Best Friends Forever

by Jennifer Weiner

  It was an awful thing to say. He’d known it was an awful thing to say almost before he’d finished saying it, even before he saw Patti’s eyes narrow and her hands ball into fists. She’d taken three steps toward the kitchen. Then she’d stopped, turned, picked up the cedar box that they’d bought on their honeymoon in Mexico and heaved it, as hard as she could, at Jordan’s head. The corner of the box had caught him in the corner of his left eye. The pain was instant and enormous. “Ow,” he cried. “Ow, shit!” Patti had stalked to the bedroom, closed the door and locked it, leaving him sitting there with the box broken in his lap and blood running down his cheek.

  He’d packed a towel full of ice, held it against his face, and driven himself to the emergency room, where he’d told the attending physician and the nurses and, later, the ophthalmologist on call that he’d walked into an open door. If a woman on his watch had given him an excuse half as lame, he’d have brought in the social workers before the lie was out of her mouth, but the eye doctor just told him to tilt his head back while she gave him drops. “You’ve got a bad scratch on your cornea,” she proclaimed after he’d spent an eternity with his chin propped on a metal crosspiece, trying not to blink as she shone violet-tinted light into his eyes. No surprise. Every time he blinked, it felt like there were grains of sand rubbing against his eyelid.

  “What do we do?” Surgery, he thought glumly. He’d probably need surgery, and wouldn’t that be a perfect ending to the perfect day?

  “Can’t do much of anything but wait,” the doctor said. She gave him an antibiotic cream and a prescription for Percocet, and told him he might notice his eye watering on and off as it healed.

  Back home, he’d cleaned up the mess, sponging blood off the carpet, throwing the broken cedar box away. At nine o’clock at night, he’d tried knocking at the locked bedroom door.

  “Patti?” he’d called. She hadn’t answered. “I’m sorry,” he said. Still nothing. “If you want to have a service, that’s okay,” he said. “Whatever you want.” Silence… and then her voice had come, cool through the door. “What I want,” she’d said, “is for you to sleep somewhere else tonight.”

  They’d stayed together for another year. Jordan went back with her to her support group. He’d sat beside her, holding her hand while she cried. They had done couples’ therapy and had had date nights every Saturday: dinners and movies, then back to the dark house where there was no sitter to pay and dismiss. They’d slept underneath the darkened third bedroom, which was now empty—at some point after the night of the box, Patti had gone to her mother’s for the weekend, and Jordan had devoted a Saturday morning to dismantling the crib and carrying it, piece by piece, down to the basement. When they made love, Jordan got used to reaching up to caress his wife’s cheek and having his hand come back wet with her tears. Later, he’d decide that their marriage had died the instant she’d picked up that box, but at the time he’d managed to convince himself that they were doing okay. They’d gone to the Bahamas for their tenth anniversary, and on the plane ride back, Patti had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he’d thought, with pride swelling his chest, of the title of a poem he’d read in college: Look! We have come through. He thought they had.

  And then had come the dentist.

  Jordan shook his head and rubbed roughly at his eyes. The left one was watering again, so he wiped it with a napkin. It had healed, but it still watered three years later, and sometimes he had double vision, which, technically, he should have told the town manager about, but he never had. What was a little bit of blurriness compared to a busted marriage, and babies that never were?

  He’d told the patrol-people to divide up the names on the guest lists and call them all, to stay on top of the hospitals, to make sure the dispatcher hadn’t gotten any news about men wandering around with head injuries and droopy pants. Then he got in his car and called Paula the dispatcher, double-checking the database’s last listing against Christie Keogh’s roster. He thought he’d take a swing by Crescent Drive to see if Jonathan Downs was around.

  TWENTY

  “We made it,” said Val as we drove up the driveway. The sun was melting the frost from my lawn, and my newspaper, in its blue plastic bag, was waiting. Val cut the engine, and I got out of the car as the Buccis’ SUV backed down the driveway. Mr. Bucci stuck his arm out of the window. “Morning, Addie,” he called, and I said “Good morning” back, just like nothing had changed.

  At Val’s instructions, I pulled her Jaguar into the garage next to my parents’ old, tarp-draped station wagon and rolled the door closed behind it. “So what now?” I asked as I picked up my paper and unlocked the front door.

  “I need a shower and some coffee,” said Val. “After that…” She stretched, tilting her hips forward and her head back.

  “Did you bring the class guide inside?” When Val waggled it at me, I said, “Maybe we should make a list of everyone Dan knew, or everyone he was hanging out with last night, and call them and ask if they’ve heard from him.”

  Val thought for a minute, then shook her head. “We don’t want people to know we’re looking for him.”

  That gave me pause. “Okay, what if we don’t say it’s us? We could pretend to be telemarketers or something, and we’ll just say we’re trying to reach Dan Swansea, and either they’ll say, ‘Wrong number,’ or they’ll say, ‘Actually, he’s right here on my couch.’”

  Val nibbled on a fingernail. “I think maybe we need to get out of town.”

  “Oh, Val…” A dozen excuses rose to my mouth: my deadline on the bunch-of-flowers card, my responsibilities, my brother. The doctor’s appointment I had on Thursday. My lump.

  “Just think about it!” she called over her shoulder as she headed toward the stairs. “Pack a bag. It could be fun!” I heard the bathroom door open and the water turn on. “Hey, can I borrow some clothes?”

  “Take whatever you need,” I yelled. Don’t you always? I thought, my old anger rising up as unavoidably as a knee jerking when the doctor’s hammer hits. But it was reflexive resentment, and it didn’t last long. The grudge I’d held for more than fifteen years was deflating like a pin-stuck balloon. It had been awful for me, being a teenager in Pleasant Ridge, but apparently it had been awful for Valerie, too… and maybe, somewhere, I’d known that all along.

  In the kitchen, I sliced two bagels and put them in the toaster, and pulled out butter and cream cheese and jam. I added a few bottles of water to my tote bag and stood for a minute, breathing the smells of home: paint and Earl Grey tea and Murphy Oil Soap, the wool of the new carpets, other scents I was sure couldn’t still be there except in my memory: the bay rum aftershave my father wore on special occasions, the milk of roses hand cream my mother had kept beside her bed, maple syrup heating on the stove.

  I was pouring cream into a ceramic pitcher I’d painted when I heard a car door slam. I ran to the window, and there it was: a police cruiser parked in front of my house. A man with dark hair, his shoulders slumped underneath his sports coat, peered at my house, then crossed the lawn, heading for the front door.

  Shit. Shitshitshit. I raced up the stairs and knocked on the bathroom door. “Val,” I panted, “the cops are here.”

  She opened the door and stood there with a towel wrapped around her body and another one wrapped around her hair. “Oh my God. Oh my God!”

  “Just stay up here. I’ll deal with it.” My heart was thumping and my mouth was dry, but a preternatural calm had descended on me. I didn’t have a plan—didn’t even have an inkling about what I’d say—but somehow, I thought that I could talk my way out of the situation, which was strange, given that, in my entire life, my mouth had gotten me into plenty of trouble and out of precisely nothing.

  “Stay up here. Don’t say anything. And don’t come downstairs no matter what.” Valerie backed into the shower, pulling the curtain shut behind her. I shut the bathroom door as the doorbell rang, then dashed down the stairs, took a deep breath, smoothed my hair,
and opened the door. “Ms. Downs?” said the policeman. He was handsome—a crazy thing to notice, given the circumstances, but there it was. He had a strong jaw and a cleft in his chin. His big brown long-lashed eyes had purplish circles underneath them, and there was stubble on his cheeks. “Police Chief Jordan Novick. May I come in?”

  “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

  “Okay if I talk to you inside?”

  “Of course,” I said, and opened the door wider.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jordan Novick did not believe in love at first sight. Lust, absolutely: the turn of a knee, the way a woman’s hair fell against the nape of her neck, a warm smile, a nice rack—he was no more immune to those pleasures than any man. Adelaide Downs—“Call me Addie,” she’d said, slipping over the floor in wool socks—wasn’t a supermodel. Nor was she some four-hundred-pound behemoth, as Judy Nadeau had suggested. Addie Downs was simply a pleasant woman with a decent body in jeans and a black sweater, a nice-enough woman with a nice-enough smile, honey-colored hair and full lips and laugh lines at the corner of her eyes. Her house, though, he thought as she hung up his coat and led him into the living room, looking over her shoulder with a worried expression as he followed—her house was something special.

  “What is this about?” she asked again as Jordan settled onto the couch, which was covered in some soft golden fabric and seemed to be psychically transmitting the suggestion that he slip off his shoes and put his feet up. The cherry-red blanket draped over one arm seemed like just the thing to pull up to your chin for an afternoon’s nap. There were small paintings clustered in groups on the walls, some in gold frames and some in wooden ones, and they were Jordan’s favorite kind of art, paintings that looked like actual things, instead of being a collection of smears and blotches called Arcadian Sunset or Woman on the Verge. Adelaide Downs had paintings of flowers that looked like flowers, and oceans that looked like oceans. There was a picture of a slice of birthday cake, with a lit candle stuck in frosting so realistic Jordan thought he could dip his finger in it for a taste, and another one of a black cat peering up, cool and green-eyed and sly, from a saucer of milk.

  He looked away from the cat so he could answer. “We have a few questions about the high school reunion last night.”

  She looked tense as she settled into the chair beside the sofa. Then her eyes darted toward the kitchen as bluish smoke filtered in. “Oh, jeez. Hang on.” She hurried out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “Hey, do you want a bagel?”

  Jordan had never accepted food when he was working. Not until today. He was, he discovered, starving. He hadn’t had breakfast, and he hadn’t managed more than a few bites of gluey pot pie the night before, and, he realized, he wanted Adelaide Downs to bring him a bagel, and eat one with him. “If it’s no trouble.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. You okay with well-done?”

  He told her that he was, and got up to study the paintings. There was one of the ocean he particularly liked, a beach scene with no people, just the water and a single brightly hued umbrella, red and orange, stuck in the sand like a flower. He stood looking until she came back, carrying a tray with toasted bagels, a pot of golden-orange jam, cream cheese and butter, a pot of coffee, a pitcher of cream, and a pair of mugs. Jordan sat down, catching a whiff of her hair as she bent over the tray, arranging plates and folding napkins. She smelled like sugar and lemons, sweet and tart, and the skin on her arms, where she’d pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, looked smooth as a magnolia petal. He bet if he touched it, it would be soft.

  She was fussing with the coffee cups, still looking worried. He wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, tell her that everything would be fine, and he couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t make sense. Sure, she had a decent figure, a curvy bottom, neither sinewy nor stick-thin, as so many women were these days, but she was no Holly Muñoz. Holly, with all of her running and biking, her lunges and squats, had a truly admirable ass. But that wasn’t a fair comparison. Holly was twenty-six. She’d never had kids. Had Addie? With a great deal of effort, Jordan pushed himself upright, tried to shake off the pleasant torpor that the couch had induced, and pulled out his notebook. No kids, he decided—there were no telltale plastic toys, no baby playthings or big-kid paraphernalia. No husband, either—he hadn’t noticed a ring, and more tellingly, there was only one remote control on the coffee table.

  “So what happened at the reunion?” she asked. He was about to tell her when he noticed that Addie was looking down, blushing. “Do you want a doughnut?” she asked. She pulled a bag out of her purse and set it next to the coffeepot. “I wasn’t sure if I should put them out. You know, cops, doughnuts…” She laughed nervously, then put her hand over her mouth.

  Jordan breathed in as steam from the coffee curled in the air, and opened the bag. Raspberry jelly. God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. “Like many clichés, the one about cops and doughnuts has endured because it is true. Are these from Ambrosia’s?” he asked, naming Pleasant Ridge’s best and only twenty-four-hour doughnut and coffee shop.

  “They’re the best, right?” Jordan nodded. He ate half of a doughnut and spooned sugar into one of the cups. Good coffee and real half-and-half, none of that skim milk or fat-free crap. Another point in her favor. “So what else?” she asked. “What other cop clichés are true?”

  He sipped his coffee. She was teasing him. It felt nice. “Okay. You know how everyone thinks we’ve got quotas to make and we just hang around outside bar parking lots or places where we know people are speeding or driving drunk?” She nodded. “That’s true. I mean, you want money, you go to the bank. You want drunks, you go to the bars. Oh, and we beat suspects.”

  She was smiling. “Well, why wouldn’t you?”

  “Not even to get them to confess,” he said. “Just to have something to do with our hands. We’re all trying to quit smoking, so… oh, and when we’re on stakeout?” He lowered his voice. “We pee in empty mayonnaise jars.”

  “I always wondered about that. Why not mustard? Why not some other condiment? Salsa or chutney or something like that?”

  “Wide mouth.”

  “Makes sense,” she said, her lips curving, cheeks flushed. For a moment they were silent, just looking at each other. Jordan pointed at the wall. “Where’d you get all the art?”

  “Those?” She looked flustered. “They’re mine. I mean, obviously they’re mine, I didn’t steal them.” She laughed a little shrilly. “I painted them.” She lifted her mug. “This, too.”

  Jordan looked at the mug, which was heavy, cream-colored glazed ceramic. On one side was a small bouquet of flowers—daffodils, maybe?—tied in a painted ribbon. “You…” He groped for the terminology. “You do pottery?” That wasn’t right—throw pottery, that was the word he’d been looking for.

  Addie shook her head. “Oh, no. Not the mug. The picture on it. The flowers. I painted them.”

  He looked at them more closely. “Nice.” Addie made a face, with the corners of her mouth lifted and her eyebrows raised. “So that’s what you do?” Jordan asked. “You’re an artist?” He pointed at the pictures on the walls.

  She waved the word away, looking embarrassed. “I do greeting cards, mostly. The occasional mug. I did a spoon rest once. That was a real highlight.”

  He polished off his doughnut and tried to keep from sighing in gratitude as the carbs landed in his belly and the sugar hit his bloodstream. “This is great,” he said. “You’re saving my life.”

  “Wow,” she said. She probably blushed easily when she was flustered or, Jordan bet, when she was turned on. She’d turn a pretty rosy color, pink from her throat to her chest, with her pupils dilated and her hair spread out as she tossed her head against the pillow… “You’re easy.”

  “Don’t tell, okay?” He looked down, remembering why he’d come here, and that it wasn’t to chat up friendly single women and eat their doughnuts. “Your brother,” he began. “Have you heard from him lat
ely?”

  “Thursday. I saw him Thursday, for Thanksgiving. What’s wrong?” The worried look was back.

  “Does he live here?”

  She shook her head. “Jon’s at a place called Crossroads. He moved there when he turned twenty-one. Why? Did something happen?”

  “Was he at the reunion last night?”

  Her hands twisted in her lap. “I can’t—I mean, I wasn’t there, either—but I can’t imagine he’d want to go, and if I didn’t take him, he wouldn’t have any way of getting there.” She paused, clearly deciding how much to tell him. “Jon didn’t have a very easy time in high school.” She looked off into the distance, fingers twining and untwining. “My brother was in a car accident when he was fifteen. The two boys in the front seat died, and Jon was hurt pretty badly. He had brain damage. Short-term memory loss, seizures—not for a while now, but he had them pretty regularly when he was a teenager—and some personality changes.” She sighed. “Medication helps, but he could be—he can be—a little strange.”

  “Everyone’s strange in high school,” said Jordan.

  Addie Downs seemed surprised to hear it. “You think so?”

  “You should have seen me. I had such bad acne, it looked like someone taped a sausage pizza to my face.”