The False Friend

by Myla Goldberg

  When Djuna’s mother smiled, her face softened. “Of course I don’t blame your mother. I really don’t. In the end, she only did what everyone else did, which I’m sure is what I would have done had the situation been reversed. I mean, what can one say or do under the circumstance? You can never talk about the thing you’re both thinking of, which is that one of you still has a child.”

  Mrs. Pearson had once made Celia dream of brightly painted houses, each containing a mother who spoke fast and knowing. Sophisticated was the word she had struck upon in fifth grade and repeated as a silent accompaniment to terms and topics beyond her comprehension. Sometimes after she and Djuna had fought, she and Mrs. Pearson would spend whole afternoons together while Djuna sulked in her room.

  Djuna’s mother bit into another cookie, then placed it beside the one she had already taken. “I suppose that’s the point of belonging to a church,” she continued. “So that there’s always someone to stick by you. Which is why we atheists are all so attached to our shrinks.” She laughed abruptly, a sound like the bark of a seal. “An expensive proposition, atheism. A chaplain would have been much more economical.”

  Celia had forgotten the old fear, the temporary sense of audience, the certainty that she was on the verge of being dismissed.

  “Tell me,” Mrs. Pearson continued. “How has your poetry come along? You wrote such lovely poems, quite exceptional for your age.”

  The conversation was turning into an exam for which Celia had studied all the wrong subjects.

  “I haven’t written for a while,” she said. “I kept it up through college, but not really after.”

  Djuna’s mother looked at her, then looked somewhere else.

  “I had hopes for you, dear,” she admitted. “Back then you had sparkle. At the time I thought it was the sparkle of a poet, but perhaps it was just youth. Whatever it was, it rubbed off on Djuna. She certainly didn’t get it from me or Dennis. We were never popular children. So you can just imagine what it was like coming here and seeing her blossom. She’d always had such trouble making friends.”

  Celia pictured Djuna’s dark braids, her pale neck. That first day in class, Djuna hadn’t once turned in her chair. She’d sat perfectly still, save for when she raised her hand, her entire being committed to being called by name.

  “I always thought it was something about her that rubbed off on me,” Celia said.

  Mrs. Pearson smiled. “Then the two of you must have brought out the best in each other.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.” Celia’s mouth had gone dry. She swallowed her coffee, which Djuna’s mother reached to refill before she had released the cup. “I remember us fighting a lot.”

  “Of course you did!” Mrs. Pearson said. “You were girls! And you were so competitive. I remember once I came into Djuna’s room to find you two simply screaming at each other over a game of Monopoly. Djuna had landed on a utility, and you said you wouldn’t let her buy it until she pronounced the words on the card correctly. Djuna was certain it was pronounced ‘tittle deed,’ but you weren’t having any of that. So you consulted the resident English professor and then you insisted that Djuna apologize.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” Celia told her.

  “Of course it isn’t,” Mrs. Pearson said. “That’s what mothers are for.”

  The clock on the wall filled the room with its ticking. Celia imagined hours magnified by the sound.

  “Grace?” she asked. “What do you remember about that day?”

  “Is that what we’re going to talk about now?” she asked softly.

  “I’d like to,” Celia said.

  Djuna’s mother gazed at her lap. Her hands grasped at each other, palm pressed against palm. “Shall I tell you what she ate for breakfast?” she began. “Blueberry yogurt and orange juice. I wanted her to have a bran muffin, but she wouldn’t, so instead I stuck one in her backpack for later on. Shall I tell you what she was wearing?”

  “Her purple pants with the extra pockets,” Celia answered. “Her white Tretorns with the pink laces. Her light blue unicorn shirt, and her light blue jacket. She hated when you put muffins in her backpack. She gave them to Ed.”

  “Who was Ed?” Mrs. Pearson whispered.

  “The boy who sat behind us on the bus. He did whatever we told him to do.”

  Djuna’s mother smiled. “Of course he did.”

  “We weren’t very nice to him.”

  “You didn’t have to be,” Mrs. Pearson said. “You didn’t have to be nice to anyone. You were such confident girls. I loved that about you, that confidence. Up until the last day, I had no idea there was such a thing as too much.”

  She tilted her head to one side, as if to observe Celia from a different angle. Celia held her breath.

  “She began as such a sensible girl,” Mrs. Pearson continued. “Do you know that she never once went into the street by herself when she was little? Not once. I told her, ‘Djuna, that’s where the cars go. It’s not safe unless you’re holding a grown-up’s hand,’ and that was all it took. It was so nice not to have to worry about her in that way. Were you like that as a little girl? Sensible?”

  Celia told her that she didn’t know.

  “I’m sure you were,” Mrs. Pearson said. “Your mother was a sensible woman. She certainly didn’t approve of me. She wanted to, of course, but I think I was too much for her. Anyway, I’m sure you listened when she advised you to stay out of the street, and not to talk to strangers, and certainly never to get into a stranger’s car.”

  Mrs. Pearson closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Your mother never raised her voice. Not with you or anyone else. It was a fundamental difference between us and one I don’t think she could get over.”

  Djuna’s mother placed one hand against her cheek in mock surprise. “When I get upset, you see—as you well know—I yell. And I defy anyone who says that it’s not a solution. It is. I almost always feel better afterward. Of course, when you came to my door that day, you weren’t yelling. You were so upset that you could hardly speak. I asked you questions, but you were crying so hard and the other girls were no help, they were crying too, and you were all just saying the same thing over and over. Then the police arrived and took you away with them, and I never saw you again.”

  Mrs. Pearson looked at Celia in astonishment. “I never saw you again!” Her cup shook as she raised it to her mouth. “You were never mine, but I missed you all the same.” She replaced the cup and hid her trembling hand. “Of course, it helped to know that you were somewhere out in the world. It became a consolation. Though I had always imagined you becoming a poet. Not someone who goes through a poetic phase, mind you, but an actual poet.”

  Celia smiled. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Never apologize for what you are, dear. But tell me, seeing as you’re not a poet, what do you do?”

  “I’m a performance auditor for the Illinois Auditor General,” she said.

  Mrs. Pearson’s face went slack. “I have absolutely no idea what that is.”

  “It means,” Celia said, “that I examine state agencies—Child Protective Services, the Department of Juvenile Corrections, the Department of Health, the Department of Environmental Quality—to report on how well their programs are meeting their goals. Then the State Assembly drafts proposals to help those programs run better. Through increased funding, for example, or improved legislation.”

  “That sounds terribly useful,” Grace drawled.

  “It is!” Celia said. She had planned which stories to tell and in what order, but Djuna’s mother was staring past her.

  “And are you married?” Mrs. Pearson asked.

  “I live with a public high school history teacher named Huck,” Celia said. “We own an apartment near Logan Square and we’ve got two dogs named Bella and Sylvie, and—”

  “Two dogs, how precious,” Mrs. Pearson said. “How charming. But surely you and Huck must be trying for the richest experience life can off
er?”

  Because Celia was taller now, Mrs. Pearson looked different than she had when Celia was a girl, her face flatter than the one Celia had to crane her neck to see.

  “No,” Celia said. “Not yet.”

  “How very modern of you,” Mrs. Pearson cooed. “It must be wonderful to be so young and modern.”

  “Mrs. Pearson,” Celia said. “Are you all right? You seem a little upset.”

  “Upset?” Djuna’s mother smiled. “Why, I’m just ducky! You can’t imagine how excited I was to hear your voice on the phone. My own Celia! Returned to me after twenty-one years! I was so greatly looking forward to our conversation. Back then, I had told myself that you were like a beautiful empty pitcher that I was filling up with sparkling water.” She leaned across the table. Celia had never seen her eyes so close, their gray-green irises ringed at the center by a circle of brownish-gold.

  “I used to comfort myself with the thought that you had survived,” Grace whispered. “That you had gone on to become something extraordinary.”

  Her face had become strange, as if it were a hand liable to grab whatever came within reach. It was an expression of terrifying possibility, which Celia realized she had sighted just once before, on a girl with the same sharp chin, in the last moment that their brief friendship had known.

  Mrs. Pearson sat very still, and Celia found herself counting the same way she used to after a lightning flash, in order to gauge the distance of the storm.

  Djuna’s mother blinked several times. Her mouth twisted into something that was nearly a smile. “I’m so glad you came, Celia, but I don’t want to keep you any longer. I’m sure your mother has made all sorts of plans. Please, take the cookies. I made them especially for you.” She blew a short puff of air at Celia, then leaned back as if having extinguished a candle.

  “Oh,” Celia said, rising from her chair. “Thank you, Mrs. … Thank you, Grace.”

  “You’re very welcome. And do take care backing out of the drive. It’s not a terribly busy road, but another car on it can be so damn hard to see.”

  Celia crossed the living room as quickly as she could. The outside quiet felt reassuring now and she inhaled it in slow, deep breaths. The darkening sky above the tree line was electric blue. Celia was not immediately able to fit her key into the car’s ignition but once she had steadied her hand, the engine turned. She backed out carefully, just as Mrs. Pearson had instructed, and slowly made her way to the county road.

  Celia rolled down the windows and let the air pound around her, the sound of it filling her ears. Her bag was almost packed, her ticket waiting. By this time tomorrow, she and Huck would be home.

  That afternoon in the woods, it was warm and her shirt clung to her back. Her face had yet to be shaped by an individual nose; her skin was still unlined velvet; her shoes waited to be outgrown. She was out of breath from running, and with every step brambles scraped her arms. She thought of all that she was ready to say to Djuna, and how if that didn’t end things between them, they could compare scratches to see who the brambles had hated more. Celia left the woods, and Djuna’s anger wafted back to her from the road’s edge in waves of sour air tinged with exhaust. The brown car was not Mrs. Pearson’s Volvo, or any other car that Celia knew. When Djuna turned, her face was equally unfamiliar. It was a face of terrifying possibility, ready to pull, or to be pulled in. It was a face capable of anything.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Nathan Englander, David Gassaway, Ellen and Mark Goldberg, Saryn Goldberg, Tim Kreider, Adrienne and Michael Little, Lisa Rosenthal, Anthony Tognazzini, Ellen Twaddell, and Michael Wilde. Thanks to Wendy Schmalz and Bill Thomas. Thanks to Hannah Miriam Belinfante, cataloger for the NYPL Dorot Jewish Division, for her research assistance; and to Melanie Chesney, Performance Auditor Director for the state of Arizona, for so generously sharing her time and knowledge. Thank you, Jason, from beginning to end.