My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  Jack grabbed the pen from his daughter. “No!” he said. “I said to draw on the white paper, goddamnit!”

  He didn’t hurt Alexandra, but he had seldom spoken to her so sharply before, and the little girl jerked her head around to stare at him in amazement. Then she burst into wails. It was absolutely amazing how a child’s face could be transformed in a flash like that, from something so innocent you could suddenly believe in angels, to something so crinkled up and red and blotchy and wide-mouthed and loud that you could suddenly—for sure—believe in devils.

  For one pure moment that lifted itself up out of time and hung like a dewdrop above Jack’s head, he hated his little girl. Well, maybe “hate” wasn’t the right word. He thought he probably was losing his mind. Carey Ann was sobbing, Alexandra was screaming, his desk blotter looked like shit, and he didn’t have any idea what to do now.

  There was a knock on his door. Of course there was, of course someone would knock on his door right now.

  “Here,” Jack said, handing his crying daughter to his crying wife. God, he hoped it wasn’t Hudson. It would be so embarrassing; it would look like Jack was being cruel and abusive to his wife or child. He had gotten a good look at Claire and would bet money she had never cried or made a scene in her life.

  It wasn’t Hudson. It was a student, a girl in a baggy sweater. She stood outside Jack’s office, sort of wincing with indecision.

  “Mr. Hamilton?” she asked timidly. “Could I sign up for your neoclassic lit course? I’m sorry to bother you now, but this is the last date for late registration,” she hurried to say.

  “Sure, we’ve got room for one more,” Jack said. While he took the form from her and signed it and told her what text to buy, she was busy looking anywhere but into his office, where the two other females seemed to have calmed down a little and were only sniffling.

  “Thanks so much!” the girl said as she turned to leave. “I really can’t wait to take your course!”

  Jack nodded and smiled and then shut the door on her retreating figure. He turned to his wife. Carey Ann was now staring at him with a new look: suspicion? anger?

  “Who was that?” she asked, her voice cold. Alexandra stared at her mother.

  “Huh? That was just a student,” Jack said. “I didn’t get her name.”

  “Do all your students look like that?” Carey Ann asked.

  “Well, no,” Jack said, trying for some levity. “Some of them are men.”

  “ ‘I just can’t wait to take your course,’ ” Carey Ann mimicked in a simpering high voice.

  “What?” Jack asked.

  “She probably wants to have an affair with you,” Carey Ann said accusingly.

  “Oh, yeah, right!” Jack yelled, losing his temper at last, going berserk. “I mean, I am such a sex object on this campus that they almost didn’t hire me. I mean, no one wants to take my course because I’m a good teacher or anything, they just all want to get in my pants. The guys too—I mean, I’m such a hunk I turn straight guys gay at the sight of me.” He caught himself finally; he was leaning over Carey Ann, yelling right into her face. She had started crying again, quietly, pathetically, the martyred wife.

  “I’m sorry, Carey Ann,” he said, and put his hand on her shoulder. Alexandra, who had been shocked into silence by his shouting, reached up her fat little hand and pushed his hand off her mother’s shoulder.

  “Go way,” Alexandra said.

  Jack went over and slumped down in his chair. He looked at his blotter, now a ruin, like his life. “I’m sorry, Carey Ann.”

  “You just don’t understand,” she said, digging in her purse for another handkerchief. “I used to be so popular and have a lot of friends and everybody liked me and thought I was pretty, and now here I am and I don’t have any friends and no one to think I’m pretty, and you have these beautiful girls just crawling out of the woodwork to get to you and I can’t even be in a little old play group and pretty soon you’ll stop loving me.”

  “I’m not going to stop loving you.” Jack sighed, thinking as he spoke that he halfway wished he could. “And everyone thinks you’re pretty, you’re the prettiest woman on the East Coast. Now let’s settle down and talk about this sensibly,” he said.

  He had meant to be soothing, but before he could say another word, Carey Ann bristled, tossed her hair, and shot him a look that could kill. “Don’t you patronize me!” she said. She was so mad now that she stood up and began to pace the tiny office, which was just barely big enough to pace in, especially since she still had Alexandra in her arms. “You want me to settle down and talk sensibly, which means you want me to just go on and act like nothing’s wrong, and I won’t. You think I’m being frivolous or childish or something, the way I’ve been upset since I’ve been here. Well, I want you to understand I’m not being frivolous or childish; I’m having a major problem with my life! I really am. Now, I love you and I know you love me, and we both love each other a whole lot, the same amount, but I was the one who had to give up something in order to spend my life with you. Why is that? Why weren’t you the one to give up things? Who says that just because you have a Ph.D. in English you have to teach it? We could be living in Kansas City right now in a gorgeous house having a lot of fun. Or you wouldn’t even have to go to work for Daddy. You could have kept teaching at the university there. You had friends there, you had students you liked. And I could still have had my friends and family and all the places I know and feel comfortable with, even if we were poor. You are just like a man! You want everything your way and if I’m not fitting into your little plans just perfectly, you think I’m not being sensible!”

  Alexandra burst into a grin because with the word “sensible” her mother inadvertently spat on her face, which surprised Alexandra. Also, it was an interesting ride for the little girl, for each time Carey Ann got to the end of the room she turned so fast she whipped around, and pretty soon Alexandra got into the rhythm of it and hung her body out away from her mother’s and grinned when the turn snapped her back against her mother. But Carey Ann’s face was deadly serious.

  “You want me to make friends right away—I know you do, and you don’t even understand a thing about friendship. These women here are so stuck-up, they ask me where I’m from and I tell them I’m from Kansas and they get this kind of superior, very amused look on their faces like suddenly they know all about me and what they know is that I go around barefoot carrying slop to the hogs or feeding the chickens.”

  All at once Carey Ann ran out of energy and slumped back down in her chair. “You tell me to be sensible,” she said in a softer voice. “What that means is that you want me to hurry up and make lots of friends and make the house look nice and be that mother out of Leave It to Beaver. I can’t do that. I’ve got to go at my own pace. I’ve got to make my own friends. Just ’cause you and I are married doesn’t mean we’re going to like the same people. Like that Daphne Miller that you like so much. I can understand that you would like her ’cause she’s been at the college for about a billion years and can tell you all about it. And she’s so serene and all, like someone who never has had any problems. She just sort of goes floating and smiling through the universe like the old Queen of England, calmly talking to everyone, and I can see she’d be helpful for you to talk to. But if I’m going to have a friend it’s got to be someone like me with some problems. If Madeline Spencer had said to me today, ‘Carey Ann, you have the prettiest hair, I really envy you because I can’t seem to get mine to do anything,’ well, then it would have been easy for me to say to her, ‘Madeline, I know Alexandra needs some discipline, but to be honest, I just don’t know how to go about it.’ Do you understand that at all, Jack?”

  Alexandra had curled up in her mother’s lap and was sucking her thumb. Jack wished he still sucked his. He had tried to pay attention to his wife and understand her, but sometimes her logic seemed unique to the point of nuttiness. It was the most he could do to say, “Look, Carey Ann, we’re both strung-out.
We’ve got a lot to talk about, but we can’t solve everything right this instant. I’m starving. Let’s go over to the student union and have some lunch. Alexandra will love the french fries.” He held up his hand to forestall another scream. “I’m not trying to get out of discussing all this. I’m just hungry and I think I’ll be able to talk about it all better after I’ve eaten.”

  “All right,” Carey Ann said. She stood up, wiping her eyes.

  The history department was also in Peabody Hall. The history-faculty offices and secretarial cubicles were on the third floor, along the south side; the English department ran along the north. In between was the huge warm thrumming Xerox room with its massive compliant machines. Jack was on his way at four o’clock to find Daphne’s office, but as he passed by the Xerox room he caught sight of his friend bent over a machine.

  “Hi!” he called, and stepped inside.

  “Oh!” Daphne jumped, looking over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he apologized.

  “I know you didn’t.” She laughed. “You just can’t hear anything when the machine’s going. Besides, you caught me with my shoes off.”

  Jack looked down; so he had. Daphne’s brown leather shoes lay on their sides, their long heels pointed at each other, on either side of her stockinged feet.

  “Come over here and talk to me,” Daphne ordered. “I’ve got to get this paper copied for Fred. He needs it for some journal.” She leaned close to Jack as he approached. “It is so boring,” she said through her teeth. “The paper, I mean. I had to type it.”

  Jack went around to the other side of the Xerox machine. Daphne had a nice rhythm going: she raised the lid, picked up a sheet of paper, put another down, shut the lid, put the paper in a pile, and picked up a new sheet of paper from another pile. The machine hummed and clicked and stuck out a tongue of copied paper into its tray. He watched for a while, admiring her precision and organization. Her movements were almost hypnotic. She was like the machine—efficient, smooth—but unlike the machine with her grace. Next to the machine she seemed very female and curvaceous. Her breasts were right at the level of the lid, right in his line of vision as he watched her work.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” he said, shaking away his thoughts. When Daphne looked at him questioningly, he went on, “I wonder if you would babysit for us tonight.” He held up a hand, forestalling any comment she would make. “I hope this isn’t an insult,” he said. “I mean, I know it’s an imposition, and I know you’re not a babysitter. But I’ve been trying all afternoon and I can’t find anyone who can come on such short notice. Hank Petrie gave me some names, but they’re all high-school girls who have to study for tests. And Pauline White gave me a name, but that woman already had plans.”

  Daphne just looked at him, a funny smile on her face.

  “I guess it’s kind of an emergency,” Jack went on. “To tell the truth, I’m a little desperate. Carey Ann is having a difficult time adjusting to the move and I need to have a long, uninterrupted talk with her. It’s hard to talk with Alexandra around.”

  “Did Carey Ann get along with any of those women I introduced her to at the party?” Daphne asked.

  “Well …” Jack hesitated, not certain how much to say. He didn’t want to betray Carey Ann; he didn’t know, after all, who might be good friends of Daphne’s—she did seem to know everyone—and he didn’t want to say anything he would mind having repeated.

  With a sudden little flurry, Daphne stopped copying, piled up the papers, and flicked a button on the Xerox machine. Silence fell around them.

  “Sure I’ll babysit,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the warmth of the machine. “What time would you like me to come down?”

  She was so easy!, Jack thought. Daphne was so easy and pleasant, and on his side. Somehow she had learned the trick of taking the world in stride. And she had such good legs—he watched her step back into her high heels.

  “God, this is really good of you,” Jack said. “You’ll have to let us do something for you sometime. I really appreciate this.”

  “We country folk have to stick together,” Daphne said, smiling. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure sometime this winter I’ll get sick and ask you or Carey Ann to get me some medicine, something like that. What time do you need me?”

  “Six-thirty?” Jack asked. “Is that too early? We all have to get up early tomorrow, so we should make it an early night.”

  “Six-thirty is fine.”

  Carey Ann was on the floor with Alexandra, helping her put huge wooden pieces into a puzzle that would soon be a rabbit. Alexandra jumped up and ran to Jack as soon as he came in the door.

  “We’re going out to dinner. I’ve got a babysitter!” Jack said, picking his daughter up and whirling her above his head. “Daphne Miller’s going to come down.”

  He was grinning up at Alexandra, so he couldn’t see Carey Ann’s reaction to this news—he wasn’t sure he wanted to see it. She didn’t say anything.

  “I couldn’t find anyone else,” he went on. “I got some names from Hank Petrie—he’s in English too, but his kids are older, but not old enough to babysit. They’re all high-school girls who will come on weekends but not on weeknights. It’ll be good having Daphne—I won’t have a long drive picking her up and taking her home.”

  “It’s nice of her,” Carey Ann said slowly. “After working all day and all.”

  “She’s coming at six-thirty. So go put on your dancing clothes, mama!” Jack made squeaky kisses on Lexi’s tummy.

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Carey Ann said.

  Jack carried his daughter into the living room and sank down onto the floor with her. She was having a giggling fit. He lay on his back, drew his knees to his chest, and put Alexandra on his legs, bum against the shelf of his feet. He held on to her hands and bounced his legs, and Alexandra laughed with pleasure.

  “Yes, this is she,” Carey Ann was saying. “Oh, yes. Oh.”

  Jack paused in his bouncing for a moment, trying to hear the conversation, trying to figure out who was on the other end of the line. But Alexandra screamed, “Go, horsie!” He bounced his legs again. He hoped it wasn’t Daphne, backing out.

  He bounced Lexi till his legs grew tired, then lifted her above his head and turned her into an airplane. Finally he said, “Daddy’s tired,” and let her down onto his chest and stomach. He hugged her. She snuggled against him. They both caught their breaths. Carey Ann hung up the phone in the kitchen and came into the living room. She sank down onto the sofa like someone who’d just been turned into jelly. There were tears in her eyes. Oh, no, now what?, Jack thought, his heart sinking.

  “Oh, Jack,” Carey Ann said. “You’ll never guess. Oh, I’m so happy.” She smiled radiantly.

  “What?” Jack said. He sat up, bringing Lexi up with him. She crawled off his lap and walked over to her mother.

  “That was Shelby Currier,” Carey Ann said. “You know, the mother of the little baby that Alexandra hit today? Well, you won’t believe this, but she called to tell me not to worry about it. She said she knew I probably felt awful about it, because she has a little boy—Aaron, he’s four, he’s in preschool—and when he was two, the same sort of thing happened to them. Another little boy pretended to shoot at him with a toy gun, and Aaron said, ‘Don’t you shoot me!’ and picked up a wooden block and threw it and hit the little boy in the face. Made him have a terrible nosebleed. Shelby wanted to die. And the other mother was really awful about it, acted like Aaron was a psychopath or something. Oh, Jack, Shelby’s so nice. Jack, she belongs to this other group. It’s a group of young mothers who get together one night a week just to talk about their kids and their problems. Each week they meet at someone’s house, and they have a theme, like thumb-sucking or discipline or sibling rivalry, and it’s at her house tonight and she wants me to come. Oh, Jack, would you mind if I didn’t go out to dinner with you tonight? I mean, I love you, but …”

&
nbsp; Jack grinned at his wife. “I love you, Carey Ann. Even if you prefer someone else to me.”

  “Oh, Jack!” She grinned, then jumped up. “What shall I wear?”

  Carey Ann had just driven off in her white Mustang convertible and Jack was still standing in the doorway with Alexandra waving in his arms—her entire arm going back and forth like a windshield wiper—when Daphne Miller came walking down the dirt road and into their yard. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and sneakers.

  “Oh, God!” Jack said. “I forgot to call you. We had a change in plans. Well, listen, come on in anyway. Have a drink with me. The least I can do is give you a drink.”

  Daphne smiled. “All right. It will give me a chance to get to know your daughter better. In case you ever need me to baby-sit again, she’ll be more comfortable with someone she’s familiar with.”

  Jack sat Alexandra on the kitchen counter and gave her a slice of lime to entertain her while he fixed vodka tonics. He was suddenly happy—this miracle had happened for Carey Ann, and now he had a pleasant adult to talk to while he babysat his daughter, whom he adored, but who could get a little boring over the course of an evening. He told Daphne where his wife had gone.

  “I’m so glad,” Daphne said, taking her drink. She followed Jack into the living room and sat down with him and Alexandra on the floor. “Shelby Currier’s very nice,” she said. “You know, she used to be a model. She married Watson Currier, who must be the homeliest man on the Lord’s earth, and he’s a chemistry prof and shy! The two of them couldn’t be more different. It’s always a mystery when two people choose each other, isn’t it? But Shelby is just as happy as a clam.”

  “Well, I’m relieved,” Jack said. He told Daphne about the playgroup incident, using gestures and euphemisms and disguised language so that Alexandra wouldn’t know they were talking about her.

  “Oh, it’s the hardest thing to move into a new town,” Daphne said. “I know. When I first moved here, I was a young faculty wife just like Carey Ann. The first semester, all I did was look at wallpaper books and paint the kitchen.” She laughed. “It’s a wonder Joe didn’t leave me then,” she said. “He’d come home from work and I’d have about seventeen billion wallpaper patterns for him to look at, all marked in the book with strips of paper.”