My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  Thank heaven for that much, Daphne thought. Cynthia was actually learning some humility.

  “Besides,” Cynthia went on, “I wouldn’t want to act in Hollywood anyway. It’s so tacky. I want to be a real actress, I want to act onstage, on Broadway. Well, I’ll have to start off-Broadway, of course. And you and Hudson live so close to New York.”

  “So much for humility.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, darling. We’ll be glad to have you with us.”

  That was true. She and Hudson had chosen their house with the thought in mind that Cynthia might come back, and before school was out Cynthia was with them, installed in her bedroom on the third floor of their gingerbread Victorian, where she could have girlfriends spend the night and play her stereo full volume without disturbing Hudson and Daphne. Cynthia had become fairly independent of Daphne, and although she was around Daphne less—always out with friends or in her room—when she was with Daphne she seemed more loving and relaxed.

  Cynthia loved Hudson. She thought he was sophisticated.

  “I think it’s awesome, Hudson marrying you,” Cyn said one day to her mother when they were folding laundry.

  “Why?” Daphne asked, amused.

  “Well, Hudson’s so brilliant and important and … debonair.”

  “Well, I’m no frog!” Daphne snapped.

  But her anger was short-lived. She knew it was only natural that Cynthia should take for granted any charms Daphne had, balanced out as they were by all the times Cynthia had seen Daphne in a rage or a fit of red-eyed self-pity. She was fortunate that her new husband and her daughter liked each other.

  In fact, she was fortunate in every way, which was the difficult part: whenever one of Claire’s blue airmail envelopes arrived for Hudson, Daphne would be reminded of Claire facing her old age alone, and she would feel overcome with guilt. Daphne could not help but compare Hudson’s desertion of Claire with Joe’s desertion of her, so long ago, and she hoped that someday she would become more forgiving of Joe and Laura, at least in her own heart. Bitterness was such a waste of spirit.

  She did not dwell on the bitterness much anymore. Now she pondered guilt. It had always been a point of pride in her life that when faced with a choice, she chose the action that would hurt the fewest people, even if that meant she was the one who was hurt most. For that reason she had not slept with Jack. For that reason she had refused to marry David, because she knew the pleasure of his company would be ruined by the times of drunkenness, which would frighten Cynthia.

  One rainy morning in April, when Cynthia was at school and Hudson was at the college, Daphne sat finishing her second cup of coffee and looking out the window at the rain. With a sort of melancholy pleasure she was worrying at the thorn of guilt that had lodged very physically in her heart. She made herself think about the last time she had been with David.

  He had been dying, for months, of cirrhosis of the liver. It was not an easy death. During his forty-seventh year of life, David had lost weight because he was unable to eat. For a while he only grew more brilliant-eyed and handsome, but finally he had begun to look skeletal, his face a death’s-head, his complexion jaundiced and mapped with broken veins.

  During the last few days, Daphne had sent Cynthia to stay with a friend so that she could be with David constantly. She was with him when he entered the hospital. By then, the doctors had told him there was nothing they could do for him except to make him more comfortable. Really, they could not do even that. He was nauseated, and vomited from time to time, with blood in his vomit. His liver had simply shut down, and his spleen was enlarged, he had edema, so that his limbs and stomach were swollen grotesquely. He had to work to breathe.

  Daphne had sat next to him, holding his hand. She had wanted to be brave for him. She had pretended that they both understood that soon, suddenly, miraculously, he would be well. In his turn, he had tried to act lighthearted and carefree.

  But once, when he smiled, and she saw how rusty his teeth looked, because of his bleeding gums, her anger broke forth. Her anger and her grief.

  “Oh, David, damn you!” she said. “I’m so angry with you. You should have stopped drinking. You could have stopped drinking! Now I’ll miss you so much. I’ll be so sad and lonely. You’re not doing this just to yourself, you know, you’re doing it to me. Why didn’t you stop drinking! Don’t you feel guilty?”

  David had thought about her question. Holding her hand, gasping as he fought to breathe, he had thought, staring in a blurry, melancholy way, as if truly looking over his entire life. Finally he had said, “Guilty? No. I don’t feel guilty. But I do feel … regret.”

  Shortly after that he had slipped into a coma and died.

  Now, in her kitchen, her new kitchen in her new Hudson-and-Daphne life, Daphne mused on David and his words. After his death she had felt guilty. Perhaps, if she had married him, he would have stopped drinking. Perhaps, if she had married him, he would not have died.

  Perhaps. Perhaps not. She had certainly wrestled with this question many times before. David had already had two loving wives who had left him because of his drinking. He had always known that Daphne would marry him the moment he stopped drinking. What it all came down to was that Daphne had had to bet her life and Cynthia’s—and David’s—that if they married he would continue to drink, and ultimately inflict his ugly scenes on Cynthia. Daphne had had to make a choice.

  When she had agreed to marry Hudson, she had once again made a choice, and this time she had chosen her own happiness over someone else’s. She and Hudson were guilty of causing Claire sorrow.

  Did that mean she loved Hudson more than she had loved David? Or was it simply that she realized at last—and it was about time, for she was getting old—that almost everyone on this earth, in order to be happy, must choose at times to do something that hurts someone else. Everyone on this earth must live with some degree of guilt.

  Very well, then, she had chosen to take her happiness at the expense of Claire’s. She was guilty.

  But about this choice, she did not feel regret.

  Carey Ann was having her period and having cramps and feeling awful, so Jack was in Grand Union buying Doritos and chocolate ice cream for her, and bananas and frozen chicken patties for Alexandra, and he didn’t know what for himself. This was what had become of him. He couldn’t even decide what he wanted to eat for dinner. Slouching over his metal cart, inching drearily up and down the aisles, he castigated himself: he wasn’t a man, he was a slug. An adult, with money in his pocket, he could have anything he wanted for dinner. He could buy a frozen gourmet dinner of clams in tomato sauce. He could stop by Burger King and buy five thick cheeseburgers and all the crisp french fries he’d ever wanted in his life, and now he wouldn’t break out in pimples. He could choose the freshest vegetables and expensive boned skinned chicken breasts and make himself a healthy stir-fry. He could get really wild and drink a six-pack of beer along with bagels, cream cheese, hot salted pretzels, and bacon sandwiches. But he didn’t have the energy to make the decision, let alone fix his own meal.

  He stood by the meat cooler for a while, hoping inspiration would strike. A whole dead chicken was truly a repulsive thing, all puckered and goose-bumped. It was the end of May. It was warm enough out to cook something on the grill, but they were moving in a week, and the grill was stuck behind packed cardboard boxes in the garage. He had done that much; he had decided to go back to Kansas City to teach. But he hadn’t managed to feel relaxed about the decision.

  “Hello, Jack.”

  Daphne’s cart rolled up against his, metal clinking companionably.

  “Daphne.” First he just looked at her. He hadn’t even seen her for over a month. Life with Hudson obviously agreed with her. She sort of glowed. But then, hadn’t she always? She was wearing a blue dress that set off the dancing blue of her eyes.

  “Hudson tells me you’re not staying on at Westhampton. That you’re going back to Kansas City.”

  “U
m, yes, that’s right.” They sounded so formal, Jack thought, so terribly proper, as if he’d never had his hand up her skirt. But he had come to attention at the sight of her, come out of his slouch and into an almost military stiffness, his body of its own accord going into this attitude of respect. “It will make Carey Ann happy to be around her family and friends. And I’ll be able to teach freshman English, and even, eventually, I hope, teach literature there. In any event, I knew I wouldn’t have a chance in hell of getting tenure here.”

  “What about your writing?” Daphne asked.

  “Oh,” Jack said. It surprised him that she remembered that he wanted to write, that she spoke of it as if it existed: “your writing.” “Well. That will happen sometime, I suppose. I have a family to support and all that.”

  “I thought Carey Ann’s father offered to support you all for a while so you could write.”

  “Yes, he did, that’s true, but—I mean, you know, man of the house and all that. Pride and responsibility, you know.”

  “What about happiness?” Daphne said.

  Jack looked down at his cart, shifted it slightly, as if it had been in someone’s way. “Of course it would make me happy to write, but I’ve got others to think about.”

  “Don’t you know Carey Ann and Alexandra will be happy if you’re happy? And as for her father—well, Jack, don’t you know now that the ultimate happiness in life comes from making our children happy? I’m sure Mr. Skrags would be just thrilled to give you a chance you’d never have otherwise in life.”

  Jack stared at Daphne. Suddenly a shiver passed over him, streaking down his spine, and he went cold all over. Here it was, the message from fate, Daphne in her toga passing along the wisdom of the ages, and he was chilled with comprehension. Or perhaps it was just the refrigerated air from the meat cooler wafting up his left arm. But he had never thought of it that way, that helping him out would make Mr. Skrags happy. Why hadn’t he thought of that? People generally liked to help others if they could.

  Still, would it be the right thing to do?

  “Still,” Jack said, “would it be the right thing to do? To let myself be supported by my father-in-law?”

  Daphne laughed. “Jack. Life is far too short to limit yourself to doing only what is ‘right.’ Good Lord, do you think I’d be living with Hudson now if I’d paid attention to what was ‘right’?”

  “Hello, Daphne! I’ve been calling you all day! Where have you been? I wanted to chat with you about the spring dance.”

  Jack turned savagely toward the fat old biddy waddling up toward them with her cart, wanting to yell at her: “Not now! Not now!” But Marcia Johannsen came inexorably on, unaware of the fact that she was interrupting one of the most crucial conversations of Jack’s life.

  “Marcia, Jack, I think you know each other,” Daphne said graciously.

  Jack realized he was glaring at the woman who was extending her hand with a smile.

  “Yes, yes, hello,” he said, taking the woman’s hand and shaking it. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Nice to see you. Daphne, the committee meeting for the dance is going to be on Thursday night instead of Wednesday. Will you still be able to make it?”

  “Let me check,” Daphne said. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a small leather appointment book. Taking her time, she flipped through till she found the right date. “Umm,” she said. “I have something that evening, but I can rearrange it. What time?”

  Were these two women going to stand here talking about a fucking dance forever?

  “… at Linda Hutton’s,” Marcia Johannsen was saying. “Since she’s going to be in charge next year, it seems only—”

  “Excuse me, ladies,” Jack said politely, wanting to murder them both. They all shifted their grocery carts so that he could roll away from the meat section and down the aisle to frozen foods. Despairingly he reached in and grabbed a brightly colored cardboard box destined for a hungry man and tossed it in his cart. Dutifully he picked out the items for Carey Ann and Alexandra and wheeled off zombielike to the checkout counter.

  Well, he was a fool, wasn’t he? After all, Daphne Miller, soon to be Daphne Jennings, was only a mere woman, a former college secretary, as lost in the whims of the world as every other human being. Why had he endowed her with special powers? Because he had needed to, he guessed. And that was foolish. Really, when was he going to grow up? Right now. He’d grow up right now, and start making his own decisions! And his first decision was that he’d stop by the liquor store for a six-pack and some of the huge salted pretzels they sold from a glass jar. He’d buy something for Carey Ann too, to help with her cramps. Korbel wasn’t too expensive and Carey Ann really loved champagne. It would be a nice gesture, and she’d be pleased that he had been so thoughtful. Then he’d tell her that he’d decided to take her father up on his offer for a year or two, and see how she reacted. She’d already said seven hundred times before, that if that was what he wanted to do, it was fine with her. He’d just check to see her reaction to be sure it really was okay.

  He loaded his groceries into the car, then walked down the little mall to the liquor store. He bought the beer, the champagne, the pretzels, and carried them to his Honda and stashed them carefully on the floor of the passenger side. As he was going around the front of his car to the driver’s side, someone honked at him. He looked up. There was Daphne, driving up the parking lot in the brown Volvo. She waved. Jack waved back.

  Daphne was now almost in front of Jack’s car, her head bent at an angle as she rolled down her window. She didn’t stop her car, but she did slow down.

  “Hey, Jack!” she yelled, as if they had never been interrupted, as if they were still in the midst of a conversation. “Do it! Take it! Go on! Be brave! It’s all right. You can take what you’re offered!”

  Jack watched, speechless. The brown Volvo passed on up the line of parked cars. Daphne stuck her head out the window and looked back at him.

  “Go on!” she yelled. “I dare you!” Her smile was brilliant.

  Then she drove away.

  For Jessica, Joshua, and Charley

  BY NANCY THAYER

  Nantucket Sisters

  A Nantucket Christmas

  Island Girls

  Summer Breeze

  Heat Wave

  Beachcombers

  Summer House

  Moon Shell Beach

  The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

  Hot Flash Holidays

  The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

  The Hot Flash Club

  Custody

  Between Husbands and Friends

  An Act of Love

  Family Secrets

  Everlasting

  My Dearest Friend

  Spirit Lost

  Morning

  Nell

  Bodies and Souls

  Three Women at the Water’s Edge

  Stepping

  Read on for an excerpt from Nancy Thayer’s

  Nantucket Sisters

  Ballantine Books

  It’s like a morning in Heaven. From a blue sky, the sun, fat and buttery as one a child would draw in school, shines down on a sapphire ocean. Eleven-year-old Emily Porter stands at the edge of a cliff high above the beach, her blond hair rippled by a light breeze.

  The edge of the cliff is an abrupt, jagged border, into which a small landing is built, with railings you can lean against, looking out at the sea. Before her, weathered wooden steps cut back and forth down the steep bluff to the beach.

  Behind her lies the grassy lawn and their large gray summer house, so different from their apartment on East 86th in New York City.

  Last night, as the Porters flew away from Manhattan, Emily looked down on the familiar fantastic panorama of sparkling lights, urging the plane onward with her excitement, with her longing to see the darkness and then, in the distance, the flash and flare of the lighthouse beacons.

  Nantucket begins today.

  Today, while her father
plays golf and her beautiful mother, Cara, organizes the house, Emily is free to do as she pleases. And what she’s waited for all winter is to run down the street into the small village of ’Sconset and along the narrow path to the cottages in Codfish Park, where she’ll knock on Maggie’s door.

  First, she waves back at the ocean. Next, she turns and runs, half skipping, waving her arms, singing. She exults in the soft grass under her feet instead of hard sidewalk, salt air in her lungs instead of soot, the laughter of gulls instead of the blare of car horns, and the sweet perfume of new dawn roses.

  She flies along past the old town water pump, past the Sconset Market, past the post office, past Claudette’s Box Lunches. Down the steep cobblestoned hill to Codfish Park. Here, the houses used to be shacks where fishermen spread their nets to dry, so the roofs are low and the walls are ramshackle. Maggie’s house is a crooked, funny little place, but roses curl over the roof, morning glories climb up a trellis, and pansy faces smile from window boxes.

  Before she can knock, the door flies open.

  “Emily!” Maggie’s hair’s been cut into an elf’s cap and she’s taller than Emily now, and she has more freckles over her nose and cheeks.

  Behind Maggie stands Maggie’s mother, Frances, wearing a red sundress with an apron over it. Emily’s never seen anyone but caterers and cooks wear an apron. It has lots of pockets. It makes Maggie’s mother look like someone from a book.

  “You’re here!” Maggie squeals.

  “Welcome back, Emily.” Frances smiles. “Come in. I’ve made gingerbread.”

  The fragrant scent of ginger and sugar wafts out enticingly from the house, which is, Emily admits privately to her own secret self, the strangest place Emily’s ever seen. The living room’s in the kitchen; the sofa, armchairs, television set, and coffee table, all covered with books and games, are just on the other side of the round table from the sink and appliances. In the dining room, a sewing machine stands on a long table, and piles of fabric bloom from every surface in a crazy hodgepodge. Frances is divorced and makes her living as a seamstress, which is why Emily’s parents aren’t crazy about her friendship with Maggie, who is only a poor island girl.