Best Friends (51 page)

“ HOW ' S SALLY?” TED ASKED.

I opened my mouth and closed it. How could I explain the deaths, the disarray? Ted and I were alone, which relieved me, but still I worried about what I'd say. “She's okay, I guess, but she's had some rough years. Her mother was killed in a car crash and then her brother, Ben—you know he always had a drug problem—he died, and then her father ended up with Alzheimer's, and now he's in a persistent vegetative state. They did a PET scan on him,” I added uselessly.

“Clare, that's tragic,” Ted sounded shocked. He shook his head. “Poor Sally.”

“So now she's running her father's pornography business.”

“Sally a pornographer?” Ted shook his head. “How bizarre. Well, at least it's an honest business. It's not Murder, Inc., or something.”

“As a woman, I find it very hard to see Sally running that business.”

Ted shrugged. “I'm sure she isn't happy about it either.”

“She even retired from her law firm.”

“Really? I thought she was married to that firm.”

“Not now. Now she's married to a man named Peter Newcomer. They have five children.”

“Five!”

“Sally just had another baby, a girl. Linnea.”

“And her husband?”

“He doesn't work. He's California.” With a pang of guilt, I remembered Peter's carefully typed-out schedules. “He tries, he really does.”

“How did Sally's brother die, did he overdose?”

I hesitated. “Probably suicide.”

Ted shook his head in silence. “I'm sure you've been a big help to her,” he said after a moment. “You two were always joined at the hip.”

“We're two thousand miles apart.”

“Still.”

“I see her pretty often. I go out there. It's weird, with all she's been through, but we don't talk about anything of substance. We just sort of . . . chatter.”

“You know each other so well, you don't need substance.”

Is that true? I wondered. But Ted said it with such certainty, as if I'd never think to disagree.

 

 

 

“ARE YOU SITTING DOWN?” I said. “I'm at this conference in St. Louis with Aury, and I ran into Aury's father.”

“You mean Ted?” Sally said.

She'd known for years, she said. Aury looked like Ted. But she'd never asked me about it because I'd never mentioned it to her.

“And besides,” Sally went on, “she has Ted's tremor.”

 

 

 

WE PARTED ON A Friday after a big communal breakfast. Ted and Mary's girls, resplendent in dresses and hair bows Mary had made herself, clustered like gaudy stars around my daughter. “You call us on the phone, Aurelia, okay?” the oldest said, arms around my daughter's waist. “You come see us.”

“You can play with Malibu Barbie and everything,” a younger voice chimed in.

Aury nodded solemnly and looked at me. “Sure, you'll visit,” I said.

The little girls wanted to kiss Aury on the cheek, but she wrinkled her face up and stuck her chin down in her chest.

“Aury, Aury,” I said. “Let your sisters kiss you! You'll hurt their feelings.” I glanced at Mary to see how she was taking this, but from her perfect hair to her buckled pumps, she was politely, firmly opaque. The daughter of two alcoholics, Ted had told me. As a little girl, she had raised her own little sisters.

“It's okay, Aury,” Ted interrupted. “You don't have to let them slobber all over you.” He crouched down in front of my daughter. “They're kissers,” he said. “Can you stand it?”

Aury studied him with her big brown eyes, her tight brow relaxing. She had Ted's droop at the edge of her eyes. “I like you,” she said. “You're my nice daddy.”

I had never—until I saw Ted, until he asked me—planned for Aury to know, or for him to know. I had done my best not to know myself. And now both of them knew, as well as Ted's “real” family, and they were making plans together. Already, three days after becoming aware of each other, my daughter and her father had a relationship independent of me. A week ago, I was worrying over whether to bring Aury's winter coat to the conference. Now that memory bespoke such stunning triviality that the winter coat itself (which I had brought, and she hadn't used) seemed to be bursting in the air above us, its down feathers drifting over us like snow or wedding rice, or the confetti that rains down on a cavalcade of heroes.

 

 

 

THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG with Ben's tooth. It wasn't a normal tooth. Aury's teeth, when I retrieved them from under her pillow, had tiny tubes running into them where the blood vessels and nerves had coursed, but Ben's tooth had no tube at all. It wasn't intact; it was a fragment of a tooth, and why it was a fragment was either a mystery or a proof.

I would take out the tooth—untying the satin jewelry bag, unsnapping the pillbox, unzipping the plastic bag—and lay it on my palm. I held it up to the light, rubbed it between my fingers, even touched it to my tongue to check its texture. One sharp edge and no tube. Something had happened. Maybe exactly what Sid told me.

I should tell her. I should give her the possibilities. I should break through her moral oblivion.

I supposed she could get a tooth forensically and genetically tested, if she wanted to take it that far.

 

 

 

TED AND I STOOD in line at a Burger King in western Pennsylvania, exchanging Aury, the girls in a gaggle behind us comparing Barbie clothes. “Ted, you're rational,” I said. “Can I ask your advice? If you knew an awful secret about someone that a friend of yours loved, would you tell your friend? Aury'll have a fish sandwich and fries and a milk. She finds the kids' toys insulting.”

“What's the point?”

“The point is because it's true, because this person is an adult and deserves to know, even if it's painful. Because otherwise they may think of the world, I don't know, in a wrong sort of way.”

“Go ahead, girls, you sit down. Daddy'll order for you. Clare, are you trying to tell me something?”

“Well, not in a wrong sort of way, exactly. An inaccurate way.”

“What are you talking about? Just come out and tell me.”

“I worry about this all the time.”

“Just tell me.” Desperation in his voice. “Tell me. Don't keep me in the dark about anything else. Did you have an abortion back when we were married? Did you have a miscarriage? Did you have an affair with someone? Clare, I can handle it. Look at me! I can handle anything. Please tell me. Please, Clare, don't torment me any more.”

“It's Sally,” I said quietly. “I'm talking about me and Sally.”

“Oh,” Ted said, embarrassed, both of us understanding what his outburst had revealed. The guy still loved me. Still. After all these years.

 

 

 

“ HOW OFTEN WILL AURY visit them?” Sally asked over the phone.

“A weekend every month or two. Ted wants it to be when he's free. He's incredibly busy, he has lots of weekend calls, plus he goes off and speaks at seminars. He's an expert on the esophagus. He calls it his ten inches of fame.”

“Is meeting him awkward?”

“A little. I'm grateful his wife doesn't come.”

“What a bizarre situation,” Sally said, and I was pleased, somehow, that Sally thought the word “bizarre” fit a situation of mine. “What about his mother?”

“Oh! She moved. When Ted went off to Baltimore, she and her husband realized they should let Ted be independent and they moved to Texas. Ted sees them maybe four times a year. It sounds like a normal relationship now.”

“She made the ultimate sacrifice,” Sally said, and her voice had a wistful quality. “She let him go.”

JOSHUA TODDLED UP to Sally in their kitchen, holding a cloth diaper which he, with some fanfare, draped over his head. “Is Joshua hiding?” Sally asked. Joshua's diaper nodded. “Where's Joshua?” Sally asked. And to me: “Have you seen Joshua?” She walked a few steps away. “Joshua! Joshua!”

Joshua whipped off the diaper and stood beaming at his mother. “Oh, lovie,” Sally said, stroking his cheek with her hand. She glanced at me. “I love these kids more than life itself. I can't believe how much I love them.”

“All of them?” I heard myself yelp. Because that had been Sid's flaw: he'd loved his daughter more.

Sally looked at me in astonishment, then—to my horror—understanding flooded her face. “Oh, you don't love them any less when you have more. I forget that you only have one. But trust me, if Aury had a sister, you wouldn't love Aury less.”

“No,” I said, flustered, feeling unaccountably guilty. “I'm sure I wouldn't.”

 

 

 

“ YOU TALK TO THE BANK?” Virginia asked. We were in the upstairs room. I had brought a gift from Ohio, a box of chocolates, and Sally was lifting the lid.

“Not yet. I wanted to talk with the Compunox people first.” Sally glanced at me. “Virginia thinks we should expand onto the World Wide Web.”

“It's not all my idea. Buck thinks so too.”

“Is Buck out?” I asked.

Sally nodded, biting into a chocolate. “Did Daddy have to go to the bank when you expanded into videos?” Sally asked. “Was that capital-intensive at all?” She turned to me. “This could actually be fairly cheap. But we'll need a partner with computer know-how.”

“How about Peter?”

Sally gave a tight smile. “Way beyond him. Don't quote me.”

What would it be like, I wondered, to sleep with a man you didn't respect? I felt a surge of pity for Peter.

“Your dad get over that urinary tract infection?” Virginia asked.

“He's much better. No fever. You should visit him, Virginia. It's a nice facility.”

“The aides all wear dresses,” I put in.

Virginia gave a little shiver. “It's like I said, I don't need to see him drooling.”

“It's like I said,” Sally noted, “you're lucky you don't have to.” When she picked up a sheaf of papers, I noticed her hands shaking. “You only worked with him for thirty-five years, Virginia.”

There was a knock on the door. “Mommy?” said Ezra's voice. “Linnea's not breathing.” Sally tore out into the hall, slamming the door behind her. Virginia and I looked at each other. Both of us were sure Linnea was fine. Ezra had a low threshold for alarms.

“It didn't happen overnight, you know,” Virginia said. “He hasn't been right for years.” Her voice dropped; she seemed to be studying the side of my head. “I could tell you things about Sid and his family that would curl your hair.”

I smiled at her and shrugged, as if that were just the sort of ridiculous inflammatory thing Virginia would say. “Care for an Ohio buckeye?” I asked, holding out the box of chocolates.

 

 

 

“ SHE SEEMS,” TED SAID, “I don't know, a lot deeper than my girls. Little Stephanie was talking about some kid at school who wears a hearing aid, and Aury said, ‘Stephanie, everybody has their own problems. Everybody is different, and there's nothing wrong with that.' ” We were standing outside the Route 10 rest area just east of the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, while Aury, whom we were passing from one car to the other, used the bathroom. After our mutual revelation, we didn't meet at the Burger King again—that would have been too intimate.

“When you work in AIDS, you tend to stress the tolerance angle.”

“It wasn't tolerance, it was empathy. How do you teach a kid empathy? Come up to Cleveland and meet me for lunch next month,” Ted urged. “I'm speaking at a seminar there.”

“Your ten inches?”

He seemed to blush, and then I blushed too.

“We need to make plans for August,” Ted said.

“August?”

“Mary and I would like to take Aury with us to our place in Colorado. For a week, maybe, not long. If you'll let us.”

I drove to Cleveland the next month, June, and ended up sitting in the dining room—a very spiffy dining room, with cloth tablecloths and big windows and a city view—at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, as Ted, post-speech, told me the details of his Colorado time-share.

“So you want to time-share Aury at your time-share,” I said, relieved that he and Mary didn't have a whole Colorado house, which would have been unacceptable extravagance, really, on top of his cream-colored shirt and elegant olive jacket and buffed brown shoes with tassels. (“Hey,” Ted had said when I commented on his outfit, “speakers have a standard to uphold.”)