One Good Friend Deserves Another (26 page)

K
elly hunched down in the passenger seat of Dhara’s rental car as Dhara took a right turn onto Fifty-sixth Street and drove up between the rows of parked cars toward Kelly’s apartment building.

“Tell me he’s not sitting there anymore.” Kelly crushed her knees against the dashboard. “Tell me he gave up and left.”

Dhara’s expression told her the bad news before she even spoke. “This is the third time around the block. He’s going to recognize either me or the fact that this car has come around three times, Kelly. You need to make a decision.”

Kelly closed her eyes and groaned. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and from overindulgence in socializing. The weekend at Wendy’s cabin had felt like a time slip to their college days, but that amount of intimate interaction, even with her best friends, tended to overload her social processing system. After that, and all those weeks with Cole on her couch, she’d been looking forward to an evening alone, preferably with a bowl of cereal on her lap and a Bollywood movie on TV.

“You might as well pull over.” Kelly pushed herself up to a sitting position, jerking her floral skirt from under her. “Wendy must have told Trey about when we were going to arrive. I’m going to have a few words with her for that.”

“Go easy on the girl, she’s reeling.” Dhara glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled the car as close to the side as she could without clipping any mirrors. “Anyway, Wendy probably thought she was doing a good karmic deed.”

“But why did he have to come here at all? It’s so
over
. I couldn’t have made it any clearer on the yacht.” It didn’t help that it was so typical for him to arrive like this—with no call, no text, no warning. It made her hackles rise. Kelly yanked her messenger bag onto her lap, swinging the strap over her head. “I’m trying so very hard to just let it go, to preserve the
good
memories, you know?”

“Oh, yes,” Dhara said quietly. “Yes, I get that.”

Kelly slung an arm around Dhara’s neck. Her body folded into her as Kelly tightened her grip.

Kelly murmured, “You take care, okay?”

“Sure you don’t want me to circle the block a few more times, just in case?”

“No, I’ll be fine.” She squeezed out the door while Dhara pulled her overstuffed weekend tote out of the backseat and handed it to her across the passenger seat. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

As Dhara drove away, Kelly strode through the parked cars to face the man on her front stoop. Trey had the grace to look sheepish. Sheepish in the way of a puppy dog, facing his owner knowing he’d made a doo-doo on the living room carpet. That was quite a feat for a man six foot three, who’d apparently been jogging, dressed as he was in a loose T-shirt and running pants, his sweaty hair clinging to his temples.

“I know.” He avoided her eye as he rolled his thumb around his iPod. “I should have called.”

“I’m tired, Trey.” She dropped her bags on the sidewalk and flipped open the flap of her messenger bag to search for her apartment keys. “All I want to do is go inside, change into my pajamas, and go to sleep.”

“Must have been a good weekend.” He clipped the iPod back onto the strap around his biceps. “Is Wendy okay?”

She paused, wondering how much Wendy had told him.

“I found out through Parker.” He planted his elbows on his knees and then clasped his hands in between. “Parker’s a mess, but he didn’t want to talk about it. When I called Wendy, she didn’t want to talk about it either. Meanwhile, at the club, everyone is talking about it.”

Kelly searched blindly among her wallet, cell phone, pens, and sanitizer for the familiar shape of her
Starship Enterprise
key chain. She didn’t quite know what to say. She had never liked being caught between Wendy and Trey, even when she was indulging in an affair, and this felt…well, she couldn’t say anything. Wendy deserved her privacy.

“That’s a real problem in my family,” Trey said, “that reluctance to really talk about things.”

“Clearly.”

“I remember a time when my uncle Tad had an accident a few days before Christmas. It was his second DUI. So my aunt arrives at my house. ‘So sorry Tad can’t be here,’ she says. ‘He’s taking some time upstate.’ And without missing a beat my mother says, ‘Terribly sorry to hear that, Boop. Would you like your scotch straight, or on the rocks?’”

Kelly searched Trey’s face, downcast, taking a deep interest in his own intertwined fingers.

“You see,” he said, his voice deep, “in my family, it doesn’t matter what’s
really
going on. As long as you avoid an awkward social moment.”

“Trey, I think you’re trying to say something, but my powers of interpreting subtext are sorely depleted.”

“I’m telling you I should have decked James on the yacht.” He shuffled his sneakers on the stoop. “I didn’t, because I was working off muscle memory. I was trying to avoid an ugly public argument.”

Kelly had a sudden image of her father one summer during a good fishing season, screaming with all the salty language a sailing man could muster at two greenhorns he’d hired to help on the boat. Her father ripped them up—right in front of her—when they tangled the ropes. Yet a week later, when her father finally gave one of those greenhorns a faint nod of approval, that boy puffed up like a rooster. A single nod from her dad became the equivalent to clanging bells of praise.

Sometimes it astonished her, the fundamentally different ways she and Trey had been raised.

“You disappointed me, Trey.”

“Join the club. In fact, if you were to put all the people I’ve disappointed into a room, their sheer mass would probably warp space-time.”

She paused, giving him a grudging nod, as she lifted her weekend bag from the ground. “That’s pretty good.”

“See? There’s more to me than just dumb good looks.”

“So, do you ever think you should stop disappointing people?”

“All the fucking time. I’d like to start by not disappointing you.”

Too late.

She tightened her grip on her keys. She’d flushed her system of Trey on the yacht. She’d let him know in one magnificently awkward moment that she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. And then she’d moved on. On Tuesday, she was seeing the premier of an independent sci-fi movie with Lee Zhao.

Yet looking at Trey now, in all his sweaty glory, she couldn’t deny she was still attracted to him. She didn’t think she’d ever forget the knee-melting thrill she’d had when she’d first seen him standing outside her building in the rain, that reckless smile spreading across his face. She missed walking with him through the streets of New York City, her heart in her chest like a warm toaster. And the sex—
oh,
she missed the
sex
—digging her fingers into those strong shoulders while his breathing kept pace with hers.

But Good Lord, how she’d built him up as some sort of golden prince. When she looked at him now, she saw only the shadow of that imaginary royalty. Trey was handsome; Trey was charming; Trey was deeply flawed.

Trey was, in effect, an ordinary man.

A man she could no longer trust with her heart.

“It’s starting to rain.” Drops splattered on the sidewalk around her. She rattled the keys in her hand and looked pointedly at him, sitting on the stoop blocking access to her building.

He placed his hands on his knees and pushed off, lumbering to his full height. He jogged the three steps to the sidewalk, giving her a wide berth. She was up the stairs with the key in the door when he called her name.

“I want you to know that I’m training right now.” He stood by a signpost, shaking out one leg, then another. “I’m planning on running a marathon.”

“That’s really great, Trey.”

She turned the bolt and then searched for the key for the second lock, anxious for this confrontation to be over.

“It’s the New York City Marathon. I’ve got only four months to prepare. But hell, I’ve never done a marathon before. Never completed one, anyway. I thought I’d set my mind on it. See if I could finally see something through, beginning to end.”

She paused, pushing the front door open, sensing more to this confession than an awkward way to say good-bye. “Isn’t a marathon more than twenty-six miles?”

“Yeah.”

“You do, what, six miles a day now?”

“Yeah, it’s a reach.” He shrugged. “But running is one of the few things I actually
like
to do. You once told me to find a passion. Maybe this is it.”

Kelly thought of the fifteen-hour days she had spent in the summers, her fingers numb with cold as she sorted fish, her mother dulling the edge of her high school anxiety by saying she smelled like a mermaid. She remembered the day she’d fallen asleep on a test in graduate school in bleary-eyed exhaustion from working at a greasy spoon so she could pay the rent, split four ways, for a two-bedroom, roach-infested apartment.

And for the first time, Kelly began to appreciate the many unsung benefits that came along with a hardscrabble, working-class upbringing—all the intangibles that came along with being the famous Gloucester baby, found on the firehouse steps.

“Good luck, Trey.” Kelly shouldered the front door wide. “Really, I wish you all the best.”

W
endy waved as Birdie, sporting a white bathing cap and goggles, took a leap into an Olympic-size swimming pool. Birdie’s personal swimming instructor caught her underwater and hauled her up, allowing Birdie to kick up enough spray to splatter the Plexiglas window that separated Wendy from the pool area. Wendy pantomimed shaking off the water as Birdie squealed.

Wendy smiled as she settled back in the cushioned seat of the viewing room of the Wyndom-Dell Assisted Living Home. Her sister had taken the news of the broken engagement in her usual way, focusing less on what had happened than what Wendy now
felt.
Birdie had quickly overpowered her with hugs and kisses until those hugs and kisses turned into a giggling game of gotcha-last. Now Wendy nursed the bruises, determined to enjoy these last moments of tranquility before she returned home to the spreading consequences of a broken engagement.

She heard the door to the viewing room squeal open. Over the tinge of chlorine, she caught the grassy scent of a familiar perfume.

Her body went cold.

“There you are, darling.” Her mother, dressed in a creamy silk shell and wide-legged linen pants, airily planted a kiss on her head before slinging her white bag on the floor between them. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever emerge from that dusty old cabin.”

Wendy let the muted barb pass. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, in the hopes of summoning the serenity, patience, and fortitude she’d cultivated during the weekend with her friends. “I thought we were meeting later this afternoon, Mom. For dinner at home.”

“That was the plan. But then I called here yesterday to tell the concierge that I’d be visiting Birdie later today. He happened to let slip that you’d be here in the morning.”

“So you rearranged your schedule.”

“We have much to talk about, and the sooner we talk, the better.”

Wendy took a sip of her coffee but it slipped tasteless down her throat. Before she’d left for the cabin, she’d told her mother only the basics. That she’d broken it off with Parker, that the break was permanent, and that when she got back, she’d call the wedding planner to cancel whatever arrangements she could. Her mother had been amazingly composed. She’d responded as if Wendy were canceling a birthday party and not a wedding she’d dedicated a year and a half of her life to arranging.

But Wendy knew that had been only an act. The fact that her mother had driven two hours just to talk suggested that Wendy was about to be subjected to a much more personal agenda.

She closed her eyes and wished for palm trees, tropical breezes, and a really strong piña colada.

“Terry and I have been working quite diligently these past few days.” Her mother folded herself in the chair beside her. “You’ll be happy to know that the caterer has been generous with the cancellation, as has the florist. Except for the South American orchids, of course. I’ve decided to give them to the church when they come in. They’ll look lovely upon the altar, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure they will.”

“The only real problem I’ve encountered is with the jeweler. He won’t take back those slides for the pearl necklaces, engraved as they are, for your friends.”

“I’ll pay the balance.” The girls deserved them. Dhara, Marta, and Kelly were the only people in the world right now who had, with touching loyalty, absolved her of all blame. “I’ll give them as Christmas presents.”

“That’s a lovely idea.” Her mother absently curled her pearls around her fingers. “Pity about the gown, though. I’ve asked Stella’s advice. She thought you might want to keep the dress—”

“No.” Wendy shook her head sharply. “Give it to Aunt Boop. An anonymous donation for her next charity fashion show.”

“My dear, it was
designed
for you—”

“I couldn’t possibly keep it. That dress was meant for Parker’s eyes.”

His name hung in the air between them. She sensed, in her mother’s stillness, the quivering restraint of a hundred thousand questions. Wendy ignored the expectant silence. If she told her mother the truth, there would be no hugs or kisses or games of gotcha-last. Long ago, she gave up sharing the details of her life with the woman she always disappointed.

“You do know,” her mother said, leaning forward to wave at Birdie through the window, “that Parker made a discreet announcement at the club Saturday afternoon?”

Wendy stared at her leopard-print ballet flats, trying hard to be stone-faced. “I figured he’d say something over the weekend. Fortunately, cell phone service at the cabin is spotty. So no, I didn’t know.”

“The way the news spread, you’d think the club manager was caught pants down with that blowsy coat-check girl.”

Sharp prickles of shame made their way up Wendy’s chest. She could just imagine the tennis ladies leaning across the tables and the clusters of golfers in the entrance hall, their avid speculation echoing off the dome.

“I surmise,” her mother murmured, “there’s no chance of a reconciliation?”

“None.”

“Darling, it can’t be so permanent as that.” Her mother shifted on the chair, straightening her back. “You’ve been together for so many years. Practically married in all but name. Whatever has happened, surely there must be a way—”

“That ship,” Wendy interrupted, “has sailed.”

“It’s all so very sudden. And after the discussion we had at Stella’s studio, I can’t help feel that I’m part of this rupture.”

“Oh, for goodness sake.”

“If it’s the wedding plans that are causing so much trouble, we can cut back. You must know that the only reason I got involved at all was because you seemed so overwhelmed by the process—”

“Stop.” Wendy held up her hand. “The wedding plans had nothing to do with it. Stop martyring yourself.”

“But—”

“I know this will seem crazy to you, but I chose to end this engagement. It was wholly my choice.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. You are perpetually making strange choices. For once, I’d like to understand
why.
”

Wendy considered, for one rebellious moment, telling her mother that she’d slept with a Brazilian artist, framing the whole affair in such a way that her mother would think, yes, once again, Wendy had been playing the tart with another supposedly inappropriate man.

But it wasn’t true. The words wouldn’t leave her tongue. What she’d shared with Gabriel wasn’t tawdry. It was sweet and wonderful and overwhelming and badly timed.

“Anything I say will disappoint you.”

“You two are the perfect couple. Of course I’ll be disappointed.”

“It’s always something. My multiple piercings. My disgracefully tasteless shoes. My utterly unsuitable boyfriends.” Wendy glanced about the empty room, with its wall paintings of seascapes, casting for one of a thousand details. “A piece of modern art that I adore but you simply can’t understand. And now, it’s the fact that I’m ending an engagement to a perfect man.”

“All questionable decisions, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I am who I am. I can’t change that, any more than Birdie could change.”

“Birdie was born this way.”

“Do you accept Birdie just the way she is?”

“Of
course
I do.”

“Then maybe it’s time you accepted me, just the way I am.”

In the awkward silence that followed, Wendy sensed her mother’s subtle withdrawal, the slowly growing tension in the room, and the palpable depths of her offense. The expression on her mother’s face shuttered, and then, in degrees, melted into a look Wendy couldn’t quite read. Before she could decipher it, her mother turned her face away, the tendons in her neck taut.

Wendy gazed at her mother’s deft French twist, wearily remembering a million other times she’d been granted the view of the back of her mother’s finely coiffed head. When Wendy was in her teens, their interactions had always been volatile, usually ending with Wendy seething and her mother stoically striding out of the room. As adults, their relationship had morphed into an uneasy détente, aided by the fact that they’d hardly spoken to each other while she worked in the Soho art gallery. And once in the museum—her mother’s most fervent wish fulfilled—Wendy had considered her mother’s growing warmth as a sign that their charged silences, unspoken hurts, and fundamental disagreements would fade. But the stresses of the wedding had ripped the veneer off that rapprochement.

Wendy was just so tired of fighting.

“Wendy, I know you don’t believe this, but I never wanted to change you. But I can’t deny that I was happy when you left that life of yours in Soho. I won’t deny that I was thrilled when you took your position at the museum. And I won’t deny that I was over the moon when I first saw you on the arm of Parker Pryce-Weston.”

Wendy ached for a cigarette.

“I thought you’d finally got past a phase, that everything would be normal now.” Her mother made an odd hiccup that she swiftly covered by clearing her throat. “It’s just so difficult to know what’s best for one’s children. I know you disagree with me about Birdie, but at least she’s settled here, and happy. I’ve all but given up on Trey.”

Wendy thought about Kelly, about Trey’s sudden passion for running, about the look in his eye when he decked James. “Don’t give up on Trey. He’s a screwup, but I suspect he’s redeemable.”

“I would
never
give up on any of you.” Her mother turned to grab her purse from the floor between them. “Even now—most especially now—I won’t give up on
you.
”

Wendy blinked at the sight of her mother’s profile. Her mother’s cheeks were wet. But it couldn’t be from tears. Her mother didn’t cry. Not when Wendy, at thirteen years of age, went off to Miss Porter’s Boarding School for Girls. Certainly not when Wendy went off to college. Her mother hadn’t cried when Grandma died. Vulgar, she’d said once, after seeing a friend collapse in sobs at her husband’s funeral. Even the sudden death of her mother’s favorite King Charles spaniel brought nothing more than a quiver to her lips.

Yet here her mother was, blotchy-faced, fumbling with the clasp of her purse. Those were tears on her mother’s cheeks, tears welling in her mother’s blue eyes, tears that her mother was making no effort to wipe away.

“You’re right, you know.” Her mother’s voice was raw. “I’m always meddling. Your relationship with Parker is none of my damn business.”

Wendy waited for her to stand up from the chair, slip her purse over her shoulder, swivel on one foot, and show Wendy the back of her head again. That’s how conversations like this usually ended.

But her mother stayed seated, as tense as a high wire in the wind. “This isn’t going at
all
as I planned it. Why is it, my dear, that we’re always at loggerheads?”

“Because I’m an alley cat born into a family of purebred dogs.” Wendy looked down at her hands, wondering why they were shaking. “If I didn’t look so much like a Wainwright, I’d be asking you about the milkman.”

“Oh, but you are a Wainwright. You are more Wainwright than you know. Your great-great aunt, Violet Wainwright, was one of the wilder eccentrics in a long, long line of them. She bobbed her hair in 1921.”

Wendy clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. “An unrepentant rebel.”

“Sounds tame now.” Her mother dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “But that was, I believe, the generational equivalent of a belly button piercing. It was also an indicator of future horrors. She eventually ran off with a Canadian rum-running gangster.”

Wendy paused. “I thought that was just one of Uncle Tad’s fish tales.”

“I’m afraid not. They had difficult lives, those unconventional ancestors of yours. It didn’t always end well.”

“Yes, but here you are, still telling the stories.”

“I had hoped you’d take the more traditional path. I hoped your eccentricity would end at a tragus piercing.” She let out a long, slow sigh. “I was trying to protect you. Someday you’ll understand. That’s what mothers do.”

Wendy turned away. She thought of Audrey and her utter devotion to her children. She thought of Kelly’s biological mother, swaddling her daughter tightly before leaving her on the firehouse stairs. She thought of Marta, giving up caffeine minutes after she’d discovered she was pregnant, when the little soul within her was no more than a bundle of cells.

Wendy glanced through the glass at Birdie’s bright face. Wendy would always believe that her sister, considering their family’s resources, would have been better served at home. But she supposed there was no denying that her mother just as strongly believed that this place—with its staff of nurses and its weight room and pool and Jacuzzi and art, bingo, sculpture, and exercise classes—was infinitely better.

Then Wendy thought of Trey and the series of jobs that her father had arranged for him. She thought of the way her mother couched Trey’s foibles in romantic terms when she spoke of him to her friends. His screwups and job losses always sounded like the inevitable result of a young man too smart, too great-thinking, to be contained in some windowless office.

“Grant me a mulligan, Wendy.” Her mother snapped her purse closed and set it on her lap. “I’d like to put my golf ball back at the starting tee, if you don’t mind.”