The Last Good Day (7 page)

“Midlife Crisis in the Wild Kingdom.” Lynn nodded solemnly.

“Tell me about it. You know how I can tell I’m getting old? Every week I’m carrying bigger and bigger corpses off my property. First, it was the kids’ goldfish. Then it was the hamster. Then I had to get rid of all these dead hedgehogs without the town finding out about it. You know what I think? I think it was an omen. I should’ve paid more attention to it. Death is coming closer and closer all the time.”

“Oh, Jeanine, will you stop that. You’re really starting to get paranoid.”

Lynn tried to take the long view with her friends. Other people looked at Jeanine and saw a hard-eyed former bond trader channeling her restless energy into maintaining a perfect house and keeping her twin twelve-year-olds well groomed and occupied with after-school programs five days a week. But Lynn still saw the debauched former cheerleader who lost her virginity in the back of a blue Chevy on prom night and still grew hydroponic marijuana occasionally in her backyard greenhouse.

“So did you hear what happened at the train station this morning?”

“Somebody fell off a boat.” Lynn swiped her hair back from her face. “Who knows what they were doing out there this time of year anyway.”

“What are you, crazy? She didn’t fall off a boat.” Jeanine gave her a withering look. “She had her head cut off. Marty saw the whole thing.”

“What?”

“And Barry was standing right there with him when the body washed ashore. He didn’t tell you?”

“No way.” Lynn blinked as if she’d stepped out of a darkroom and straight into blinding daylight. “Are you serious? How do you know?”

“Marty called me from the train and told me,” Jeanine said.

“That’s so bizarre.” Lynn patted her barn jacket pockets, cursing herself again for leaving the cell phone at home. What if Barry had been trying to call her? What if the kids were worried? She looked around Charlie’s, noticing a couple of young mothers prematurely breaking up their children’s fights over Lego blocks at the back. All at once, she had an overwhelming, almost vertiginous, need to have everything in its proper place. She should’ve checked home for messages. She should’ve driven by school to make sure the kids were all right. She remembered having this same surge of anxiety two weeks ago when Sandi Lanier called a few minutes after nine and said,
Turn on CNN; you’re not gonna believe this.

Hadn’t they moved here to get away from all this? Why didn’t anybody tell her what was going on?

“Everybody’s fine.” Jeanine touched her hand.

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s probably like that other one who wasn’t from around here. But don’t tell me I’m being paranoid. You want to know about paranoid, talk to Sandi.”

“Why?” Lynn blew on her latte, trying to settle herself down again. “What’s up with her?”

“Oh, she’s gone hog-wild with the whole terrorism thing. I saw her over the weekend, and she was going on about trying to buy all these antibiotics in case there’s a biological attack. I told her, ‘Honey, what’s the good of that? Number one, they’re probably not coming
here.
And number two, you’ve been giving the kids that crap for every ear infection since they were babies. Haven’t you heard about building up resistance?’”

“I don’t know what’s going on with her.” Lynn watched the foam in her cup recede. “She stood me up for dinner last night and never called to apologize. And she still hasn’t invited me in to the new house.”

“Yeah, she’s getting to be a real flake.” Jeanine coughed into her napkin. “I was thinking of giving our friendship a rest for a while. I’ve got enough drama going on already.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Lynn softened. “I’ve still got a lot of time for Sandi.”

“Well, you’re a better woman than I am.”

“Remember her mom? She was such a cool lady.”

“God,” said Jeanine, “she must’ve been our age when she died. Breast cancer, right?”

“Just like Sandi. Except people didn’t beat it that often then.”

“Shit, Lynn”—Jeanine sagged—“now you’re really making me feel old.”

Lynn stared off into the mid-distance. “You know, I remember playing in their backyard when I was six. Her mom helped me climb their big old oak tree. I used to feel so guilty about that for years ’cause she died like six weeks later. I always thought she should’ve been saving her strength for Sandi.”

Jeanine speared a new potato and lifted it to her lightly rouged mouth. “Jesus, how do you remember these things? I can barely remember most of high school.”

Lynn decided not to suggest that that might be because Jeanine had spent too many days and nights engulfed in mighty clouds of cannabis, huffing and puffing over her bong like a Juilliard bassoonist.

“So, speaking of old friends,” said Lynn, finishing her latte, “you know who I ran into this morning?”

“Who?”

“Michael Fallon.”

“Really?” A forkful of omelet stopped halfway to Jeanine’s mouth, dripping melted cheddar off the tines. “How’s he doing?”

“He looked good. He was over at the train station while I was taking pictures across the street for my show. He was the one who told me somebody drowned.”

“Well, maybe he was just trying not to panic you,” said Jeanine.

“Hmm, wouldn’t that be ironic? Considering.”

“I guess so.” Jeanine chewed on one side, regarding her carefully. “So how was it, seeing him again?”

“It was a little odd, though mostly he couldn’t have been nicer. A couple of strained moments. It helped that Harold was around.”

There was a pause, and she watched the locomotion of Jeanine’s jaw, the long bone rising and falling under the taut skin as she worked her way from one end of a thought to the other.

“Well, for whatever it’s worth,” she said finally, “I think he’s finally got his act together.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I see him from time to time.” Jeanine crossed her legs, a thick tan ankle showing between the cuff of her jeans and white tennis shoes. “He was the kids’ soccer coach in the AYSO league a few years ago.”

“Was he?”

“And I have to tell you, he was wonderful. Patient. Considerate. Never raised his voice. The first three games, Zak wouldn’t leave the sidelines. He’d just lie there, sucking down juice boxes and staring up at the clouds. It was Mike who got him in the game, and now he’s a little tiger on the field. He just needed a male role model to show him how to be aggressive without losing his temper, and Marty’s in the office so many Saturdays …”

Lynn thought of Barry trying to set up basketball drills with Clay in the driveway this summer, the boy’s halfhearted enthusiasm quickly fading into indifference and a long afternoon in front of the Sega Dreamcast. She pictured Barry going back to shooting baskets by himself, trying not to be disappointed that his son didn’t share his love of the game.

“And you know he was up for the chief’s job last year, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah. Supposedly,
he
was the one who really cleaned things up downtown. Remember how sleazy it used to be along the waterfront?”

“So why didn’t he get the job?”

“A black kid got shot, and they decided to go with Harold instead.” Jeanine wrinkled her nose, not needing to spell out the implications.

“That must’ve been quite a blow, with them being such good friends and all.”

Lynn thought of the way they slid past each other like sandpaper blocks this morning.

“I think Mike was okay about it,” said Jeanine. “He’s just a real true-blue straight arrow. Did you know he was one of the rescue-and-recovery guys at Ground Zero?”

“Really?”

“Just jumped in his car and drove down there because he wanted to do something to help. They showed him on Fox news lifting a girder with a couple of guys.” She leaned across the table, confiding. “I have to tell you, I looked over at Marty in his Jockey shorts with his stomach hanging out and his little bottle of Evian, and I thought,
And what are
you
doing, ya big slug?
”

“I’m glad Michael finally seems to have straightened out,” Lynn said, bending a little red coffee straw around her fingers.

“Well, you two were always kind of an odd combination.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you were kind of this arty chick, and he was this bottom-dog guy whose dad worked at the prison.”

Lynn sat back, experiencing the uncomfortable sensation of being in front of the camera for once.

“Hold on a minute,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s kind of oversimplifying it?”

“No, why?” Jeanine dabbed at the sides of her mouth. “It’s true. He’s from that shantytown crowd that’s always worked down by the river. And you’re from halfway up the hill, where people can come and go anytime. Your dad was in
advertising.
It’s just an accident of geography that we all went to the same high school.”

“But I never looked down on anyone.” Lynn crossed her arms defensively. “I never put anyone down because of where they came from.”

“You don’t have to.
It’s in your pictures.
”

“How can you say that?”

“Well, come on. Look at them.”

Lynn turned, elbow on the back of her chair. Each of the prints on the wall had been matted and framed. The Michelangelo clouds and the guard tower overlooking the Hudson at dawn; the Great White Commuters with their trench coats and briefcases on the platform; the Town Fathers with their rictus grins and nine irons on the Stone Ridge Country Club golf course; twilight in the windows of the old map factory by the river; the middle-class homes up in the hills with their roofs spreading out like the skirts of girls on summer lawns; the empty cracked swimming pool full of leaves on the grounds of the old Van Der Hayden estate.

“What’s the matter with them?” She turned back to Jeanine.

“Nothing. Unless you mind your hometown looking like a cross between a war-torn Bosnia and a Coney Island sideshow.”

“I thought you liked my work.”

“I do. It’s very
accomplished,
” Jeanine said crisply, pushing her plate away. “But it’s like you’re looking at us through a microscope.”

“That’s not true. I love this town. That’s why I came back.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Jeanine smirked. “And you’re really doing a lot for our property values with those kinds of pictures.”

Lynn looked down at the little round table between them. In the last few seconds, it seemed to have widened into a small icy pond.

“Well, I think there’s also a lot of affection in these photos,” she said.

“Sure, like the ones you won that award for. What was it called?”

“The Thomas Cole Prize.” Lynn lowered her voice. “You say that like it’s something I should be ashamed of.”

“Well, it got you into Pratt Institute, so I guess they must have done somebody some good.”

“Are you saying I used him to get ahead?”

Jeanine raised her eyes to flag down a passing waitress, as if she had no interest in continuing the argument now that she’d gotten her digs in.

“Jeanine …”

“Honey, we don’t need to talk about it anymore. That’s all ancient history.”

“I
know,
but what are you saying? You can’t just leave it like that.”

“I’m just saying that things are more complicated than they look sometimes …”

“So you think that what happened with Michael and me in the end was only
my
fault?”

She saw Jeanine hesitate, as if she were standing at the edge of a cliff. This is the place where a friendship drops off, Lynn realized. This is a place where you stop calling each other and just give each other chilly smiles across the Stew Leonard’s parking lot. This is where you start looking for another doubles partner and rolling your eyes when your husband asks why you guys haven’t seen the Pollacks for a while.

“Listen, it was a long time ago.” Jeanine gave her a quick reassuring smile, deciding to pull back from the edge. “We’re all different people now. Right?”

“Riiight,” said Lynn, trying to let the moment go.

“Seriously, if you told me I was going to spend my evenings making cupcakes and reading
The Berenstain Bears
over and over when I was on the trading desk at Merrill Lynch, I would’ve had to slit my wrists.”

“I guess that’s true for me too.” Lynn cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I never counted on carpooling and sewing sequins on little tutus when I was shooting for the
News.
”

“And now look at us, a couple of middle-aged broads eating lunch …”

“Thank God we get to be seventeen and do it all over again,” said Lynn.

“Oh, yeah, right … hahahhahhaha … ”

But having gone around this treacherous bend in the conversation, Lynn found herself restless and not quite able to sit still. She kept looking over Jeanine’s shoulder at her old pictures on the walls, finding the light a bit harsh in some, the focus too tight in others. If she were to go back to some of these subjects, she’d want to use softer lighting, more shades, maybe a wider-angle lens.

“Anyway, let’s talk about something else.” Jeanine reached over to touch her arm. “How are the kids?”

6

“COME ON, DANIEL.
Move up a little.”

The kid looked petrified as he hung back in the goalmouth. Not a natural athlete at the best of times, thought Mike, watching the other seven-year-olds hurl themselves around the practice field. A beanpole with a head too big for his body who cowered every time the ball came his way.

“Come on, Dan the Man, get your head in the game.” Mike clapped his hands, aware of the kid’s mother watching from the sidelines, where she had just given him an earful about how badly this child needed a father figure at the moment. “We’re down a player. We need you on offense.”

He came over to give the boy a nudge.
I don’t have enough to worry about?
He pictured the warped blue butterfly on the cold white ankle again. But then Carl Fitzsimmons’s son looked up at him with those crooked Chiclet-size teeth and those old-man eyes. He patted the kid on the shoulder, and Danny started to edge out toward the middle of the field.