Friends Like Us (25 page)

“And this is where you come in!”

“Ah.”

“Will, seriously, listen. You can help me write it! You can, I don’t know, cut your hours at the flower shop, that’ll give you some extra time, and I’ll give you an outline, a really detailed outline of what I want to happen, and we’ll write it together! I mean, you could do most of the writing, and I’ll have, like, creative control!” He looks at me with so much sincerity that I am, for a moment, tempted to say yes.

“No.”

“Just like that?”

When I was fourteen, Seth told me that his best friend, Eric Ackerman, captain of the swim team, had a crush on me.
Write him a note,
Seth said.
Tell him you’re interested!
I was already five-eleven then, my boobs as big as my head, my center of gravity treacherously high. I hadn’t met Ben yet. I had glasses and braces and hair that grew out instead of down, and I had not yet discovered the magic of a silicone-based antifrizz product. My limbs were too long for my body, like a marionette’s, and I was in the habit of apologizing to the inanimate objects I bumped into—lockers, desks, lunchroom tables.
Sorry! Oh, whoops, sorry about that!
Still, I wrote that note. So, yes, there was a time Seth could convince me of anything. “Yep,” I say now, bonking my hip against a bench at the side of the path. “Just like that.”

Seth is quiet again, sulky. We’ve rounded half of the perimeter of the rainforest and are slowly making our way back to the entrance. I’m starting to feel sticky and overwhelmed by the humidity of this enormous greenhouse, a misplaced succulent, a cactus trapped in the wrong dome. I suck in a deep breath that doesn’t quite do the trick, that gets caught somewhere partway down. The woman with the dozing twins is coming up behind us again, the stroller clacking as it gains on us.

“Hey!” Seth turns as she nears us, trying to edge past. “Hey, do you mind?”

She looks up, a little confused. “Sorry,” she mutters, slowing slightly.

“Yeah, well, we’re trying to walk here,” he says, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Why don’t you get off the path with that double-wide of yours?”

“Jeez,” she says. One of the babies stirs, squeaks, then settles. Their mother shrugs. “Guess they’re not the only ones who need a nap today.” She maneuvers her stroller off the paved walkway, crushing a few tiny purple flowers as she does.

“Seth!” I say, when she’s out of earshot.

“Well, we had the right of way!”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that sign,
BABIES IN STROLLERS MUST YIELD TO GRUMPY PEDESTRIANS
.”

He lets out a little huff and sulks some more, shoulders slumped, head down. “Hey,” he says, after a few minutes, looking up and glaring at me. “I bet you’re getting excited for Jane and Ben’s wedding. That’s coming up real soon now, isn’t it? I bet that’ll be fun for you.” He takes his right hand out of his pocket and flicks the leaf of a flowering philodendron. “You brought them together, and now off they go without you. Happily ever after.” He breaks the leaf off the plant, then tosses it onto the ground. “Must suck.”

“Um, well.…” The wheels in my brain spin furiously before I realize that no answer is required. Seth will say whatever Seth will say. I understand with a sudden, sharp stab that I’m here to take it.

“No, seriously, Willa, you’re so judgmental. You think I’m the loser and you’re this … this … holier-than-thou princess good-girl martyr. It’s pathetic. You think your life looks any better than mine? You think that by not
actively
fucking up you’re not a fuckup?”

He stops to catch his breath and I turn and look at him, this grown man, my brother, who ruined his relationship with Nina and seems hell-bent on destroying ours now, too. A trickle of sweat runs down the side of his face. The earth tilts off its axis. Admiration and pity cannot coexist.

Two bright yellow birds swoop and squawk overhead and land in a rustle of leaves, startling me. I had forgotten about that, that there are tropical birds living in the trees here. They probably think they’re in Borneo or Java or Botswana, somewhere hot and wet and real. But they’re living out their entire tropical-bird lives in the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Idiots. Bird brains!

“Hey,” I say. “I think I’m ready to leave now.” Seth is still staring straight ahead, and for a second I’m not sure if he heard me. I pick up my pace as we near the exit. I drove us here; he has no choice but to follow.

When I get back from the Domes, a big package is sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, wrapped in shiny silver paper and tied with a red bow. Ben and Jane are scrunched together on the couch, reading the same book.

“Who’s this one from?” For the past three weeks the UPS truck has been stopping in front of our apartment. I’ve gotten to know the driver. His name is Don. His daughter, Kate, is a freshman at the University of Iowa. His son, Evan, has been in and out of rehab. But he’s doing much better now.

“Us,” Ben says, smiling.

Jane nods. “Us!”

“Oh, cute,” I say. They’ve gotten a present for each other. Maybe I’ll get myself a present. Congratulations on losing your boyfriend and your best friends and your brother! You’re really alone now! Maybe a tablecloth or a nice assortment of jellies. Or an egg spoon. Declan was always going on about egg spoons.
You can’t get an egg spoon in this bloody country.
I really want to go into my room and lie down. I start down the hall with a backward wave. “Gotta get ready for work,” I mumble.

“No,” Jane says. “It’s from us to you!”

I bounce back into the kitchen, excited in spite of myself. A present! “Why?”

“Just open it,” Ben says, dog-earing their book.

I shove the bow aside and rip into the paper. I’ve never understood people who unwrap presents as if they’re performing surgery, carefully peeling back the tape, delaying gratification until the last possible second. I tear the silver paper off with one satisfying yank.

END UP, it says on the side, and I wonder, for one fleeting second, if this box is trying to tell me something.
See, dumb ass? Here is where you END UP.

“Oh!” I say.
Kaffeeautomaten.
A coffeemaker. But we already have one, a serviceable hand-me-down from Bonnie Weston. I look at Ben and Jane on the couch, Jane cross-legged, her left knee resting on Ben’s right, both of them gazing at me hopefully. They’re starting to resemble each other, like dogs and their owners. Ben’s hair is longer than it was in high school, and Jane often wears his shirts; their expressions, I’ve noticed, mirror each other’s more and more, those eager half smiles, the way they purse their lips when they’re confused, forming the silent
wh?
of a question.

I get it, of course: this fancy coffeemaker, with its built-in water filter and its integrated bean grinder, this German brand my parents always made a point of not buying. It’s for me, this
Kaffeeautomaten,
because they’ll be taking the old one with them.

“It’s programmable!” Jane says.

“For when you’re just too tired in the morning to push a button!”

“Wow,” I say. “This is amazing. Thanks.” Tears push up against the backs of my eyes, the pressure building. “This is really … amazing.” I’m imagining this state-of-the-art chrome-and-steel machine in the Dumpster out back, picturing myself dropping it off at Goodwill, unopened—
auf Wiedersehen
! What a deal for someone else, what a find. “Thank you so much.”

Gratefully, I feel the tears recede, floodwaters that at the last minute do not breach the banks. In a flash, I see myself drinking coffee alone at the kitchen table before work. Someone else has moved into Jane’s old room. Her name is Andrea. She hates coffee. She cooks with Hamburger Helper most nights and there is the pervasive smell of beef in the apartment. She gives herself pedicures on the couch; she uses those little Styrofoam toe sandwiches to keep the bright pink polish from smearing.

“I was thinking about cutting down on caffeine,” I say, pressing my fingers against the edge of the box and smiling at my friends. They look back at me, bewildered. “I mean, I won’t, though. Yay! Now I won’t.”

Chapter Twenty-two

All day long I’ve been either on the verge of tears or actually in tears. At the flower shop, while I was snipping the stems of a bunch of tulips, I nicked my index finger, and I cried so hard I had to close the store for ten minutes.

Later, just before my shift ended, an elderly man walked in. He took his time wandering around the store, then finally picked an assembled bouquet of barely open red roses and bursts of pink aster mixed with a spray of white daisies. He placed the flowers on the counter with a gently shaking hand. “These are for my wife,” he said, with a small, adoring smile. “We’ll be married sixty years tomorrow.”

“Congratulations,” I said as the tears spilled down my cheeks. I plucked a tissue from the box underneath the counter. “Allergies,” I said.

The man nodded. I could see the bones of his shoulders through his thin cotton shirt. His blue eyes were watery and sympathetic. He paid for the bouquet and put his hand on mine. I don’t appreciate strangers touching me, but I didn’t pull away. I had the feeling that this man was going to say something kind and wise to me, maybe something about patience or the permanence of love.

“This place is very expensive.” He patted my knuckles and scowled a little bit. “Next time I believe I’ll buy my flowers at the Shop ’n’ Save on Elmwood.”

When I got home, I changed into a T-shirt and my last pair of clean shorts and collapsed onto the couch, floppy as a jellyfish. I haven’t moved since then.

Ben opens a package of spaghetti and dumps the pasta into a pot of boiling water while I flick through the channels. Jane is babysitting for the Amsters for the evening.
(That little Amster never goes to bed! He’s downright nocturnal!)
So it’s just the two of us. The German coffeemaker sits on the floor in the middle of the room, squat and gleaming, like a tiny Prussian soldier.

After a few minutes of pots banging and cupboard doors opening and closing, Ben asks, “You hungry?”

“Sure.”

He hands me a bowl of undercooked spaghetti with tomato sauce from a jar and a sprinkle of Parmesan. “Wow,” I say, jabbing at the stuck-together noodles with my fork. “Fancy!”

“My uncle Al, from Sicily, gave me the recipe,” Ben says. “Did I ever tell you about Uncle Al? Al Dente?”

“How long have you been waiting to use that one?”

“Just about”—he glances at the clock—“forty-five minutes.” He sucks a noodle, loudly, then dabs at his chin.

Is this the last time we’ll do this, Ben and I? Is this the last time we’ll be easy together, just the two of us, single and unfettered, slurping spaghetti and watching TV? Jane hates eating on the couch; the possibility of getting stains on the fabric undoes her.

I probably knew, in high school, that Ben had a crush on me. I might have even known that he loved me. Why else would he have dropped out of his beloved Geology Club, with its weekend field trips, so that he could spend his Saturdays with me? Why would he have studied for my Spanish tests with me when he himself took French; why would he have bothered explaining continuous functions to me over and over again when we both knew I was never going to pass calculus; why would he have listened sympathetically to my endless rhapsodies about the unattainable track-star superhero Ryan Cox? He was my best friend, but best friends have limits, and Ben had none. He would have done anything for me, and I let him, again and again. I knew. Obviously I knew.

I glance at him, next to me on the couch, the sharp lines of his jaw, his face shadowy with a day-old beard, his long fingers close enough to touch mine, but not touching, ever. Lately we’ve avoided even the most incidental physical contact. If our hands brush when I’m handing him a plate, one of us recoils. If we accidentally nudge past each other in the hallway, we both practically leap to opposite walls.
Sorry! My fault! Sorry!

He catches me looking at him and raises his eyebrows.

“You have a little …” I point to his face. He picks up his napkin and wipes off a nonexistent spot of sauce. A reality show about a family with seventeen children, all of whose names start with
T,
drones in the background.
After our sixteenth child, we weren’t sure the Lord was going to bless us with another, but then along came Trystal!

I can hardly swallow for the thick coil of sadness lodged in my throat. I have
screwed up
. I have headed down what looked to be the same road my friends were traveling, only to find myself lost in a thicket of dark and dangerous woods while they traipse off, hand in hand, into their clear, sunny future. I rest my bowl on my lap and take a deep, jagged breath. Declan’s gone. Seth is gone, or maybe he hasn’t been here in years. Jane is leaving. There is only one person who has ever saved me, and now he’s going, too. Is this adulthood? Loss, loss, and more loss? There is no possible way I can reconcile it, no way at all.

“Ben.”

He turns. “More sauce?” He dabs at his cheek, his chin.

“No, not that.” I reach for his hand to stop him from more unnecessary face wiping, and my breath catches and I start crying, big heaving sobs that erupt from me, low and awful, suffering cow sounds, sobs that ought to loosen the mass in my throat but don’t, shuddering quakes that only breed more and more weeping, until I’m pretty sure I’m about to start hyperventilating or give birth to a calf.

And tears are streaming from my eyes, and snot is rushing from my nose, and it’s Ben, Ben who swabbed calamine lotion on my chicken pox sophomore year, Ben who sat next to me on the bathroom floor as I puked my guts out after eating sushi from the deli counter at the Fuel-n-Food
(Didn’t I tell you, never, ever eat raw fish from a gas station?),
Ben who has seen me at my worst, my ugliest, and who is now just staring at me, tender and baffled, patting my hand like the old man in the flower shop. “Weeping Willa,” he says softly, and as my sobs finally begin to subside, he gently touches the wet skin above my lip, where the tears have pooled. “Nice. You look pretty.”