One Good Friend Deserves Another (20 page)

“It wasn’t easy.” She dug her fingers into the Styrofoam. “I don’t think it will ever be easy.”

She’d done nothing else these past two weeks but try to work through the foggy maze of her feelings, trying very hard not to let Cole’s medical issues muddle the clarity of her thoughts, or Cole’s lingering, hopeful glances during their poker session turn her mind away from the path she’d chosen.

Desh’s voice came, flat and emotionless. “Is this going to change our plans?”

Dhara stared into her tea, seeing not the muddy liquid but Cole in the gloom of a Poughkeepsie winter, his cheeks angry pink, his grip on her hand softened by her mittens as he raced to Sunset Hill to go traying. She saw Cole, years later, at the Cape May B and B where they’d finally consummated their relationship. She still remembered the smell of the September sea blowing the window curtains. She remembered the crisp give of his hair under her palm.

“Yes. This is going to change things.” Her throat tightened, making her voice a husky whisper. “I think, Desh, that under the circumstances…it’s best to reconsider our arrangement.”

Desh held her gaze for a painfully long time. Then he made a long, sighing sound like the deflating of a balloon. His head dropped so she could see the spot on the top of his head, that little pinpoint origin from which his dark hair whorled.

His chair creaked as he sank back. “I was afraid something like this might happen.”

“Be angry with me, Desh.”

“I can’t be angry at you. I can see your pain.”

“You’re supposed to make a scene.” The Styrofoam cup warped into an oval within the pressure of her hands. “You’re supposed to call me terrible names, blame me for the embarrassment.”

“I won’t do that, Dhara.”

“You’re supposed to ask me to reconsider.”

“I see your mind is made up. Schrödinger’s cat can’t really be alive and dead at the same time.”

She blinked at him, not understanding.

“Schrödinger’s cat,” he repeated wearily, scraping his fingers through his wet hair. “It’s a quantum mechanics thing. And a philosophical one too.”

“One year of physics,” she reminded him, “and one lost semester in philosophy.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “It’s basically a cat in a sealed box. It’s either alive or dead, depending on the state of some subatomic particle. You don’t really know whether it’s alive or dead until you look at it,” he said, “thus sealing its fate.”

Her heart turned over with sorrow at lost possibilities. “I really would have liked to introduce you to Kelly.”

“The point is, you either feel one way or another,” he said. “You only
think
you have two equal possibilities.”

Oh, but she did. Between Cole, recuperating in an upstate rehab facility. And Desh, this quiet rock of a man, a cipher still, but one who understood her Indian side, the man who was taking the news of their breakup with stoic and philosophical sanguinity. Dhara wished she could reach across the table and finger away the line deepening on his brow.

“You’ll waver between those two possibilities endlessly,” he continued, “until the very moment you decide to take a good, long look at the situation. At that moment, the truth becomes unequivocal.”

Unequivocal.

It didn’t feel that way, this splitting of her heart.

“Marriage is a big step.” Desh seemed to find great interest in the pattern of hairline cracks in the Formica table. “It should never be made lightly. I’ve come to know you well enough to understand you’ve thought hard about this. Apparently, that cat of ours is dead.”

“Desh—”

He held up his palm. “Don’t worry about my family. I’ll smooth things over with the Boharas.”

“Blame it all on me.” She let go of the cup long enough to rub her temples with her fingers. “It
is
my fault.”

“No fault. I’ll let everyone know it’s mutual. Amicable. For the best.” He shifted his weight again, the rickety chair tapping the floor beneath him. “For what it’s worth, I’ve spent the last month or so feeling like the luckiest man in the world. I hope that this man knows what a gift he has in your affections.”

His words sank deep, pinching where she felt the sorest.

Just then, one of the restaurant workers showed up in a food-streaked apron and silently shoved two plastic plates in front of them. He pulled chopsticks out of his apron pocket and then ducked back behind the counter without even a
thank you very much.
Desh pulled the chopsticks out of the sleeve and separated them with a little crack.

She fiddled blindly with her own chopsticks. She’d just remembered that it was Monday, her Shiva fast. She wasn’t supposed to eat before sunset. Then again, she may as well break her Shiva fast, because the point of a Shiva fast was to find her a nice boy to marry.

In his capricious generosity, Shiva had found her two.

Then Dhara was saved by her cell phone. “It’s the hospital,” she said, recognizing the distinctive ring tone. “I have to take this.”

Desh nodded, his attention on his food. Dhara turned a shoulder for privacy’s sake and took the call. She spoke to the floor resident, knowing what the news would be. She’d expected it to happen sometime during the evening and certainly long before morning. Dewey had been slipping away, his breath slowing in his sleep like the unwinding of an old clock. She’d been putting off sending him to a nursing home, knowing that would separate him from his buddy, who wouldn’t be able to manage the train and two buses it would take to visit. As the night-shift resident relayed the details, Dhara heard in the background the mournful keen of a saxophone.

When she hung up the phone, Desh glanced up from his food. “Trouble?”

“One of my patients just died.”

“I’m so sorry.” He turned toward the counter to catch the attention of the man at the register. “I’ll get a bag so you can take your food with you.”

She didn’t really have to go. In her profession, death happened all the time. The doctor on the floor would take good care of Dewey now. She could stop by the hospital after she ate, to pay her respects, and to listen to Curtis playing the saxophone by his bedside.

But Dhara made no objection as the worker took her food away. She’d told Desh what she’d come to say. It was probably best if she just slipped out of this restaurant before the sound of Curtis’s mournful saxophone merged in her mind with the terrible realization that she was saying good-bye forever to a relationship that could have been very good.

While she waited for her food to be packed, she glanced away from Desh only to find herself contemplating his blurred reflection in the window. He was staring at his food. His thick black hair shone from the lights. She had the odd sensation that she was watching the two of them from a great distance. They looked just like any Indian-American couple sharing a meal. Like married folk, making plans. Talking of weekend duties, work troubles, children. They looked good together. They looked like they
belonged
together.

She once felt that way about Cole too. By reflex she summoned the old memories—Frisbee, traying, picnics in the park—and instead, with a strange stutter of her heart, she noticed that the images were fixed, like old photographs marked ochre from Scotch-tape stains. She probed deeper, seeking to turn the many pages of their shared history. On cue, fresh images came to mind.

These memories were not kind.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block them out. The truth was, she had
always
worried about her relationship with Cole. In college, she’d worried that Cole wouldn’t fit in with her voluble family. After she’d introduced him to her parents, and her mother and father had accepted him, she’d struggled with unease. As she’d discovered bottles of vodka in the garbage and the smell of vomit on his work clothes, her worry had vaulted into new territory. The more she thought about Cole, the more the reel of the good memories flickered and stuttered, like a Havan candle lit to disperse the evil spirits, sputtering out, drowning in its own liquid wax.

Desh’s warm hand was suddenly on her arm.

“Hey, your food is ready.” He tilted his head at the bag knotted on the table. “Do you want me to hail you a cab?”

She searched Desh’s face. She let her gaze linger upon his high cheekbones, then the fathomless depths of his eyes. Then she looked lower, to the sweep of his throat, the hollow at its base, and the stretch of hard chest revealed by the two buttons undone on his shirt. She had just told this man she wasn’t going to marry him. Yet warmth and concern radiated from him, all for her sake alone.

She couldn’t speak. She knew, instinctively, that Desh would always be like this. He would face difficult decisions with equanimity. There would never be angry words, terrible fights, or blind uncomprehending resistance. Desh would approach the inevitable troubles of marriage and family with a simple philosophy and boundless kindness. There would never be discomfort. There would never be lies.

And Dhara felt the rush of the future like the pounding rain outside, fogging the glass so she could no longer see their reflection. Now she could see only Desh—flesh and blood. In that face, she saw her own children: a solemn-eyed boy with a calm, thinking manner, and a wild-haired girl with impish eyes and swift feet, racing away in the wake of laughter.

Desh squeezed her fingers. “Don’t cry, Dhara.”

It was so simple, really. So very, very simple, once she took a good, hard look at the truth.

“Remember, I can’t hug you in public,” he whispered, laughing. “A thousand generations of relatives are watching.”

“Let them watch.”

She leaned across the table. She pressed her lips against his mouth.

He jolted. She tasted soy sauce and strong tea. She felt the heat of his sudden breath. He reacted, rising from his seat and tilting his head for a better fit. He scraped his hand through her wet hair.

Long after they separated, they stayed like that, half-standing, staring into each other’s eyes.

K
elly Palazzo sat in the deck chair and stretched her painted toes into the July sun. Behind her oversize sunglasses, she drank in the view of Long Island Sound, retreating from the back of a fifty-foot Navigator Pilothouse yacht. Trey leaned against the deck rail just beside her, his ankles crossed, casual in his battered boat shoes, plaid bathing shorts, and sun-bleached polo shirt, the sun striking auburn lights in his dark hair.

So very, very handsome. And all mine.

Her heart gave a stuttering flutter. She didn’t know it was possible to be deliriously happy and nervously anxious, all at the same time. She was so thrilled to be with Trey in public with his friends. Yet she was so
nervous
to be out with Trey in public with his friends.

“I’m very impressed, Kelly.” Audrey Eckensburg, the hostess and wife of Trey’s good friend James, arrived with a bottle of sunscreen and sprawled on the deck chair beside her, all long, golden legs. “I just spoke to James about you. Wendy told him you practically grew up on the sea, but I had no idea how much you knew about boats.”

She felt her skin warm. As soon as they’d navigated out of the marina, James had given her the grand tour of the yacht. When they got to the wheelhouse, Kelly couldn’t help but gape at the panel of computerized instrumentation with its Captain Kirk swivel chair. She’d been full of questions, mentally comparing this wheelhouse to the one on her father’s boat, with its scratched Plexiglas, worn knobs, and duck-taped seat.

“I suppose James isn’t used to people asking him about the lifting capacity of the davit.” Trey gave her a little wink as he gripped a long-necked bottle of cold beer. “Or being told he could haul up a hell of a lot of flounder, if the boat was set up to drag.”

“Flounder? Oh, dear.” Audrey laughed, showing off a pearly array of perfectly aligned teeth. “Such a lowly fish would never grace these decks. Nothing but marlin and the like.”

Kelly gave a little shrug. It was inevitable that the truth of her upbringing would come up. So inevitable that she’d determined she wouldn’t second-guess every question she was asked or worry too much that if she opened her mouth she’d say something spectacularly gauche. If she did, she’d spend the whole trip in a state of terrified muteness instead of trying to enjoy the moment.

“In Gloucester,” Kelly said, “we didn’t do a lot of marlin fishing. If we caught one, we’d probably be pissed because something that big would rip the netting.”

“Gloucester. Ah, yes, Trey said you were from there.” Audrey lifted a wrist laden with chunky bracelets, shaking them down her arm. “I think the Marshals have a sailboat moored there.”

“My father had a fishing trawler, thirty feet long,” she said, figuring the Marshals had one of the fancy sailboats in the new marina. “I used to work the decks with him during the summers.”

“What Kelly is saying,” Trey explained with a wry little smile, “is that her father was in commodities.”

“Until the runs dropped off,” Kelly added, “and we had to work within quotas, which killed our daily take.”

“I see.” Audrey lifted one perfectly winged, lovely brow. “So, in basic investor-speak, the bottom fell out of the fish stock?”

Trey and Audrey laughed. Kelly looked at both of them and joined in a few seconds late. She was just beginning to understand that these little jokes were a strange form of social lubricant, smoothing out the rough edges of conversation. Rough edges caused, without doubt, by her own social ignorance. There always would be gaffes, she suspected, since she and Trey were moving this relationship into the wide open, and, well, Kelly Palazzo was Kelly Palazzo.

Hey, she was the girlfriend of Trey Livingston Wainwright. That should be good enough.

Audrey’s two children, Chad and Emily, tumbled out of the galley to hook their feet on the stern railings, watching the ocean churned up by the three-hundred-and-seventy-horsepower Volvo engine as they wove their way toward the open waters of the sound. The purr of the repressed power was so markedly different from the sound of boat engines Kelly had heard all during her youth, a labored whine that sputtered and coughed as her father propelled his little boat into the bay.

“Emily—Emily—don’t stand up on that railing,” Audrey said, tugging on the edges of the girl’s terrycloth cover-up. “Now, Trey, tell me the truth. I thought I heard Parker this morning telling you both that he was going to hold his bachelor party on his sailboat.”

Trey glanced up toward the wheelhouse and shook his head in amused disbelief. “Yeah, that’s what he said. James and I are going to try to talk him out of that. I reminded him it sleeps only four, and it’s too much work.”

“I’ve always admired Wendy’s fortitude.” Audrey lifted her glasses to give Kelly a significant look, kindly keeping her in the conversation. “Wendy doesn’t seem to mind that Parker has another lover.”

Trey leaned back over the edge of the gunwale to look ahead to where the yacht was heading. “I think that’s why they get along so well. Parker would always choose the boat over the woman, and Wendy doesn’t seem to mind.”

“I mean, really, James loves this boat.” Audrey gestured to the whole of it with her bracelets clattering. “But the minute I become a yacht widow, I’m calling for marriage counseling.” Audrey straightened up suddenly. “Chad, really, must you keep kicking the boards like that?”

“Mommy,” Chad asked, “what are they catching?”

“Fish, darling.” Audrey arched her neck a bit to see past the rail. “Like the fish you had for dinner last night.”

“Actually, it’s a lobster boat.” Even from her seat, Kelly could see the mound of piled traps. “He’s probably checking his traps and laying new ones in the water. See those buoys? They have distinctive markings, according to who the trap belongs to.”

“Ah,” Audrey said, “we have an expert on board. You’re in for it now, Kelly.”

“What about that boat,” Emily asked, “the one over there?”

Kelly put down her drink and stood up in the hot sun. Holding her wide-brimmed hat against the wind, she glanced at the wooden boat hugging the shore. “That’s an oyster boat. They’re pulling a net full of them right now. That’s what that big, round gray thing is.” She scanned the little boat, acutely aware of Trey beside her. Acutely aware of his eyes on her figure as she stretched to see the boat better.

She knew she looked good. Marta had made her try on every string bikini they could find during a trip to a Jersey mall. Marta had literally dragged Kelly away from the conservative one-pieces she’d gravitated to, to protect her already freckled skin from overexposure.

Honey, that’s what sunscreen is for. You’re not on the rocky beaches of New England. You’re going cruising on a yacht. You’ve got to look the part.

She did. She saw it reflected in Trey’s half-lidded eyes, saw it in the way his gaze lingered on the gold clasps at her hips, the battered bronze cuff on her wrist, and the sheer cover-up that hid absolutely nothing. She’d spent more than two weeks in grocery money for this one tiny scrap of bathing suit, and judging by the way Trey’s gaze lingered, it was worth every penny.

Suddenly, Trey’s hand lay on her waist. His fingers were chilled from holding the beer, and their touch sent little goose bumps running all over her skin.

“Hey,” Trey said, “I see the last buoy coming up.” He walked around her, letting his fingers graze her side, her belly, all out of Audrey’s view. “James is sure to punch it as soon as we get into open water. If you two don’t mind, I’d like to take the kids up to the pilothouse.”

As the kids squealed and skittered down from the railing, Trey addressed his question to both her and Audrey, yet his gaze behind his sunglasses rested solely on her. She sensed his eagerness to be off. She thought
she’d
be the only one walking on eggshells today, but somehow, Trey’s quiet unease was strangely endearing. And as much as her stomach clenched at the thought of trying to make small talk with Audrey—a sweet but impossibly well-tended, stay-at-home mother—she knew Trey wanted to be in the wheelhouse with Parker and James.

Kelly wished Wendy had come. She could have used her guidance today.

“Please, go on up and take the kids,” Audrey said, waving Trey away. “Until you’re gone, Kelly and I won’t have a chance to gossip about you.”

His laugh was short and strangled. He paused for a moment, as if he were contemplating the wisdom of dropping a kiss on the top of her head. She willed him to do so. She gifted him an inviting smile. But he just lifted the beer in salute, then made a little backward shuffle before striding away.

“All right, Kelly.” Audrey patted the seat of Kelly’s deck chair as an invitation to sit. “The little boys are all gone now. You and I have to talk.”

Kelly froze. She wondered how much Audrey knew about her and Trey’s earlier connection. Kelly doubted Wendy would have told her that story, but Audrey could have heard it from James, who might know it from their Princeton days. Gawd, Kelly thought, sinking into the deck chair. She had spent half the night visiting Web sites about quick and easy guides to small talk, but she hadn’t spent a single minute thinking about how she could describe the weird narrative of her and Trey’s relationship.

“Now, you must tell me,” Audrey said, settling her deck chair a foot closer to hers. “What in God’s name is going on with Wendy?”

The question pulled her up short. Audrey removed her sunglasses to reveal a pair of concerned blue eyes.

“I don’t believe for a minute that Wendy is dealing with a case of food poisoning,” Audrey confessed. “That girl has a stomach of steel. We have a little tradition at Miss Porter’s concerning raw oysters and senior year. I won’t bore you with the gory details, only to say that Wendy set the house record.”

Kelly paused, contemplating. Wendy had shown up at the marina this morning wrapped in a long-sleeved sweater and an ankle-length skirt, looking ashen and twitchy, like she could really use one of the emergency cigarettes she always carried in her purse. The original plan was to have three couples for their day-jaunt on the yacht. Wendy had arrived last, but as Parker hopped off the yacht to greet her, she clutched her midriff and looked as if she were going to be sick right off the edge of the dock.

“I don’t know, Audrey. She looked pretty shaky to me.”

“For weeks, she’s been a wreck.” Audrey settled back on the dock chair, tapping the arm of her sunglasses against her lower lip. “It’s spreading beyond just my notice too. Her mother has been talking about her on the golf course. Our mothers,” Audrey explained, “are part of a regular Thursday foursome. Wendy’s own mother has been complaining that Wendy has been completely unreliable. And frankly, sometimes, Wendy doesn’t answer my calls for days.”

Kelly frowned. She’d been so anxious about the trip on the yacht that she hadn’t given much thought to Wendy’s decision to beg out. Wendy was sick; Kelly took that fact at face value. But now, with Audrey so suspicious, Kelly began to wonder. Maybe Wendy had bowed out of this trip because of her and Trey.

No.

Kelly’s reaction was instinctive. This morning, Wendy had greeted her with a tight hug and then sent a casual wave toward Trey on the boat deck. Wendy had seemed distracted, twitchy, but not because of them. Something else was bothering her.

“The wedding.” Kelly riffled through Wendy’s difficulties with her mother, with seating plans, with the planner, with Birdie. “Wendy says it has been difficult.”

“All weddings are difficult.” Audrey waved the thought away. “Listen, I understand wedding stress. My wedding took place at the yacht club with three hundred and seventy-two guests, and I had to contend not only with my mother, but also with my stepmother-in-law, who we call the Botox Queen. The woman insisted on wearing a
tiara
.”

“If this were poker,” Kelly said, “Wendy would see your Botox Queen and raise you a Manhattan Wedding Planner.”

“And I’d win that hand, no question—and Wendy would agree. No, it’s not just the wedding. Wendy would say that’s a rich-girl problem. Wendy would shuck that off. It’s something more.”

A teenage boy, sporting a white polo shirt emblazoned with the yacht club logo, suddenly approached from the gloom of the bar galley. He offered them both sweating drinks upon a silver tray. Kelly took a sip of the Sea Breeze, thinking it a far cry from her father’s twice-burned coffee.

“She’s been playing tennis like a fiend,” Audrey continued, setting the glass down on the teak table between them. “She shattered Mrs. Mountebank last week in singles. Now Wendy’s in contention for the championship. It’s…so not Wendy. I had hoped,” she said, “that she’d come on this trip with us. That I could pin her down, try to get to the bottom of it.” Two lines of concern appeared between Audrey’s brows. “Frankly, Kelly, I was hoping you could shed some light.”

“Me?”

Audrey twirled a lock of hair around her finger, while staring at her bracelet with great attention. “Wendy’s very loyal, you know. She really makes an effort to see me, even though I’ve got a husband and a family now. It was kind of her to choose me as her matron of honor, and I can’t tell you how excited I am about the bachelorette party at the Wainwright cabin next weekend. I’m so glad Wendy offered it as an option—so much better than holding it in some sleazy Hamptons club.” She dropped her ponytail and lifted her drink, bracing it on her clearly Pilates-toned belly. “But though we both agreed on that…I know that Wendy and I aren’t nearly as close now as we used to be at Miss Porter’s. She spends most of her time with you guys—you, and Dhara, and Martha.”