The False Friend (25 page)

“Snickerdoodles,” Celia said, the name leaping the twenty-one-year void.

“Every time you came you would ask for them, so as soon as we got off the phone I made up a batch. You’re not one of those people always on some diet, are you? You certainly don’t need to be; you’ve turned into a lovely thing—but I’m babbling. You can’t imagine how uninterested I am in hearing my own voice. I want to hear all about you.”

She led Celia through the kitchen doorway to a small square table whose constituent parts Celia could picture arriving for assembly with a wordless schematic, a bag of bolts, and an Allen wrench. The sight of cookies arranged on a ceramic plate with a familiar green stripe conjured the old octagonal table of reddish wood, the hard-backed chairs with their cheerily mismatched seat cushions, kitchen walls the color of lemon sorbet, and a white floor on which Djuna and Celia would skate in their socks, pretending to be in the Ice Capades.

“I used to have more things,” Mrs. Pearson murmured, running her finger along the plate’s painted edge, “but it wasn’t good for me. My doctor told me to get rid of them, and I mostly listened. Mostly.” She smiled. “I still have photos, of course. I only take them out on her birthday, but if you’d like we can look through them together. Do you want coffee or tea? The coffee is already brewed and the kettle is on the boil, so neither is any trouble.”

Had Celia asked for honeysuckle nectar, Mrs. Pearson would have run to gather blooms.

“Coffee is fine, thank you.”

There was a tray already set with teacups, milk, and sugar. The kitchen was too small to hold more than one cook. As Djuna’s mother poured, Celia abandoned her initial vision of an imaginary woodsman and his children.

“So, you’ve fled west,” Mrs. Pearson said. “How long have you been in Chicago?”

“I went for college and never left.”

“Chicago.” She chuckled. “Dennis would have loved for us to live there. He was heartbroken when Northwestern and the University of Chicago turned him down, but I thought Jensenville was a much better place to raise a child.” She shook her head. “So much safer, you know.” She reached for a cookie and made a dunking motion into a cup that wasn’t there before reaching for the one left on the tray. “And then when the university also offered me a position in the English department, well, it was hardly an offer we could refuse. Do you know that if Djuna had been a boy, Dennis would have insisted on naming her Malthus? What kind of name is that? There are no good nicknames! Whereas Djuna allows for June, or Una. When she was very little, I called her Jujube, but she put the kibosh on that by the time she was six.”

“I’ve never met anyone else with that name,” Celia said.

“I’m not surprised,” Mrs. Pearson said. “Do you know of Djuna Barnes?”

“Wasn’t she an author?”

“And a lesbian,” Mrs. Pearson added. “Now if she had been a heterosexual …” She shook her head. “As if lesbianism is contagious! But it’s a beautiful name, and she was a beautiful
writer. Of course, had Dennis known, he wouldn’t have liked it one bit. Dennis fancied himself more open-minded than your average mathematician. I suppose he was, but that’s not saying much, is it? He’s in Michigan now. You don’t remember him, do you?”

“I can picture his face,” Celia said. “I remember the dolls he brought back from his trips.”

Once, she and Djuna had undressed the most beautiful one—a Japanese girl with perfect black hair and a fancy kimono. They used cuticle scissors to undo the stitches, the layers of cloth coming away in pieces, the kimono reduced to scraps of cheap silk.

Mrs. Pearson smirked. “Of course you do. I remember the look on your face whenever Djuna showed them as proof. Of having a father, that is, and not just a tenant in the upstairs bedroom office.” She laughed. “I fell in love with his mind, you know, which for a while gave us something in common. Do you know that he actually kept a framed copy of his Wechsler scores? I was certain a woman of letters and a man of mathematical genius could make a child of boundless potential. Which I suppose in a way turned out to be true.”

Djuna’s mother stared at the wall. Celia realized a beauty mark she had always taken for natural was something Mrs. Pearson penciled onto the skin.

The silence stretched. Celia was accustomed to their conversation as a dance in which she was led through the turns.

“How are your parents?” Mrs. Pearson asked.

“Good!” Celia chorused, her smile too broad, her mind leaping in five directions. “They’re beginning to talk about
retiring, but I don’t think they’d know what to do with themselves … Um, Mrs. Pearson? I’m sorry my mother didn’t keep in touch.”

“Celia.” Djuna’s mother sighed. “You’re thirty-two years old. I think you can call me Grace, don’t you?” She encircled her cup with tapered, elegant fingers. “And please don’t feel the need to apologize for your mother. We weren’t particular friends. It was always such a nice idea, an adult friendship flowering from one between children, but what were you supposed to talk about after you’d exhausted the topics of their teachers and their little triumphs and foibles? I found it so … depressing to predicate friendship on the sole shared criteria of both being mammals who’d borne live young.”

When Djuna’s mother smiled, her face softened. “Of course I don’t blame your mother. I really don’t. In the end, she only did what everyone else did, which I’m sure is what I would have done had the situation been reversed. I mean, what can one say or do under the circumstance? You can never talk about the thing you’re both thinking of, which is that one of you still has a child.”

Mrs. Pearson had once made Celia dream of brightly painted houses, each containing a mother who spoke fast and knowing.
Sophisticated
was the word she had struck upon in fifth grade and repeated as a silent accompaniment to terms and topics beyond her comprehension. Sometimes after she and Djuna had fought, she and Mrs. Pearson would spend whole afternoons together while Djuna sulked in her room.

Djuna’s mother bit into another cookie, then placed it beside the one she had already taken. “I suppose that’s the point
of belonging to a church,” she continued. “So that there’s always someone to stick by you. Which is why we atheists are all so attached to our shrinks.” She laughed abruptly, a sound like the bark of a seal. “An expensive proposition, atheism. A chaplain would have been much more economical.”

Celia had forgotten the old fear, the temporary sense of audience, the certainty that she was on the verge of being dismissed.

“Tell me,” Mrs. Pearson continued. “How has your poetry come along? You wrote such lovely poems, quite exceptional for your age.”

The conversation was turning into an exam for which Celia had studied all the wrong subjects.

“I haven’t written for a while,” she said. “I kept it up through college, but not really after.”

Djuna’s mother looked at her, then looked somewhere else.

“I had hopes for you, dear,” she admitted. “Back then you had sparkle. At the time I thought it was the sparkle of a poet, but perhaps it was just youth. Whatever it was, it rubbed off on Djuna. She certainly didn’t get it from me or Dennis. We were never popular children. So you can just imagine what it was like coming here and seeing her blossom. She’d always had such trouble making friends.”

Celia pictured Djuna’s dark braids, her pale neck. That first day in class, Djuna hadn’t once turned in her chair. She’d sat perfectly still, save for when she raised her hand, her entire being committed to being called by name.

“I always thought it was something about her that rubbed off on me,” Celia said.

Mrs. Pearson smiled. “Then the two of you must have brought out the best in each other.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Celia’s mouth had gone dry. She swallowed her coffee, which Djuna’s mother reached to refill before she had released the cup. “I remember us fighting a lot.”

“Of course you did!” Mrs. Pearson said. “You were girls! And you were so competitive. I remember once I came into Djuna’s room to find you two simply screaming at each other over a game of Monopoly. Djuna had landed on a utility, and you said you wouldn’t let her buy it until she pronounced the words on the card correctly. Djuna was certain it was pronounced ‘tittle deed,’ but you weren’t having any of that. So you consulted the resident English professor and then you insisted that Djuna apologize.”

“That’s not how I remember it,” Celia told her.

“Of course it isn’t,” Mrs. Pearson said. “That’s what mothers are for.”

The clock on the wall filled the room with its ticking. Celia imagined hours magnified by the sound.

“Grace?” she asked. “What do you remember about that day?”

“Is that what we’re going to talk about now?” she asked softly.

“I’d like to,” Celia said.

Djuna’s mother gazed at her lap. Her hands grasped at each other, palm pressed against palm. “Shall I tell you what she ate for breakfast?” she began. “Blueberry yogurt and orange juice. I wanted her to have a bran muffin, but she wouldn’t, so instead
I stuck one in her backpack for later on. Shall I tell you what she was wearing?”

“Her purple pants with the extra pockets,” Celia answered. “Her white Tretorns with the pink laces. Her light blue unicorn shirt, and her light blue jacket. She hated when you put muffins in her backpack. She gave them to Ed.”

“Who was Ed?” Mrs. Pearson whispered.

“The boy who sat behind us on the bus. He did whatever we told him to do.”

Djuna’s mother smiled. “Of course he did.”

“We weren’t very nice to him.”

“You didn’t have to be,” Mrs. Pearson said. “You didn’t have to be nice to anyone. You were such confident girls. I loved that about you, that confidence. Up until the last day, I had no idea there was such a thing as too much.”

She tilted her head to one side, as if to observe Celia from a different angle. Celia held her breath.

“She began as such a sensible girl,” Mrs. Pearson continued. “Do you know that she never once went into the street by herself when she was little? Not once. I told her, ‘Djuna, that’s where the cars go. It’s not safe unless you’re holding a grown-up’s hand,’ and that was all it took. It was so nice not to have to worry about her in that way. Were you like that as a little girl? Sensible?”

Celia told her that she didn’t know.

“I’m sure you were,” Mrs. Pearson said. “Your mother was a sensible woman. She certainly didn’t approve of me. She wanted to, of course, but I think I was too much for her. Anyway, I’m sure you listened when she advised you to stay out of
the street, and not to talk to strangers, and certainly never to get into a stranger’s car.”

Mrs. Pearson closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Your mother never raised her voice. Not with you or anyone else. It was a fundamental difference between us and one I don’t think she could get over.”

Djuna’s mother placed one hand against her cheek in mock surprise. “When I get upset, you see—as you well know—I yell. And I defy anyone who says that it’s not a solution. It is. I almost always feel better afterward. Of course, when you came to my door that day, you weren’t yelling. You were so upset that you could hardly speak. I asked you questions, but you were crying so hard and the other girls were no help, they were crying too, and you were all just saying the same thing over and over. Then the police arrived and took you away with them, and I never saw you again.”

Mrs. Pearson looked at Celia in astonishment. “I never saw you again!” Her cup shook as she raised it to her mouth. “You were never mine, but I missed you all the same.” She replaced the cup and hid her trembling hand. “Of course, it helped to know that you were somewhere out in the world. It became a consolation. Though I had always imagined you becoming a poet. Not someone who goes through a poetic phase, mind you, but an actual poet.”

Celia smiled. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Never apologize for what you are, dear. But tell me, seeing as you’re not a poet, what
do
you do?”

“I’m a performance auditor for the Illinois Auditor General,” she said.

Mrs. Pearson’s face went slack. “I have absolutely no idea what that is.”

“It means,” Celia said, “that I examine state agencies—Child Protective Services, the Department of Juvenile Corrections, the Department of Health, the Department of Environmental Quality—to report on how well their programs are meeting their goals. Then the State Assembly drafts proposals to help those programs run better. Through increased funding, for example, or improved legislation.”

“That sounds terribly useful,” Grace drawled.

“It is!” Celia said. She had planned which stories to tell and in what order, but Djuna’s mother was staring past her.

“And are you married?” Mrs. Pearson asked.

“I live with a public high school history teacher named Huck,” Celia said. “We own an apartment near Logan Square and we’ve got two dogs named Bella and Sylvie, and—”

“Two
dogs
, how precious,” Mrs. Pearson said. “How charming. But surely you and Huck must be trying for the
richest
experience life can offer?”

Because Celia was taller now, Mrs. Pearson looked different than she had when Celia was a girl, her face flatter than the one Celia had to crane her neck to see.

“No,” Celia said. “Not yet.”

“How very modern of you,” Mrs. Pearson cooed. “It must be wonderful to be so young and modern.”

“Mrs. Pearson,” Celia said. “Are you all right? You seem a little upset.”

“Upset?” Djuna’s mother smiled. “Why, I’m just
ducky!
You can’t imagine how excited I was to hear your voice on the
phone. My own Celia! Returned to me after twenty-one years! I was so greatly looking forward to our conversation. Back then, I had told myself that you were like a beautiful empty pitcher that I was filling up with sparkling water.” She leaned across the table. Celia had never seen her eyes so close, their gray-green irises ringed at the center by a circle of brownish-gold.

“I used to comfort myself with the thought that you had survived,” Grace whispered. “That you had gone on to become something extraordinary.”