The Friends We Keep

by Holly Chamberlin

  It was really none of my business but I found myself asking Sophie how she was situated. In other words, had Brad done right by her in the settlement?

  “It was an uncontested divorce,” she said a bit defiantly. “We didn’t need lawyers. We came to an agreement on our own.”

  I didn’t quite know what to do with this bit of information, other than to say, “Oh.” Only an enormous expenditure of self-control prevented me from adding, “Are you insane?”

  “Yes,” she went on, fiddling with her napkin, “I’m fine. Brad is an honest man.”

  Ah, the questions that were crowding my mind! Such as: How can you be sure Brad hasn’t hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars under the proverbial mattress?

  I asked instead, “So, what do you do with yourself all day? Really, I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t get out to an office every morning. Kill myself, most likely.”

  “Oh, Eve—Eva—don’t say something like that!”

  I made a face as if to say, “Whatever.” Since turning forty, I try not to use that expression, but I’m not past implying it. “Well,” I repeated, “what do you do?”

  “Well, unpacking and setting up the apartment took some time. But I’m almost finished. So, I don’t know. I’m thinking of going for my real estate license here in Massachusetts. I was thinking that working in real estate might be a good way to meet people.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And by people, do you mean men?”

  Sophie laughed. “I mean all people, but yes, men, too.”

  “So, you’re ready to get back in the game?”

  “Yes. I think so. Why?” Sophie asked eagerly. “Do you know anyone for me?”

  Assist the rival? Not that I considered Sophie much of a rival. “No,” I said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own dates.”

  “Oh.” Sophie looked downright crestfallen. “I was hoping . . . It would be nice to meet someone through a friend, someone I can trust. You know?”

  So, Sophie considered me a friend and not simply an old, dusted-off acquaintance. She considered me someone she could trust. Was Sophie someone I could trust? How was I to know? Besides, I thought, I’m not in the market for a trust buddy.

  I nodded, offering neither a yes nor a no.

  “I want to get married again,” Sophie explained. “But I want to take the dating thing slowly. I don’t want to make a mistake and it’s been so long. I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Taking things slowly makes sense. Though you’d better not wait too long before making a move. Forty might be the new thirty but there are an awful lot of men out there who prefer the actual to the ‘as if.’ ”

  “I know, I know. The whole thing is so daunting.”

  “And yet you still want to try again. Even after going through a divorce you feel positive about marriage.”

  Some people, I realized long ago, are gluttons for punishment.

  “I do, yes. Marriage worked for me, for a long time. A new marriage would be different, of course. Well, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “For example, this time I’d like . . .” Sophie hesitated.

  “You’d like what?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, after a quick glance to her left to assure she couldn’t be overheard, “I’d like a more passionate marriage. I’d like to know what it feels like to really . . . to really want someone.”

  “A marriage with passion? Good luck finding the impossible.”

  “Even in the beginning,” she went on, ignoring my remark, “Brad and I weren’t—I don’t know, wild. We were in love but it was more like . . . more like friends who love each other. I’m not saying that was bad. Our marriage worked for a long time. Still . . .”

  “This time you want orgasms that cause the neighbors to pound on the wall.”

  Sophie’s eyes widened. “Well, I don’t want to be fined for disturbing the peace, but I wouldn’t mind some fireworks! And I know—at least, I’ve read—that you can’t manufacture real passion. You have to let it find you.”

  “So,” I said, “since your wedding day, no sex with anyone other than Brad?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And Brad?” I asked, casually. “Was he faithful, too?”

  “Of course,” she replied in a slightly insulted tone.

  I didn’t believe her for a second, but everyone has her pride.

  “What about since the divorce? Please don’t tell me you’ve been celibate.”

  “I did have one minor sexual . . . encounter,” Sophie confided, again with a glance to determine possible eavesdroppers. “It was before I moved back East. I met this man at a museum and he asked me out for dinner the next night. We had a nice time and then we went back to his house and, well, we fooled around a bit, but . . . I just couldn’t go through with it. It was too soon after the divorce.”

  “And you never heard from him again.”

  “Of course. But I don’t feel bad that things didn’t work out. He wasn’t really my type, for a relationship, I mean. But I do wish I’d had the nerve to go, you know, all the way.”

  All the way? I refrained from laughing at the use of such a quaint turn of phrase. “Well,” I said, with as much sympathy as I could muster, “there’s always another man. You’ll get your chance.”

  Sophie looked doubtful. “I hope so. There are so many attractive women in this city and they’re all so much younger than I am. Then again, Southern California was even more crowded with starlet types.”

  “You’ll do okay,” I said. “Your clothes could use some work and you need to get rid of that gray, but your skin is good. You maintained your figure. What I can see of it, anyway, under that floppy jacket. Have you considered contacts?”

  Sophie shook her head.

  “Well, think about it. I’ll give you the name of my colorist, too.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Sophie busied herself with her napkin, wiping an invisible spot of dirt off the bar.

  Realizing I hadn’t exactly been encouraging I introduced a topic Sophie would find of interest. See? I do have some social graces.

  “Jake—that’s your son’s name, isn’t it?”

  Sophie’s head shot up and she smiled. “Yes. Jacob Michael. Michael is my father’s name.”

  “How nice,” I said. What else? And then I remembered that mothers and grandmothers carried photos in their wallets. Mine had, anyway. I thought again about the photos Sophie had once been in the habit of sending me—Jake on a department-store Santa’s lap; Jake at his graduation from kindergarten; Jake in a school play.

  “Do you have any recent pictures with you?” I asked.

  Sophie reached for her purse, a sort of backpack, the kind used for, I’m told, hiking. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t!” she said. “I used to be much better at that sort of thing. I could show you a picture taken when he was in third grade?”

  “No, no, that’s fine,” I said. “Really. Next time.”

  Sophie put her cumbersome bag back on the floor. I was relieved. I know I had asked to see the photos but I am terribly unskilled at oooohing and aaaahing.

  “You know,” Sophie said then, “I’ve been wondering about something. Back in college you used to talk about writing children’s books.”

  “I did?” I asked. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, really. But I guess that answers my question. You haven’t written a book?”

  A bit of memory flickered to light. “No,” I said firmly. “And if I did write a book it certainly wouldn’t be for children.”

  “I remember like it was yesterday, how you used to talk about wanting to write a novel that would become a children’s classic.”

  A little overambitious of me, I thought. “Well,” I said with some impatience, “we all ‘used to’ do and say a lot of things we don’t do or say today. Things change, people change, you can’t go home again, the past is the past, period, the end.”

  And yet, I thought, here I
am with Sophie, the closest friend I’d ever had. My protestations sounded ridiculous even to my own ears. Something had made me say yes to Sophie’s invitation, something other than mere curiosity, and if it wasn’t partly nostalgia, then I was fooling myself.

  “I’m going to order some oysters,” I said.

  10

  Dear Answer Lady:

  I get terribly seasick. Even the sight of a body of water makes me nauseous. My girlfriend has been pestering me to go on a cruise with her. She doesn’t know about my problem and I’m embarrassed to tell her. What should I do?

  Dear Idiot:

  Tell her about your problem. No woman wants to spend seven days on the high seas with a man while his head is in the toilet.

  SOPHIE

  “I’ve been going on about me this whole time! I’m sorry, Eva. I guess I’m just excited seeing you after all these years.”

  Eva smiled a bit. “Oh, that’s all right. There’s not really much to tell about me.”

  I didn’t believe it for a minute. No woman carrying a Gucci bag (the bartender had raved about it, that’s how I knew it was a real Gucci) lived a boring life. “Oh, come on,” I said. “I’m sure your life is very exciting, at least, compared to mine. So, tell me, are you seeing anyone special?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  Undaunted, I asked: “Are you looking?”

  Eva gave me a look of studied blankness. “Why?” she asked. “Should I be?”

  “No, no,” I replied hurriedly, fearing I’d been rude, “of course not, not if you don’t want to be looking.”

  Eva’s expression remained unchanged. “I don’t really have the time right now for a relationship.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said with a nod. “I understand. What with your job and all.”

  “Right. What with my job.”

  Eva looked away and busied herself with the oysters she’d ordered. (I don’t like oysters.)

  “Was there ever someone special,” I ventured, “you know, after we fell out of touch?”

  Eva put down the skinny little oyster fork and seemed to consider before answering.

  “Well,” she said, “I dated, of course. But nobody struck me as good enough to marry, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. Maybe—”

  “Actually, there was one exception, a few years back. I thought for a while that he was worth the effort of a serious relationship.”

  Eva took a sip of her drink—a martini—and left me to consider that tantalizing nugget of information. “What happened?” I asked.

  Eva carefully replaced her drink on the bar before replying.

  “What happened,” she said, “was that he left me.”

  “Oh, Eva, I’m sorry.”

  I reached for her left hand on the bar but Eva moved it away. I remembered then how awkward my greeting kiss had made her and vowed to avoid unnecessary physical contact until we got better reacquainted.

  “There was another woman,” Eva said. “He denied it but I knew better.”

  I nodded. Didn’t most men cheat on their wives and girlfriends? At least in my limited experience they did. My son, I was sure, was not “most men.” I’d tried very hard to teach him the importance of fidelity.

  “Look,” Eva went on, her expression hard, “what else could it have been but another woman? I’m successful, I’m smart, I’m attractive. Why would a man in his right mind leave me unless another woman had gotten her hands on him?”

  For a moment I thought that Eva was joking, mocking herself and her own faults in the relationship, and then, looking carefully at her face, I realized that she was dead serious.

  “Of course,” I said soothingly. “You’re a wonderful woman. Any man would be crazy to leave you.”

  “I know. Anyway, everything was just fine between us. We spent a part of each weekend together and we text messaged during the week. It was all perfect, not a glitch.”

  “Oh, he lived out of town?” I asked.

  “No. Right here in the city.”

  “But you said you didn’t see each other during the week. Did he travel for business?”

  “No. But do you know how crazy my schedule is?”

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Believe me,” she said—beckoning to the bartender for another drink (I declined)—“I have very little free time. At first, he complained. He wanted to be with me almost every night. He even wanted to talk on the phone every day and I just have no time for empty conversations. I have a very demanding job; I just can’t be available to everyone. He didn’t get that about me at first.”

  “At first,” I repeated. “So, he understood eventually?”

  Eva shrugged. “He came around. And everything was going just fine until he met that other woman. For weeks after he broke things off with me I watched his apartment. I was dying to catch him red-handed.”

  I took another small sip of my Cosmo and thought: You had the time to stalk him after the relationship but not the time to see him during the relationship. But I would never say anything so confrontational.

  “So,” I said, “did you ever see him with a woman?”

  “Unfortunately, no. He always came and went alone.”

  I thought: What was the point of the stalking? Just because he came and went from his apartment alone didn’t mean he hadn’t been seeing someone during his relationship with Eva. Anyway, by that time he was single again and perfectly free to date other women. Poor Eva. She must have been terribly distressed to act so strangely.

  “So,” I said gently, “what happened next?”

  “I called him, of course. Several times. I wanted an explanation for why he ended the relationship.”

  “He never gave you an explanation?” Well, I thought, that can be very frustrating.

  “Oh, sure,” Eva said, waving her hand dismissively, “some nonsense about our not being compatible for the long run, about each of us wanting different things out of the relationship, ridiculous excuses.”

  Well, Brad had said similar things to me—and he’d been right. “So, what did he say when you called him?”

  Eva took a sip of her second drink before answering. “Nothing, really. He refused to talk back, which I knew meant he had a guilty conscience. He would just listen to me call him a liar and worse, and then he would say, very calmly, ‘Good-bye, Eva,’ and hang up.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “I tried to get him to meet me face-to-face but for some reason he kept refusing.”

  I thought: Because he was afraid of you, and maybe rightly so. And then I felt bad for the disloyal thought. Eva was my friend and there I was taking the side of some man I didn’t even know.

  “He said,” Eva went on, “he thought it best to just cut the cord and walk away. It was extremely frustrating for me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it was. Everyone needs closure.” Even Brad and I, though I wondered if we’d ever achieve complete closure, given the fact of our child.

  “Exactly. But he just couldn’t give me that.”

  “So,” I said tentatively, “since then?”

  “No one,” she said. “For the past few years I’ve just been a wreck.”

  If what was sitting next to me at the bar was the personification of a wreck, I thought, I, too, want to be a wreck. Eva looked marvelous. Her skin glowed. She was impeccably dressed and looked toned and fit. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of my own unpolished appearance and flabby upper arms. Right there I determined to buy a set of hand weights and take a subscription to one of those fitness magazines.

  But maybe, I thought, Eva is a wreck on the inside. Maybe she’s just skilled at hiding her real feelings. Maybe, I thought, I should have sympathy for her.

  “Of course,” Eva went on, “I have sex whenever I want, so I’m not lonely.”

  “Oh,” I said, my voice unnaturally high with surprise.

  Maybe it was my imagination but I found Eva’s tone challenging, and the sympath
y I’d felt for her a moment earlier wavered.

  Eva looked at me, and again, I thought I sensed challenge. “Does that shock you, that I have sex without being in a relationship?”

  “No,” I said quickly, “it doesn’t shock me.” I thought: Your tone shocked me, as you intended. “It’s just that I’m not used to hearing that sort of thing from other women.”

  “Your friends are all married, I suppose.”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted, thinking of the acquaintances I’d left behind in California. “Except for those who are divorced, and they’re all dating, hoping to meet someone to marry. They’re not just sleeping around. Not that I mean to imply that’s what you’re doing!”

  Eva laughed. “Poor Sophie. I don’t take offense all that easily. Anyway, it’s not like I go to bars and pick up strangers. That’s stupid, not to mention dangerous.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Eva went on airily. “I have this friend—well, he’s not really a friend. We have sex and we go our separate ways. And sometimes I’ll have a quick fling with someone, no one who works in my industry, of course. That’s just bad policy. Anyway, I’ve decided that relationships are simply too risky. Look at you and Brad. The perfect couple, or so everyone thought.”

  Who was everyone? And how little Eva knew about the later years of my marriage! I wondered if she’d even be interested in finding out. Maybe, I thought, I shouldn’t have told her about the baby we never had. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her call Brad an ass.

  “But life is all about risk, Eva,” I said. “I’m sure you take risks in your professional life.”

  “Calculated ones. You can’t take a calculated risk in matters of the heart so you’re bound to lose.”

  “Not necessarily,” I argued. “Even if a relationship doesn’t last forever, you can still gain a lot from the good parts of it.”