Friends Without Benefits (Knitting in the City) (5 page)

“Obviously I have no idea what it’s like for you, dealing with those issues every day, but it seems like you could identify a less self-destructive way of working through job stress.” Fiona’s expression softened. “I just worry about you. You need an outlet, you need
 . . .”

Somebody.

The word wasn’t spoken
, but the implication hung between us unsaid.

“Yes, well
.” I cleared my throat and lifted my voice so the rest of the room could hear, “It was an accident. I meant the glove prank for Dr. Ken Miles, but Dr. Botstein must’ve used the room first.”

“He’s kind of hot—Ken, not Dr. Botstein. Dr. Botstein seems like the kind of guy who would have a prematurely wrinkled
bottom.” Sandra nodded as she made this assertion and gulped the remainder of her drink.

“I concur.”
Ashley, in turn, nodded her agreement and lifted her glass. “But hopefully we’ll never find out.”

“Several breeds of dog
s have wrinkles, like the Pug and Shar Pei.” Janie sipped her margarita and licked at the excess salt on the rim.

We all paused for a beat, waited to see if she would continue. Janie had an impressive habit of spouting off trivial facts at odd times. It was one of the many reasons we all adored her.

“Janie, your left-fielding skills are very impressive. You are the most impressive left fielder I’ve ever met.” Sandra surreptitiously reached for Kat’s almost full margarita and took a sip.

Janie frowned
. “You mean the baseball position?” She sat back in her chair and twisted the obscenely large ruby ring on her left third finger. “I’ve never played baseball.”

“No hun. I’m talking about someone who says stuff out of left field. I never know where you’re going or where you’re going to take me. I’m just happy to be along for the ride.” Sandra blew Janie a sincere kiss which made Janie smile sweetly.

My heart twisted. Damnit, I missed Janie. A lot. I blinked away the sudden moisture and berated myself for this overreaction and emotionality. Janie was getting married, she wasn’t dying. I would continue to see her, to talk to her—just not as often. I needed to get a grip.

Unfortunately, logic isn’t a cure for loneliness.

Kat, seemingly just noticing that Sandra had swiped her margarita, began to sputter. “Did you—I can’t believe—you stole my—Sandra!”

Sandra ducked her head and took a large swallow.

“It’s okay. I’ll make some more and bring out a pitcher.” Janie stood and reached for Sandra’s empty glass. “But since Sandra is being greedy, she has to come and help me.”

Sandra stood. “Fine. It’s a fair punishment.”

“I’ll come too.” I took off my hat and bundled it together with my scarf and mittens and left the hand-knit trio on my chair, followed the redheaded duo into the kitchen.

Sandra strolled behind Janie and lovingly caressed the granite countertops as she entered the decently sized space; “I love this kitchen. It’s a kitchen for cooking.”

I shrugged. I wasn’t much of a cooker. I didn’t like to clean stuff up.

“I approve of this kitchen. I like the placement of the dishwasher relative to the sink and the refrigerator relative to the stove.
” Janie said, towering above both of us, pouring tequila and lime juice into the cocktail shaker. “Sandra—can you start squeezing more limes? They are in the bottom drawer of the fridge.”

“These are really good margaritas, Janie. Well done.” I smiled up at her as I poured salt onto a plate; I coated the rim of Sandra’s empty glass with the crystals.

“It’s the Limoncello and fresh lime juice, I think. I also used agave nectar instead of sugar.” Janie squeezed the amber colored syrup into the shaker, replaced the lid, and started to shake.

“You should make these when we go to my reunion in Iowa next week.” I said, screwing the cap back on the tequila.

Janie abruptly stopped shaking the aluminum cylinder and stared at me with wide eyes, her mouth open slightly. She held very still. Sandra and I shared a concerned glance.

“Janie
 . . .? Are you okay?”

“I completely forgot. I completely forgot about your reunion.” Janie slowly lowered the shaker to the counter. She appeared to be both distraught and preoccupied.

I couldn’t help my frown. My heart started to sink. “Did you make other plans?”

“I’ll—I’ll find a way to
 . . . I’ll think of something.” She was staring over my shoulder in a way that told me she was trying to concentrate on a problem.

Sandra glanced between me and Janie. “What plans did you make? Maybe I can help?”

Janie sighed. “We’re—Quinn and I—we were planning to go to Boston to see his parents. I was going to meet his parents, but—” Janie’s hazel gaze met mine. “I completely forgot about the reunion since you and I planned the trip so long ago.”

“I’m confused. Isn’t Quinn estranged from his parents? Didn’t they, like, disown him? Don’t they blame
him for his brother’s death or some such nonsense?” Sandra picked up the discarded shaker and finished the task Janie had abandoned.

Janie nodded; “Yes, they did. I’m not sure if they still do. I called his mom a few weeks ago and introduced myself. I told her I was marrying her son and explained that I planned to give he
r grandchildren at some point.”

Sandra’s hands ceased mid-shake. “You what?”

“Well, I know this separation from his family, from his mom and dad, contributes to some measure of his broodiness. I thought I could offer them grandchildren in exchange for forgiveness.”

I was not surprised. Janie was nothing if not practical. The plan made complete sense to me.

Sandra blinked at Janie, as though if she blinked hard enough Janie might disappear or grow a tail. I took the shaker from Sandra’s hands and finished the job of mixing the cocktail.

“I—I can’t believe you did that
. You’re using children—”

Janie shook her head
. “No. I’m not using children. We’re going to have kids anyway, and I thought why not use the idea of these future kids to
persuade
his parents to make the right decision now?”

Sandra made a choking sound then leaned on the kitchen counter. “You’re not going to—you’re not going to use the kids are you? Later? Once they’re born? You’re not going to manipulate his parents into—”

“No. Absolutely not.” Janie appeared to be genuinely horrified by the thought. “I would never do that. I just—I just want his mom and dad to give him a chance. I just want them to make an effort. He’s so . . . He’s so . . .”

“Grumpy?” I supplied as I poured the margarita into Sandra’s glass.

Janie tried to suppress her smile with a scowl. “No. Not grumpy. He’s sensitive. He doesn’t show it to many people—”

I snorted
. “You mean he only shows it to you.”

She ignored me.
“But he is. And he misses his family. And they’re his family. And I want to meet them. I’ve never had a mother, not really, and his mom sounds great, except for the whole—you know—disowning her son thing. And why shouldn’t my children have grandparents?”

I lifted Sandra’s glass and took a sip. “They should. I completely support you in this
decision.”

Janie gave me a single nod of appreciation; “Thank you, Elizabeth. Your support means a lot.”

Sandra was still frowning as she took her glass away from me before I could take another drink. “Well then, what about the reunion? I imagine it took a lot for you to get these people to agree to the visit? Right?” 

Janie looked from Sandra to me. She didn’t respond.

The earlier sinking feeling morphed into full-fledged and sudden depression. I couldn’t ask Janie to reschedule her trip to Boston. I knew how important it was to her to have a family. Her family was worse than having no family at all. Her sisters were criminals and her father—although he meant well—was clueless and, honestly, similar in personality to dry paint. Her mother, when she was alive, was a terrible woman who’d abandoned her family when it suited her.

At least I had my dad and wonderful memories of my mother.

Janie deserved this. She deserved to have her husband’s family know her and love her.

I glanced at the counter and picked at the granite; “You should go to Boston.” I met her gaze. “Really. Go to Boston.”

She shook her head. “I can reschedule. You can’t reschedule your reunion.”

“I’ll go
.” Sandra’s declaration was a bit of a slurred shout.

Janie blinked at her; “To Boston?”

“No, Wonder Woman. I’ll go to Elizabeth’s high school reunion. I’ll go with Elizabeth, and you’re off to Boston with your McHotpants to go make babies for those awful people.”

Janie looked at me. I looked at Janie. I looked at Sandra. Sandra looked at me. Janie looked at Sandra. Sandra looked at Janie.

Sandra lifted her glass again, winked at me, and toasted us both. “To friendscorts. Like escorts, but without the cash.”

“For the love of
chartreuse, can we please listen to something else?”

“No.”

“Please, oh please, oh please, oh please.” She sounded so anguished, tortured.

“No.”

“Damnit, Elizabeth. I’ve dropped three stitches and had to rip out two rows of this shawl. I can’t listen to one more prepubescent boy say the word ‘girl’ or ‘kiss’ when you know he wants to say ‘whore’ and ‘fu—’”

“F
ine.” I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel. “Fine, pick something else.”

Sand
ra bolted upright, placed her pile of knitting to the side, and grabbed my iPhone. “Oh, god, thank you so much. I know I said I wouldn’t make fun of your music, but I honestly do not know how you can listen to that. I could feel my vagina shriveling with each neutered verse.”

“Oh, come on—
” Laughing, I glanced at Sandra from the driver’s seat. “—I saw you mouthing along with the last song.”

“Yes, but much like a schizophrenic mouths wordlessly to themselves or how one feels after stepping off the ‘
It’s a Small World After All’ ride at Disney World.” She thumbed through my albums and her brow drew downward with each pass. “Well—you are a complete crackhead. Every single album on here is boy band shisterhosen.”

Sandra, making no attempt to hide her disgust, pulled the
audio jack from my phone and dumped it in the center console. She pulled out her phone and simultaneously plugged it in while searching for music. When she pressed play, and a sultry, mournful voice reverberated over the speakers, her head fell back against the headrest, and she closed her eyes.

“Oh. Yes. God. That’s the stuff.”
I noted her fingers flexing and unflexing on her knees.

We were just
crossing the Mississippi River, heading west on I-80. I promised Sandra that we would make a detour at the World’s Largest Truck Stop so she could purchase an ear-flapped trucker hat. Part of me wondered if the truck stop was the main attraction of the trip for her.

Acres of what would usually be cornfields were barren on either side of the interstate. Large
silver silos, red barns, and picturesque farm houses dotted the landscape. Tall, leafless trees lined the road, stretching to the sky like brown bottle brushes. It was near fifty degrees outside, and the sky hadn’t yet decided if it wanted to be gray or blue.

“So
 . . .” Sandra’s voice beside me was relaxed, almost dreamy. She resumed knitting. “Is there anything I should know?”

I shifted in my seat
; “About what?”

“About your high school dynamics. Is there anyone you’re hoping will be there? Anyone to avoid? Who was
prom queen and do we hate her?”

“Well
, let me see . . .” I shifted again in my seat, forced myself to loosen the grip on the steering wheel, and told a little white lie, “I don’t really know.”

If I were being honest I would have said:
I hope everyone is there.

“Don’t know which part?” Sandra’s
head bobbed in time to the music.

“
I don’t really know about the high school dynamics.” This, at least, was mostly true. I hadn’t paid much attention to popular-people dynamics during high school. But I did know that I’d been universally invisible.

In my peripheral vision I saw her head swing toward mine; she paused for a moment then said, “I call shenanigans.”

I gave her a sideways glance. “It’s true. I was kind of a—well, a loner.”

And by
“loner” I really meant “mean spirited cranky-face who avoided my peers at all costs.”

“Then why do you even want to go? We could blow the whole thing off and drive to Vegas instead.”

“I did have some friends.” I tried to defend myself, my face growing hot with the now grayish lie.

I did have some friends
—or, more precisely, acquaintances—in high school; but I wasn’t sure whether any of them would show up.

The truth was, I really wanted to go to my high school reunion
, but I couldn’t tell Sandra why because most of my reasons were ten out of ten on the petty-insipid-twit scale.

Granted, part of me was
simply curious.

However,
a much bigger part of me wanted to go because I’d worked my ass off and was now a medical doctor; I wanted to lord it over all the people who were popular, beautiful, and barely knew I existed in high school. I was sure—crossing my fingers—that they were all failures of some sort. I wanted to introduce myself as Elizabeth Finney, MD—as in Medical Doctor. I practiced doing this in the mirror a few times before I’d left Chicago and felt good about my delivery.

My pretend conversation usually went something like this:

Them, surprised:
“Elizabeth? Is that you?”

Me, caught off guard:
“Oh—hi. Yes, it’s me Elizabeth.”

Them, amazed and in awe of my beauty:
“Oh my gosh—you look totally different.”

Me, humble smile:
“Hey, thanks—”

Them, interested and
still dazed by my good looks: “
What are you up to now? Where are you working?”

Me, politely responding with an air of modesty:
“What? What do I do now? Well, I’m actually a medical doctor.”

Them, completely blown away and fumbling over their words:
“Oh my god! That’s so fantastic!! That’s so impressive!!”

Me, laughing off the praise as though it makes me uncomfortable:
“Oh, I don’t know about impressive, but—ha ha ha—I get by. What are you doing now?”

Them, looking actually uncomfortable and ashamed:
“Oh? Me? Well . . . I pick through trash outside people’s homes looking for recycled materials to take to the dump.”

It didn’t matter if they were a materials scavenger or a train-hopping hobo, in my fantasies they were always less successful than I was.

But mostly I wanted to go to my reunion because I now had boobs. Like, a C cup on the third week of the month.

In high school I was both short and
impressively scrawny. Add to that my belligerent personality, and I was a double dose of teenage girl fail. When I was fifteen most people thought I was an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy; my nickname—
Skinny Finney
—didn’t help matters. New kids thought Finney was my first name.

Now, I had boobs.
I was enormously proud of my boobs. I’d waited so long for them. But, when they finally arrived with a vengeance after my sixteenth birthday, the summer before my senior year of high school, I was too despondent to notice or to care.

I couldn’t tell Sandra the
true reasons without sounding like the raging, self-absorbed, shallow twit that I actually was at that moment.

Instead I said, “
And I wasn’t really into that stuff—group activities, team sports, and popularity contests.”

“Well what stuff were you into? Living under a rock?”

“I was—” I wrinkled my nose. “I was a tomboy in high school.”

“
Well no shit Sherlock. You’re still a tomboy now except that you listen to tween music and have long hair. You’re lucky you don’t need to wear makeup. But you must’ve noticed which cheerleaders were ho’s and which guys to put into your Spank Naughty and Spank Nice list.”

I rested an elbow along
the door to my left and tugged at my bottom lip. If I were with Janie I wouldn’t need to explain the reason I was detached during my last two years of high school—and any
Days of Their Lives
drama from ten years ago. I was detached because of Garrett. Janie was the only person I knew in Chicago that was aware of my story.

Perhaps now was a solid time to test the sharing waters with Sandra.

I cleared my throat and repositioned my hands on the steering wheel; “So, there was this boy . . .”

“Ok
ay, okay—good—good—this sounds promising.” Sandra put her knitting aside again and rubbed her hands together.

A small, saddish smile tugged one side of my mou
th upward. “There was this boy, his name was Garrett and he had big brown eyes and blond hair and just the best, warmest smile. He moved to my town when I was in fifth grade, right after my mother died, and I just—I just—” I swallowed. “I just fell for him.”

“I didn’t know your mother died.”

“It happened when I was nine. Garrett really helped me through it.”

“In fifth grade?”

I nodded once. “This isn’t a happy story.”

Sandra was quiet for a moment
, and when she spoke next her voice was softer. “Go on.”

I recognized it as her
shrink
voice, the one she used when speaking to someone upset, emotionally fragile, or with whom she was trying to reason. During one of our knit nights out on the town she used the voice to convince a hoity-toity maître d' that he, indeed, lost our reservation and that he, indeed, needed to set the thing to rights as soon as was humanly possible.

It worked.

We were impressed.

I was impressed.

She was using
the voice
on me now, and it was working.

“
I think I fell in love with Garrett within three months of meeting him. I skipped a grade in elementary school, so he was a year older. But he was so easy to be around, made me feel good, like I was important to him—you know? So gentle and kind, sensitive. He was really there for me—you know? I just always wanted to be around him. We were childhood sweethearts, just like my parents, and were going to get married. But when he was sixteen, he . . .”

I started tugging at my bottom lip again
. “We went to a party and both of us drank. He only had, like, two drinks; but, afterward, he had severe pains in his neck and sides. So his friend—uh—Nico—drove Garrett to the hospital. They discharged him almost immediately after he was admitted. I think they thought he just had too much to drink. But,” I sighed. “A few months later, at the end of summer break, he was getting sick a lot—fevers with no other accompanying symptoms, that kind of thing.”

I paused, waited for the sting of tears that
previously accompanied this part of the story; but—to my surprise—I felt capable of continuing without fear of a chin wobble or voice waver.

“
The doctor ran a complete blood panel, and he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He was sick our entire junior year, at first going through chemo, surgeries, then—later—just succumbing to the disease. He died in April, April thirteenth. He was stage—stage—” I cleared my throat. “It had progressed too far by the time he was diagnosed.”

I heard Sandra exhale
, and I exhaled with her. We were both silent for a long while. The World’s Largest Truck Stop came and went. Miles of barren cornfields passed us by. I thought about the day Garrett died, compared and contrasted that day’s weather with the present.

At last Sandra spoke.
“Well . . . that is some depressing and tragic shit, Elizabeth.” Her voice was watery.

I glanced over at her and realized that she was crying; or, rather, she was trying not to c
ry. My eyes widened in surprise. “Did I just make you cry?”

“No, I’m crying because we
missed the World’s Largest Truck Stop—” Her voice was thick with sarcasm until she continued, “Yes, you did just make me cry.”

I
felt the first tingling of tears behind my eyes, and the chin wobble I’d been expecting earlier made its appearance.

“Oh no
—don’t
you
cry—” Her tone became authoritative, “If you cry I will be forced to beat you with my shoe and you will not like it. I’m not wearing any socks, and my feet seriously stink.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.
After I told Janie about Garrett she didn’t cry, but she held me while I did. It felt good to be held. It also felt good to laugh.

“Well, no wonder you weren’t paying attention to high school dynamics
or creating spank tanks. You were dealing with real life issues. I can’t fathom what it was like for you, losing your mom then your first love like that.”

I shrugged
, but her words made an impact.

“Is that why you decided to become a doctor?”

“It’s one of the reasons, yes. But also I really like it, like the work.”

“Why emergency medicine? Why not oncology?”

“Because both my mom and Garrett were misdiagnosed in an emergency room. If they’d been diagnosed correctly. . .”

“Ah.” She nodded her understanding. “After Garrett’s death, did you get some help? Did you go to therapy after?”

I shook my head. “Afterward, that summer, I just kind of floated through stuff, not really noticing or paying attention. My dad decided to take me to Ireland at the end of the summer, and I completed the first half of my senior year there—which helped.”