The Friends We Keep (3 page)

7

 

I was surprised to hear from Sophie Holmes. The last time I saw her was when her son, Jake, was a toddler, just before Sophie moved to the West Coast so that Brad could take an important job he'd been offered by one of the big studios. Her parents threw “the kids” a going-away party, and though it meant I had to take a night off my job as a waitress—one of several jobs I was working at to support my sister and me—I went.

I didn't have much to say to Sophie by then; our lives had taken such incredibly different directions. I vaguely remember us hugging awkwardly when I left to catch a train back into the city. I don't remember Jake at all; maybe he was asleep somewhere. I do remember John sailing in with his latest girlfriend in tow; I'm not sure we said more than a word that evening. John had finished law school, Sophie was married and a mother. I was the only one not doing what I thought I would be doing at the age of twenty-four.

For a while after Sophie moved to the West Coast we sent each other birthday and Christmas cards. Sometimes they included dashed-off notes about what was going on in our lives; Sophie often included wallet-sized department-store portraits or school photos of Jake. I have no idea where those photos are now. I suspect I tossed them at some point, probably after the cards stopped coming—or I stopped sending them. Who forgot a birthday first? Who was too exhausted from holiday shopping to send a Christmas card? I couldn't remember.

I also couldn't remember much about our friendship during the four years of college. This wasn't terribly surprising. I learned early on, right after my parents' untimely deaths, that dwelling on the past is simply unproductive. And every moment of life should be productive. If the past has to be let go in order to ensure the future, then so be it. Repression or willed forgetfulness can be powerful tools on the road to success. Recovered memory? Not for me. What I've forgotten I believe I've forgotten for a very good reason: it was inconsequential.

And yet, I found myself willing to meet Sophie for a drink. I wouldn't commit to dinner; I wasn't prepared to spend an entire evening with her. But I was willing to see how things would go, maybe out of simple curiosity. How had Sophie fared since I'd last seen her? Did she look older than her forty-two years, or younger? And how would I compare?

Stranger still, I found myself wondering if whatever it was that had drawn us together in college, whatever it was that had made us friends, would be there again, after all this time.

And if it was there, I wondered if I would care.

8

 

I'd been thinking a lot about my personal relationships, even before Sophie's call. And I'd come to the realization that other than my father and brothers-in-law, I didn't have any male friends—and I wasn't sure I could properly call family members friends. Sure, there were a few colleagues with whom I occasionally had a drink or caught a ball game when someone scored free tickets. And although I work out almost every day at a local gym, I avoid getting into locker room conversations. I'm there to do a job—keep my body in some semblance of order—and once the job is done for the day, I'm gone.

Maybe, I thought, having no guy friends wasn't a problem.

There is one guy at my office who deserves a mention in this context. His name is Gene Patton
.
He's thirty-three and a rat of a guy, a real sleaze. He regularly cheats on his doting, stay-at-home wife, a sweet woman named Marie. I met her at last year's company Christmas party, at which Gene completely ignored her, compelling me to spend an entire half hour chatting with her. She's not a great conversationalist but short of dragging her bum of a husband to her side by his ear, I wasn't going to let her stand there all alone in her not-so-fine finery, looking like a scared rabbit.

I meet so many women in the course of my work who've wound up with such disgusting specimens of my sex and always I ask myself: How and why did this happen? There are all sorts of answers, of course, from the economic to the personal, from social strictures to family pressures. But even when I learn the specifics of a particular story I'm still left wondering. I still feel unsettled.

But back to Gene. Not only is he a slime in his personal life, he's also a pimple on the butt of society in that he's a major tax evader. Understandably, I'm uncomfortable with this knowledge but my personal code of ethics forbids me from ratting on a buddy. Gene might not be a friend but he is in a way a companion and while I can advise him never again to mention his illegal activities to me, as I am, in fact, an attorney, I also won't turn him in to the IRS. So sue me.

As if cheating the government isn't bad enough, this guy never picks up the tab when a few of us from the firm go out for a drink after work. We're wise to this habit and have devised several schemes to leave Gene stuck with the bill whenever the tab is particularly high.

Still, I tolerate this guy's presence. And sometimes it keeps me awake at night wondering why.

It's pretty clear to me that a lot of Gene's hanging around my office is due to a rabid desire to get in good with one of the firm's partners. I'm no fool—I'm not going to award Gene anything he doesn't deserve—but the fact is I'm a bit of a lonely guy these days. I'm not proud of it, but sometimes I find that spending an hour with a creep is better than spending an hour by myself. And Gene does understand some of my professional pressures. In spite of his severe character defects, he is a pretty good attorney. Okay, some might say that his professional skills are a direct result of his defects as a human being. Suit yourself.

As long as I'm confessing, I'll go further and admit that on occasion, I'm amused by Gene's antics—the ones that cause no real harm to anyone but himself, of course, like when he's forced to give a report at a staff meeting while nursing a hangover.

That said, I have counseled Gene on his appalling behavior as a husband, but I know that my words fall on deaf ears. If Gene's going to undergo a personal epiphany, it won't be a result of my influence. My ego isn't so big that I believe I can make a real difference in his life for the better.

There's one more thing I want to say regarding my troublesome colleague. In my more harried moments—I should say, in my most harried moments—I wish that I could be a bit less concerned with other people's problems and a bit more concerned with my own happiness. I wonder what it would be like to be a little like Gene, a self-serving person instead of a giver.

Of course, it's impossible that I would ever morph into a Gene, even for an hour. It's simply not in my nature to be . . . to be what I'm not. I'm not bragging; I'm fully aware that I'm no saint. And I'm not seeking pity; my life is a pretty damn good one.

In fact, it seems to me that my entire life has been charmed.

School came easy for me, right from the start. My mother tells me that I was reading before I got to kindergarten. I don't remember a time when I wasn't reading, so maybe she's telling the truth and not exaggerating, something she tends to do when talking about her children's finer points.

I went to a private high school on an academic scholarship, then graduated from college at the top of my class. After that, it was law school, where I made law review even while maintaining a very active nightlife.

I've been told I'm a good-looking guy, and I have plenty of evidence that I'm personable (for that, I thank my father, who could charm a smile out of a corpse). Yeah, I use my looks and personality to meet women—why not? But the game stops there. I don't lie to women; I don't promise anything I can't deliver. That doesn't mean that some women haven't accused me of leading them on, of toying with their feelings. I've never made a promise of forever or of exclusivity, but some people hear what they want to hear.

At the age of thirty-five, I made partner in my firm. For a while I felt as if I was on top of the world. And then the loneliness began to seep in through the cracks of my bright-and-shiny life. “Bright and shiny” usually implies a quality of brittleness. Time causes stress, stress causes cracks, and in through those cracks trickles grim reality.

Still, I did nothing about the loneliness except to let it continue to seep in and crowd me. I was busy. That was my excuse for ignoring the ultimately more important aspects of my life.

And then I hit forty, and realized that I was the only single man of my professional or personal acquaintance. Even those guys who were divorced were actively in the process of signing up another wife while spending fun-filled weekends with their kids from the first one. No man in the firm, gay or hetero, was going home to an empty apartment except me.

The loneliness had become loud and insistent, a giant wave rather than seepage. Something had to be done. But what?

Here's what I came up with, the grand plan. Step One: No more casual sex. I'd come to realize that a lot of the thrill in casual sexual encounters had worn away. Not all of it—my libido is as high as any guy's—but somehow, the effort, which was, admittedly, minimal, just didn't seem worth it. Most times. Okay, so I expected some trouble adjusting to this new rule of delayed gratification but I was confident I could adopt new habits.

Step Two presented itself to me in the form of a phone call from Sophie Holmes, Sophie Jimenez back when I knew her in college. After years in Los Angeles she'd moved back to Boston and was hoping to reconnect with me and another of our college friends, a woman named Eve Fitzpatrick.

Step Three would have been Step Two if Sophie hadn't emerged from the past. Step Three was to begin to look in a serious way for Ms. Right.

I'm a guy. I identify a problem and I go about solving it in a methodical fashion. Which is not to say that love was ignored in the project. I knew myself well enough to know that without genuine love I'd never be able to pull off a trip to the altar.

I'll admit I wondered if the newly divorced Sophie might be looking for a husband. It might, I thought, be easier to rekindle a friendship—and have it build to a romance—than to start from scratch. I'm not lazy, but the notion of dating with intention was daunting.

And what about Eve as a candidate for the role of loving life partner? The answer to that would be a big fat
no
.

Back in college I had a crush on Eve but I never pursued it. I'm not stupid, nor am I a masochist. Eve never gave me the slightest clue that she might be interested in me. In fact, she spent a good deal of time berating me for being self-important and overly fond of pretty but stupid women.

Besides, after a failed fling with Sophie, which, thankfully, ended with our friendship intact, I was hesitant to risk another friendship with a woman I admired. Sure, Eve seemed to find me morally repulsive, but she also continued to count me as a friend. Go figure.

Anyway, a few years ago I ran into Eve at a big fund-raiser. At first, she didn't recognize me, which I found a bit surprising, as I've been told I haven't changed all that much since college. But maybe I shouldn't always believe my mother.

I introduced myself and from that moment the conversation, if it could be called that, was all about the guy she was seeing and how fantastic he was. I remember being suspicious about the whole thing. In my experience, when one member of a couple (or worse, both) claims that everything is perfect, the relationship is just about to tank.

I also remember being struck by how much Eve had changed. For one thing, what was with the name change? The tall, su-perblonde, stylishly dressed woman I met at that fund-raiser was a carbon copy of the kind of woman I regularly dated, the kind of woman I had grown tired of: fast talking and self-absorbed. The Eve I had known back in college was the antithesis of that woman—deliberate in her speech, and almost entirely other-focused.

I'm not saying that Eve—Eva—didn't look great, she did. But looks aside, I wasn't happy about the transformation. At the time I wondered if the change in her personality was due to the influence of her mystery man. And, I considered, maybe the change wasn't really all that deep; maybe my surprise was largely due to the unexpected nature of our meeting. Finally, I thought, maybe when she was at home Eve was her old self. We all play a role when we're out in the world. Maybe Eve was just acting—as Eva.

Still, I looked forward to seeing Eva again, and Sophie. I was curious to see what further changes time had wrought, on all of us.

And I was curious to see what our future might be, together.

9

 

She hasn't changed a bit.

This was my immediate impression when Sophie walked into Churchill. The sense of familiarity was powerful, far more than I'd anticipated. There was the thick dark hair. There were the gold-framed eyeglasses. It was only as Sophie started to walk toward me that I noticed the changes: a visible strand of gray; glasses more stylish than those she'd worn in college; and, something new, clothes that had the distinct, somewhat matronly look of Clearwater Creek.

I must, I thought, get her to dress her age. She's a good ten to fifteen years too young for midcalf skirts and tunics, even if they're expensive, and especially if she's hoping to meet a man. I'll introduce her to my colorist. I'll inquire about contacts.

I stood as Sophie approached the bar, a look of tempered excitement on her face.

“Eva?” she asked. “My gosh, I hardly recognized you with your hair so short—and so blonde!”

“Yes, well,” I said.

I put out my hand at the same time Sophie attempted to give me a hug. It was an awkward moment. I'm not one for affectionate gestures.

We each took a seat at the bar. When the bartender had taken Sophie's drink order, a Cosmo, our reunion began.

“So, what have you been up to for the past twenty years or so?” I asked. I delivered the question in a jaunty tone, expecting an answer on the order of
“Rotting away, and you?”

“Well, there's Jake, of course,” Sophie said seriously. “Raising him took up almost all of my time, especially with Brad so involved with his job. Which was fine because, honestly, I enjoyed every minute of being a stay-at-home mom.”

I looked for an indication of quiet desperation in Sophie's eyes, and found none. Maybe, I thought, I'm just not looking hard enough.

“Wasn't it ever . . . dull?” I asked.

Sophie laughed. “Oh, no, never dull! There's always some excitement cropping up. Sometimes, though, it was a bit . . . lonely.”

I nodded.

“You know,” she continued, as if I'd asked her to explain, “if Jake was in bed and Brad was working late . . . Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time by myself over the years.”

“Another baby might have kept you company, stretch marks be damned.”

I can't describe the expression on Sophie's face right then except to say that it combined sorrow and anger in a distinctly uncomfortable way. Shit, I thought. What crazy impulse had made me say that?

I watched Sophie struggle to regain her formerly pleasant demeanor. “It still upsets me to think about it,” she said after a moment.

“I shouldn't have—”

Sophie waved her hand dismissively. “No, no, it's okay. It's just that Brad wasn't thrilled about my trying to get pregnant after Jake. I don't know why but he just didn't want more kids. But when Jake was three I finally convinced him that a sibling would be a good thing for Jake—and that another baby was what I really, really wanted.”

“But Jake's an only child?”

“Yes. The thing was, I just couldn't get pregnant. After about a year of trying on our own, I went for tests and . . . And I found out there were problems that would make another pregnancy difficult to achieve.”

“Oh,” I said. I have little knowledge of the intricacies of the female reproductive system. I know enough not to get pregnant and that's about all.

“Anyway,” Sophie went on, “it was a very painful thing to hear. I was told there were plenty of fertility treatments available and Brad said fine. By then, he was resigned to the idea of another baby. But in the end I decided against the treatments. The process was long and expensive, and there was no guarantee I'd actually get pregnant.”

Brad, I thought, must have been thrilled.

“And,” Sophie added, with a slight air of apology, “I have a problem with the idea of extensive fertility therapy. Maybe it's a holdover from my Catholic childhood, I don't know. Of course, I would never tell anyone else what to do with her body.”

“Of course,” I agreed. But what did I really know about Sophie? Anyway, it seemed expected of me to continue the topic I, after all, had so stupidly started. “But what about your desire for a baby?”

“Oh, I didn't give up the idea of another baby entirely. I began to research adoption, foreign adoption, specifically.”

“A popular course. I can think of the three people in my firm who've adopted from Asia.”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “I thought that if I presented Brad with all my research from various agencies he might actually consider adopting a baby, maybe from Eastern Europe. Brad's great-grandparents came from Poland, you know.”

“But no luck?”

Sophie raised her eyebrows in that way that says bingo.

“He shot down the idea without even looking at the information. Brad said that if we were going to have another child it would have to be our own. He suggested I change my mind about fertility treatments.”

“Well,” I said, “did you explain to him your . . . moral . . . hesitations?”

“I tried to. But Brad thought I was just being stubborn. He didn't understand me and, frankly, I'm not sure he even tried to understand.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why was Brad suddenly all gung ho about the fertility option? I thought he didn't want another baby, period.”

Sophie laughed ruefully. “I don't think he did. I think he just wanted me to put the adoption issue to rest. And suggesting I get all caught up in fertility treatments was one way of getting me out of his hair. If another baby was going to give me something to do—so that I wouldn't have the time to pester him—fine, he'd deal with another baby.”

I hadn't spoken to Sophie in years. I had no idea what sort of rights I had. So, I asked. “Am I allowed to make a negative comment about your ex-husband?”

Sophie thought about this for a moment before saying, “Yes. You can say what you want.”

“Brad sounds like an ass. I never was a big fan, even back in college when you started bringing him around in our senior year. Then, again, from what I can remember, which isn't much, I got the impression he didn't quite care for me, either. Or for John.”

“Brad was jealous of John. He thought something had gone on between us.” Sophie paused and then added hastily, “He thought that about every guy who even looked my way.”

“Ah, an ass and jealous. Lucky you.”

“He wasn't always an ass,” Sophie corrected. “There were times when he was really sweet. And his possessiveness seemed to die away when Jake was born.”

Right around the time you began to fade into his background, I surmised.

“But the whole thing about another baby,” Sophie said, almost as if she was speaking to herself. “I was so angry with Brad for such a long time after that. When he finally told me he was leaving, I realized that things had started to fall apart years ago. The whole experience—trying to get pregnant, wanting to adopt—drove a wedge between Brad and me. Eventually, we just split apart.”

All those years, wasted, I thought.

“Maybe if we'd gone to counseling,” she went on, “to talk about Brad's resistance to adoption and my resistance to the therapies, I don't know, maybe we could have had a happier life together.”

Maybe, but I doubted it. A happy life, in my opinion, rarely involved anyone other than the self. Another one of my opinions is that sacrifice of anything more important than the last cookie on the plate is rarely, if ever, worth it.

“You gave up what you really wanted,” I said bluntly, “so that your husband could have what he wanted.”

“I know. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't find a way to get what was so important to me.”

“It might not be too late. If you're more open to science playing a part in conception, you could still have another baby.”

“No,” Sophie said emphatically. “No. It's far too late.”

I could have asked Sophie to explain why she felt it was too late. She would probably have told me. But I didn't ask. Instead I wondered how I had stumbled into a conversation of such a personal nature with someone I hadn't seen or spoken to in almost twenty years.

I wasn't sure I wanted, or needed, a friendship—at least, this particular friendship. I'd been on my own for so many years, utterly self-reliant. Being there with Sophie, once a friend, was disquieting. I'd left my old life and old self behind, even changed my name, in order to survive on my own—and eventually to thrive. And that was what I was doing, wasn't I? Thriving, without the intrusion of old friends.

“So, you didn't work all those years Jake was growing up?” I asked somewhat meanly. “I mean, at a job with pay and health benefits and business trips and a pension?”

Sophie didn't seem to take offense. “Well,” she said, “once Jake was in high school there wasn't much for me to do at home—Brad insisted we have a housekeeper. So, I decided to get a real estate license.”

“Interesting,” I said, though real estate doesn't interest me in the slightest. Aside from my own apartment, which I bought primarily as an investment on the advice of my accountant, I have little interest in the buying and selling of property. But in women earning their own money—that's a topic I consider of great importance.

“It was fun,” Sophie said. “But I didn't stick with it for long. I guess . . . I guess without the financial incentive I just couldn't make myself focus like I should have. Brad's income was very good . . .” Sophie shook her head, as if tossing off a piece of unpleasant self-knowledge—perhaps that she was lazy?

It was really none of my business but I found myself asking Sophie how she was situated. In other words, had Brad done right by her in the settlement?

“It was an uncontested divorce,” she said a bit defiantly. “We didn't need lawyers. We came to an agreement on our own.”

I didn't quite know what to do with this bit of information, other than to say, “Oh.” Only an enormous expenditure of self-control prevented me from adding, “Are you insane?”

“Yes,” she went on, fiddling with her napkin, “I'm fine. Brad is an honest man.”

Ah, the questions that were crowding my mind! Such as: How can you be sure Brad hasn't hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars under the proverbial mattress?

I asked instead, “So, what do you do with yourself all day? Really, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't get out to an office every morning. Kill myself, most likely.”

“Oh, Eve—Eva—don't say something like that!”

I made a face as if to say,
“Whatever.”
Since turning forty, I try not to use that expression, but I'm not past implying it. “Well,” I repeated, “what do you do?”

“Well, unpacking and setting up the apartment took some time. But I'm almost finished. So, I don't know. I'm thinking of going for my real estate license here in Massachusetts. I was thinking that working in real estate might be a good way to meet people.”

“Yes,” I said. “And by people, do you mean men?”

Sophie laughed. “I mean all people, but yes, men, too.”

“So, you're ready to get back in the game?”

“Yes. I think so. Why?” Sophie asked eagerly. “Do you know anyone for me?”

Assist the rival? Not that I considered Sophie much of a rival. “No,” I said. “I'm afraid you'll have to find your own dates.”

“Oh.” Sophie looked downright crestfallen. “I was hoping . . . It would be nice to meet someone through a friend, someone I can trust. You know?”

So, Sophie considered me a friend and not simply an old, dusted-off acquaintance. She considered me someone she could trust. Was Sophie someone I could trust? How was I to know? Besides, I thought, I'm not in the market for a trust buddy.

I nodded, offering neither a yes nor a no.

“I want to get married again,” Sophie explained. “But I want to take the dating thing slowly. I don't want to make a mistake and it's been so long. I really don't know what I'm doing.”

“Taking things slowly makes sense. Though you'd better not wait too long before making a move. Forty might be the new thirty but there are an awful lot of men out there who prefer the actual to the ‘as if.' ”

“I know, I know. The whole thing is so daunting.”

“And yet you still want to try again. Even after going through a divorce you feel positive about marriage.”

Some people, I realized long ago, are gluttons for punishment.

“I do, yes. Marriage worked for me, for a long time. A new marriage would be different, of course. Well, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“For example, this time I'd like . . .” Sophie hesitated.

“You'd like what?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, after a quick glance to her left to assure she couldn't be overheard, “I'd like a more passionate marriage. I'd like to know what it feels like to really . . . to really want someone.”

“A marriage with passion? Good luck finding the impossible.”

“Even in the beginning,” she went on, ignoring my remark, “Brad and I weren't—I don't know, wild. We were in love but it was more like . . . more like friends who love each other. I'm not saying that was bad. Our marriage worked for a long time. Still . . .”