When We Were Friends (2 page)

I pulled myself from the tub, screwing my face against the groaning in my knees. The reality of baths is always a little disappointing, but you tend to forget the disappointment when you aren’t actually in one. I didn’t know why I even bothered to take baths anymore, except that they seemed like they should be a good idea, like if I just knew how to do them right they would, in a New-Agey way, bring peace.

I dressed in a black skirt, a little dressy but not too dressy, a little slimming, but not enough. I look better without clothes on. It’s an unfortunate fact, since people don’t usually see me without clothes. But the way I’m built, muscular and curvy smooth, like something sculpted out of clay that’s a little too wet for precise sculpting, the clothes manage to drape themselves in such a way that you’d think my belly starts where my breasts end, and my head looks too small for my shoulders. I’ve read lots of articles on vertical stripes and A-lines and bias cuts, but the conclusion I’ve come to is that for my body type, the only way to emphasize the good points would be to strip and show them in all their glory. Not acceptable in most situations, so usually I’ll just wear black, which is what the articles recommend for almost everybody anyway.

I combed my hair back into a chignon, decided it was too much
and combed it forward again, then took out the ring I’d bought. A gumball-machine sort of ring, gold-painted with a plastic diamond the size of North Dakota, but it’d look real enough for this one day. I smiled into the mirror, showing my teeth. I had good teeth. Excellent teeth. Anyone would be jealous of these teeth.

“Lainey!” Star called.

I tilted my face to the ceiling. “What!”

There was no answer. I started for Star’s bedroom. “What?”

She was in bed with her incense dish, her head propped on pillows. She cupped her hand over the burning stick and blew, a patchouli cloud veiling her face and obscuring the smile lines so that with her rounded cheekbones and wide eyes she looked twenty. My mother had been truly beautiful once but now she was sallow, gaunt, as if she’d spent the past decade trapped inside a dark box. Which, in effect, she had. “Mmmm, aren’t you pretty today,” she said. “Why you all dressed up?”

“I’m not.” I pulled up the blinds, waving away the smoke. “You want something?”

“You didn’t say good morning.”

“You were asleep.”

“You’re full of crap; I’ve been up since six. I know when I’m being avoided.” She smiled and nodded at the desk. “Bills’re done, you can take them out. Oh, and when you get a chance next day or two, I could use a barber.” She pulled her hair into her face and wrinkled her nose. “I look like Cousin Itt.”

It had been over twenty years that I’d been cutting my mother’s hair. I wondered if she even realized women had long ago decided their hair was too precious for barbers. I pulled a brush from her nightstand and sat on her bed, began brushing the hair back from her forehead. “I’ll do it tonight. Actually, I’m on my way out to an occult shop if you want anything. They’re looking for someone to do their walls, and I was thinking of some kind of Druid theme.”

“An occult shop? How fun is that! Which one?”

I hesitated a second. But there was no reason not to tell her; she wouldn’t remember it was Sydney’s store. “It’s called Six of Swords.”

Star pulled away. “Six of Swords? You mean Sydney’s store?”

My shoulders stiffened. I focused on pulling loose hairs from her brush, holding them to the light to see whether there was any blond left. Seemed like recently it had all gone white. “It’s not Sydney’s, Ma, she just happens to work there. I’m bringing over my portfolio.”

Star nodded slowly. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

I made a face. “I’m sure the Lord has better things to do. If I’m lucky they’ll have me painting at night and Sydney won’t even be there.”

She kept nodding. “Would you get me my cards?”

“I don’t want a reading.”

“And I don’t want wrinkles or drooping boobs. Don’t be difficult. At her best that girl is unpredictable. At her worst, she’s dangerous.” She said this last in a jovial whisper.

“I’m not sixteen anymore, Ma.”

“You are.” She thumped her chest as she rose. “In here you’re like me, we’re both sixteen.” She pulled a red velvet cloth from her top dresser drawer, unfolded it and handed the deck forward.

The cards were old and yellowed with age, their edges smudged and worn. I’d bought her three new packs before I finally gave up trying. It was Star’s belief that age and use had made the cards more powerful, engrained their connection to the spirit world. Before the pack had been Star’s it had belonged to my grandmother, who’d used it in county fairs and then, once she’d established a loyal customer base, in private readings at her parlor in Roanoke. (Rumor had it that my grandmother had done readings for the likes of Lady Bird Johnson and Elvis, but more than likely the stories were just Nana Sterling’s imagination at work, because really what would Elvis be doing in Roanoke?)

“Shuffle,” Star said. I knew the drill, had known it since childhood, shuffle, cut the deck and stack, shuffle, cut the deck and stack. She’d made a living from her readings back when I was a kid; mostly women, all unsatisfied with marriage, job and children (or lack thereof), who’d confessed their problems while I listened from behind the closed door.

Her clients had dwindled—due, I suspected, to a number of faulty readings—down to seven women who treated the readings like therapy. So with nothing else to take her time, Star had turned all her attention onto me.

With every new year in school, every trip to the doctor, every trek to the swimming pool or sledding hill, anywhere something might possibly go wrong, there was a reading. And as Star grew more afraid of the outside world, the readings became an everyday ordeal. As if laying the future out on the table could protect me from it, in the same way holing herself behind closed doors protected her from what might lie on the other side.

“So this here represents the central issue between you,” Star said, laying a card face up. She raised her eyebrows and dealt three more cards on each side: the Relationship Spread. “Well,” she said. “Well.”

“So what is it?” I tried not to sound indulgent.

Star rolled her eyes meaningfully. “Very strange is all.” She traced her fingers over the center card. “Three of Swords represents betrayal, being cheated by someone you trust. And here’s the Tower card.” She pointed to the crumbling tower, animals leaping from its roof. “Which means a shake-up, unexpected change. This here is Sydney, the Magician, and it’s reversed, which means she’s a manipulator, intoxicated with her own power.” She glanced at me, looking vaguely amused. “Which I guess we already know. And this is you, the Eight of Cups, which means an injury to your heart. Which all sounds bad, but this here is the Ten of Cups which signifies bliss, things unfolding exactly the way they should.”

She laid another card on top of the center card, and her face froze. Death. I used to freak myself out with that card when I was a kid, the black-caped man with his scepter, dismembered limbs at his feet. I used to sneak into Star’s room and pull it out from the deck, then stare at it, my insides squirming, for as long as I could stand to look. I raised my eyebrows. “So I’m gonna kill her?”

Star gathered the cards, slipping Death to the center of the deck before she looked up into my eyes. “Wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said.

•   •   •

On my way into town I stopped off at Pamela’s house, because I needed some affirmation and Pamela is the affirming type. We’d been friends for eight years, ever since we first met at the Newport News Memorial Day Parade. We were sharing a bench, watching little girls in leotards stumble their way through pirouettes, and she was breast-feeding the tiniest baby I’d ever seen. It was while trying to avoid staring at her breast that I noticed she was eating a cheeseless pizza, which is how our conversation started.

etcetera …

And we’ve been friends ever since, which just goes to show the power of twists of fate and a big mouth.

I knocked on her door, then rang the bell. After a minute I opened the door and called, “You there, Pam? It’s me.”

“Hey,” Pamela called from upstairs. “Just got out of the shower. Come on in.”

I walked to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, then sat at her table and waited. The table was sticky and toast-crumby, as was almost everything in Pamela’s home. She took a kind of pride in it, I think, in having three kids and a husband who was too manly to use a sponge. It was a sign of domesticity, being continually blanketed by the presence of mess.

Pamela breezed into the room carrying Matty, who struggled free
when he saw me and pulled himself onto my lap. I snuggled him close. How many times had I imagined myself in Pamela’s life? All the days I’d spent joking around with Pamela and Craig, an equilateral friendship triangle until he’d do something, squeeze a hand at the back of her neck or hook a finger playfully under her belt, and I’d all at once feel how alone I was. The days I babysat the boys, where after hours of board games and wrestling matches they begged me not to leave. Little Matty crying out whenever I just reached for my purse—seeing it as a sign I was about to go—which made me reach for it again and again at random moments so I could absorb the joy of being so wanted.

Pamela glanced at the gurgling coffeepot. “Bless you,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m too good to you.”

She smiled and opened a cupboard and I rubbed at Matty’s back, ignoring the snot streaming from his nose until it made its way to my blouse. “You have a cold, Matty-kins?”

“Yuh,” he said, swiping his nose against my boob.

“Sorry.” Pamela handed me a napkin. “It’s the day care center, breeds more germs than kids. Hey, you’re all dressed up. What’s the occasion?”

“Nothing really.” I wiped carefully at Matty’s nose and then my shirt. “I just have to make an impression today.”

Pamela poured coffee and brought it to the table. “For who?”

“It’s stupid. Just an old friend I haven’t seen in a trillion years.”

“Cool. And I guess within the past twenty-four hours you’ve gotten engaged?”

My face flushed and I twisted my ring to hide the diamond.

“It’s okay. When I went to my reunion I got Botox and told people Craig was a neurosurgeon.”

“Don’t just assume I’m lying. We met last night and we fell in love and tonight we’re flying to Vegas. By tomorrow we’ll have bought a house and conceived our first kid.”

Pamela widened her eyes. “Then congratulations and congratulations! Who’s this friend?”

I shrugged. I’d never told Pamela about Sydney; it was embarrassing
and there was no reason to contaminate the present with the past. Matty was fingering my gold necklace so I pulled it off and slipped it over his neck. “You’re gorgeous,” I whispered, then looked back at Pamela. “It’s just somebody I used to know. We had a falling-out in high school, she got popular and I didn’t, and this is the first time I’ve seen her since graduation.”

“And you have to show how you’re popular now, I get it. You don’t think she’ll eventually realize you’re only married to your paintbrush?”

“No, why should she? She lives an hour away so I won’t see her anywhere except in the shop where she works, and we don’t have any mutual anythings, so I could tell her I have three husbands and she’d never find out the truth.”

Pamela hesitated, then said, “Here, take this.” She pulled off her wedding band and handed it to me. “Now you’re actually married.”

This is why I adored Pamela. Talking to her was almost like having an interior monologue, minus the self-judgment. “Thanks,” I said, pushing the ring onto my finger. “I’ll bring it back tonight.” I held out my hand, tried to feel ownership, but with the mammoth diamond the hand felt like a transplant from the type of lady who’d wear knee-high boots with miniskirts. “I’m so stupid,” I said.

“I’d pretend to disagree, but you wouldn’t believe me.” She nodded at my coffee. “Drink up. It’s a diuretic and an appetite suppressant, and it’ll give you a rosy glow.”

I grinned at her and finished the coffee in three quick swigs, then rose with Matty on my hip to pour another cup. Tempted as I was to check my reflection for a rosy glow, I managed to refrain.

Six of Swords was in a Branchbury neighborhood, streets flanked by brick row houses and streetlamps still decorated with last winter’s Christmas bows. When I was a kid, Branchbury was the hipster region of an otherwise middle-class county, with its head shops and
tattoo parlors and hippie street musicians. A hangout for teens who didn’t want to be teens, where one could buy worn alternative rock records, and beer without being carded. Cool until one grew up and realized it was anything but. A few years ago the township had applied for revitalization money, using it in an attempt to become “quaint.” But the plastic surgery didn’t do much to cure it of its essential nature, just as the dangling cigarettes and tattoos didn’t change the kids who still hung out there: neon-loud, dirty round the edges, trying to be something they were not.

Sydney’s shop had been refurbished into the “quaint” version of an occult shop—puffy black awning and a trapezoid-shaped purple sign, lettered in the sort of pointy calligraphy one might find on a “magick” scroll. I stood on the sidewalk, portfolio in hand, trying to pretend myself into someone else. It was a trick I’d learned years ago when I’d had my first interviews, that I could be strong and sparkling and self-assured if I imagined myself thin and lovely, made myself into the people I most wanted to be. Often, I actually pretended I was Sydney. Which of course wouldn’t work in this particular circumstance. So I closed my eyes and made myself into another favorite choice, regal and slightly petulant, beautiful and saucy, but ultimately good at heart. I was Diana Ross. I smiled and entered the shop.