With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  “Yes, ma’am.” Her voice was faint, her expression inscrutable. I hoped she meant what she said, because I wouldn’t have known how to operate that particular appliance, not to mention four out of five cycles in the top-of-the-line German dishwasher or the rotisserie in our restaurant-worthy oven. Why I’d once thought we needed it was its own mystery, since I can’t see myself roasting a lamb on a spit anytime soon. I prefer to admire our home technology from a safe distance. Two of my worst days of the year are when our eleven digital clocks need to be reset.

  “The floors are bamboo.” Did they even grow bamboo in Tibet? Where was her native land, exactly—near China? No, India. No, China. Should I have hired the Irish girl who jabbered during the interview, wee lass this, wee lass that? “I think we’re finished here,” I announced. Jamyang had already seen and seemed to approve of her room. Decorated with chintz, a small flat-screen TV, and walls painted apple green, it was located on the semisubterranean floor that the previous owner had proudly called an English basement. “Let’s see if Dash’s awake.”

  We took the back staircase, bypassing the parlor floor with its formidable living room and dining room, and peeked in on Dash, whose tiny chest was rising and falling as if set to a metronome. I brushed away a strand of blond hair, but he didn’t stir. I’d kept him up late with the hope that his father might arrive in time to see him. Last night Xander had missed him by twenty minutes.

  “Pity baby,” Jamyang said. “Very pity.”

  “Pretty,” I said, softly rolling the r. “Thank you very much.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jamyang said. “Pity.”

  We tiptoed into Dash’s bathroom, where Jamyang scrutinized the flotilla of rubber ducklings and stacks of monogrammed towels—DMcK for Dashiel McKenzie Keaton—walked through the playroom, and U-turned into a corridor that led to Xander’s literary Fort Knox. I hesitated before I opened one of its double doors. How should I explain that my husband could detect at twenty paces if a visitor had misshelved Tender Is the Night with the Henry James collection? Then again, what were the chances that Jamyang would want to cozy up with an early-twentieth-century first edition? “This is the library,” I said as we entered the mahogany-paneled room and spread my arms wide. “Many, many books!” Jamyang pinched her nose. “Sorry, Mr. Keaton smokes cigars.”

  “Febreze,” she announced, in our most promising exchange of the day.

  I walked across the room to open a window. When I turned around, Jamyang had bent down to trace the intricate leaf pattern of the rug’s rich ochre weave. “Pity,” she said.

  “From your country.” I seriously hoped that we hadn’t flung a sanctified prayer rug across the lesser nirvana of our Brooklyn Heights floor, where Xander would occasionally flick cigar ashes and spill single-malt Scotch. Jamyang responded with a spatter of words. I smiled, vacantly, I’m sure. She arched her eyebrows in a grimace and resumed a placid expression as she got up to review the rows of leather-bound books.

  This was going to be the first of what I had just realized would be at least several endless days. “Excuse me,” I said, pointing to my watch, and bolted to the master bedroom suite on the top floor. My desk and computer were tucked into a dormer window across from our dressing room. “I may have made a huge mistake,” I whispered when Talia answered her phone. “I forgot to hire a translator.”

  “Sure she’s not just shy?”

  You’d think one shy person would have radar for another. I’d lived through a whole childhood of being ordered to smile. Usually I was terrified, not least by Mother. If she hadn’t drummed into me that rule number one of proper manners is showing an interest in others, I wouldn’t have a friend in the world. Jamyang might be shy—or judging me. “All I know is I can’t leave Dash with her quite yet. I’m so sorry I’m hanging you up.”

  “You mean ‘hanging me up longer’?” Talia asked, though she sounded more amused than angry, one of many reasons why I love her, my most instinctively thoughtful friend.

  “You’re amazing,” I told her. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  One peace offering was waiting, gift-wrapped. The sweater I’d chosen—sumptuous, ruby red three-ply cashmere—was don’t-ask-don’t-tell expensive, nothing Talia would buy for herself, but shopping for friends gives me infinite pleasure. I had something for the others, too. When we got together for dinner the next week, Jules would receive a novel set in Rome—if we didn’t visit, she could at least read about it—and for Quincy I’d found a vintage photograph of Central Park, because she’d seen an apartment near there that she’d loved.

  “Just get your tush back as soon as you can,” Talia said.

  “Messages?” I asked, since we function as each other’s answering service.

  I heard her rustling around on her desk. “Not much,” she said. I jotted down information on two calls—one about the meeting of a women’s shelter where I sit on the board, and the other from a consultant who guided parents through the lunacy of school applications. Xander had gone to prep school and college on scholarship, and the position for which that education had prepared him now allowed him to provide a private-school education for Dash. He wanted us to pick the best school, a topic he’d been raising every day.

  “Should I get you up to speed about this morning’s meeting?” As Talia started a play-by-play, I thought about how little such details interested me. I was surprised no one else had commented on my lack of enthusiasm, no one but Xander. He, for whom it took a month to register that I’d chopped off six inches from my hair and gone two shades blonder, had said, more than once, “You’re bored with that job—why stay there? We don’t need your salary.” He stopped just short of modifying salary with measly. By week three of my recent frenzied nanny search, he’d started saying, “This is ridiculous. Quit working.” But if I didn’t work, I’d expect myself to be permanently attached to Dash, poor child. Soon he’d require daily psychoanalysis, not preschool.

  “If I quit,” I asked Xander, “what do you suggest I do, be some sort of dilettante?” We refer to his boss’s wife as Charlene the Chatelaine, tied down as she is with dressage, the Met’s Costume Institute gala committee, and controlling the purse strings at her husband’s charitable foundation.

  “How about more volunteering? We’re writing checks to enough organizations.”

  “Maybe you’d like me to find an internship in Zimbabwe?”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Chloe. I’d back you in either a foundation or a business. You know, like that lady who started eBay.”

  That was when I suspected that what my short, towheaded husband—my twin, some people have thought—wanted was bragging rights. If I were to go on a steady diet of philanthropy, he wouldn’t be satisfied until I became a benefit chair. If I started a business—baking blueberry muffins, let’s say—in five years he’d expect me to take those muffins public. Xander is a smart guy, but he overlooks a key fact: I am not a leader. I’m not even a woman who would skim a self-help book on leadership.

  I like my job’s predictable grid of assignments and deadlines and—in small doses—its conversation, which doesn’t revolve, like a never-stopping carousel, around children. I also appreciate the part-time schedule, which is ideal and uncommon. My arrangement with the agency and Talia would be hard to duplicate, not that I’ve searched for alternatives. Simply keeping track of Dash’s schedule—swimming! music! numbers classes!—exhausts my organizational skills.

  As Talia continued, I added the appropriate “Really?” but when the intercom came alive, I was grateful. Dash was awake, and he wanted the whole house to know. “Can you hear that shout for Mommy?” I said abruptly. “I’ll have to call you later.” I walked downstairs. With blue eyes open wide, my son was sizing up Jamyang, who was hovering in the doorway.

  “Pity boy awake,” Jamyang said, cooing in a language I couldn’t understand: our comprehensive library could use a copy of Tibetan for Dummies. “Dashiel,” I sang out, “did you have a wonderful nap? This is Jamy
ang. She’s going to be taking care of you.”

  For the first time, Jamyang smiled broadly, displaying tiny, straight teeth. She turned to my son and said, “Does Dashiel want to play?” He answered with a giggle and handed her a stuffed cow.

  Everything’s going to be all right, I realized. I sighed so loudly Jamyang turned around. “Why don’t I leave you two to get to know each other? Bye-bye, sweet prince.” I kissed my son’s rosy cheek. “I’ll see you in ten minutes.” I spoke then to Jamyang. “After you two get acquainted, meet me in the kitchen, please, and I’ll show you what Dash likes to eat.” Then we’d circle through the neighborhood and onto the Promenade.

  I walked upstairs, found the number for the school consultant, and dialed. “Hannah McCoy’s office,” a crisp voice announced before it buried me on hold. “Mrs. Keaton,” Hannah McCoy said finally. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but the phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

  “I’m sure I’m calling way too early.” I said, embarrassed, “but I wondered if I could make an appointment to meet about my son for school next fall.”

  “You’re not calling a bit early,” Hannah McCoy answered, chomping on bit. “I’m well along with meetings for your child’s peers.”

  Dash still went to bed at night in UnderJams, but apparently he already had peers, eager toddlers whose mothers were more plugged in than I. “Better make an appointment to meet soon, then. What do you have available, please?”

  “Let me look—so sorry, have to take this call. May I put you on hold for a moment?” Six minutes later she returned. “It’s your day, Mrs. Keaton—I had a cancellation for Monday.”

  Monday was when I would be returning to the office. “How about later in the week?”

  “I’m booked solid for the next month.” She paused. “July sixth?”

  Xander and I had rented a house in Nantucket and were planning to take off the entire holiday week. “Sorry, that’s not possible. What do you have the following week?”

  After a long pause, she spoke. “One opening—on Wednesday, at eleven.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll take it. It’s Keaton, Chloe Keaton, K-E-A-T …” I continued with my vital statistics, including an AmEx number for the sizable deposit. “Is there anything else I should know?” I wanted to learn, fast.

  “Only this—pardon me for asking, but are you single?” Hannah McCoy’s tone had turned cloying.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “You said ‘I.’ Traditionally, both parents attend the appointments.”

  Why hadn’t I figured this out? “In that case, eleven isn’t going to work, either.” After two more sessions on hold, Hannah McCoy suggested an appointment for a full six weeks from now. By then all of Dash’s peers probably would have learned to conjugate French verbs. “You know what?” I said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to grab the slot on Monday.” Talia would have to work one more day, and Xander, whether he liked it or not, would have to get with this program.

  CHAPTER 5

  Quincy

  Jake and I woke early, despite three celebratory romps in bed last night. He ran his warm palm from the curve of my shoulder down to the small of my back, over my behind, and along my leg, which was almost the length of his. “What do you say we hit the road, Q?” he asked. It was Saturday, and the two of us always loved an uncharted trip, whether we splurged on a four-star hotel or pitched a tent. Within an hour, we’d packed a bag and rented a car.

  I can sniff out an antiques store miles away, but today, as Jake and I drove north on back roads, I barely took note of the dusty shops, the delicate church spires, or the farm stands selling the season’s first pumpkins. All I could think and chatter about was the apartment, which we’d bid on before we’d even ridden down the building’s elevator.

  Jake had followed through on the plan we’d rehearsed, should he decide that he liked the co-op as well as I did. “We’ll bid five percent above asking price,” he told Horton as I felt liftoff in my heart, speaking these words with the same bravado that had convinced the silvery sages heading his law firm to make Jacob Benjamin Blue a junior partner before he turned thirty-three.

  If we canceled our trip to Costa Rica and liquidated 75 percent of our savings, we could manage the purchase. If we ever required a third bedroom, Horton was right, we could eke out a good-sized space from the enormous, sunny dining room. When I imagined Jake and me in what I was beginning to think of as our home, I saw us happy, with child or without. We were our own family.

  By eleven we spotted an inn fronted by weeping willows. “What do you think?” I said, pointing to the vacancy sign. As we pulled into the cobblestone driveway, my cell phone rang. It was Horton, crowing. “Fran’s delighted with your bid and has submitted it to Dr. Walter’s legal guardian.” I felt a beat of pleasure. Mrs. Shelbourne was a woman I wanted to please, a woman who made me want to stand up straight. My hand shot up in a victory salute Jake returned as I said, “Excellent. Anything else we need to do now?”

  “Not yet,” Horton answered. “I’ll keep you in the loop, but don’t expect to hear from me until Tuesday. Congratulations—you’re on your way to owning a very special piece of property. Now enjoy your weekend.”

  That we intended to do. As soon as I pushed open the inn’s screen door, I liked the parlor, which hadn’t an inspirational plaque in sight. A pile of art books stood on a trestle table next to a bowl of plums. When I pressed the bell for service, a curly-haired man walked through a hallway wiping his hands on a snowy apron. “Welcome to the Black Cat,” he said, smiling. “May I help you folks?”

  “I hope so,” Jake said. “Could you show us some rooms, please?”

  “Certainly, but there are only two left.”

  The first room had a pencil-post bed layered with what appeared to be a faded bridal trousseau, but from the window seat of the second choice I saw a stone patio with wicker chairs and broad white market umbrellas. The room was larger and lighter, with a bath whose centerpiece was a deep claw-foot tub that reminded me of my first apartment. Jake took my hand and squeezed twice, our standard signal of agreement, the one we’d used to indicate approval on the apartment. I squeezed back. “We’ll take it,” he said.

  “I wish we were staying longer than one night,” I whispered as we walked downstairs.

  “I don’t see why I can’t be late on Monday.” He raised his eyebrows in his most lascivious Groucho glare. “I’ll book it for Sunday, too.”

  I couldn’t recall one occasion when Attorney Blue had taken a sick day, not even when he broke his femur on a ski slope. It was at moments like this when I truly believed that even if I never had a child, my life was nevertheless going to be much more than fine. Jake is everything I want in a husband, and while putting up with my quiet spells heads the list, the unquenchable attraction I feel for him is not far behind. When I returned downstairs, he’d already arranged for a picnic to eat after a hike to the area’s main draw, a covered bridge. Arms around each other’s waist, my straw hat tickling his ear, we wandered down the inn’s driveway.

  We hadn’t gotten fifty feet past the gate when the trill of my phone competed with a moo. “What’s up, Horton?” I said.

  “Dr. Walter’s adviser thanks you for your offer but wonders if you’d be willing to increase it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said feeling a familiar disappointment snake up from the pit of my stomach, grip my insides, and give them a good yank. Every other apartment bid had run along these lines. “We’ll discuss it and I’ll call you in a bit.” I clicked off and explained.

  “What it comes down to, is, do you really want this place?” Jake asked reasonably.

  I thought of all my addresses in thirty-some years—the solid, three-story house in the Minneapolis of my childhood; the rambling Manhattan apartment I’d shared with a boyfriend, and then with Jules, Talia, and Chloe; Jake’s cozy hovel, which I moved into when we became engaged; our current rental in a building that looked like a stack of ice cubes, i
ts balcony the size of a coffin. In the Central Park West apartment, I felt as embraced as if I’d lived there in a previous life of extraordinary contentment.

  “My gut says go,” I admitted, “but maybe I’m getting carried away. I need a reality check.”

  We walked in silence until Jake sat down by a stream we’d been following. He began picking up pebbles and idly throwing them into the rushing water. A dozen pebbles later, he spoke. “Q, you’re not crazy. It’s a terrific apartment, and probably a pretty sure investment if we decide to move somewhere like this for good.” Whenever we got fifty miles outside of Manhattan, he invariably launched a Norman Rockwell fantasy, forgetting that he was well on his way to a prosperous career representing white-collar crooks, a species he’d find in short supply here in the land of the rake and the rooster. “If you want it, I want it. We can up the offer five percent, but that’s the limit. I draw the line at food stamps.”

  I hugged him as he left a message for Horton. Then Jake and I trundled off to the bridge, spread a quilt nearby, and feasted on sandwiches thick with turkey and Brie, washed down with sparkling lemonade. Stuffed, the two of us lay back hand in hand and counted clouds floating in the sort of pool party sky you never see in a city. Soon I began to doze. I dreamt of us unpacking boxes in our new apartment. Inexplicably, I was playing the cello, accompanied by Eloise Walter. After a bravura performance I retreated to a bedroom, where I discovered a door that Horton hadn’t shown us. It was locked. I didn’t have the key. I banged, again and again.

  I woke to Jake shaking my shoulder. “Q—you’re moaning.”

  “What did I say?” I asked, blinking in the light. I’ve been known to dream in convoluted, Spielberg-worthy plots, which I try to recount for Jake, who finds them considerably less captivating than I do.