Best Friends (49 page)

“Stay with me,” Mrs. Cotton whispered, clutching my arm. “I may need a doctor.”

Mr. Cotton's only sibling, a sister who kept twisting the strap of her purse, stood on my other side. She was a secretary, divorced and childless, at a private school for girls. “You were his doctor?” she said in a low voice. I nodded. “So you're a cancer specialist?”

“I'm not a specialist, I'm a general internist,” I said, and she looked at me with pity and revulsion, as if I were less than she had thought.

Larry's accountant friend, looking spent, approached us in the line. “I was your brother's accountant,” he said to the sister. “Larry spoke of you often.” He glanced at me furtively, then seemed to gather strength: “He was a great friend to me.”

The sister stared past the accountant at something across the room. “Oh,” she said, “one of Larry's
friends.
” The accountant held out his hand, but she ignored it. I wondered which scared her more, his blackness or the fear he might be gay.

“You certainly were his friend, I don't know how he could have done his will without you,” Larry's mother broke in. “Samantha, shake hands with Larry's nice accountant. What's your name? I'm afraid I've—”

The accountant, dropping his hand, mumbled a name. I tried to catch his eye, but he looked away, and his hiding from me—who knew everything—hit me as something sad.

“What's that again?” Mrs. Cotton asked, tapping her hearing aid. “I'm rather hard of hearing.”

“Cleve Burton,” the accountant said more loudly.

Cleve Burton. I knew that name. “Cleve Burton?” I said. “You're Cleve Burton? You're not the Cleve Burton who writes—?”

But he was moving past us. “I love to write,” Cleve Burton whispered, touching the back of my forearm with his manicured hand. And he was gone.

 

 

 

“I VISIT EVERY DAY, ” Sally said. “I missed the day I had her”—Sally gestured at her new baby, nestled in a sling that hung across her chest—“but the next day I took her to meet Grandpa. Didn't you meet Grandpa, little sweetums?” Linnea's tiny hand was gripping Sally's finger.

“Any responsiveness at all?”

Sally shook her head. “But I talk to him. Sometimes I hold his wrist to see if his pulse speeds up when he hears me, and you know, maybe it does.” Linnea was tiny, only six pounds at two weeks, and if you didn't know there was a baby hiding in the sling, you might think Sally was a home-improvement salesperson carrying a sack of nails.

I stood up and walked over to the stovetop, lifted the lid on the pot. “What's this glop?”

“Tofu sauce.” Peter had requested less meat in their diet.

“Is this what the guru eats?” The guru was my new name for Peter, who enjoyed his role as a media co-mogul and regaled me with a thousand reasons why Crown Communications was important to the world. He talked at times as if he ran it, which I knew wasn't at all true.

“New recipe,” Sally said. “I don't know.”

I turned away and paced to the paned windows overlooking the backyard. The shrubs and flowers were beautifully groomed, even in November; Sally and Peter had hired a gardener with their blue money.

“I've been thinking about something,” Sally said. “It's not enough to say you're sorry. You have to make peace with the person you hurt. That's from the Kol Nidre service. Yom Kippur.” She looked at me and added an explanation. “Yom Kippur. The Jewish Day of Atonement. Last month. I mean, I don't think there's anyone I've hurt directly who I need to atone to, but it's an interesting concept, don't you think? That atonement should be active.”

I wasn't used to hearing about Jewish holidays from her. I didn't remember her observing any Jewish holidays back in college, except maybe a Passover dinner or two. “Are you getting religion all of a sudden?”

“Who knows?” Sally said.

 

 

 

I WENT OUT AGAIN after Christmas. It was only eight months after the L.A. riots, after the police were found not guilty of beating Rodney King, and I was thinking how I liked the upbeat signs in the airport—LET'S REBUILD L.A. TOGETHER!—and why didn't Sally pay attention to those signs, why did we always stay in the prosperous suburbs and never go, say, downtown?

She wanted to go to some mall, to a Disney store of all places—how consumerist—and of course I went along.

An ad on TV had started me worrying about college costs for Aury. How would I ever do it? For a doctor I didn't make much, and I was supporting my mother too. “I have almost no investments,” I told Sally. “I have a pension fund at work that's invested in Akron Gas and Electric or something.”

“It's probably in a mutual fund,” Sally said. “Pensions don't usually invest in a single stock.”

“Whatever. But I've been thinking, I need help. I mean, this is the nineties, even Frank's talking about stocks again, everybody's investing. Do you remember when those patients of mine got together and did my makeover? That was a great moment.”

“It worked.”

“Sure it did. Expert advice is helpful. So I've been thinking about my money, and I think I need expert advice.”

“I can go over some things we're invested in,” Sally said. “I'm certainly no expert, but . . .” The kids were lapping around her like waves against a boat; I found it hard to concentrate.

“I was thinking of an accountant,” I said. “Don't you think I could use an accountant?”

 

 

 

EARLY IN THE MORNING, Sally stood in the kitchen with a robe on and a towel around her wet hair. “I need my list,” she said. “Where's my list?”

Peter slapped a sheet of paper on the counter in front of her, her daily schedule, which Peter typed out each night on the computer. Really, the man tried. I had realized he was an overgrown boy: he wanted to please her.

I read the list over Sally's shoulder:

“Wow,” I said. “That's a day.”

“That's not a day, it's my life,” Sally said, annoyed. “I'm sure your life's just as hectic.” She removed the towel and started combing out her hair with her fingers.

A small voice rose from the door. “Mommy, can I have some glue and the M&M's?”

Sally made a face, but her tone didn't show it. “Sure, Ezra. Here they are. What are you making? Another pirate ship?”

“When do you go to your office?” I said, reading over her schedule. I was disappointed to see Sara joining us for lunch.

“Every time not listed, I'm in my office.”

“Who's Bruno?”

A small sob sounded through the baby monitor. “Uh-oh,” Sally said. “Linnea's awake. Personal trainer,” she added, answering my question.

“Mommy, where's my cereal?” Barbara demanded.

“Up,” Joshua said beseechingly, his arms around Sally's leg.

“Where's Teresa? Is she sleeping late again? I don't believe this. She goes to bed hours before I do.” Sally scooped up Joshua and opened the door to the basement level where Teresa lived. “Teresa!
Levántate! Por favor!
”

Linnea, her sobs ignored, started to wail.

“I'll bring her to you,” Peter said.

“Oh, God, let me at least get my hair combed out before she gets here.”

“Stop it, Barbara! Stop it!” A thud and a scream. “Mommy, Barbara's eating my M&M's!”

“Ezra, don't hit Barbara. Violence solves nothing. Nothing, do you hear? Barbara, those M&M's aren't for eating. They're for art.”

Suddenly Sally was staring at me while her fingers explored her hair. “Which side do I part my hair on?”

“What?”

“Which side? I can't remember.”

I couldn't remember either. “It's pretty much in the middle.”

“Yes, but it's more to one side.”

Peter rushed in with Linnea, her face almost purple with rage. Sally set Joshua on the floor, tossed herself in a kitchen chair, pulled open her robe, and stuck Linnea on her breast. “Peter, which side do I part my hair on?”

“Too much on your brain,” I said to Sally.

“It's a wonder I'm not a raving lunatic,” Sally said.

“Mommy, what's a—”

“Do you have that form for Dr. Weisbrot?” Sally asked Peter.

“Why not look at your driver's license?” Peter suggested.

The phone rang and Peter answered it.

Gabriel, who was pulling himself onto a kitchen chair, fell and knocked his head on the table.

“Can you FedEx out that Urseline letter this morning?” Peter shouted over Gabriel's screams.

“It's on the list, Peter.”

“A little to the left,” I said, finally locating the license in Sally's wallet.

“Okay. Come here, Gabey.” With her free hand, Sally stroked and inspected his head. “Ouch! Linnea, don't bite me. This is ridiculous,” she said, looking at me. “This is more than one person can stand.”

 

 

 

I WAS WATCHING a stream of videos on the monitor over Virginia's shoulder. Rumps, breasts, penises, the old in and out, in umpteen variations. Of course, the door was closed. “Important thing is to keep things moving,” Virginia said. “Can't have people lying there like logs.”

“Don't you get tired of it?”

Virginia shrugged. “I can't even say they look like people to me anymore. I think of them like those little dolls you can bend all around, and they're stuck together in all these crazy ways. The only I time get confused is with some of the orgies.”

I laughed. “What are the models like, do you meet them?”

Virginia considered. “The actors? They're a mixed bag. I don't deal with them.”

“I've met Sara Tweedles,” I said. “At Sally's play group.”

Virginia's face lit up, her eyes still on the screen. “Sara? She's different, she's a crackerjack. Work, work, work, you don't often run into a work ethic like hers. And she's so clean. She's the top of our line.”

“Sally says she's starting law school.”

“Really? Good for her.” I noticed a sudden hardness in the set of Virginia's jaw. She didn't look at me. “Bad for us, though,” she said, punching a button that made the screen go blank. “I got those grandkids.”

 

 

 

“YOU DON'T NEED ME.” Cleve Burton shuffled some papers. “I'm an accountant. What you need is a financial planner.”

“Really?” Even I could hear how crestfallen I sounded.

“Well, yes. I do cut-and-dried things, taxes, pro formas. I'm not a visionary.”

“Not in this part of your life,” I muttered. And then I burst out with a speech that surprised me, how I didn't have anyone else to go to; how my mother, who I'd thought was a good investor, lost her money; how none of my brothers had any money sense—Frank having lost his thousands on margin calls, Baxter with his odd jobs barely making his pickup payments, not to mention Eric and his bankruptcies. How my best friend was in the adult entertainment business with plenty of money but God knows what she invested in, and I wanted to be socially responsible, at least minimally. How I was a single mom with a bright young daughter who'd probably want to go to an expensive college like I did and I didn't have anything saved, not a penny, even though I made a lot of money by normal—if not by doctor—standards. “But I don't know how to start investing!” I finished. “ And then I thought of you, and it seemed exactly right because I know you're, I know you're—”

He looked up at me, bluish circles in the dark skin under his eyes. “Gay,” I swore he was thinking, and this pained me.

“Trustworthy,” I finished. “You're incredibly trustworthy. You're like this hero to me.”

I don't know how I, Clare Ann Mann of Akron, Ohio, ended up talking California-ese. I do it more than Sally, a California native. “Like this hero to me”—I winced at my own words. But my way of saying it was typical for me; imprecise, distanced, mildly ironic. Skirting the emotion rather than embracing it.

“You're my hero,” I said.

He looked up at me and blinked, clearly startled, mistrusting. I could see him searching my face for a clue to my intentions, and I looked back as steadily as I could. Trust me, I felt myself pleading.

“Why your hero?” he asked.

“Everything you've done for the gay community. The alarms you've sounded. The free-needle program you started. The outrageousness of your column. Your anger! And then you were kind to Mr. Cotton. And not just to him, to his mother, his sister, all of them. And even though I'm sure it cost you, you never let it show.”

The accountant's eyes slipped from my face and focused somewhere in the middle distance. “It did cost me,” he said.

“I could tell. But you never wavered.”

“I did waver.”