One Good Friend Deserves Another

by Lisa Verge Higgins

  And for the first time, Kelly began to appreciate the many unsung benefits that came along with a hardscrabble, working-class upbringing—all the intangibles that came along with being the famous Gloucester baby, found on the firehouse steps.

  “Good luck, Trey.” Kelly shouldered the front door wide. “Really, I wish you all the best.”

  chapter twenty

  Wendy waved as Birdie, sporting a white bathing cap and goggles, took a leap into an Olympic-size swimming pool. Birdie’s personal swimming instructor caught her underwater and hauled her up, allowing Birdie to kick up enough spray to splatter the Plexiglas window that separated Wendy from the pool area. Wendy pantomimed shaking off the water as Birdie squealed.

  Wendy smiled as she settled back in the cushioned seat of the viewing room of the Wyndom-Dell Assisted Living Home. Her sister had taken the news of the broken engagement in her usual way, focusing less on what had happened than what Wendy now felt. Birdie had quickly overpowered her with hugs and kisses until those hugs and kisses turned into a giggling game of gotcha-last. Now Wendy nursed the bruises, determined to enjoy these last moments of tranquility before she returned home to the spreading consequences of a broken engagement.

  She heard the door to the viewing room squeal open. Over the tinge of chlorine, she caught the grassy scent of a familiar perfume.

  Her body went cold.

  “There you are, darling.” Her mother, dressed in a creamy silk shell and wide-legged linen pants, airily planted a kiss on her head before slinging her white bag on the floor between them. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever emerge from that dusty old cabin.”

  Wendy let the muted barb pass. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, in the hopes of summoning the serenity, patience, and fortitude she’d cultivated during the weekend with her friends. “I thought we were meeting later this afternoon, Mom. For dinner at home.”

  “That was the plan. But then I called here yesterday to tell the concierge that I’d be visiting Birdie later today. He happened to let slip that you’d be here in the morning.”

  “So you rearranged your schedule.”

  “We have much to talk about, and the sooner we talk, the better.”

  Wendy took a sip of her coffee but it slipped tasteless down her throat. Before she’d left for the cabin, she’d told her mother only the basics. That she’d broken it off with Parker, that the break was permanent, and that when she got back, she’d call the wedding planner to cancel whatever arrangements she could. Her mother had been amazingly composed. She’d responded as if Wendy were canceling a birthday party and not a wedding she’d dedicated a year and a half of her life to arranging.

  But Wendy knew that had been only an act. The fact that her mother had driven two hours just to talk suggested that Wendy was about to be subjected to a much more personal agenda.

  She closed her eyes and wished for palm trees, tropical breezes, and a really strong piña colada.

  “Terry and I have been working quite diligently these past few days.” Her mother folded herself in the chair beside her. “You’ll be happy to know that the caterer has been generous with the cancellation, as has the florist. Except for the South American orchids, of course. I’ve decided to give them to the church when they come in. They’ll look lovely upon the altar, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “The only real problem I’ve encountered is with the jeweler. He won’t take back those slides for the pearl necklaces, engraved as they are, for your friends.”

  “I’ll pay the balance.” The girls deserved them. Dhara, Marta, and Kelly were the only people in the world right now who had, with touching loyalty, absolved her of all blame. “I’ll give them as Christmas presents.”

  “That’s a lovely idea.” Her mother absently curled her pearls around her fingers. “Pity about the gown, though. I’ve asked Stella’s advice. She thought you might want to keep the dress—”

  “No.” Wendy shook her head sharply. “Give it to Aunt Boop. An anonymous donation for her next charity fashion show.”

  “My dear, it was designed for you—”

  “I couldn’t possibly keep it. That dress was meant for Parker’s eyes.”

  His name hung in the air between them. She sensed, in her mother’s stillness, the quivering restraint of a hundred thousand questions. Wendy ignored the expectant silence. If she told her mother the truth, there would be no hugs or kisses or games of gotcha-last. Long ago, she gave up sharing the details of her life with the woman she always disappointed.

  “You do know,” her mother said, leaning forward to wave at Birdie through the window, “that Parker made a discreet announcement at the club Saturday afternoon?”

  Wendy stared at her leopard-print ballet flats, trying hard to be stone-faced. “I figured he’d say something over the weekend. Fortunately, cell phone service at the cabin is spotty. So no, I didn’t know.”

  “The way the news spread, you’d think the club manager was caught pants down with that blowsy coat-check girl.”

  Sharp prickles of shame made their way up Wendy’s chest. She could just imagine the tennis ladies leaning across the tables and the clusters of golfers in the entrance hall, their avid speculation echoing off the dome.

  “I surmise,” her mother murmured, “there’s no chance of a reconciliation?”

  “None.”

  “Darling, it can’t be so permanent as that.” Her mother shifted on the chair, straightening her back. “You’ve been together for so many years. Practically married in all but name. Whatever has happened, surely there must be a way—”

  “That ship,” Wendy interrupted, “has sailed.”

  “It’s all so very sudden. And after the discussion we had at Stella’s studio, I can’t help feel that I’m part of this rupture.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake.”

  “If it’s the wedding plans that are causing so much trouble, we can cut back. You must know that the only reason I got involved at all was because you seemed so overwhelmed by the process—”

  “Stop.” Wendy held up her hand. “The wedding plans had nothing to do with it. Stop martyring yourself.”

  “But—”

  “I know this will seem crazy to you, but I chose to end this engagement. It was wholly my choice.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. You are perpetually making strange choices. For once, I’d like to understand why.”

  Wendy considered, for one rebellious moment, telling her mother that she’d slept with a Brazilian artist, framing the whole affair in such a way that her mother would think, yes, once again, Wendy had been playing the tart with another supposedly inappropriate man.

  But it wasn’t true. The words wouldn’t leave her tongue. What she’d shared with Gabriel wasn’t tawdry. It was sweet and wonderful and overwhelming and badly timed.

  “Anything I say will disappoint you.”

  “You two are the perfect couple. Of course I’ll be disappointed.”

  “It’s always something. My multiple piercings. My disgracefully tasteless shoes. My utterly unsuitable boyfriends.” Wendy glanced about the empty room, with its wall paintings of seascapes, casting for one of a thousand details. “A piece of modern art that I adore but you simply can’t understand. And now, it’s the fact that I’m ending an engagement to a perfect man.”

  “All questionable decisions, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I am who I am. I can’t change that, any more than Birdie could change.”

  “Birdie was born this way.”

  “Do you accept Birdie just the way she is?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then maybe it’s time you accepted me, just the way I am.”

  In the awkward silence that followed, Wendy sensed her mother’s subtle withdrawal, the slowly growing tension in the room, and the palpable depths of her offense. The expression on her mother’s face shuttered, and then, in degrees, melted into a look Wendy couldn’t qui
te read. Before she could decipher it, her mother turned her face away, the tendons in her neck taut.

  Wendy gazed at her mother’s deft French twist, wearily remembering a million other times she’d been granted the view of the back of her mother’s finely coiffed head. When Wendy was in her teens, their interactions had always been volatile, usually ending with Wendy seething and her mother stoically striding out of the room. As adults, their relationship had morphed into an uneasy détente, aided by the fact that they’d hardly spoken to each other while she worked in the Soho art gallery. And once in the museum—her mother’s most fervent wish fulfilled—Wendy had considered her mother’s growing warmth as a sign that their charged silences, unspoken hurts, and fundamental disagreements would fade. But the stresses of the wedding had ripped the veneer off that rapprochement.

  Wendy was just so tired of fighting.

  “Wendy, I know you don’t believe this, but I never wanted to change you. But I can’t deny that I was happy when you left that life of yours in Soho. I won’t deny that I was thrilled when you took your position at the museum. And I won’t deny that I was over the moon when I first saw you on the arm of Parker Pryce-Weston.”

  Wendy ached for a cigarette.

  “I thought you’d finally got past a phase, that everything would be normal now.” Her mother made an odd hiccup that she swiftly covered by clearing her throat. “It’s just so difficult to know what’s best for one’s children. I know you disagree with me about Birdie, but at least she’s settled here, and happy. I’ve all but given up on Trey.”

  Wendy thought about Kelly, about Trey’s sudden passion for running, about the look in his eye when he decked James. “Don’t give up on Trey. He’s a screwup, but I suspect he’s redeemable.”

  “I would never give up on any of you.” Her mother turned to grab her purse from the floor between them. “Even now—most especially now—I won’t give up on you.”

  Wendy blinked at the sight of her mother’s profile. Her mother’s cheeks were wet. But it couldn’t be from tears. Her mother didn’t cry. Not when Wendy, at thirteen years of age, went off to Miss Porter’s Boarding School for Girls. Certainly not when Wendy went off to college. Her mother hadn’t cried when Grandma died. Vulgar, she’d said once, after seeing a friend collapse in sobs at her husband’s funeral. Even the sudden death of her mother’s favorite King Charles spaniel brought nothing more than a quiver to her lips.

  Yet here her mother was, blotchy-faced, fumbling with the clasp of her purse. Those were tears on her mother’s cheeks, tears welling in her mother’s blue eyes, tears that her mother was making no effort to wipe away.

  “You’re right, you know.” Her mother’s voice was raw. “I’m always meddling. Your relationship with Parker is none of my damn business.”

  Wendy waited for her to stand up from the chair, slip her purse over her shoulder, swivel on one foot, and show Wendy the back of her head again. That’s how conversations like this usually ended.

  But her mother stayed seated, as tense as a high wire in the wind. “This isn’t going at all as I planned it. Why is it, my dear, that we’re always at loggerheads?”

  “Because I’m an alley cat born into a family of purebred dogs.” Wendy looked down at her hands, wondering why they were shaking. “If I didn’t look so much like a Wainwright, I’d be asking you about the milkman.”

  “Oh, but you are a Wainwright. You are more Wainwright than you know. Your great-great aunt, Violet Wainwright, was one of the wilder eccentrics in a long, long line of them. She bobbed her hair in 1921.”

  Wendy clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. “An unrepentant rebel.”

  “Sounds tame now.” Her mother dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “But that was, I believe, the generational equivalent of a belly button piercing. It was also an indicator of future horrors. She eventually ran off with a Canadian rum-​running gangster.”

  Wendy paused. “I thought that was just one of Uncle Tad’s fish tales.”

  “I’m afraid not. They had difficult lives, those unconventional ancestors of yours. It didn’t always end well.”

  “Yes, but here you are, still telling the stories.”

  “I had hoped you’d take the more traditional path. I hoped your eccentricity would end at a tragus piercing.” She let out a long, slow sigh. “I was trying to protect you. Someday you’ll understand. That’s what mothers do.”

  Wendy turned away. She thought of Audrey and her utter devotion to her children. She thought of Kelly’s biological mother, swaddling her daughter tightly before leaving her on the firehouse stairs. She thought of Marta, giving up caffeine minutes after she’d discovered she was pregnant, when the little soul within her was no more than a bundle of cells.

  Wendy glanced through the glass at Birdie’s bright face. Wendy would always believe that her sister, considering their family’s resources, would have been better served at home. But she supposed there was no denying that her mother just as strongly believed that this place—with its staff of nurses and its weight room and pool and Jacuzzi and art, bingo, sculpture, and exercise classes—was infinitely better.

  Then Wendy thought of Trey and the series of jobs that her father had arranged for him. She thought of the way her mother couched Trey’s foibles in romantic terms when she spoke of him to her friends. His screwups and job losses always sounded like the inevitable result of a young man too smart, too great-thinking, to be contained in some windowless office.

  “Grant me a mulligan, Wendy.” Her mother snapped her purse closed and set it on her lap. “I’d like to put my golf ball back at the starting tee, if you don’t mind.”

  Wendy looked anywhere but at her mother, unsure of how to respond.

  “What I came here to tell you today was how truly, truly sorry I am about you and Parker. If you’re very sure this is the right thing for both of you…well, I’ll do my very best to do what a mother should do, what I’m very good at, and that is smooth troubled waters.”

  Wendy bowed her head, strangely moved. She noticed her mother’s hands. Normally, her mother’s fingernails were finished with the subtle rosy hues of a French manicure, refreshed every Monday morning. Now, those white tips were ragged with chips, the cuticles bitten into little bloody strips.

  And it came to her that while she was at the cabin, licking her wounds and seeking comfort among her friends, her mother had remained at the club, skipping all her appointments, facing the swarm of gossips with no information at all.

  Wendy reached out and took her mother’s hand. Across her mother’s face passed a spastic little smile that threatened to quiver into a sob.

  “Maybe, Mom,” Wendy murmured, “it’s time you started treating me less like a daughter and more like a friend.”

  “Oh, Wendy.” Her mother laughed, a little laugh that was half relief and half despair. “How in God’s name am I ever going to do that, when I can so clearly see disaster coming?”

  “Just hold your breath and cover your eyes.” Wendy thought of the weekend she’d just spent with Dhara, Marta, and Kelly, thinking of what true friends do for one another. “If it all goes badly, well…I could always use help picking up the pieces.”

  chapter twenty-one

  They say there’s nothing like April in Paris, but Marta was convinced the City of Lights couldn’t hold a candle to September in New York City. This month was a crystal blue calm between the hordes of summer tourists and the crush of the Christmas season. To her, the air smelled of pencil shavings and the warm-linen perfume of new notebooks. Even if she had no other reason, the fine weather alone was a good excuse to take a Sunday stroll through Central Park.

  She wandered into a maze of white tents that marked a craft fair. She paused at one pavilion to peruse a vendor’s collection of painted wooden bracelets. She breathed in the scent of fried dough and promised herself some for lunch. She bought a straw hat tied with a coral scarf that matched the sundress she was wearing. No reason to hurry. S
currying to get things done was an old habit she was trying hard to change.

  Two-thirds down the second row, she came upon Gabriel Teixeira’s booth. She slowed her approach, scanning the paintings hooked on the flaps. Yesterday, in the popcorn-scented shadows of a seedy Asbury Park bar, Wendy had finally cracked enough to give some details about the man and his work. Marta figured the three watered-down drinks had a lot to do with the loosening of Wendy’s tongue, but it didn’t hurt that the four of them had spent the day amid the rough-edged pleasures of the Jersey boardwalk. Riding a fifties-era wooden roller coaster seemed like a fitting way to blot out the fact that yesterday would have been Wendy’s wedding day.

  Marta saw the man’s feet first. His black sneakers were hiked up on the table. He tilted back on a folding chair, his face buried in a tattered book. With a quiver of worry, Marta looked away. This man had torn apart an engagement and unhinged a steady woman. So she sent up a Hail Mary hoping he wasn’t an unkempt jerk of a hipster, a newer version of Wendy’s former weakness.

  Hiding her face with the brim of her new hat, she wandered to a pile of large framed paintings leaning against the tent pole. She thumbed through them, becoming more convinced with every click of the frames that she’d found the right Gabriel. Each new canvas illuminated what Wendy had been trying so hard to describe: the fragility of everyday things, and the hopefulness of pure light.

  Then she found it.

  “Can I help you?”

  Marta startled. She glanced up. Up. She found herself face-to-face with a dark-eyed, dark-haired hunk. Clean-shaven. His hair a crisp temptation for a woman’s fingers. His features, utterly arresting.

  She considered a moment, searching his face for the unknowable. Character. Integrity. Kindness.

  Physically, at least, she approved.

  “Yes, actually, you can help me.” She tipped the frames against her legs to better reveal the painting that Wendy had so lovingly described. It was a collection of four bottles of different shapes and sizes, clustered together in the light pouring through an old window. “How much for this one?”