The Best Friend

by Adam Mitzner

  Maybe she said that to all the new mothers. Maybe she was insane. But in Ella’s case, I always thought it was true. Neither Clint nor I believed in reincarnation, but sometimes we’d joke that this was definitely Ella’s last time through, and it might be Charlotte’s first.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but I have to keep my promise to you. The doctor said that the chemo has stopped working. That means that I have only a few more months. It’s hard to tell exactly how long, but he said that I would be fine, maybe even stronger than usual, until about mid-April, and then . . .”

  By this point she had burst into tears, her head shaking back and forth as if she could change my fate by objecting to it. I’d desperately wanted to be strong for her, like I was when I first shared my cancer news, but this time there was no chance of that.

  23.

  Almost as soon as I stopped the chemo, I felt better. I knew it was something of a dead-cat bounce, but that didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy finally going through the day without feeling as if I might puke at any moment. Within two weeks, my hair started to grow back. At first it was just fuzz, and splotchy at that, but by St. Patrick’s Day I had coverage, albeit in a Sinead O’Connor way. I suspected that by the time I finally succumbed, I’d be sporting that adorable Mia Farrow pixie style after all.

  If Dr. Goldman was correct that I had two to three months left to live, then April was likely the tipping point. If he had been overly optimistic by a month, which he acknowledged might be the case, I was now entering the death-rattle phase.

  When my hair began to reappear, I told Charlotte the bad news, for fear that she’d otherwise interpret it as a sign that I was better. She reacted stoically, a response that made me sadder than if she had lost her composure completely. It meant that my baby was already adjusting to her new reality of life without a mother to comfort her.

  There now remained only one person to share the news with.

  Easter Sunday 2004 was April 11. It was Clint’s idea that the family go to mass.

  All the talk at church of rising from the dead, of being worthy of redemption, finally pushed me over the edge. The next morning, as soon as Clint had left for work and the girls were on their way to school, I turned my attention to figuring out how I could get a message to Nick Zamora.

  His phone number was unlisted, of course. I could have told my husband that as part of putting my affairs in order, I wanted to call Nick and say goodbye, but I feared that would be too suspicious. Other than my moments with the girls, I hadn’t engaged in melodramatic farewells with anyone. Clint knew too well that I preferred the “Irish goodbye,” even at dinner parties. Besides, I had no reason to believe Clint knew Nick’s phone number. Their last contact had been before cell phones were even invented.

  I began my investigation to find Nick Zamora by running online searches with his name. But they only directed me to web pages where his books were for sale. I called the general number of his publisher, and they told me to contact his agent. When I asked for his agent’s name and phone number, they told me that they were not at liberty to give out that information.

  Finally, I went to Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore on Lexington Avenue. About twenty copies of Nick’s latest novel—Losing Things I Never Had—were displayed atop the bestseller table.

  It was a big book. So heavy, in fact, that in my current condition, even lifting it off the table took effort. The cover art was a cloud-filled sky, which reminded me a bit of The Simpsons’ title sequence. Nick’s name was in the largest font, embossed in shiny silver above the title. Beneath it was the obligatory International #1 Bestseller and a quote from the New York Times that said, “Zamora’s name must be included among the voices of his generation.”

  Like I did whenever Nick came out with a new book, even before cracking the spine, I turned it over to see the author photo. He had used the same photo for his last two books, but an updated picture graced the back of his latest tome. The photograph might have been captioned The Great Man at 50. It showed Nick with a full head of hair that could be fairly characterized as salt-and-pepper and cut short in a way that he could pass for a Wall Street lawyer. His outfit also suggested a professional turn. Nick was wearing a dark suit, his tie loosened at the top button, as if he’d just finished a night of celebrating. To cap off the image, he wore black-framed glasses that gave him that serious author vibe.

  On page 579 were the acknowledgments. That was another thing I did every time Nick published a new book—read the dedication and the acknowledgments first. I had long stopped thinking that my name would be listed in either place; still, I checked anyway to see if there was someone else in his life. But the thanks he gave were always to his agent and publisher and PR team. Not a Zelda among them, at least as far as I could tell.

  This time was no different. In the first paragraph he thanked his agent, Scott Stonehill of Javelin Media. I called Javelin’s main number as soon as I hit the street but didn’t make it past Stonehill’s secretary. When she agreed to take a message, I said, “My name is Anne Broden. I’m an old friend of Nick Zamora’s. Could you please tell Mr. Stonehill immediately to get the following message to Nick: That I’m in failing health, and there are things that I need to share with him while I’m still able. He should call me on my cell phone as soon as possible. My name again is Anne Broden.”

  I asked her to read back the message. When she did, it sounded more dire than I had intended. My circumstances required that degree of urgency, though. There was no way to sugarcoat it.

  Later that night, while Clint was still at work and I was eating dinner with the girls, listening to Charlotte strenuously argue that OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” was a much better song than Usher’s “Yeah!,” my phone rang. A sixth sense told me it was Nick. I jumped up and rushed to answer it.

  “No phones at the dinner table,” Charlotte said with a giggle, mimicking what I said to Ella on an almost daily basis.

  I ignored her and left my girls to continue their debate. My hand was shaking when I grabbed the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Anne?”

  I shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction that I recognized his voice, but I needed to get this part over with. “Nick,” I said. “Thank you for calling.”

  “Is what you said in your message true? Are you sick?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I have cancer.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I . . . I was hoping that your message was some type of joke someone was playing on me. But at the same time, I wanted it to be you who called, just not for the reasons you said in the message.”

  His babbling revealed that he hadn’t rehearsed what he was going to say. I had the sense that he must have just received my message and immediately called, without giving the matter any further thought. I, on the other hand, had been thinking through this conversation for years. In none of those imaginary iterations did we conduct it over the phone.

  “I was hoping you’d come to New York so that we could talk in person.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Of course. When?”

  “The sooner the better. Can you be here in the next day or two?”

  He fell silent. I didn’t think it was because he was checking his schedule. Instead, I assumed my request to drop everything and fly across the country emphasized how little time I had left.

  “Yes. I’ll leave tomorrow. Is the day after that soon enough?”

  “Thank you, Nick.”

  He asked if I had a place in mind to meet. I suggested that the bar of whatever hotel he was staying at would suffice, so long as it was quiet. He told me that when he came to New York these days he stayed at the Four Seasons, and the bar area there was usually empty after lunch.

  We agreed to meet at three. When the plans were done, he said, “Anne . . .” But nothing followed.

  “Until then,” I said.

  24.

  October 30, 1985

  When I was a kid, the night before Halloween was called Mischie
f Night. In college, I learned that for people from other parts of the country, it went by other names—Devil’s Night, Goosey Night, and even Cabbage Night. Regardless of the designation, it was when teenagers went around toilet-papering yards and committing other acts of petty vandalism.

  The week prior to Mischief Night, Nick had given Clint the manuscript of his novel to read, but an appellate brief had consumed all Clint’s time. Left alone at night, I’d agreed to read it in my husband’s stead. The book was called Precipice and was about . . . well, about Nick. His stand-in was named Alexander, an aspiring painter whom everyone was convinced would achieve greatness, although Alexander was finding it difficult to live up to that promise. The love interest, Nicole, wouldn’t hear of Alexander’s self-doubt.

  When I called Nick to tell him that I had finished the book, he stopped me cold.

  “Not another word. Let me buy you a drink and get your full thoughts. Tomorrow. You pick the place.”

  I selected a French restaurant near our apartment because it was quiet and had a bar area with tables. I invited Clint to come along, but he told me that he had a client dinner. “Besides,” he’d said, “you read the book, I didn’t.”

  Nick was waiting for me at the bar, a glass nearly half-full of brown liquid sitting in front of him. He saw my eyes go to it.

  “Scotch, just in case it’s that type of a discussion,” he said.

  “I don’t know what that means, but I’ll have one too.”

  He signaled to the bartender to get me the same drink. Turning back, he said, “The suspense is killing me.”

  “You’re the one who made me wait until now to tell you.” I paused for a beat, to tease him. “It’s great, Nick. Really.”

  His body slackened, as if I were his commanding officer and had ordered him at ease. A smile came to his face that could easily have launched a thousand ships.

  Before Clint, I’d dated a lot of Nicks—pretty boys for whom everything had always come easy. I found them boring and shallow, less interested in me than in the concept of me. It was in part why I had fallen for Clint. He didn’t expect to be handed anything, and he didn’t regard me like an accessory that would make him look better.

  In short, Clint was everything that those boys were not.

  The bartender delivered my scotch. I had no sooner lifted it when Nick touched his glass against mine. “To my first reader,” he said.

  “To the soon-to-be bestselling author,” I toasted back.

  We talked through the plot, Nick peppering me with questions about what I liked and didn’t, asking if certain parts rang true to me. I answered truthfully, which wasn’t too hard because I truly loved the book.

  “What about the ending?” he asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Nicole’s death, in particular.”

  “Isn’t that always the way it goes in fiction?” I said. “The poor girl stands by her man through thick and thin, and right when he’s about to achieve fame and fortune, what’s her reward? She dies.”

  “Seriously, Anne. I’m asking for real. I agonized over the ending.”

  “Okay,” I said and put on a more serious expression. “The ending worked for me. In my humble opinion, the type of relationship Alexander and Nicole shared was too intense to survive. That type of passion either burns out, or everyone gets incinerated.”

  He laughed. “Jesus. I always thought Clinton was the cynic in your marriage, and you were the wide-eyed romantic.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “You’ve known Clint since he was eight, and you think he’s a cynic?”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. Not at all. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not Richard Gere sweeping Debra Winger off her feet in An Officer and a Gentleman, but Clint has the strongest moral code of anyone I’ve ever known. If that doesn’t qualify you as a romantic—someone who believes in an ideal—then I don’t know what does.”

  “That’s not the dictionary definition, though,” he countered. “Does your husband believe love conquers all? That’s what I think of when I think of a romantic. Which is why I think it applies to me. And, before what you said two minutes ago, I thought it applied to you too. But Clinton . . . I think he would say that reason conquers all, and that’s a very different thing.”

  “Tomato, tomahto. The point is that he believes in something greater than himself, and that, to me, is what makes someone a romantic. I know you like to fancy yourself a romantic, but I’m not sure what you believe in to justify that label. Sadly, I’m not worthy of the name either. I wish it were otherwise, and so in that way, you and I, we are kindred spirits. We both want to be romantics—me with my music and you with your writing—but, for both of us, it’s still about us in the end, not the art, not the creation. Which is why, I’m sorry to say, we’re both posers when it comes right down to it.”

  “I believe in true love, Anne. I’m a little hurt that after reading the book you don’t see that.”

  I’d upset him, which wasn’t my intent. “No. That’s not what I meant, Nick. In the book, it’s obvious that you know what it is to believe in true love. But you’ve given that position to Nicole, right? And you capture that beautifully. She believes in true love, which makes her the true romantic in the story. Not Alexander. He’s more committed to the idea of being the kind of person who’s capable of falling in love than he is to being in a committed, loving relationship . . . if that makes any sense. In that way, he’s . . . well, not too surprising here, right? Alexander’s more like you.”

  Nick looked at me curiously. “Alexander isn’t me.”

  I thought he was putting me on.

  “I know you’re supposed to say that it’s fiction, but c’mon, Nick. Even though you made Alexander a painter and not a writer, it’s still not even thinly veiled; it’s . . . not veiled at all. At least for anyone who knows you. That’s fine, don’t get me wrong. It’s what makes the character seem so real. Because he is real.”

  “Alexander is you, Anne.”

  “What?”

  “I’m Nicole. That’s why the initials line up.”

  Alexander for Anne. Nicole for Nick. And here I’d thought he was playing on a Russian-czar theme by substituting Alexander for Nicholas.

  I tried to rethink the story, running through my head each reference to Alexander’s beauty or his talent. Nick intended those descriptions to apply to me? He thought I was the one destined for greatness? The creator of beauty? Just as quickly, another thought hit me. If he was Nicole, did he love me the way she loved Alexander? Was that why he was so interested in my take on the ending? Was he asking if I thought I would be the death of him? Or was he suggesting that he and I could live happily ever after?

  “You’re freaking me out, Nick.”

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention, I promise. I know it’s a lot to take in. And don’t worry, I’m certain no one will ever make the connection without my telling them that I based Nicole on me and Alexander on you, and I’ll take that to the grave with me. I would never have offered to let Clinton read it if I thought it was remotely possible he’d see that it’s about you and me. I . . . I just thought you needed to know. I love you, Anne. And I have for some time. And, sadly for me, I think I always will.”

  I told him I was flattered but that we needed to remain friends. I couldn’t imagine he expected me to say anything else. In fact, I wondered if he’d fully considered the possibility that I might tell Clint about it as soon as I got home.

  “I knew that’s what you were going to say,” he said. “But can you honestly say you haven’t thought about me that way? That if we’d been the ones set up that night, we wouldn’t be the ones married to each other today?”

  That was when I made the first of many missteps. I told him the truth, when I should have lied. I could have easily said, “No. I’ve never thought of you that way. You’re my husband’s best friend.” But what I actually said was, “I don’t know about marriage, Nick, but yes, I have thought about you
in that way in the past. But part of being grown-ups, not high schoolers, is having the ability to recognize that just because you think something, you don’t have to make it happen.”

  I don’t know why I gave him that gift. He certainly didn’t need me to stroke his ego. And it’s not as if I’d never lied to a man to dampen his expectations. But there was something I always saw as fragile about Nick; I suppose I didn’t want to hurt him. Although I can’t rule out the more sinister explanation: I wanted him to know I was lonely in my marriage to Clint and was looking for someone to rescue me.

  When we left the restaurant that night, I thought we had reached an understanding. We’d each said something that would stay between us, and our lives would go on as before as if the words had never been spoken.

  Of course, that’s never the way it works. In high school or after.

  25.

  It was raining. Not a downpour, but coming down steadily enough that I would have otherwise worn a hat. But to meet Nick after all these years, I opted against it. I wanted him to see me all at once, without enduring a slow reveal of my condition.

  As he had predicted, the bar area in the Four Seasons was largely empty. It was also dimly lit, as if perfectly suited for a clandestine encounter. Before turning my attention to locating Nick, I scanned the room to ensure that Clint was not there, even though I knew he’d be holed up in his office. Still, “of all the gin joints . . .” was the last thing I wanted today.

  Midway through my reconnaissance, I spotted Nick. He had his back to me, sitting beside the fireplace, the flames illuminating his silhouette. I stopped where I was, about twenty feet away. For a moment, I questioned the entire plan. My body was consumed with the irresistible impulse to turn and run. I might have too, had it not been for the fact that Nick made a quarter turn and caught my eye.

  He smiled, as I expected he would upon our first sight. But then I held my breath, awaiting his next reaction. That’s when most people who had not seen me recently usually morphed into an expression of pity, or at least concern. But Nick continued to take me in with nothing but joy in his eyes.