With Friends Like These: A Novel (44 page)

As I became big, then bigger, with child, Arthur and I went—his words—“on hiatus,” though hiatus was put on hiatus seven times for sex. Still, by month nine the sight of a penis made me gag. One night, my dress already off, he started to unbuckle and I batted him away. “I just can’t,” I said. “Don’t take it personally.”

He did. “Okay, okay, I’ll keep Mr. Weiner in my pants. But don’t leave—we have things to discuss.”

“We do?”

“That’s my kid in there!” He pointed to my belly, which stuck out like an awning that matched my behind. I was one of those women “carrying all around,” a polite way of saying I wasn’t merely pregnant, I was fat and pregnant. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I want in on his life. I’m an only child. You might be carrying the last Weiner.”

Again with the pleading. It was true that Arthur had given me a ring, which I wore when we were together, but neither of us had initiated discussion about whether this piece of jewelry came with a promise. I considered
the bauble strictly a token of kindness, because in his way, Arthur has that quality.

“What do you have in mind?” I said as I let him zip my pup tent.

He placed his hands gently on my shoulders and turned me toward him, his face as serious as I had ever seen it. “Julia Maria de Marco,” he said, “marry me.”

The following week I’d be having a birthday that would hurtle me solidly into a slot Ma’s generation called middle-aged. In my long time on earth, this was my first proposal. Arthur’s offer was, theoretically, tempting. Okay, it was a goddamn concerto, but it came with him attached. Pregnancy might have changed my body, but my brain was pretty much intact. Kindness notwithstanding, Arthur was Arthur.

“Let’s sit down,” I said. As we walked to his living room I hobbled a bit—a varicose vein snaked toward my knee like a gnarly root. I pushed aside a pile of magazines, settled my bulk on the couch, and hoisted my leg onto the coffee table. Arthur sat next to me and put his hand on my thigh. I removed it. “Marry? You, me, man, wife?”

“That’s the usual definition.” He was back to a grin, gaining confidence.

“Usual” is not how I prefer to think of myself. “Why follow convention? First of all, we didn’t plan this pregnancy.”

“The baby is a gift from God.”

“Are you suddenly tight with God? You’ve always said you were an agnostic. Would you want a wedding at St. Theresa’s and the Infant Jesus on Victory Boulevard?”

“I just know I want us to be together, to have you two in my life.”

“That’s charming, but where would we live? Not here, for Christ’s sake—it’s much too cramped.” And the thought of his moving into my home had all the romance of head lice. I liked my spices alphabetized, my bathroom to myself.

“I might still get that apartment. The old lady died, but Basil said when her estate’s settled I’m first on the list.”

Never! Obviously, that co-op carried a curse. Maybe it was because of pregnancy and my new no-woman-is-an-island philosophy, but I’d finally admitted to myself that it hadn’t been my finest hour when I told Arthur about that apartment in the first place, and by going to see it with him, I’d dirtied my hands all the more. Twice in the last month I’d actually walked into a church and considered going to confession to make good on that particular sin. The last place I wanted to raise my child was at the scene of the crime.

But there was a bigger question at hand. “What you’re talking about, Arthur, isn’t you, me, man, wife. It’s you, me, Mom, Dad. Am I right?”

He stood up, but rather than answer, he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a beer for him and apricot nectar—my new obsession—for me. “You, me, Mom, Dad—that’s a start, if you promise it’s forever.”

I thought of my deadbeat pop, Surfer Ted, and every other fucker who’d broken my heart. “How can I promise forever?” How can any woman?

Through my support hose, Arthur started to massage my leg; his caress was tender, his fingers touched with witchcraft. “Jules, Jules, Jules,” he murmured. “Plenty of women make that promise, every day, in long white dresses.”

He tilted his head like a beagle, and my heart bent, too. “Okay, Artie. No to marriage, but,” I said, very, very slowly, “yes to your being the baby daddy.”

Beads of perspiration broke out on Arthur’s forehead. I was fairly certain they were from relief, although he asked, “Is that no to marriage now or no to marriage ever?”

“It’s don’t bring it up—if I want to, I will.”

“If you’re saying yes to me as Daddy, can I be in the delivery room?”

This time I didn’t hesitate. “No fucking way.” It would be bad enough to endure labor on my own surrounded by a team of trained professionals. I had refused to talk, listen to a lecture, or look at a film about it. Why women felt otherwise was inexplicable.

“Okay,” Arthur said. “I can live with that. Daddy. I like the sound of it.”

When the day came, it was Talia who met me at Lenox Hill Hospital, just as it was she who’d been my partner at half a Lamaze class. Panting like a tired old collie? No, thanks. Natural childbirth sounded like unadulterated hell, and I’d gotten over hoping to become canonized after Sister Dildo’s cavalcade-of-saints class. Dildo had had me at St. Lucy, whose eyes were gouged out. A bad copy of a Renaissance painting hung in our classroom, featuring a girl carrying eyeballs in a dish as if she were serving dim sum. No sainthood for me. I wanted as many drugs as Sheila would be willing to inject. I would gladly pay extra.

Talia didn’t stay at my side long. In the end, I had a C-section. The baby was breech, standing straight up. Leave it to me to produce a kid too lazy to turn around, though at least her posture was excellent. She weighed less than seven pounds, and since I’d gained more than sixty, my first thought was that I’d be eating sashimi for years.

After recovery, I was wheeled into a private room. A few minutes later, a tightly swaddled bundle the size of a Perdue Oven Stuffer was placed in my arms. I brought the sleeping baby to my lips and softly baptized her with a kiss. “We de Marcos don’t have a great track record, my darling,” I told her, “but I’m going to try to change that.” I’d picked Sienna’s name months earlier, choosing it for the city of my great-grandmother’s birth, a city I’d always hoped to travel to with my friends. I stroked my baby’s tiny scalp, with its wisps of dark hair, and wondered if that would ever happen. Well, if it didn’t, I could go there with my daughter.

“We are going to be best friends, Sienna Julia, I know it,” I said. “Mama has a lot to teach you. You see, my precious, I have these rules….”

  
Chloe

“Chloe?” It was Winters on the intercom. “All set?”

“Ready!” We were pitching a new client. I’d have liked to say it was Chanel or even Talbot’s, but it was Wax Maxx, a day spa that specialized in Brazilian landscaping. Winters had suggested that to prepare, I should sample and expense some of the competitors, which—after I blushed a shade of pink never seen before in nature—I appreciated because since the fall of the Keaton empire, I’d been waxing myself, one of many economies of which I was proud. Not that Xander had gotten a peek at my landing strip. We hadn’t seen each other naked since our world caved in.

“Don’t worry about me,” Xander had announced when I left for work that morning. That was like saying,
Don’t look at the cold sore on my lip
. Worrying about my husband had become my second job. Who wouldn’t perseverate about a husband who guzzled Coronas every afternoon while dozing through reruns of golf tournaments from before he was born? Who twice forgot to pick up his son from a play date? Who’d made Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy his only friend, because he couldn’t bring himself to talk to his wife?

This was fine, because I wasn’t sure what I’d say to him. I expected I’d get over his deception in a year or five. But fortunately, from Autumn Rutherford I’d learned the gentle art of compartmentalizing, a skill for which I’d discovered a talent. When I triple-locked the door of our sublet apartment—no doorman, sunlight, laundry room, dishwasher, or linen closet—and waited for the subway, I morphed into Chloe the conqueror, a woman who percolated with self-respect.

I liked this Chloe, just as I liked how Jade, Bespoke’s receptionist, absorbed my advice on where to buy her mother a gift (a lovely robe would never disappoint), how to keep clothes wrinkle-free when packing (tissue paper), and what the curious utensil was to the right of her plate the previous night at Per Se, where her hedge fund boyfriend (run, Jade, run) had taken her (fish fork). I liked how Winters praised 75 percent of my copy on the first go, and I liked even more that I was being paid well and supporting my family. Every other week when my salary showed up direct-deposited into my account, I smiled. But only to myself.

In Compartment Chloe, I might have been alone, but I wasn’t lonely. Jules continued to be steadfast, and Quincy and I chitchatted between New York and Minneapolis. Every time we spoke, I sensed her growing affection for her new community, which in its own reserved way must have been speaking to her, literally. The other day she shrieked, “Oh, jeez,” when she stepped on dog poo after their puppy, Tallulah, had an accident.

That left Talia.

We’d seen each other at the first day of school. I’d looked up, and she was skulking away like a shy spy. I sensed that she wanted to pick up where we’d left off, and in light of the solar eclipse inflicted by Xander’s deception, the events between Talia and me felt blazingly trivial. I should have put them behind me, the way I had when I once walked into a kitchen and found Xander wrapped around Quincy like yarn on a knitting needle.

I’d have liked—make that loved—to reconnect with Talia, especially since my life had taken a ninety-degree turn in her direction. Surely she’d
have handed over some coupons she’d clipped or explain how to reserve books at the library. And I could have used the hug. But could we simply hit delete and pretend as if nothing had happened? Perhaps getting back on track was only one e-mail and cup of coffee away. It should have been easy, reconnecting, but just then it felt like trying to rewhip cream. I needed more time.

My intercom buzzed. “The client’s five minutes late,” Jade said. Before I had a chance to thank her, my cell phone played its tune, which I’d changed to “Anticipation.”

“When a recipe calls for a clove, is that the whole garlic?”

“What are you cooking?” I asked after explaining garlic anatomy.

“Pasta puttanesca,” Xander replied. My favorite. Progress! “Caesar salad, too. Is it okay to buy dressing?”

“Better to make it yourself. Use that yellow cookbook.”

“Okay, boss,” he said. I heard his affection, almost like the innocent college boy who’d won my heart ten years earlier. “Also, the UPS guy just rang the bell with a package.” We no longer got many of those anymore, since I’d switched to the cheap dry cleaner who didn’t deliver and broken up with Zappo’s. “It’s from Talia.”

“Small box or large?” I asked.

“It’s a lumpy envelope, one of those padded jobs, fairly small.”

“Open it.”

I heard the ripping of paper. “I can’t believe this,” Xander said.

“What is it?” I whispered into the phone.

“A picture,” he answered as he laughed. “The two of you are dancing together—I think it’s from Talia’s wedding. You’re wearing that strange black dress.”

“Who wears black to a wedding?” Mother had said, but I’d had no choice—I was the maid of honor. Talia had picked it.

“You don’t look all that sober,” Xander added.

If it had been taken at the reception, I wasn’t. “Is there a note?”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Strange.”

“No, I’m wrong. I turned it over. She’s written on the back, ‘Were we ever this young? See you at Jules’ in two weeks. Love, Talia.’” He paused. “What’s going on at Jules’?”

“A party,” I said. “But I’ve already told her I’m not going.” I wasn’t ready to turn back the clock. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready.

Then Again