Going Back

GOING BACK

“Judith Arnold writes beautifully
and poignantly. Highly recommended!” Romance Readers
Anonymous

Copyright © 1988 by Barbara
Keiler

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

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PHYLLIS HAD recommended this
restaurant as a change of pace. Or, more accurately, a friend of a
friend of hers had recommended it, and she had unilaterally decided
that she, Andrea and Daphne ought to try it out. The three of them
had been meeting for lunch at the same chic midtown Manhattan
eatery on the first Wednesday of every month for the past two years
and, not surprisingly, they were growing tired of it. The food
there was expensive—Daphne was convinced that the price of each
entree was fixed in reverse proportion to the number of calories in
the entree. Since she spent at least half of her life on a diet,
she usually wound up ordering a flimsy-looking salad, the price of
which approached that of a new set of all-weather radials. She’d
had no objection to trying someplace new.

This highly touted restaurant,
however, left something to be desired. It featured Indonesian fare.
Daphne wasn’t sure what she was eating, but it tasted weird, spicy
in flavor and slimy in texture. She picked at her food and consoled
herself with the thought that eating nothing was even less
fattening than eating flimsy salads.

The cuisine notwithstanding, these
monthly luncheons in the city were something Daphne greatly
enjoyed. Phyllis and Andrea had been her closest friends at
Cornell, and after their varied wanderings and their respective
searches for themselves, all three of them had wound up living in
the greater New York metropolitan area, Phyllis and her Significant
Other on Long Island, Andrea and her husband in Manhattan, and
Daphne in northern New Jersey.

There were times when, faced with
blizzard forecasts or tons of paperwork at the office, Daphne had
mixed feelings about dragging herself into the city just to meet
her old school chums for lunch. There were other times when Daphne
found herself counting the weeks, the days, the minutes until she
could reunite with her friends and let down her hair in a way she
couldn’t with anyone else. And there were times like today, when
the trio’s monthly luncheon was a pleasant diversion, something
Daphne had looked forward to with neither obsession nor dread, but
simply with appreciation of her immense good luck in having her
friends living a manageable distance from her.

Ever since their meals had been
served, Phyllis had been describing her ongoing effort to convince
her Significant Other, Jim, to marry her. “I still haven’t figured
out if the new tax laws help or hurt my case,” she complained,
prodding her spiced noodles with the tines of her fork. “Jim says
we shouldn’t bother getting married because they’ve done away with
the Schedule W deduction. I don’t know,” she concluded with a
shrug. “I can’t help but think he’s handing me a line.”

“Line twenty-seven, probably,”
Daphne quipped. Having never been married herself, she had no idea
which line of the 1040 the deduction for married couples used to be
entered on. Whenever the subject turned to Jim—as it frequently did
at these luncheons—Daphne usually thought it best to make jokes. If
she didn’t, she’d probably wind up ranting about what a jerk Jim
was. Phyllis was beautiful, intelligent, professionally
successful—and incredibly dumb when it came to men.

Not that Daphne was an expert on
that particular subject. One of the differences between her and
Phyllis was that Daphne would rather be by herself than invest her
all in an unsatisfying relationship. One of the other differences
was that, while Daphne was intelligent and professionally
successful, she definitely was not beautiful, so the question of
whether or not she’d choose to socialize with handsome but
self-centered men like Jim was largely academic.

“So what am I supposed to do?”
Phyllis rotated her head so both Daphne and Andrea could view her
glum expression. Phyllis’s little-girl pout was familiar to Daphne.
Back in college, Phyllis had seemed to live from one melodramatic
love affair to the next, and she’d had plenty of opportunities to
perfect the pout. Her puckered pink lips and scrunched-up little
nose made her look more adorable than pathetic.

“Do you really want to know what
you’re supposed to do?” Andrea asked, gesticulating broadly with
her fork. “You’re supposed to say, `Jim, it’s been fun and it’s
been swell, but now I’m ready to live like a normal human being, so
please haul your ass out of here.” Andrea was a lot blunter than
Daphne. She was also a lot messier. As she waved her fork, a strand
of some unidentifiable slivered vegetable went flying off the end
of it and landed on the floor just inches from Daphne’s
foot.

Daphne forgave Andrea. At least
Andrea had good taste in men. Her husband was a sweetheart. Eric
was generous, good-looking, and exceedingly tolerant of his sloppy
wife. Not only that, but he earned enough as a tax consultant so
that, combined with Andrea’s income as an assistant producer on one
of the daytime talk shows produced in the city, they could afford
an utterly beautiful, obscenely priced co-op on the Upper West
Side. Andrea might not have had as many boyfriends as Phyllis in
college, but quality was more important than quantity—and Eric was
definitely quality. Daphne wouldn’t mind meeting a man like him one
of these days.

“I love Jim,” Phyllis declared
staunchly. “I’m not going to ditch him just because he happens to
believe—with some justification, I think—that marriage is an
archaic ritual not necessarily appropriate for
everyone.”

“Spare us,” Andrea snorted. “I’ll
tell you what Jimbo thinks marriage is: something that’s gonna cost
him in money and freedom. And the guy’s too cheap on both counts to
pay the price and make you happy. He’s a miser, pure and simple. Am
I right, Daff?” she asked, turning her intense brown eyes on
Daphne.

Daphne bought time by sipping from
her glass of ice water. Lowering the glass, she smiled. “Let me put
it this way: I wouldn’t make a habit of mentioning Jim and Santa
Claus in the same breath,” she conceded in a half-hearted attempt
at tact.

“To tell you the truth, I’m sick of
talking about Jim,” Andrea announced. “I’ve got some real
interesting news, ladies: guess who’s moving to our little corner
of the world?”

“Please,” Phyllis groaned, still
caught up in the drama of her love life, “don’t make us play twenty
questions.”

“Brad Torrance,” Andrea
obliged.

“Brad Torrance?” Phyllis exclaimed,
her woes abruptly forgotten. “From school?”

“The one and only,” Andrea
reported. “Eric got a call from him a couple of days ago, saying
his company is transferring him to its New York City headquarters.
He and Eric were really good friends in school, you know. I’m so
happy for Eric.”

“The hell with
Eric,” Phyllis interjected, reflexively running her manicured
fingernails through the ash blond waves of hair framing her face.
“
I’m
happy Brad’s
going to be living nearby. He isn’t married, is
he?”

Andrea shook her head. “Not unless
he’s been keeping it a secret from us. When he called with the news
that he was being transferred, he used first person singular. ʻI’m
moving back east,’ he said.”

“Then there’s hope for me,” Phyllis
concluded, relaxing in her chair and lifting her glass of wine. “If
a hunk like Brad Torrance is still single... Who knows? Maybe I’ll
give Jim his walking papers, after all.”

“Forget it,” Andrea teased,
refusing to take Phyllis too seriously. “You and Brad knew each
other in college, and the sparks never ignited then. What makes you
think they’d ignite now? We’re all eight years older and burnt
out.”

“Speak for yourself, Andrea,”
Phyllis parried. “I’m not burnt out—I’m just entering my prime. And
I bet Brad Torrance is, too. I’d love to put his prime and mine
together.” She let loose with a mischievous laugh, and Andrea
joined her.

Daphne didn’t say anything. She sat
quietly, twisting her fork aimlessly through the noodles on her
plate, listening as her friends continued to babble about Brad
Torrance and hoping her face didn’t betray her feelings. Andrea
reported that Brad had phoned a week ago to tell Eric about his
promotion and transfer, that he was more excited about the former
than the latter, that he really didn’t want to move to the Big
Apple but that this was the sort of career boost one didn’t refuse.
Phyllis talked about how gorgeous Brad had been in college, how his
thick, dark hair used to make her think of ranch mink, how she’d
always liked guys with small buns and Brad certainly qualified as
likable on those grounds. “I hope he hasn’t aged,” she concluded
earnestly. “I hope he’s as handsome as he used to be.”

He had been handsome. Daphne
wouldn’t argue that. Brad Torrance had been the kind of handsome
that reeked of polish and privilege, of abundant self-confidence
and grace. His hair had never put Daphne in mind of mink, but then,
mink wasn’t something she gave much thought to. Instead, his thick
dark mane had made her think of nighttime, velvet, infinite
softness, and his riveting blue eyes had made her think of endless
autumn skies, and his smile had made her think of the morning sun,
warm with promise, and his body, his tall, slim physique, his
well-shaped hands and long legs and broad shoulders and—sure, why
not?—his small buns, all made Daphne think even today, so many
years later, of the astonishing stupidity she’d been capable of at
one time in her life.

Depressed by the thought, she
directed her attention back to her friends’ dialogue. “So, he’s
going to be staying with us while he’s house-hunting,” Andrea was
saying. “His firm offered to put him up in a hotel, but when Eric
invited him to camp out in our apartment, he decided that would be
more fun. I’m looking forward to it myself. I’m figuring that he
and Eric are going to go out and carouse every night, and I’ll be
able to watch whatever I want on TV without fighting with Eric over
who gets to hold the remote control.”

“I wouldn’t mind carousing with
them,” Phyllis volunteered. “But how come Brad’s going to stay with
you? Maybe I’m confusing him with someone else from school, but I
seem to remember that he had roots in the city.”

Andrea nodded. “His parents live
somewhere on the East Side. I guess he doesn’t want to stay with
them.” She folded her hand over Daphne’s wrist, drawing her back
into the conversation. “Now, here’s where you come in, Daffy. You
can help him find himself a new home.”