With Friends Like These: A Novel (6 page)

“If you’d admit you can’t afford these trips, they’d work around it,” Tom said. “These women are your friends. Trust them. They deserve some credit.”

There he went, being reasonable. How did I wind up married to an emotional mutant, a man envious less often than I vote? Tom takes far too much devilish delight in the fact that his family’s quaintly rotting vacation home was shabby before the term got affixed to chic. He would walk two miles out of his way to resole his boat shoes rather than buy a new pair on sale.

“I hate to plead poverty.” What I wouldn’t say was that the disparity in our personal economics came from our husbands. Chloe and I earn an identical salary, down to the decimal point. Xander runs a hedge fund, for which he is rewarded in capital-
C
compensation. Tom teaches high school English and gets rewarded hardly at all, but as I remind myself often, Mr. Wells is everyone’s favorite teacher, and thanks to his schedule, on the days when I’m in the office Henry only has to stay with our sitter—Agnes from downstairs—until three-thirty, which is when Tom usually arrives home. This gives father and son plenty of guy time and me peace of mind. Another fact I refrain from pointing out, at least to Chloe, is that Xander goes for days without seeing Dashiel awake.

“How about if I cook tonight?” Tom scooped up Henry and brought him to the sink. “I’m thinking fusilli with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.” He rinsed Henry’s sticky fingers as quickly as if they were ten baby carrots.

“You cooked last night.”

“That’s your problem,” Tom said with a grin. “You keep score. I swear you have a spreadsheet hidden somewhere.”

I walked over to my lanky husband, pushed back his reddish hair, badly in need of one of his fifteen-dollar haircuts, and thought,
You I will always love, always trust, and always respect, and every one of those things is more important than money
. “Talked me into it,” I said. “I’ll do Henry’s bath,” I called out as I walked to our small bedroom in the back of the apartment.

An extra half hour alone was like a slice of cheesecake with none of the calories. I could swallow it in one immense gobble by napping, or I could savor it in multitasking nibbles as I read a few pages in the book I’d started reading last month—no, last fall—and called my mother or watched TV. While I was savoring my options, the phone rang.

“Hi there.” Chloe sounded even more chirpy than usual. “Jamyang said yes.”

“Going to give her a day off for the Dalai Lama’s birthday?” Mean Maxine inquired. Xander had lobbied for a Chinese nanny so that Dash could learn Mandarin, but Chloe thought a Tibetan child care worker would bring serenity to Brooklyn Heights.

“My only concern is she’s seriously gorgeous,” she said. “Jamyang is this exquisite creature with long, silky hair.” Not unlike Chloe, I thought, who’s gone through life being compared to a doll, while I—taller, with sharp angles everywhere—live in fear that someone might notice my uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. “She’s starting Monday, so I’ll be back at work next week.” Finally. For the last month, with Chloe between nannies, I’d been handling our job solo. Then again, Chloe had filled in for me when I visited my parents last winter. Such was our deal.

Chloe and I had started to brainstorm for a sales pitch when Tom
stepped into the bedroom, holding Henry’s hand. “Dinner in five,” he said. “Pasta awaits.”

“Tom’s cooking again?” Chloe asked. “No takeout over there in the Slope?”

As if the Fisher-Wells family would ever splurge on ordering in. “You know our dirty little secret. Tom loves to cook, and don’t get him going on stain removal or he’ll whip up a poultice so fast your marble won’t know what hit it.” Tom had acquired his domestic engineering technique courtesy of his parents’ housekeeper. “Got to go,” I said, “but I’ll think in my sleep and e-mail you in the morning.”

After taking Pontoon for a walk, Tom topped off dinner with peach cobbler as we did a rundown of Henry’s latest, most winning accomplishments. That’s when Tom asked the question I was expecting. “Have you made up your mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” I answered calmly, although my insides were swing-dancing.

He pushed up the bridge of his wire-rimmed glasses, an anxiety indicator as reliable as another man’s grinding teeth, and gave his fork the kind of attention due a fossil as I said, “Not even a choice, really.”

For so many summers I’d stopped counting, Tom had worked at Camp Becket in the Berkshires, where I’d join him most weekends—for the last three with Henry in tow. The unspoiled lake and equally unspoiled boys who benefited from his patient attention as athletic director; the accommodations in the stone lodge bearing the name of the original Henry Thomas Wells, Tom’s grandfather—it was a needlepoint throwback to an era before stress became a verb. Everything said 1960, including Tom’s salary. His camp contract was on the desk, as was the contract for option B, a grown-up summer job: doing research at Xander’s firm. When Xander had offered the position, my first thought was that pity might be the catalyst. My second was that if this was what Tom could earn for twelve weeks of slave labor, the Keatons were even wealthier than I’d guessed.

Tom had said that if I wanted him to work at Xander’s company, I’d
only have to shout
go
and he’d suit up for Wall Street. I felt he was a wimp for not making the decision himself, and said as much. Taking Xander’s job was what I wanted, but I wanted him to want it, too. “I can live without the suspense,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word. “I’m going with”—I looked at my plate—“option C.” For Tom to try to finish his dissertation.

Tom’s relief was almost visible. “You’re really on board with this?”

“Yes,” I said.
No
, I thought.

Not for the first time, I’d voted my heart instead of my head. Since Tom’s academic effort would contribute a grand total of nothing to the family coffers, it would mean us doing without. What we’d be sacrificing, specifically, I wasn’t sure. Tom and I didn’t operate within a budget; we simply tried to economize with panache. Cabs and Broadway shows? Never. Metrocards and free nights at the Brooklyn Museum? Now you’re talking. Let me loose in a thrift shop and I can dress myself with such
je ne sais quoi
that I get assaulted by rogue fashion stylists who want to know where I found my
shmattes
, my rags. Dinners out? We invite friends over instead: ten times the work, one-fifth the cost. Stoop sales? The Fisher-Wells Olympics.

Tom had been finishing his thesis for years, but since we’d become parents, his work had slowed, with those hours previously dedicated to research funneled into Henry. Our child was our own blue chip, but one who’d made our expenses soar. The logistics of family life make my head ache. If I weren’t working, Tom would have plenty of time to write, but we require my paycheck, the heftier one in the family, even though my job is part-time.

Henry Thomas Wells Ph.D., would be able to teach college. “The degree is an investment,” he often says. Not exactly like buying Google in 2004, but the ticket to the kind of position Tom wants and deserves. He got up from his chair, pulled me toward him, and said thank you with his well-educated lips.

Kissing led to more-than-kissing, and this accounted for why I slept only five hours that night. I got up in the morning, took one look at Tom,
and wished I’d had the nerve to say,
Stop chasing the degree. Grab the money job. It won’t kill you to work as hard as all the other guys on the Street and take the burden off your poor wife, who—if you haven’t noticed—feels as if she’s single-handedly tugging a barge upstream
. But I am bred to try to do the right thing; I said none of this.

A day went by, then another. Tom and I put ourselves through the monthly ritual of trying to decide which bills to pay in full and which to let slide. Agnes raised her rate. Our washing machine went on the fritz, forcing me to drag our clothes to the launderette blocks away. An old friend from college sent one of those
listen up—life is not a dress rehearsal
chain e-mails to pass on or risk dire consequences. It was falsely attributed to Maya Angelou, but creepily resonant just the same. I found more gray hairs.

Meanwhile, the stickie scoffed at me every time I opened my tote, where it was hidden. I had almost managed to convince myself that June Rittenhouse had never called, except that as I was leaving the office one night, I picked up the phone. Again, she was asking for Chloe.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, but Ms. Keaton’s taking personal leave,” I said. “When will she return? I honestly don’t know—she’s away because of a … family emergency.” I took a deep breath, then another. Mean Maxine growled.
Say it
. “This is Talia Fisher-Wells—the two of us share our job. May I help you?”

June Rittenhouse gave me an appointment.

  
Chloe

“When you wash the baby’s laundry, please use this.” Jamyang said nothing as I raised the barbell-weight container from the shelf. “It’s fragrance and dye free.” I moved on to nontoxic, hypoallergenic, and biodegradable. Jamyang offered a nod, which made her hair sway, its shine catching the light filtering through the window. “Have you ever used one of these?” I pointed to the washing machine, whose porthole appeared to have escaped from an ocean liner.

“Yes, ma’am.” Her voice was faint, her expression inscrutable. I hoped she meant what she said, because I wouldn’t have known how to operate that particular appliance, not to mention four out of five cycles in the top-of-the-line German dishwasher or the rotisserie in our restaurant-worthy oven. Why I’d once thought we needed it was its own mystery, since I can’t see myself roasting a lamb on a spit anytime soon. I prefer to admire our home technology from a safe distance. Two of my worst days of the year are when our eleven digital clocks need to be reset.

“The floors are bamboo.” Did they even grow bamboo in Tibet? Where was her native land, exactly—near China? No, India. No, China. Should I
have hired the Irish girl who jabbered during the interview, wee lass this, wee lass that? “I think we’re finished here,” I announced. Jamyang had already seen and seemed to approve of her room. Decorated with chintz, a small flat-screen TV, and walls painted apple green, it was located on the semisubterranean floor that the previous owner had proudly called an English basement. “Let’s see if Dash’s awake.”

We took the back staircase, bypassing the parlor floor with its formidable living room and dining room, and peeked in on Dash, whose tiny chest was rising and falling as if set to a metronome. I brushed away a strand of blond hair, but he didn’t stir. I’d kept him up late with the hope that his father might arrive in time to see him. Last night Xander had missed him by twenty minutes.

“Pity baby,” Jamyang said. “Very pity.”

“P
r
etty,” I said, softly rolling the
r
. “Thank you very much.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jamyang said. “Pity.”

We tiptoed into Dash’s bathroom, where Jamyang scrutinized the flotilla of rubber ducklings and stacks of monogrammed towels—
DMcK
for Dashiel McKenzie Keaton—walked through the playroom, and U-turned into a corridor that led to Xander’s literary Fort Knox. I hesitated before I opened one of its double doors. How should I explain that my husband could detect at twenty paces if a visitor had misshelved
Tender Is the Night
with the Henry James collection? Then again, what were the chances that Jamyang would want to cozy up with an early-twentieth-century first edition? “This is the library,” I said as we entered the mahogany-paneled room and spread my arms wide. “Many, many books!” Jamyang pinched her nose. “Sorry, Mr. Keaton smokes cigars.”

“Febreze,” she announced, in our most promising exchange of the day.

I walked across the room to open a window. When I turned around, Jamyang had bent down to trace the intricate leaf pattern of the rug’s rich ochre weave. “Pity,” she said.

“From your country.” I seriously hoped that we hadn’t flung a sanctified prayer rug across the lesser nirvana of our Brooklyn Heights floor,
where Xander would occasionally flick cigar ashes and spill single-malt Scotch. Jamyang responded with a spatter of words. I smiled, vacantly, I’m sure. She arched her eyebrows in a grimace and resumed a placid expression as she got up to review the rows of leather-bound books.