Really, I thought, I have no clear idea of why I’m here. I have no interest in baseball, in sports of any kind, for that matter. I could have used this time to finish the book I was currently reading, a juicy adventure novel by one of today’s top-selling writers. (The name stays with me.) I could have gone to the Armani Exchange store and bought that jacket I’d been considering.
I sighed.
“What?” Sophie asked, her eyes shifting to look at me.
“Nothing. Keep your eyes on the road.”
“I’m an excellent driver,” she said. “I’ve never gotten a ticket.”
“Maybe because the police haven’t been able to catch you,” I muttered as we whizzed past a string of fast food giants with colorful names like Timmy’s Tub o’ Lard and Duke Danny’s Donuts.
We arrived eventually at the field, a big, square plot of grass and dirt punctuated only by a high fence and two sets of rickety, unpainted wooden bleachers. Nice, I thought. I’ll get a snag in these pants and they’ll be ruined. Two hundred bucks down the drain for a charitable act of so-called friendship.
Sophie and I took seats halfway up one set of bleachers. Sophie seemed extraordinarily happy to be there. But already I was bored silly and very aware of the stares I was getting from some of the people scattered across the ancient bleachers. Fine, I thought, let them stare. The sweatpants-wearing public is no concern of mine. I will die, I thought, before I plunk a hot-pink sun visor on my head.
But I wasn’t bored for long. For some crazy reason I’d been thinking that we were on our way to watch a bunch of pimply preteens. But the players trotting out onto the field were men. Young men.
Of course. The three-year-old boy I vaguely remembered would be an adult now. Kids. They’re tricky.
I let my eyes roam over the players taking positions and discussing, no doubt, vitally important strategic matters. It was quite a display. One player in particular caught my attention: a tall, well-built guy with thick, wavy dark hair and a butt for which a woman would kill to have access. As if reading my lascivious thoughts, the guy turned and looked right at me.
There it was, the spark that sizzled and burned. I felt overwhelmed with lust, almost sick with it.
Suddenly, Sophie grabbed my arm. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to shake off her touch. “Eva, look,” she said excitedly, “there’s Jake!”
Sophie let go of my arm and waved wildly toward the playing field. “Jake, over here!”
And then the guy with the amazing butt was ambling toward us, a slow grin dawning on his very beautiful face.
“Oh, shit.” The words escaped my lips and Sophie turned to me with a frown.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” I squeaked. “Just . . . just a splinter from the bench.”
And then Jake was climbing up the bleachers, his muscular thighs outlined nicely beneath his formfitting pants.
“Mom, hey,” he said. Sophie leapt to her feet and threw her arms around Jake’s neck. I sat, transfixed. Over her shoulder, Jake gave me a wink.
“Are you glad I came to see you?” Sophie asked when she’d let her son go.
Jake smiled. “More than you know, Mom.”
Oh, shit, I said, this time to myself.
“Oh, where are my manners!” Sophie turned to me and said, “This is my friend Eva. Eva, you remember Jake, don’t you? Though he doesn’t look anything like he looked when we moved West!”
Jake extended his hand. I put out mine as I searched for an appropriate greeting. “I want to have sex with you immediately ” probably wouldn’t cut it.
“Hey,” Jake said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
His eyes held mine. Yeah, I know that’s a trite expression but how else to describe the “moment”?
“Hey,” I said back. “The pleasure is mine.”
The moment the words were out I thought I’d blown it. Had Sophie heard the implication there? I released Jake’s hand quickly (though reluctantly), but the happy smile on my friend’s face put my mind at ease.
Sophie told Jake that we were having dinner in Boston after the game with our college friend John.
Jake put his arm around Sophie’s shoulders. “Hey, maybe I’ll come with you, no? After I clean up.”
I imagined Jake in the shower. He looked at me and I’m sure he knew what I was thinking.
Sophie playfully patted her son’s chest. She was killing me and had no idea. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’d just be bored. All we’ll be doing is reminiscing.”
Jake squeezed her shoulder and then released her. “Okay, well, maybe some other time. I’d better get back to the field. The game’s about to start.”
I smiled pleasantly, but my heart—rather, the seat of my libido—sunk. With a wave and another smoldering look (yes, smoldering, and very daring, too), Jake loped off to join his teammates.
Sophie sat down next to me and beamed. “Isn’t he wonderful?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said weakly, “wonderful.”
15
The best lies sound perfectly ordinary and often make good sense. You suspect you smell of another woman’s perfume? The first thing to do when you walk through the door that night is complain loudly about the overperfumed woman who squeezed in next to you on the train. Your wife will have no good reason to suspect you of foul play.
—Covering a Lie: It’s Easier Than You Think
EVA
God, what a beautiful man.
These were the words that came to my mind when John walked into the restaurant that evening. The thought was dispassionate. There was no sexual chemistry like there’d been with Jake earlier that afternoon. My appreciation of John was of a different sort. Nevertheless, I skillfully squashed it.
John had suggested Marino’s for dinner, a mom-and-pop Italian place in the North End, a little downscale for my taste. Sophie, however, loved it, proclaiming it so “warm and friendly.” John said he ate there once a week, as he loved the puttanesca sauce.
Sophie leapt to her feet and embraced John. He hugged her back with enthusiasm. I remained seated and offered my hand. He took it and we shook briefly and firmly.
“It’s so good to see you!” Sophie gushed. “You look wonderful!”
They took their seats and engaged in a meeting of the mutual admiration society while I waited. Finally, John turned to me.
“You look well, Eve,” he said.
“Eva.”
“Of course. You haven’t changed a bit since I ran into you at that event a few years back.”
I had a vague memory of that night. Ben. I remembered going on about Ben. I stifled a shudder. “Yes,” I said, hoping John wouldn’t ask about my ex-boyfriend. “I take care of myself.”
John gave me a half-smile and asked nothing more.
When the wine arrived, a bold red that John had selected, he proposed a toast. “To us,” he said. “The old crowd.”
Sophie raised her glass and beamed. “It’ll be great being friends again. It’ll be just like old times!”
How could I be expected not to betray my native skepticism? “It’s been said that you can’t go home again.”
John frowned at me. “Whatever happens,” he said soothingly, “I’m glad that Sophie got us all together.”
I took a sip of the wine (which was really very good) so that I wouldn’t speak my thought: that I still wasn’t sure I was glad Sophie had hunted us down.
Before the first course, talk turned to our professional lives. Sophie asked me if I enjoyed working at Caldwell and Company.
“My career is everything to me,” I said, and then I wondered: What, exactly, do I mean by that? My career is everything because there is nothing else? There is nothing else because my career is everything? I took another few sips of wine and thought, so what if I get drunk? There’s no one at home to yell at me.
“I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing,” John was saying when I tuned back in. “I can’t imagine
not working in the law. But who knows? Maybe five, ten years from now I’ll feel the need for some sort of change. Burnout happens. So does boredom. If I don’t feel challenged, I’ll move on, expand, something.”
Sophie smiled. “You’re lucky. I mean, how many people can say they like their jobs?”
“Not many,” I said abruptly—not if you listened to my staff.
“I’m not saying that my job can’t be stressful,” John added. “Some nights I’m so wiped I can hardly muster the energy to get on the T for home. And pretty much on a daily basis I have to contend with a variety of idiots, creeps, and bureaucrats. Still, on the whole, I’m happy.”
“At least you’re not digging ditches,” I said, for no reason at all.
John looked at me curiously. “How did you know about that?”
“About what?”
“The summer I did a volunteer gig in Africa. Mostly we dug trenches for irrigation.”
“Really?” I asked. “How socially conscious of you.”
Sophie laughed. “John,” she said, “I can’t believe you’re not married! You’re perfect!”
I thought I saw John wince but I probably imagined it. John never did have any real modesty. He just pretended to be humble. It got him more adoring, empty-headed girls.
“Hardly,” he said, lightly. “But thanks, Sophie. It’s nice to have fans.”
“You never did make a big deal of your accomplishments,” Sophie went on. “I remember when you were elected into Phi Beta Kappa in our junior year you just shrugged and said something like, ‘Oh, it was just luck.’”
Ah, now John pretended to blush! Really, I thought, why didn’t he take up acting or politics instead of the law? His considerable talent was being wasted.
I made a bit of a choking sound. John looked at me. I smiled and said, “It’s a bit thick in here, don’t you think? The air, I mean.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have kids, Eva,” John said abruptly.
“Why are you surprised?” I replied with a casual lift of my shoulder. “Lots of people don’t have kids. You, for example. Unless you’ve got an illegitimate son or daughter stashed away somewhere.”
“No children that I know of,” he said evenly. “And do people really use the term ‘illegitimate’ anymore?”
“I’m surprised, too, Eva,” Sophie said, turning to me. “Back in college you used to talk about having two or three children. You were sure you’d marry an artist, maybe a sculptor, and live in a big loft with all handmade furniture and a big dog. Remember?”
A dog? Did I drop acid in college? “No,” I stated firmly. “I don’t remember.”
“Do you think about having kids someday?” Sophie asked John. “I think you’d make a wonderful father.”
“I’m not opposed to the idea,” he said carefully.
“Ah, I can see it now,” I said. “He’ll play around until he’s sixty, then marry some thirty-year-old to bear the children he won’t live long enough to see graduate college. I suppose you think that teenagers will be a comfort to you in your old age?”
Sophie looked uncomfortable. She took too big a sip of her wine, reached for her napkin, and coughed politely into it.
“Where is your sister these days, Eve?” John asked, pointedly ignoring my comment.
“Eva.”
“Eva,” he said, and I thought I detected a bit of amusement at my expense in his tone.
“Maura lives in Michigan. She’s on husband number two. She has four kids, a tiny house, a lousy job as a cashier, and yet she’s happy. At least, she claims to be.”
Sophie, recovered, looked puzzled. “Why would you doubt her?”
Because it’s hardly the kind of life I would want for myself, I thought. Call it supreme self-centeredness but it was hard for me to imagine my own sister being content with what I considered to be such a crabbed life. It made me angry somehow that she didn’t want more, that she was so entirely different from me. But I wasn’t sure why I needed her to be someone she was not.
I shrugged in reply to Sophie’s last question.
“Do you see her much?” she asked.
“No,” I said, wondering suddenly when it was I had last ventured to Michigan. Three years ago? Four? It had only been for a night, anyway; I’d gone to Ann Arbor to visit a potential client. I’d stayed at a Hampton Suites. Maura, who’d come into town to meet me for dinner, saw the little kitchenette and pronounced it paradise. “In fact, I’ve never met her youngest. I think she’s about two now.”
“Oh,” Sophie said. “That’s too bad.”
“There’s nothing to do out there in the sticks,” I said by way of explanation, “so visiting has no appeal. And they can’t afford to come here unless I put them up in a hotel, and Maura’s husband won’t allow that, something about his manly pride, so . . .” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We were never close. Probably due to the age difference.”
“Age matters less when you’re an adult,” Sophie said. “I mean, I don’t have siblings of my own but I can imagine.”
“I’m surprised you’re not more involved with your sister’s kids,” John remarked then. “I can’t get enough of my nieces and nephews. I do my best to visit every week. I don’t want to just be the guy who shows up at graduations with a check.”
“Well,” I stated flatly, “I’m not you.”
Sophie put her hand on John’s arm. “John, Eva doesn’t remember wanting to write children’s books. Can you believe that?”
“I can believe most things,” John replied with a grin. To me, he said: “I remember you kept notebooks of story ideas. And sketches, which, by the way, were really lousy.”
“You read my private notebooks?” I demanded. Suddenly, I had a vision of the ratty, paisley-print satchel in which I’d carried my school stuff. I wouldn’t be caught dead with that satchel now.
“I looked over your shoulder from time to time,” John said, with absolutely no shame. “Now that I think about it, I remember one story idea. Something about a sculptor, a woman, sort of a twist on the Pygmalion thing.”
I had absolutely no memory of that story, or of any others. Where, I wondered, were those notebooks? I imagined I’d thrown them out at some point. Without my parents’ basement for storage—of course, I’d had to sell the house immediately after their deaths—I’d had little room for childhood memorabilia. Dolls, games, most had gone out in the trash. Anything of any value, like a small desk painted white with yellow daisies, had gone to a resale shop. But the notebooks?
“You would have made a good writer,” Sophie said.
Would I have? “Things change,” I said, dismissively. “We were kids then, young and naive.”
“Young, maybe,” John replied, “but not naive. At least, when it came to a career path. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer ever since high school and I’ve never regretted that decision.”
“And I knew I wanted to have a family,” Sophie said. “I’ve never regretted having my son.”
“What about having married Brad?” I asked. “Do you ever regret that?” It seemed a reasonable question but John raised an eyebrow at me.
Sophie didn’t answer immediately. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t regret marrying Brad. He’s the father of my child and he’s basically a good person. Things just didn’t . . . last. Besides, I don’t understand how any woman could regret marrying the father of her child!”
John took a slow sip of his wine before he said: “If you’d met the number of abused women I have, you might understand. Especially when your jaw has been broken and the child support is late because your ex-husband has spent all his money on drugs. You might very well regret ever having met the father of your child.”
“You’ve been lucky, Sophie,” I said.
“I’m sure Sophie earned what good things she has in her life,” John said with a pointed look in my direction.
“Oh, I know what Eva means,” Sophie said. “But I’d say blessed rather than lucky.”
“I’ve had my share of hardships, too,” Sophie said, defensively. “My life hasn’t been a bed of roses. I’m divorced. I’m living alone for the first time ever. I’m studying for my real estate license and it’s not easy, there’s a lot to learn.”
“Of course,” John said soothingly. “I’m sure Eve didn’t mean to imply that you’ve had a free ride. Did you, Eve? I mean, Eva.”
I looked at my old friends, teamed up against me. “Is anyone having coffee?” I asked, suddenly eager to get the hell out of there.
16
Dear Answer Lady:
I’m getting married next spring in an awesome ceremony after which there’s going to be a really amazing reception. The whole thing is costing my father, like, thousands of dollars and believe me, I’m spending a lot of my own money, like on a personal trainer, visits to a tanning salon, a stylist, and a honeymoon wardrobe to die for. There’s only one problem and it’s a big one. See, my three girlfriends from high school are still my best friends. Naturally, they expect to be my bridesmaids and I have no problem with two of them. Like me, they’re in shape, tall, and blonde. They’ll look awesome on either side of me! (I’m thinking of spring green for their dresses. Well, my stylist is thinking. She’s amazing.) But the third girl is kind of fat and she’s much shorter than the rest of us and her hair is really dark brown. I mean, this stuff never bothered me before. She’s really funny and let’s face it, next to me (and my other two friends) she’s no threat! But if she’s in my wedding party, she’s going to ruin everything! What should I do? She’s destroying what is supposed to be the most awesome time of my life!
Dear Most-Shallow-Woman-Alive:
The Friends We Keep Page 6