Friends Forever (3 page)

All five of them had had a great first day at the Atwood School, they liked their teachers and were happy with their new friends. Marilyn told herself that it had been worth the long, agonizing admission process. As she drove away with Billy, her water broke on the front seat, and she felt the first familiar labor pains, which heralded Brian’s arrival into the world. He was born that night.

B
y the beginning of third grade, the five best friends had been bosom buddies for three years. They were eight. They were still in the same carpool, with Andy and Izzie’s babysitters pitching in when needed, and they often had play dates with each other. More often than not Connie O’Hara, Sean’s mother, would invite several of them to her house. Her older son, Kevin, was fifteen by then, and a sophomore at Atwood. He was always getting demerits or study hall for talking in class, or for homework he hadn’t done. And no matter how difficult he was to get along with, how much he fought with their parents, or how often he threatened to beat Sean up, Kevin was a hero to his little brother, who worshipped him and thought he was “cool.”

Connie loved having kids over, both Kevin’s friends and Sean’s. She volunteered for field trips and various projects at school, and worked for the PTA. As an ex-schoolteacher and devoted mother, she enjoyed her kids and their friends. And Kevin’s friends particularly enjoyed talking to her. She was as sensitive to the problems
of teenagers as she was to those of her eight-year-old. She was known to keep a cookie jar full of condoms in the kitchen, where Kevin’s pals could help themselves, no questions asked. Mike O’Hara was equally great with kids, and loved having them in the house, and had coached Little League and been head of Kevin’s Boy Scout troop until Kevin quit. Connie and Mike were realistic about what their kids did, and were well aware of the experimentation with marijuana and booze among kids Kevin’s age. They discouraged it, but also knew what went on. They managed to be firm, protective, involved, and practical at the same time. It was a lot easier for them being Sean’s parents than Kevin’s, but Sean was a lot younger. Things were dicier at fifteen, and Kevin had always been more of a risk taker than Sean, who followed all the rules.

Sean was doing well at school, and his best friends were still the ones he had made in kindergarten. He had gone from wanting to be a sheriff to wanting to be a policeman, then a fireman, and by eight back to the police again. He loved watching any kind of police show on TV. He wanted to keep law and order in his life and among his friends. He rarely broke the rules at home or at school, unlike his older brother, who thought they were made to be broken. They had the same parents but were very different boys. And in the three years since Sean had started kindergarten at Atwood, Mike’s business had done extremely well, and he spent a considerable amount of time with both boys, doing activities with them. He and Connie were very comfortable financially. There had been a major construction boom, and he was the contractor that people were fighting to hire in Pacific Heights. It afforded the O’Haras a very secure lifestyle, they went on nice vacations in the summer,
and he had built them a beautiful lakefront house in Tahoe two years before, which all of them enjoyed. He had a background in economics, but building houses had always been what he loved. He had set up his own construction company years before, and started small. And it had become one of the most successful private contracting firms in the city, and Connie had encouraged him from the beginning.

Marilyn Norton’s life was more hectic than Connie’s, with two young boys. Billy was eight by then. Brian was three, and had all the needs appropriate to his age, but was a quiet, well-behaved boy. The big disappointment to Larry, his father, was that Brian had no interest in anything athletic—he didn’t even like to throw a ball. At the same age, Billy had already shown his father’s love of sports, which he had inherited from him. Brian hadn’t. He could sit and draw for hours, was already learning to read at three, and had a strong aptitude for music. But Larry wasn’t interested in his achievements. If Brian wasn’t going to be an athlete, Larry had no use for him, and barely spoke to the child. It infuriated Marilyn and was often the spark that set off a fight, particularly if Larry had too much to drink.

“Can’t you just talk to him?” Marilyn said, looking unhappy, and inevitably raising her voice. “Just say something to him, for five minutes. He’s your son too.” She was desperate to have Larry accept him, and he just wouldn’t.

“He’s
your
son,” Larry said angrily. He hated to be called on it. Billy was his boy, and they had so much more in common. Billy shared his father’s dream for him, he wanted to play pro football, it was the only career goal he ever talked about. He didn’t care
about firemen or policemen. He just wanted to play sports. But Brian was a quiet, serious, less outgoing child. He was small, and didn’t have his father’s and brother’s talent for athletics. Billy played baseball and soccer at school, and Larry went to all his games. He cheered them when they won, and gave Billy hell when they didn’t. He said there was never an excuse to lose a game. His father’s exuberance and tough demands made Brian uncomfortable around him and even scared him, but it didn’t faze Billy.

Larry’s business had been growing too, but his success just seemed to add more stress to their lives instead of less. He was home less often, and he stayed out later when he spent the evening with clients. And most of his clients were professional basketball, baseball, and football players now. Larry spent a huge amount of time with them, and went to Scottsdale for spring training for his clients who played for the Giants. Some of them were now his closest friends, and some of them had a wild side that Larry loved sharing. He rarely included Marilyn in those evenings, and she was just as happy to stay home with her boys. She had gotten back in shape after Brian, and she was looking great at thirty-three, but the girls most of Larry’s clients went out with were twenty and twenty-one, and she had nothing to say to them. It was a racier crowd than she wanted to hang out with. She preferred to be with her kids. She almost always went to school functions alone, and when Larry did come, he always had just a little too much to drink, of the wine they served at school. Not so much that the other parents would notice, but Marilyn always knew he had had too much wine, or a couple of extra beers or even a bourbon on the rocks before they left home. It seemed to be the only
way he could get through evenings he thought were boring. He wasn’t interested in his boy’s school, except for sporting events, which he always attended. And more than once he had commented that Judy Thomas, Gabby’s mother, was quite a babe. Larry had an eye for pretty women.

Judy and Marilyn were good friends, and Marilyn ignored the comments Larry made about Judy. She knew that however flashy Judy looked, she was crazy about Adam, her husband, and was well behaved. Judy had just turned thirty, and had already had a lot of work done, liposuction, a tummy tuck, breast implants, and regular Botox shots, and although her friends told her she was foolish to do it, she looked great. She had never gotten over her youthful beauty pageant mentality. She had admitted to Marilyn and Connie once that she had entered Gabby in baby beauty pageants at four and five, and Gabby had won hands down, but Adam had had a fit and made her promise never to do it again, and she respected his wishes. Adam adored both his girls, although Gabby was undeniably the star of the show. She had more personality and more spark to her than her much quieter younger sister, Michelle. It was Gabby who Judy was certain would make a mark on the world. She had a dazzling personality. In contrast, Michelle lived in her sister’s shadow, but she was only six, so it wasn’t fair to compare them.

In third grade, Gabby was taking piano and voice lessons, and seemed to have real talent at an early age. Judy was trying to convince the school’s drama department to do a full musical production of
Annie
and put Gabby in the lead role. For the moment, they had decided it was more than they wanted to undertake, and not
many of the students were as well prepared as Gabby for a Broadway musical on their stage. Gabby already knew she wanted to be an actress when she grew up, and Judy was seeing to it that she had all the skills she needed. She had been going to ballet lessons since she was three. Michelle loved ballet too, but her abilities weren’t as obvious as Gabby’s. Gabby was a star. Michelle was just a little girl.

The couple who did the most for Atwood were Adam and Judy, who made big donations to the school, and had both girls there. Michelle was a better student than Gabby and got straight A’s, but it was Gabby’s many talents that caught everyone’s attention. Michelle was just as pretty, but Gabby was more extroverted and infinitely more noticeable.

And Adam was happy to do whatever he could for the school. He had donated a Range Rover from his car dealership for the school auction. The evening had made the school a fortune, and Adam was the hero of the hour. They were flashy and certainly not subtle, but they were nice people and well liked by all, except for a few more reserved parents who thought they were just too showy and could never understand how they had gotten their daughters into a school like Atwood. But they were clearly there to stay, whether their critics liked it or not.

Gabby and Izzie were still best friends in third grade. At eight, they loved each other even more than they had at five. They shared Barbies and traded clothes. Izzie spent weekends at Gabby’s house as often as she was allowed. They had carved their initials into Izzie’s desk at home, G+I4EVER, which hadn’t gone over well with Izzie’s mother, and she’d been on restriction for a
weekend. Izzie loved staying at Gabby’s, where she could try on all her pretty clothes. Practically everything Gabby owned had sparkles on it, and she had two pink jackets trimmed in real white fur, and a pink fur coat her mom had gotten for her in Paris. They wore the same sizes in everything, and traded clothes when they were allowed to, although not the coat from Paris. And Izzie liked Michelle, even though Gabby said she hated her sister, and blamed her for everything whenever she could. Gabby hated it when her mother insisted they play with her, because she wanted Izzie to herself, but Izzie was a good sport about including Michelle in their games, and she even let her win sometimes. She felt sorry for Michelle. She never seemed to have as much fun as Gabby, and her parents seemed less interested in her. Izzie had a strong urge to nurture everyone; she always felt sorry for the underdog, and even took care of Gabby sometimes if she was in a bad mood or had a cold. Izzie was the perfect friend.

Judy always said about her older daughter that she was born to succeed at everything she did, and it seemed to be true. Gabby had modeled a few times for ads for children’s clothing, and one national campaign for GapKids by the time she was in third grade. No one ever doubted that Gabby would be a star one day. She already was in her own little world. And Izzie loved being best friends with her, although she loved the three boys in her group too.

Izzie’s father, Jeff, took them all out for pizza and bowling sometimes. The girls loved it, although they could hardly pick up the ball. Once in a while, Izzie’s mother went with them, but usually she had to work late at night. Katherine always brought a lot
of work home from the office, and you had to be quiet in the house, so Jeff took them out, or dropped Izzie off at Gabby’s, if Izzie begged long enough. Her mother never minded, and once in a while she heard her parents fight about it. Her dad would ask why her mom couldn’t take at least one night off, and then the fight would start. Katherine always talked about her husband’s clients at the ACLU as the Great Unwashed. Whenever Izzie heard those words, she knew one of their really big fights was about to start.

She talked about it with Andy sometimes, because he was an only child too, and his parents were busy and worked a lot, like hers. And she wondered if his parents fought too. He said they didn’t, and his mom worked late, if she had to stay out all night to deliver a baby. Both of Izzie’s parents were lawyers, and Andy’s were doctors. His mother didn’t come home for two or three days sometimes when she had a lot of babies to deliver, and his father traveled a lot to give lectures and appeared on TV for his latest book. He went on book tours when he wasn’t home seeing patients. Andy said his father was even busier than his mother. He wrote books about people’s problems. But Andy liked their housekeeper, and she lived in the house, so he said it didn’t matter to him how busy his parents were. Izzie had a babysitter, but not a housekeeper who lived in. And Andy lived in a bigger house.

Like Izzie, Andy’s favorite house to visit was Sean’s, because his parents were so nice, but Andy always said that his parents were nice too, they were just out a lot, and the O’Haras were always home, and made time to talk to all of them. Izzie used to like to pretend that Sean’s mother, Connie, was her aunt, but she never
told Sean about it, she just said it to herself. And Connie always gave her a big hug and kiss when she walked in. Izzie thought all of the moms in the group were nice, except sometimes her own, because she was so busy, had so much work to do, and she came home so tired from the office that she sometimes forgot to give Izzie a hug. But her dad never forgot. He gave her piggyback rides around the house, and took her to movies and the park. Being with her friends made Izzie wish she had a sister or brother sometimes, but she knew there was no hope of that. She had asked her mother about it, and she said she didn’t have time, and she was older than the other mothers. Katherine Wallace was forty-two, and Izzie’s dad was forty-six. They said they felt too old to have another child, and her father always said that they didn’t want one because they knew they’d never have one as great as she was. But Izzie knew it was an excuse, they just didn’t want more kids.

It was almost the end of the school year when Kevin O’Hara got into trouble again. Izzie heard about it from Sean, when they traded lunches in the schoolroom. She knew that something bad had happened because Connie hadn’t driven carpool for two days. In the end they had kept their carpool to the three mothers, and this week Connie had missed both her days, and when Marilyn and Judy took turns driving for her, neither of them said why. Izzie sensed trouble right away.