With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

“Talia, would you relocate?”

  “I wish I could tell you the answer is yes,” I admitted, “but my husband’s a teacher and we’re committed to staying here because of his job, although I could imagine a position in, say, New Jersey or Westchester.”

  “Where does your husband teach?”

  “James Madison in Brooklyn.”

  “No!” She beamed. “I can’t believe it. My housekeeper’s son is a student there. What’s your husband’s name?”

  “Thomas Wells.”

  “You’re Mr. Wells’ wife?” she said, as awed as if I’d just revealed that Tom was in line for the English throne.

  “That would be me.”

  “I can’t begin to tell you what a godsend Mr. Wells is, the way he’s been tutoring José for the SATs and how he started that basketball team. He’s all I heard about last year.”

  Me too.

  “It would be a crime if your family left Brooklyn,” she said, and once again beamed her freakish astral stare in my direction. This interview is over, I thought, but she seemed to be revved up for more. “I wanted to see you about two different positions. Obviously, the Cincinnati job isn’t right for you, but there’s this small agency in Tribeca. My client needs someone with particular flair in fashion and home decorating, and he hopes to branch out into travel and wine and spirits.”

  No personal hygiene sprays? No anticoagulants for tragically clogged pipes?

  “Does this interest you, given your strong background in packaged goods?”

  Well married as I might be, I had no background in any of the glittering specialties she’d mentioned. Chloe did, I couldn’t help thinking, which was why someone had recommended her for the spot. Still, I had the temerity to say, “I’d be very interested. I’ve reached the stage where I need a different challenge and the idea of a new company sounds …” I searched for a fashion-forward adjective. All I could come up with was dynamic, a word that was anything but that.

  “Fair enough. The next step is for you to prepare a sample account pitch. Everything you need to know is here.” She handed me a computer disc. “Would a week be enough time?”

  “I have a big assignment due in three weeks at work,” I lied. “Could we stretch it a bit?”

  Her unblinking stare reappeared. “Two weeks from today, then,” she said in the spirit of a woman not used to negotiating, and stood up, ready to shake hands as my cell phone rang.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I forgot to turn this off.”

  She chuckled. “You’d better take the call—maybe it’s your husband.”

  The saint? “Oh, it’s not important,” I said. I recognized the Norah Jones ring tone and snapped off the phone. It was Chloe.

  • • •

  The next morning, the phone rang about ten o’clock. “Did I vake you, sveetheart?” Since she’d moved to this country at fifteen, Mira Fisher had lived four blocks from the Pacific Ocean, yet her Zsa Zsa accent clung like glaze on Sacher torte.

  “No, Mommy. Henry and I have been up for hours,” I said.

  “How’s that grandson of mine?”

  As I recited Henry’s CV—his exploding vocabulary, the way he fearlessly climbed the Everest of a playground slide, and how he willingly ate jicama—the longing for my mother became so great I felt she was almost in the room, her hazel eyes twinkling unconditional approval. Tom may be the world’s best husband, but no one on earth will ever love me as fiercely as my mother. It’s what females in our family do. Bubbe, who lives with my parents, is no different. Lioness ladies, Tom calls them.

  “Has Chloe come back to vork? Have you gotten a break? I vorry about you.”

  I cautiously considered my next few words. “Everything’s good, Mommy. I just might have another opportunity—a very good one.”

  “Shhahh,” she said, and puh-puh-puh’d as if an incantation could blow away the evil eye. For women in our family superstition is the true religion, to which we adhere far more than any everyday practice of Judaism. The way we throw salt over our left shoulder, you’d think the three of us were living on a dirt road near Anatevka, peeing in a pot and plucking chickens. Even Tom, as High Church as they come, has learned to say kinehora, a reverse curse I taught him to spit out whenever someone speaks of the auspicious. If you don’t say it, then ukh un vey—tough tooties. Your good luck just got deported to Siberia.

  “If there’s good news, you’ll be the first to know, believe me,” I said.

  The bond between my mother and me is nothing less than symbiotic. We dwell in each other’s heart like pacemakers that activate hope and optimism. I know Quincy grieves for her own mom, who died of Alzheimer’s. Chloe seems terrified by her swizzle stick of a mother up in Connecticut, and Jules bitches about her ma, who, when she’s not plastered, has her hand out for money. Neither of these last two women is a perfect maternal specimen, yet why can’t my friends fix whatever was wrong? These are their mothers. I am completely intolerant.

  When I graduated from Wesleyan—Xander wasn’t the only scholarship kid—I decided to try New York. I predicted that when I told them, my parents might impale themselves with grief. But Mira and Sam Fisher’s strategy was to give me time to come to my senses, assuming that after a season or two of gray skies and maxed-out subways, I’d miss the beach and, yes, our ganze mishpacha, our whole family.

  What they hadn’t counted on was my goy boy. No Fisher could believe that Tom and I would last. But since the morning after the first time we slept together I would never look at another man. My family also hadn’t expected me to ditch marine biology and announce that I absolutely had to move to Manhattan, not only because Tom planned to land there after a year in England but because that was where you went to be a book editor, which I’d suddenly decided I wanted to become.

  That I fell into advertising instead is a short story. The first interview I went on was at a magazine’s promotion department, as close to book publishing as I could get. Where most of my friends had to sweat landing a job, I was hired on the spot and moved up the ladder with such shameful constancy that I lost my incentive to become the next Max Perkins holding the hand of my generation’s F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copywriting was too easy—yak, yak, yak, talking on paper. From magazine copywriting I switched to advertising.

  “Tell me about the job as soon as you know something, promise, bubbele?” my mother was saying, pulling me back to now.

  “I promise. Now can I say hi to Daddy?”

  “He’s at shul.”

  Of course. He’d be at the morning minyan in a boardwalk synagogue ten steps away from the tattoo parlors supported by Valley teenagers. “Give him a kiss for me. Tell him Henry adores the book you sent.”

  “That’s all you vanted to do as a girl, you vith your nose in a book. Ve knew you’d be a writer.”

  I’m horrified to think that my mother considers me Joan Didion, but I’ve given up on correcting her. “Bye, Mommy. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, my darlink.” She hung up, and I closed my eyes as I ticked off the months—too many—before my parents’ next visit. I’ve stopped suggesting that they move to the East Coast, because for all their Old World habits, they’re Angelenos hooked on a balmy climate. And Tom would sooner relocate to Tanzania than spend more than one week per year in southern California, where he’s convinced that topic A is invariably how long it takes to drive from B to C and why that time has, year by year, increased exponentially.

  I returned to my laptop to punch up verbs on the two paragraphs I’d written on June Rittenhouse’s pitch.

  “What are you doing?” Tom said as he wandered into the bedroom. He was, according to my preferences, in sex symbol mode, wearing a clean white T-shirt and faded jeans. I considered stopping my work—then reconsidered. Henry’s naps had become abbreviated, and by tonight I’d be brain-dead from how that child answered every conversational bounce with another question.

  “Sorry,” I said, returning my eyes to the screen. “I’m working.”
r />   “On what?”

  “No big deal. I had an appointment with a headhunter and she gave me an assignment,” I tossed off, although it did feel like a big deal. I hate to lose—arguments, poker, face.

  “A headhunter called you out of the blue?” We both knew the subtext—as if that would ever happen to me. The likelihood of Tom’s being solicited for a better position was, on a scale of 1 to 10, maybe a 2, largely because he’d never look for his luck. If only I could amputate half of my competitive edge and donate it to him like a kidney.

  “The headhunter called the office,” I said, skipping over the fact that she’d asked for Chloe. I tried not to think about that part, though this time Mean Maxine and I agreed. We knew we were wrong.

  I also realized the reason I hadn’t told my mother about the headhunter meeting was because she’d have said, You stole an opportunity from your best friend? I didn’t raise a daughter to be a goniff, followed by an icy coast-to-coast pause. I couldn’t reveal that I felt my possible stroke of professional and thus financial good fortune was beshert—fated—and that I needed to stalk it to help my family. This would have led to a diatribe on why I wanted more when I should be satisfied with enough. My mother would never believe that even if my salary tripled, our Fisher-Wells ways would still be far from extravagant by the standards of this city, where—despite rumblings about a recession—cramped apartments with papery walls sold for enormous sums and yearly tuition for private preschool cost 30 percent more than my parents’ Prius. I’d have a hard time defending myself without diminishing Tom, and explaining the whole June Rittenhouse thing to him would be worse. I wanted to stay ethically chaste in my husband’s eyes, which missed nothing.

  “What’s going on with you?” he said. “You look tense.”

  “I’m trying to concentrate on this before Henry gives up on his nap.” I knew I sounded snappish.

  “In that case, I’ll hunker down with my concubine, The New York Times Book Review. Anything you need?”

  Need? No. Want? Lots.

  CHAPTER 11

  Chloe

  “Cookie!”

  The name took me back to when I was fourteen, with a concave chest and an acute case of perm.

  “Arthur!” I said, tucking the phone under my chin and continuing to pack. The trip to Maine was a week away, but I’ve always liked to be prepared. Would I need thermals? A flannel nightgown? I’d already laid in a substantial supply of insect repellant, with and without DEET. Lyme disease is everywhere.

  “I’ve been meaning to call,” he said. Arthur Weiner always speaks at fortissimo. I put down the piles of clothes and moved the receiver away from my ear. “For two reasons—but first, how’s the captain of industry?”

  “Xander’s fine, thanks.”

  “And how are you, Cookie?”

  “Remember? I’m Chloe now.” I sounded sharper than I intended. “Please.” I walked to my closet. Hiking boots? One of those shiny yellow sou’westers that ties under the chin? I could speed-order one.

  “Giving a lot of tea parties, are we? Are you old enough to be a Chloe?”

  Before I had a chance to earnestly report my age he said, “Shit, do younger people have birthdays, too? What does that make me? Anyway, I’ve been meaning to say thanks for setting me up with your friend. What a broad.”

  “Jules mentioned you’d hit it off.” Even though you call her a broad.

  “Smart as Oprah. A lady in the living room, a whatever in the bedroom. Always a step ahead, if you get my drift.”

  Unfortunately, I did.

  “Yeah, we’re totally on the same wavelength. You did good, kid.”

  Right out of college, after I stopped temping, Arthur Weiner had been my first boss. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be in advertising—he’s excellent at what he does, including teaching me how to write decent copy. I’d hesitated before introducing him to Jules, though—my idea of attractive is not a man unaware of his own nose hair. But last December during our annual holiday lunch at a coffee shop near our old office, Arthur had started to get personal. Not coming-on personal, though I’m not sure I could tell; Talia regularly informs me that men are flirting when I take hello for strictly hello. Over grilled cheese sandwiches, he’d started describing how a woman he was living with had broken up with him and moved out. At first I got the feeling that he was in mourning for the premium cable channels she’d paid for that he’d watched on her fifty-two-inch HDTV. Then he said, almost as if he were talking to himself, “I don’t know why I always wind up alone. I know how to treat a lady. I don’t want to be fifty and every night opening up cans, eating dinner in my underwear.” After I shook away that image, I realized I was touched. Arthur was lonesome, though if I was doing the math right, he was already fifty.

  This happened not long after Ted, who was eight years younger than Jules, had left for Maui with a suitcase full of aloha shirts. Even though I wouldn’t have called Jules lonely—her calendar has always been so jammed I imagine her penciling in time to pee—why should she be alone? Impulsively, I gave Arthur her number. I wasn’t sure if he’d call, if she’d agree to have even a glass of wine with him, or if she’d be angry after she did. But I’ve never gotten chemistry. What made me go for Xander? I’ll save that one for a therapist, should I ever decide to see one.

  “You’re absolutely welcome. I’m glad you two …” Hooked up? That’s for teenagers. “Clicked. I hope you’re having fun.”

  “Fun? She’s a one-woman Mardi Gras, that Jules. Comes up with out-of-the-way restaurants.”

  Even I knew that, when applied to New York City, out-of-the-way translates to cheap, and I started to remember Arthur’s legendary stinginess. My going-away present from him had been an ashtray engraved with the logo of the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay, and the last Christmas gift he’d given me had been a coffee mug courtesy of the Diorissimo account. When Dash was born, Arthur sent him a onesie with a Coppertone illustration, still in the press kit.

  I pressed the phone to my ear again and threw in beach shoes. I wanted to get my clothes together before Dash and Jamyang returned, so we could all eat lunch. I needed alone time with Dash and planned to show him the hand puppets I’d bought—the surgeon was my favorite. I should have told Arthur I’d call him back, but he kept jabbering.

  “Did you hear the coup de grâce?” he whooped.

  Coop de what? “I don’t think so.”

  “Jules found a drop-dead-gorgeous apartment for me. Pulled it right out of her ass.”

  “Where is it?” I said absentmindedly. The red bathing suit was there, as was the one with pink polka dots, but the blue one that made me look as if I had curves in the right places? Nowhere. “Tell me about the apartment,” I said, half listening. Was I coming off as disinterested as I felt, I who almost fell asleep when Xander tried to explain a two-tiered stock structure?

  “Ask your friend to tell you. All I’ll say is, the co-op’s under my nose, so to speak.”

  I spotted my blue swimsuit, tangled in a pile of sarongs. Should I bring a few of those, or would sweatshirts be better? “Didn’t you tell me you were calling for two reasons?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Almost forgot. Getting old, Chloe.” He dragged out my name as if he were a French professor introducing a new word. “What I wondered was, have you heard from a headhunter, my friend June Rittenhouse?”

  “No, it doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “That’s strange. I gave her the lead weeks ago, but I’ve been dealing with this apartment crap. Slipped my mind to tell you.”

  Arthur, always a scorekeeper, wanted credit for the good deed, I realized. “I’ve been busy, too,” I said, “hiring and training a new nanny.” I waited for him to run with that subject. He didn’t.

  “The position’s a plum. Brand-new agency with accounts up your alley—fashion, fragrance, decorating, restaurants. You could write their copy in your sleep, and like I always say, one good deed begets another,” he said. “Besides, there�
�s something in it for me if you get placed.”

  I heard Jamyang’s keys in the front door. “Got to go—I’ll let you know if I hear from that headhunter. Thanks again, and good luck with Jules. I’m happy for both of you!”

  “Get yourself hired, Cookie, and we’ll be even.” With that, finally, he hung up.

  Maybe I should try to switch jobs, to get Xander off my back, I thought. When I spoke to Talia, I’d ask her about the call. That is, if the woman had indeed called. It was entirely possible that she’d yessed Arthur simply to get him off her back and had never even written down my name.

  Just then a small voice drifted upstairs. “Mommy!” Dash shouted. “Mommy!”

  Arthur was right. I did want a tea party. I wanted it all!

  CHAPTER 12

  Jules

  I was finishing my manicure. The polish was new, the screaming coral of a lobster—ideal for Maine. He loves me, I thought as I layered on a final stroke. He loves me not. And does it matter when we’re having sex? It has become a feminine truth, all but universally acknowledged, that it does, but a long time ago I decided it didn’t. My ma lusted after the scumbag who was my pop, and where had it gotten her? Broke, mean, bitter,

  Arthur strutted out of my bedroom on his sturdy, slightly bowed legs. Was he good in bed? Good enough. I’ve discovered that when I’m with a man, I have to be the belle of my own ball, which is one of Jules’ Rules every woman should follow way before she’s my age: pushing forty. Well, forty-two. Okay, closer to forty-three, which no one knows and no one will. It’s not as if I have to worry about ma revealing my true date of birth, which I suspect she’s forgotten, and since I didn’t graduate from college, I’m at no risk of being outed by some casting director’s dogged cyber-search.

  “Doll,” Arthur said, “what do you say to another bouncy-bouncy?”

  Arthur, who should know better than to keep his driver’s license in plain view—in his wallet, if we’re getting technical—is also older than he claims, which is perhaps why he takes such pride in being endowed with an extraordinary supply of self-generated Cialis. Generally, I applaud a partner who can give it three times in a go. Just not today.