Friends Like Us (28 page)

“Oh, gee!” Ben said. He was so short back then that he had to crane his neck to meet my frantic eyes. “This is so embarrassing, Jake, but we have another soirée to attend this evening!” Jake handed us each a cellophane-wrapped variety pack of minisausages at the door and politely thanked us for coming, as if we were good friends of his parents.

“I think I still have some of that turkey jerky,” Ben says now, grabbing my hand and squeezing.

“Well, we’re staying for at least fifteen minutes this time.” I squeeze back. We’re at our best like this, two misfits shoring each other up against the terrifying swell of normal human interaction. We both know that it’s a better thing to face your fears bravely, to talk to an acquaintance at a party, to sit down next to a stranger and smile, but even in high school we’d been content to rely on each other, and so we had never even tried.

Al lists toward us, clearly already a little bit drunk. He hands me a big plastic cup of his famous neon blue-green potion. “Heyyyy,” he says, engulfing me in a hug. It’s only been four months since we last saw each other, at Amy and Rafael’s wedding in June, but he hugs me like it’s been years. “Happy Halloween! Where’s your twin?”

I smile and take a sip of my drink. I thought that, when a tornado touches down in a small town, people heard about it. “Huh,” I say, over the din. “I don’t know!”

Ben pulls me into the room and leans toward my ear. “Do you think Jane could show up here?” he hisses.

“I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe.” I offer him my cup. The thought has, of course, occurred to me.

That morning in August, after we told her, Jane pushed back from the table and walked slowly into her room. She kept her spine straight, her posture dignified, but she couldn’t stifle the choked sob that escaped her throat. Ben and I sat, silent, immobile. We heard objects moving around, hangers jangling together, zippers unzipping. After about ten minutes, she walked out the front door, carrying two suitcases and a fat backpack. She didn’t even turn around. She didn’t yell or scream or shriek that she despised us. She just left. A few days later, I got an e-mail from her, requesting that we leave the apartment the following Saturday so that she could retrieve her things. Saturday! It would have been her wedding day. She included in the e-mail a list of objects that belonged to her—the blender; the chair with the stuffing poking out; the coffeemaker, of course—and a few things she wanted that we’d bought together. “I will leave a check for you for half the value of those items,” she wrote, formal as a contract.

That Saturday morning, we left the apartment and went to Rock River, our coffee shop. After a while, Ben headed to the library for an early shift. I didn’t have to work that day. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I loitered. I sat in the big chair near the window, where I could watch people walk by, and I peeled my eyes for Jane, for the dark head that rose above the crowd, for the long legs that propelled her quick stride. I didn’t expect to see her. Why would she stroll around her old neighborhood and risk bumping into the two people who had betrayed her? I paid for a refill and made my way up the block, edging closer and closer to our building, until there I was, lurking in the alley, peering around the moldy mattress that was still propped up against the wall, waiting for Jane.

She showed up just fifteen minutes later. At first I didn’t recognize her. She was wearing a baseball cap, her hair in a ponytail and pulled through the back of it, and she seemed somehow shorter than she actually is. I flattened myself against the wall of the building next to ours, and she didn’t see me as she jiggled her key in the front door. Her mother’s blue Dodge Intrepid waited at the corner, Mrs. Weston square shouldered and grim at the wheel. I felt like a spy—like the worst spy ever, a spy who had just dreamed up her mission twenty minutes ago, one who was dressed in yellow shorts bright as a banana and pink sneakers, still clutching a to-go cup of lukewarm coffee. A spy who, if she had to escape, would undoubtedly spill her drink and then trip over her shoelaces as she ran.

I took a deep breath. When Jane exited the building, not long after she’d gone in, she was hauling her lamp and the blender. Our neighbor, James, held the door for her, and she smiled her thanks. I noticed, then, that she was dressed in a pair of Bonnie Weston’s pants, the pink floral leggings Mrs. Weston had worn on our shopping expedition, way back in June, three lifetimes ago. On Jane, Bonnie Weston’s leggings were capris.

“Mom!” Jane called, and motioned with her head for her mother to pull up to a newly vacated parking space right in front of the building, a premium spot. She tugged at the waistline of her pants and adjusted her grip on the lamp. I pressed myself harder against the wall. That was the moment I realized what we’d done, Ben and I. It wasn’t that I hadn’t known before. But seeing my best friend in her mother’s ill-fitting leggings, lamp and blender in hand, that was the moment I understood that we’d changed her—not just her future, but her past, too.

Now, Al’s living room is a crush of people. “I don’t think she’d show up here,” I say to Ben. Why would she go anywhere we might be? But as I look around at the throngs of grown adults in silly costumes—a lion, a sexy nurse, Spider-Man, a marshmallow—and then at Ben, in his shirt and jeans and furrowed brow, I realize: I have no idea what any of us are capable of.

“Willa?” A chubby witch in a long black dress taps me on the shoulder. “Willa! Hi!” Amy flings one arm over my shoulder and presses down for a second, the half hug of the noncommittal. “We’re here with the baby!” she announces. “Can you believe it?
The baby!
” She looks delirious, her pretty blond hair matted, her face blotchy, purple smudges so dark underneath her eyes I think it must be makeup, until I lean in closer and realize it’s not. She’s wearing a pointy black hat that has tipped precariously to the side of her head, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “You don’t have any gum, do you?” She covers her mouth with her hand. “I didn’t have a chance to brush my teeth tonight.” She laughs, then blinks hard. “The baby never,
ever
sleeps! It’s insane.” For a second I think she means the baby is insane, and I nod sympathetically. How terrible to give birth to a baby, only to find out that it’s insane!

Rafael comes up behind her, the tiny, wet-mouthed baby strapped to his chest in a pouch. Rafael is wearing regular clothes and, in a nod to the holiday, a headband with wobbly, bobbing antennae attached. The baby, wobbly itself, its arms and legs flailing, looks larval, like something alien-insect-Rafael might decide to snack on later.

“Wow,” I say to them, peering at the pink-clad infant, her little tongue lolling, big brown eyes gazing past me and then crossing, as if, overwhelmed, she prefers to stare at herself. “Congratulations!” Amy and Rafael both look like they’re going to cry.

“Her name is Liliana,” Amy says. “After his great-grandmother.” She jerks her head toward Rafael. “Apparently she never slept, either. Just four hours a night, right up until she died at ninety-six. Nobody told me that before we named her, though.” She narrows her eyes and glares at Rafael, then at me.

Ben, next to me, bends toward Liliana. “She’s beautiful,” he says, as Amy takes it in, the tall, handsome man she has met before as Jane’s boyfriend, here now with me, holding my hand.

Amy tilts her head; her black witch’s hat slides down to her ear. “Huh,” she says. “I mean, oh, yes, thanks. We think so.” She rests her hand on Liliana’s round, fuzzy head and walks away with Rafael.

“I think it’s been fifteen minutes,” I say, deflated, somehow demoralized by the whole interaction. Ben nods.

And then the door swings open and she glides in—tall, graceful, face powdered, lips blood red, her hair streaked and sprayed stiff: the bride of Frankenstein, white robe trailing like—oh, yes—a wedding gown.

“Oh!” Ben says as together we realize that it’s Jane, and my heart thumps fast, choosing flight.

Jane surveys the place, looking past us, smiles, and waves at a group of people near the kitchen, conspicuously far from where Ben and I are standing. She drifts across the room, stopping briefly at the big bowl of candy on the coffee table, and heads over to the group (an evil ballerina; a nun; Van Gogh, a splash of red where his ear once was; a glowworm), bending to receive an eager round of hugs. From the way Jane is enveloped and embraced by this group, I can see that the troops have rallied, that most people do know what has happened, that our betrayal has made headlines.

And as they circle their wagons around her, I know, too, that Jane will replace me, if not with one of these solicitous friends, then with someone else, and soon. Our hearts are like starfish, regenerating what we’ve lost. We move forward, regroup, reconfigure; people find ways to be happy. I try to make out what Jane is saying, but the room is too loud and full. All I hear is music and laughter and the occasional excited screech.

“Should we go over?” Ben asks. If the background noise weren’t so loud, I’d think my ears were playing tricks on me: he sounds almost eager.

“No way.”

“I think we have to. Preemptive strike.”

“And I think a jump from a second-story window probably wouldn’t kill us.”

“Come on, Will. I promise to protect you from the completely innocent woman whose life we ruined.”

I take a huge, fortifying sip of my disgusting drink as Ben, his hand on my back, guides me toward the island of misfit toys that surrounds Jane. And if my ears weren’t still playing tricks on me, I’d say a hush falls over the room.

“Ah.” This comes from the glowworm, Bridget McCarragher, the poet who, according to Jane, writes only florid iambic pentameter about her ex-boyfriend, punctuated with emoticons. Bridget plants her hands on her plush, stuffed green hips. The nun turns to Jane and whispers, close in her ear. Jane shakes her head in response, her helmet of white-streaked hair immobile.

Van Gogh, aka Larry Hirsh, rotund confessional memoirist, places his hand protectively on Jane’s arm. “Well,” the evil ballerina says. “This is awkward.”

I will Ben to put his arm around me, but he doesn’t. He stays close, though, even as he takes a half step toward Jane. “Hey,” he says to her, and I raise my hand in a little wave.

Jane swallows hard and pulls herself even straighter. In the split second before she opens her mouth, I understand that we are all here for a reason: Ben and I to find out whether or not we have destroyed her, Jane to let us know that we haven’t. And then I realize something else, something fully detached from this moment, from the clear answer she is giving us with her impeccable posture, her sublime costume, her imperious gaze. I hear the echo at the depths of me, the baleful howl from the darkness beneath my darkest heart. I didn’t want my best friend to have what I didn’t have. So I took it from her. I took it.

Jane looks us both up and down. “I see you came dressed up as human beings,” she says. “How clever.”

Ben turns away; I see the tears in his eyes, and the surprising shame of that makes me turn away, too. I take his hand and head for the door, and as we stumble down the long hallway of Al’s apartment building, Ben lets out a little moan, a despair that almost exonerates him. But I’m silent, a cold wind blowing through me.
What did you expect?
I think, but do not say.

Chapter Twenty-four

I haven’t spoken to my brother since August. We’ve had longer dry spells, but none like this—three months swollen with mutual pride, our silence so obviously spiteful and pointless. I’ve started dreaming about him, vague, gauzy, increasingly disconcerting dreams of Seth in various situations and permutations. We’re walking along the beach together when suddenly he turns into a seagull and flies away, squawking; Seth as the superintendent of my apartment building, plunging my overflowing toilet; weirdest of all, Seth and Ben, interchangeable, Sethben, Benseth, my dark-haired companion, his arms open, running toward me across an expanse of meadow, eyes misty with affection and concern and, oh, yes, there it is, lust … but who is it? Ben? Seth? This last of which is why I woke up this morning, curled around Ben, intent on making contact with my brother, finally determined to patch things up.

His phone rings seven times before he picks up.

“Hi,” I say. “It’s me. Will.”

“Will Shulman, from college? Your voice sounds different. How
are
you?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, Wilma MacIntyre, from the Department of Public Works. Listen, I’ll have that report to you by Monday.”

“Seth, stop it.”

“I’m just surprised, is all.” His voice is gravelly, as if I woke him up, although it’s almost noon. Clearly, nothing has changed in his miserable life.

“So, do you want to go get coffee or something?” My heart races; I feel like I’m asking him out on a date, and I brace myself for a stinging rejection.

He pauses for a full fifteen seconds, plenty of time to come up with a good excuse, then clears his throat. I hear rustling in the background, imagine him sitting up and throwing his grimy blankets off, flinging his pale, hairy legs out of bed. He’ll tell me to fuck off; he’ll tell me he’s gotten perfectly used to his miserable life and doesn’t need me to try to help him. And I never could.
Well, no. I’d rather not get some coffee or something,
he’ll say, mocking,
but thanks so, so much for calling.
He clears his throat again, and I realize that I’m holding my breath. “Nah,” he says, and the disappointment leaks through a shoddy dam in my chest. I’m about to hang up. “But I could go for some ice cream. Are you in the mood for ice cream?”

We meet at Lakeside Licks—like Braun’s Deli, another relic from our youth. The ice cream isn’t very good: is, in fact, frequently freezer burned and often downright crystallized, possibly morphed into some other substance entirely, but the flavor options are endless, which made it our favorite when we were growing up. Bubblegum Blowout was my top choice until I was eleven, neon pink and studded with real nuggets of gum—a delicious choking hazard of an ice cream flavor. Seth usually went with Sweet Cotton Candy (as if “cotton candy” alone wouldn’t be quite cloying enough). He nudges me and points to it in its brown tub, still exactly where it was fifteen years ago, quite possibly the very same tub.