushed. “After seeing almost fifty apartments, when I walked into this place it felt absolutely like home.” Idiotically, she’d blathered to Jules about it, and Jules blabbed to her boyfriend. “She’s betrayed me. No ethics.” Now Arthur, whom I’d yet to meet but already despised, was, with Jules’ help, scheming to grab the place away from the Blues, though Quincy and Jake had put down a deposit on it. “He’s trying to break our contract.”

There was considerable detail to take in at one-thirty in the morning, especially for someone not acquainted with the customs of buying apartments, but I got the central plot. When Quincy finished, she sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. I thought she might be trying not to cry.

“I can’t believe this,” I said stupidly. “It doesn’t sound like Jules.” Not the Julia de Marco I thought I knew, who usually repaid friends with a high rate of interest.

“I assure you, I am not making any of this up.”

I could hear the hurt in Quincy’s voice. It was going to be a
long
long weekend.

  
Chloe

In the morning I headed to Maine. I parked my SUV in Westport, where we switched to Jules’ new Mini Cooper, a convertible so compact and golden it was like riding in one of the minaudières I see women casually toss on the tables at charity dinners. Jules and I took turns driving and, as usual, she was prepared, not only with a thermos of strong coffee and shortcuts but with rock mixes—classic, indie, alternative. The two of us were harmonizing with Feist when Arthur’s name spontaneously combusted. “That fucking Arthur” were her exact words as she looked at her cell phone.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“The dickhead just texted a list of things I should buy for him up in Maine. Lobster Newburg, cranberry chutney, Maypo, and that revolting canned brown bread. Can’t he find his way to a grocery store?”

“Maybe he misses you and it’s his way of showing he cares.”

“Did I not tell you to cut the crap if we were going to be stuck together for seven hours?” This was said with love.

“Tell me honestly, are you cursing the day I gave him your name?”

“Dollface, you did good,” Jules said. “I’m only cursing myself.” She paused. A mile later, after I thought the topic was dead, she started up again. “When Arthur pulls something like this I want to shoot back with my own list—of his faults. Except I know that the moment I hit send I’ll get all ‘Julia Maria, you’ve been dating for almost thirty years, and who’ve you found who’s better?’” She was mimicking her nonna. “‘Don’t give up on this one, not yet. In the long run, will you turn out any less happy with Arturo than with George Clooney, who, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t returning your calls?’”

I had to ask, because we’d had this conversation before. “Why talk yourself into a guy?”

Jules glanced at me with a look close to pity. “I appreciate the sisterly support, but have you checked out my ass lately? Each cheek’s the size of a pizza pan. What makes you think Arthur isn’t settling for me?”

Behind closed doors, I suspect, Jules has a sensuality men can’t get enough of, but I think every bad boyfriend she’s ever had, along with her mother and father, is living inside her, rent free. “I’m not buying it. You’re going to have to convince me.”

Two exits and a long Eric Clapton set passed before she tried. “For the record, I do admire many things about Arthur. Number one, he needs managing, and I am a born manager. Two, at least half the time I laugh with him, not at him. Three, he’s smart, which I assume you must know, since he used to be your boss. Four, he isn’t a drunk, an actor, or a drunk actor. Five, he’s straight, and six, he doesn’t need Viagra. Seven, he’s not a divorced daddy with nose-ringed teenagers whom I’d hate as much as they’d hate me. Eight, neither is he a politician or athlete, whose job description apparently includes philanderer. Nine, he hears me when I call him on his bullshit, and ten, the most important reason of all, he calls me on mine. I’ve run out of fingers. Shall I go on?”

“Tell me one thing, do you find any of this romantic?” Jules had overlooked what I consider the most crucial element of any couple.

She howled. “Chloe, my child, do
I
look like a romantic?”

“Seriously, in this century, what constitutes romance?”