Bess flinched. She had chosen the anchor as a symbol of the love that existed among the group, not as something referring only to herself. Bess wondered if her friends had lied about the scheduling conflicts of the year before. She couldn’t bear to ask.
“I just realized something,” Marta said. “Bess is probably the one who made us all swear the forever friendship pact the night before graduation.”
Bess practically jumped from her seat. “I just remembered I need to check in with Kara,” she said. She hurried to the den and closed the door behind her. Her heart was racing and her eyes were blurry with hot tears. She leaned back against the door. Marriage was an unknown. Her friends were proving not half as dedicated to the friendship as she had supposed them to be. Nothing felt certain—nothing but Nathan’s love for her. At least she could trust that love.
Couldn’t she?
Chapter 56
Allison frowned. “I feel bad I told Bess about that London vacation Chris and I missed out on. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I don’t know about that,” Marta countered. “It can’t be good for Bess to go on believing that we’re all exactly the same as we were back in college, with the same thoughts and feelings, untouched by everything that’s happened in the past twenty years. That’s dangerously naïve.”
“Or,” Allison said after a moment, “it’s heroically brave, if that isn’t redundant. ‘However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.’ Supposedly de la Rochefoucauld said that. Whether he did or not, the message might be worth considering.”
Marta considered. “What you said about Bess being our anchor. An anchor works both ways, doesn’t it? It can keep you safe when times are tough, but it can also hold you back when you want to be moving on.”
“Yes,” Allison said, getting up from her seat. “I’m going for a drive. Some of the back roads around here are so charming it almost hurts. And my car has air-conditioning.”
Leaving her beach bag and fan behind, Allison went on her way.
Marta remained in her seat and wondered. How could a friendship be expected to survive and continue to bring satisfaction when each party wanted or needed a different degree of closeness and support? Changing life circumstances changed friendships. The loss of a job. A change of location. A major illness. An unpopular marriage. Friendships were not immune to death from without.
Marta heard someone approaching and turned her head to see Chuck.
“What’s up?” he asked, flopping down next to her.
“Nothing but my pondering questions too big for me.”
“Pondering the imponderable. Not the best way to spend a hot summer afternoon.”
“Why not now?” Marta countered. “The big questions never go away.”
“Maybe life would be boring if they did,” Chuck said.
“Does it ever get to you,” Marta asked, “being confronted with so much human frailty, so much illness and sadness, watching the sick get sicker and their loved ones struggle not to fall apart as they stand by, helpless to stop the circle from turning?”
Chuck raised an eyebrow. “You’re in a melancholy mood,” he noted. “Yes, it does get to me. We’re all so terribly fragile. Sometimes it amazes me we make it past the first day of our lives, just this little bundle of flesh and blood against such enormous odds.” Chuck sighed. “Maybe I’m becoming too soft to be a good doctor. When does a healthy dose of compassion become something debilitating, something that gets in the way of facing cold, hard fact and the ability to ascertain when a patient is lying or even innocently neglecting to relate a bit of information that might be crucial to your making the right diagnosis or suggesting the best course of treatment?”
Marta sighed. “I can’t answer that.”
“No one can, at least in the broad sense. There’s an answer in each particular situation, though. The trick is to find that answer quickly. And now that I’m more than just an occasional patient, as well as a doctor, I’ll get to see it all from the other side. I wonder if I’ll be a good, pleasant patient, always trying to make those around me feel good. What a lovely day it is, Dr. Black; oh, I love your necklace Nurse Brown! Or will I be a brutally honest patient. How are you feeling today, Mr. Fortunato? Awful, Technician White. Like crap. How do you think I feel?” Chuck raised an eyebrow. “Life is a Sisyphean task indeed.”
“Especially when your friends turn on you. Allison and I made Bess feel bad a little while ago. We admitted we aren’t always keen on showing up for the reunions.”
Chuck frowned. “And she didn’t take it well.”
“I feel as if I’d kicked a defenseless kitten.”
“Bess is tougher than she looks.”
“Is she?” Marta said.
Chuck looked thoughtful. “I hope so.”
Chapter 57
Allison had no destination in mind when she set out. She just wanted to be alone, away from Marta and her default negativity, Bess and her relentless optimism. It was enough to be going somewhere, anywhere.
She was only a few miles from Driftwood House when a strange grating noise caused Allison to pull to the side of the road. She got out of the car, cursing herself for not having taken the time to learn more about the workings of an engine. But she had let Chris handle that sort of thing, yet another habit that had contributed to her overall sense of helplessness.
Allison had pulled her phone from her bag and was about to call AAA when a dark blue pickup truck came cruising to a stop a few yards behind her car. The driver stepped out of the truck. His hair was bleached from the sun; his skin was tanned. He wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His jeans fit well. “Need any help?” he asked with a smile as he came toward her.
It didn’t occur to Allison to be afraid. This was southern Maine after all, even the back roads were busy with summer traffic, and the sun was shining. “I was just about to call triple-A,” she told him. “The engine was making a funny noise. Well, maybe not the engine. Something’s wrong, anyway.”
“I could take a look if you like,” the man offered, “maybe save you some money.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you don’t mind.” She wasn’t sure why she had accepted the man’s offer. AAA was totally reliable; a mechanic would have been on the scene before long.
“You never really know what you’re getting with a rental,” he said, opening the hood.
“How do you know it’s a rental?” Allison asked, suddenly wary.
“The license plates.”
“Oh.” Allison felt foolish. “Right.”
“Where are you visiting from?” the man asked, his head bent over the car’s engine.
“From Chicago. I’m here for a friend’s wedding.”
“We get a fair amount of summer weddings in these parts. Good for business. I’m Bill, by the way.”
“Allison. Nice to meet you.”
The man poked and prodded while Allison’s thoughts took an interesting and an unprecedented turn. It would be nice, she thought, to enjoy attention from a person without overwhelming demons. Someone like Bill. But it was a silly assumption to make, that Bill whatever-his-name-was had no troubles of his own. Besides, changing people was only changing one set of problems for another. You could, however, consciously choose one set of problems over another set of problems. Nobody was perfect, but you could decide what level of imperfection you could live with without going mad.
“Nothing wrong with the engine as far as I can see,” Bill reported. He began to circle the car, squatting to peer at the undercarriage.
There was no reason she couldn’t have casual lovers, Allison thought as she watched her Knight in Shining Armor. It had been so long since sex had been uncomplicated; increasingly it had become about getting pregnant and not about enjoyment or intimacy. Always at the back of her mind—if not at the forefront—was the thought that “maybe this time” would be the magic time. The attempt to get pregnant had actually wedged its way between Allison and Chris
so that what might have been the ultimate joint venture had become an uncomfortable three-party event.
“Here’s your problem,” Bill announced triumphantly. Allison came back to the moment with a start. “You’ve got a tree branch stuck pretty tight under here. Let me get a tool from my truck.”
While Bill was focused on rescuing the car, Allison’s mind continued to wander. If you loved someone, she thought, but chose not to be in a relationship with him because his troubles were hurting you too badly, was leaving a failure of your love? Until death do we part was a pretty tall order—some would say a cruel sentence—when one member of the couple was tormenting the other with his psychic pain or emotional immaturity. That said, love was eternal. At least for some people it was. A name graven on a tablet.
Suddenly, Allison shook her head. The topic of love was deep and complex, not one to be thoroughly plumbed in a few minutes while waiting for a particularly tenacious tree branch to be extricated from the undercarriage of your rental car.
“Bingo,” Bill announced as he got to his feet holding the offending branch. He tossed it into the field at the side of the road. “You should be good to go. Drive carefully. Oh, and enjoy the wedding.”
There was no doubt about it, Bill had a killer smile. For a split second Allison was tempted to give him her cell phone number. Instead what she gave him was her hand and a firm shake.
“Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate your help.”
“My pleasure. Take care now.”
Allison got into her car. She couldn’t resist peeking in the rear-view mirror to see if Bill was watching her drive away. When he lifted a hand in a final wave Allison bit her lip. The opportunity was gone, the moment had passed. But she didn’t feel any real regret.
She really didn’t.
Chapter 58
Bess was wiping the kitchen counters for the second time. She tended to go into housekeeping overkill when she was having trouble making a decision. The thing was she really wanted to tell Nathan that she was having second thoughts about giving her friends the charms she had bought for them. It wasn’t as if she suddenly felt they didn’t deserve the gift; at least, she didn’t think that was what she felt. It was more like she felt the charms wouldn’t be appreciated in the spirit with which she had intended them to be.
But she was hesitating. She didn’t want to appear childish. Nathan was so steady and mature, not one to overreact as she had so often been accused of doing.
Bess put down the sponge, resisted the impulse to pick it up again to make one more swipe behind the sink, and dried her hands. She went out to the back porch, where she spied Dean on the lawn, stretched out on his side on a bright blue beach blanket, dangling a little floppy bunny for Thomas as if the baby were a lazy cat, content to take an occasional swipe with his paw, but not to make a real grab.
Bess hurried down to join them and dropped onto the blanket.
Dean smiled and adjusted Thomas’s sun hat. “Hats are almost impossible to keep on little heads. I don’t think he minds them, but they mind him. They keep inching off.”
“I know,” Bess blurted. “I never really talked about this, but I pretty much raised my sisters for the first few years of their lives. My mother was a full-time caregiver for two elderly relatives and needed my help at home.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “So, all this supposed fear of babies . . .”
“I’m not really afraid of them,” Bess said with a small smile. “It’s more like I’ve had my fill. That, and I’m way out of practice. Anyway, can I ask you something?”
“I don’t know. Can you? Sorry. My father always used to correct me when I said ‘can’ instead of ‘may.’”
Bess smiled. “It’s about relationships. It’s just that . . . There’s something troubling me and I want to talk it over with Nathan, but . . . but what if he thinks I’m just being silly and selfish? And maybe I am just being silly and selfish, but I feel what I feel.” Bess leaned beyond the edge of the blanket and plucked a blade of grass. “Do you understand?”
“I think I do,” Dean said. “The prospect of total honesty and all that entails—like opening yourself to your partner’s possible criticisms—feels really daunting.”
“That’s it,” Bess admitted. “And what I want to talk with him about isn’t even all that important. Well, it is to me but not in the scheme of things.”
“Feelings are always important in the big picture, Bess. Don’t discount them.” Dean sat up. “Let me tell you a story. Chuck insisted he go to the doctor on his own to hear his diagnosis and nothing I said could change his mind. I was furious. I was hurt. Chuck was acting as if he were still single and not part of a unit, not a crime by any means, but not healthy for a marriage.”
“Maybe he just thought it would be better if you heard bad news from him when you guys were home alone and not from a third party?” Bess suggested. “He is a thoughtful man.”
“Yes, he’s thoughtful, but what I could and could not handle was not his decision to make,” Dean stated firmly. “If he was concerned about my hearing bad news in a clinical environment like a doctor’s office he should have told me. Then I’d have had the opportunity to assure him that I wanted to be with him. I’m not someone who shirks responsibility or who’s easily devastated by the slightest bit of difficult news. He should know that.”
“I see,” said Bess. At least, she thought that she did.
“The point is that particularly in the early days of a marriage it can be difficult to negotiate the boundaries between the individual self and the person who is an integral part of the couple. Hold nothing back from Nathan, ever,” Dean went on. “It’s all got to come out. Not necessarily in one big lump,” he added with a smile. “Delivery is an art, as is timing.”
Bess frowned. “You’re saying I should share every little passing thought?”
“Maybe not every little one,” Dean admitted. “He doesn’t necessarily need to know that whenever you’re in the bakery aisle in the supermarket you have a craving for a Twinkie. But you’ve definitely got to share the big stuff.”
“How did you know I used to love Twinkies?”
Dean cringed. “You did? I was more of a Devil Dogs guy myself. Pop those suckers in the fridge for a while . . . heaven.”
Bess laughed and gently touched the baby’s cheek with her forefinger. “In some ways, we never really grow up, do we?”
“I guess. Though you couldn’t pay me to eat a Devil Dog now, not with all the artificial stuff they’re made of. In this case, memory will suffice.”
“What happens when Thomas gets old enough to want a Devil Dog?” Bess asked.
“I’ll deal with that issue when it arises. I’m not going to be one of those parents who force their child to eat only kale and tofu. An occasional cookie or soda isn’t going to kill anyone, and allowing fun food here and there deprives it of glamour, making it no big deal and hence less of a temptation.”
“You’ve got it all worked out,” Bess said approvingly.
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Have I? We’ll see.”
“This is kind of out of the blue,” Bess said after a moment, “but I read this very interesting quote somewhere, and I wrote it down because it really struck me. ‘As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.’ Supposedly it was said by François de La Rochefoucauld. Do you know him?”
“Not personally,” Dean replied with a smile.
Bess herself didn’t really know much about de La Rochefoucauld. She knew only that he lived in the seventeenth century, that he was French, and that he was famous for his maxims.
“Don’t you think he’s on to something?” she asked Dean.
Dean seemed to ponder for a moment before he said: “The expression that comes to mind is ‘a fond old man,’ meaning someone who’s put aside all learned wisdom to allow foolish emotion to hold sway over him, lavishing his money on someone or some cause totally unworthy—at least, unworthy in the eyes of those who consid
er themselves the rightful heirs.” Dean shrugged. “That’s my take, anyway. But back to you and Nathan. Talk to him, Bess.”
“Thank you, Dean,” Bess said. “You’ve given me courage I didn’t have a few minutes ago.”
“You had the courage,” Dean assured her. “You just needed reminding of it.”
“What do you think, Thomas?” Bess asked the little one.
From under his white sun hat, Thomas burped and then smiled up at Bess.
Dean laughed. “See? He agrees with me.”
* * *
Bess opened the bottom drawer of the tall dresser and removed from under a layer of neatly folded T-shirts the blue silk-covered case in which were stored the charms she had ordered for each of her old college friends, as well as for Dean. There was a special charm for Nathan, too, but that Bess kept separately. It was a surprise. She would give that to him on the eve of their wedding. About that gift, she had no doubt.
She sat on the edge of the bed, the case on her knees.
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked, sitting next to her. “You look so sad.”
I am sad, Bess thought, placing both hands flat on the case containing the charms. She would risk appearing to Nathan as needy. She would risk total honesty.
“Nothing’s the same as it was,” she said quietly. “No one is the same, not Chuck or Mike or Marta or Allison. Certainly, not Chris. I don’t know why I was kidding myself, thinking that our friendship hadn’t changed since college, that everyone still feels as strongly about the friendship as I do. Maybe, if I was really honest with myself,” she went on, “I’d realize that I, too, don’t . . . don’t care as much as I once cared.”
Nathan put an arm around her shoulder. “Is that really true?” he asked. “Do you really care less for any of your friends than you did last week? Last year?”
Bess sighed. “No, it’s not true. I love them all much as I ever did and I need them in my life as much as I ever did. But I seem to be the only one who feels that way. Everyone’s moved on but me. I guess I feel a bit . . . betrayed. And more than a little foolish.” A fond middle-aged woman, she added silently.
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