Friends Like Us

by Lauren Fox

  Seth stares hard at Nina. “This is pretty fucking twisted.”

  Nina shakes her head. “I have to go.” She motions toward the box with her chin. “There’s a cactus in there. That one you bought. So be careful. I watered it last week. It should be fine for a while. I have to go.”

  But Nina still doesn’t move; silence hovers over us again like a storm cloud about to burst. Am I the only one who can feel the pressure? I extend my arms in front of myself and do jazz hands. “Herpetology waits for no man!” My God, what’s wrong with me?

  Nina laughs a little and relaxes her shoulders. She bends to retrieve her things. Seth holds his breath and looks away as she leans over him, her loose shirt exposing the freckles on her chest and a thin slice of white cotton bra. “I really have to go,” she says.

  And, finally, she does. We both watch as she walks away, red ponytail swinging slightly. From behind, she could be anyone. Except for the boots.

  Seth rifles through his box. “Awesome,” he says. “I wanted that cactus back.”

  “Come on,” I say, peeling my thighs from the bench. I take Seth’s hand and pull him up. “We need to leave. This is not a good place for you to be.”

  Seth rises, pulls his shirt free from where it was glued with sweat to his back and his stomach. “That is very true. That is a very astute observation.”

  “Ass toot,” I say: our favorite, our only, joke left over from our shaky, shared adolescence.

  He hoists the cardboard box into his arms and takes a weird, long sniff of it. “Oh, motherfucker,” he says tenderly, as if he were cooing at a baby. “Motherfuck.” We begin to make our way to the edge of the playground, toward the street where his car is parked. “I’m sorry to say this to you, because you’re my sister, but I wish I’d been paying better attention the last time Nina and I … you know.”

  From nowhere, Ben’s face flashes in my mind, Ben’s face close to mine, its familiar planes and new, rough edges, his breath in the hot car, our one, ill-fated kiss. “I know,” I say. If Seth and I had any precedent for physical affection, for the familial comfort of a hug, I would throw my arms around him now, squeeze him tightly, and rest my head on his wide, damp shoulder. Instead I just keep up my pace next to him, my flawed big brother, brought low by his miasmic regret. If he hadn’t cheated on Nina, none of this would have happened. It seems like his longing should have a gravitational pull or the magnetic power to heal fractures.

  “Hang on.” Seth veers suddenly toward a green garbage can near the public bathrooms a few feet away. He sets his box down on the grass next to the bin and shakes out his hands, rolls his head to one side, then the other. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll walk you to the flower shop.” He leaves the box there, by the garbage can, cactus and all, the detritus of his life with Nina, unnecessary now. He walks back toward me, swatting a mosquito away from his face, first with his right hand, then with his left.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jane had finally called Ben when we were on our way back from Marcy. I was driving, and she was talking and applying mascara simultaneously. At first I was impressed.

  “Hiya,” she said. “I missed you.” Her mouth was turned down in the putting-on-eye-makeup frown. “I said I missed you!” They chatted for a while, and she switched the mascara wand into her left hand and the phone into her right. “Yes,” she said, “tonight,” and “I love you.” I caught a glimpse of how she examined herself in the mirror and then smiled at her own reflection. For the first time I saw what an overabundance of confidence looks like, how it accumulates like snowdrifts over the rocky landscape of complexity, of ambivalence, of guilt.

  “When are you two getting together?” I asked her. “I’ll call Declan. Let’s make it a double date.” I’d wanted to prove something. Who knows what? That I could have what Jane had? That I would never do what she had done? That I could if I wanted to?

  The sun is setting when Declan meets us on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building; the sky is a nine-year-old girl’s bedroom, decorated with puffy clouds and streaked with dusky pinks and candied purples. The heat has finally broken; the breeze that coughed hot exhaust all over the city for two weeks is cool and dry now. Ben folds his arm around Jane as if he hasn’t seen her in three months instead of three days. Their fight the night before we left is ancient history. Declan stands in front of us, near the street, and rocks on his heels.

  Jane bumps Ben with her hip. “Let’s go dancing!”

  Declan shakes his head, holds out his hand like a stop sign in front of him. “Irish men don’t dance.”

  “Okay, let’s stay home, then,” Ben says. He unwraps his arm from Jane’s waist and looks at her, takes her in. “I’ll cook.”

  My breath catches. I glance at Declan, who is still bouncing gently, gazing at passersby. “Irish men don’t stay in!” I say quickly. Maybe they do; maybe they don’t. We’re not staying in tonight.

  So we wander over to Blue Roses, the café down the street, and commandeer a table outside. The place is busy, the sidewalks crowded. People have emerged from their air-conditioned caves, giddy and relieved.

  Declan orders a bottle of wine for the four of us. I sit next to Ben and notice how Jane rests the back of her hand lightly on his neck, brushing it across his skin. He closes his eyes for a second and then turns to her. She smiles, her chin tipped toward him, her teeth naked and white. I feel like I’m witnessing a precursor to something private and enviable. She laughs delightedly at nothing. Is this all calculated? I’m seeing Jane differently now, after Dougie; I can’t help it.

  At the table next to ours, two girls hug each other and squeal. Declan pours wine for us, then, as soon as anyone has taken a few sips, he pours more.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?” Ben asks. They’ve only just met each other.

  He winks. “You bet I am, baby.” They’re hitting it off, the two of them, and Jane is relaxing into the evening. Not me. I have to plant my palms on my thighs to stop my legs from bouncing under the table.

  “What was it like, growing up in Ireland?” Ben asks, and Declan launches into a story from his scrappy Dublin childhood: how he and his friend Johnny used to steal underwear from the neighbors’ clotheslines and switch them around, so that tiny old Mrs. McCormack ended up with beer-bellied Jack Fahey’s graying skivvies. We all laugh, loud yelps that ricochet off cars and buildings.

  “My daddy was a poor milkman,” he says, shaking his head sadly, “and me ma raised fourteen wee ones in a two-room shack.”

  “Your father is an architect,” I remind him, “and your mother is an ophthalmologist. And you’re an only child.”

  He slaps his forehead as if he’s just remembering this. “So, you two,” he says, tipping his wineglass toward Ben and Jane. “How long have you been the happy couple?”

  Ben pushes back in his chair a couple of inches, the wrought-iron legs screeching against the sidewalk. “My uncle Walleye used to say, ‘Aunt Rose and I have been married for five wonderful years.’ ” He hooks his fingers into the holes in the table. “This was when they’d been married for almost fifty. We always thought he was kidding. Then one morning last year, Aunt Rose told him she’d put a week’s worth of meatloaf in the freezer and that she’d filed for divorce.”

  Jane claps her hand over her mouth. Her fingernails are painted all different colors, red for her thumb, orange and yellow and green and blue for her fingers, a jaunty synthetic rainbow.

  “That is a lovely romantic story,” Declan says.

  “That’s a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie,” I offer.

  Jane moves her hand from her mouth. “You have an uncle Walleye?”

  “His real name is Walter,” Ben says, “and he also does have a wonky eye.” He nods, as if that’s the point of the whole thing.

  “The next generation,” I say, “is going to tell their stories about Great-aunt Brittany and Grandma Ashley.”

  “And Grandpa Jaden,” Jane says, running her hand up and down Ben’s
arm, her fingertips fluttering like small flags.

  “Remember old lady Tiffany, from down the block?” Ben stares at Jane’s moving hand and grins. “She died an old maid.”

  “Six months, by the way,” Jane says suddenly to Declan, emphasizing the number like it, too, was fifty years, or as if she’s surprised by it herself. “We’ve been together for six months.”

  “So it’s serious, then?” Declan asks. The combination of his age—he’s five years older than we are—and his former position as my boss gives him a tinge of experience, the aura of someone who knows things.

  “Well,” Jane says, “last week, after some discussion, we agreed on the names of our future children. Ella for a girl, Sam for a boy.”

  Ben holds up one finger. “Sam and Ella.”

  Jane giggles. “So it’s back to the drawing board on that one!” She leans over, pulls Ben’s face toward hers, and kisses him.

  Are all of our jokes and conversations just the scaffolding for our physical desires? Are we just rabbits with well-developed frontal lobes? Three days ago Jane was wetly kissing Dougie in a smoky bar in Marcy. Now here she is with Ben, fingertips to skin, mouth to mouth, laughing about the names of their unborn children.

  “Imagine yelling that on the playground,” Ben says.

  “Or in a crowded restaurant,” Jane adds. “Look out! Samand-Ella!”

  The table rattles, and I realize it’s me, my left leg bouncing again, banging against the edge. It’s too much, their treacly happiness, the warm gluey syrup of it filling my lungs. I feel as if I might be catapulted out of my chair, like a machine, spring-loaded and wound up. “Ha,” I say, under my breath, tracing my finger around the rim of my glass. “Sam and Ella.” I think about the prediction Seth made, months ago, that Ben and Jane’s relationship would become serious and that I would be left behind. For the first time I understand that I am living in the midst of something that I might lose.

  Under the table, Declan lowers his hand onto my thigh and squeezes.

  Declan pays the check, refusing money from the rest of us, smiling at me. I glance away, suddenly shy. As we make our way back to the apartment, my head is full of cotton. I have the buzzy, fuzzy, not unpleasant sense that I’m barely touching the ground—that we’re moving forward more than just physically. We’re on a conveyor belt to the future! Or maybe it’s the wine. On the narrow sidewalk, I hook my arm through Ben’s. Behind us, Declan and Jane are chatting.

  “… since college,” she says. I strain to hold the thread of their conversation while maintaining my loopy focus on Ben. “… nobody in the world like Willa. But you already know that.” She’s my advocate, my best friend and protector. You hurt Willa, you’ll be sleeping with the fishes!

  “So, what can you tell me about Marcy?” Ben is saying to me. He’s grown more subdued as the night has worn on. “Jane hasn’t given me much.”

  “She’s a great girl,” Declan says. My back is to them, but I’m picturing his long fingers, his confident smile, oh, yes.

  “Well,” I say to Ben, “you know.” He doesn’t; that’s the problem. “Her dad acts like he’s just, I don’t know, misplaced a sock or something. Like, oops, where did my bank account go? Her mom is self-medicating with massive doses of retail therapy. It was a lot to take in. Jane … wasn’t quite herself.”

  I could choose this moment, right now, to pull closer to Ben, to whisper in his ear, Here’s what I can tell you about Marcy: Jane kissed her old boyfriend. But maybe it’s true that Jane just wasn’t herself. Maybe her family crisis turned her into someone else and then threw that other girl, the unJane, temporarily into Dougie’s beefy arms. How can I blame Jane for the ill-advised actions of the unJane?

  I feel the sudden, complicated relief of someone who has just convinced herself via the logic of tipsy reasoning. I tilt my head back to catch the breeze. It’s delicious to be outside, to not be sweaty and enervated. My body belongs to me again. I could climb a mountain! But we’re in Milwaukee. Yes, Jane kissed Dougie. But it’s not always obvious, what’s right. I turn my hazy thoughts back to Declan.

  “I like my apartment in Chicago, but, sure, it’s never really felt like home,” he says, behind me. Well. I’ll take that to mean that he’s home now, with me, because of course that’s what a nostalgic Irish immigrant who briefly dated me three years ago would mean. Have I forgotten something important? I shake off the strong feeling that I have; I let myself be propelled by my ambitious lust.

  Ben presses his arm against mine. “I’m just trying to understand everything,” he says, turning to me, his brown eyes watery and serious as a basset hound’s. “So, thanks.”

  When we walk into the apartment, the air is still warm and muggy, in spite of the cool breeze outside. The wood floors are sticky with humidity, the furniture disconcertingly damp.

  “That was fun!” Jane says. “Really fun!” She flips her hair with both hands and looks at each of us for confirmation. It was fun! Was it fun?

  Declan nods gamely. “Yep,” he says, after a minute. “Sure was fun!” We’re standing in a clump in the middle of our living room, Jane and Ben and Declan and I and our new friend, awkward conversation.

  “What a fun night!” Jane says again. The word is beginning to sound strange and foreign to me, like a kind of exotic stew or a great beast of the African plains. Fuhn? Pfunn? Ben is newly fascinated with a bit of string on his sleeve: in the time it’s taken us to walk home, he’s gone from subdued to sullen. Jane is ramped up and tipsy, unaware that the mood has shifted. She tickles Ben’s ribs. She seems not to notice that he has stopped laughing. I close my eyes against an awful flash of insight: that unless I snatch the reins right now, my life is going to be a series of random decisions and diminishing returns, door after door slamming shut in front of me, a narrow hallway of yeses and noes. Enough of this, I think, or maybe I actually say it; I’m too tipsy to be sure. I grab Declan’s hand and pull him into my room. This is our slow seduction.

  I place my hand on his chest and push Declan down onto the bed the way they do on the TV shows Fran watches, about morally ambiguous lawyers who argue ripped-from-headlines cases and then have hot sex with each other. In seduction, I’ll have to take my cues from prime-time television; I don’t quite know what I’m doing.

  I climb on top of Declan. He looks up at me, one eyebrow raised. “I’ll be honest, Will, I wasn’t expecting this.”

  I kiss him to prevent him from discussing it in any more detail, the unlikely chain of events that has brought us here. He tastes like wine and cigarettes. I could slow things down right now, just like this, with the taste of ashtray on my tongue. But I want him. And also, once I commit to a project, I like to see it through.

  His body is solid underneath mine; we fit together, Declan and I, two warm, breathing mammals, arms to arms, chest to chest. We kiss some more and roll around on the bed, and after a while I feel I should let it be known that I’m enjoying myself. So I let out a soft moan and then, just in case he hasn’t heard, a much louder one.

  Declan stops what he’s doing, which is something strange to my belly button. “Are you all right?”

  “Absolutely!” I say. The word strikes me, suddenly, as the unsexiest word in the English language. Absolutely! It’s a word for motivational speakers and preschool teachers. Can my four-step confidence-boosting program change your life overnight? Absolutely! Boys and girls, these are absolutely the best hand-turkeys I’ve ever seen! I laugh a little, then cover it with more ambiguous moaning. I sound like a dying lamb or a seal reuniting with an old pal.

  A few weeks ago, Jane sent me an e-mail (she was in her bedroom and I was in mine). Can you teach me how to talk dirty? she wrote.

  Mud! I wrote back. Motor oil!

  Seriously.

  Why do you think I know? I typed.

  You have more experience than I do. You’re more slutty.

  Let’s roll around in a pile of sewage, baby.

  Seriously, she wrote again. I would lik
e to know what it entails.

  Entrails! I wrote back.

  Jillian said you’re supposed to, like, describe what you want. Jillian was a girl we knew in college who worked part-time at Hooters. She had a worldly quality about her. Like, “Take me from behind,” or whatever.

  This was the point in the e-mail exchange when I started screaming, and then Jane and I convened in the kitchen and tore into a bag of chocolate chips. For the rest of the night, one of us would say, “Take me from behind, or whatever,” and we would double over, laughing, the mysteries of talking dirty unsolved.

  But here in bed with Declan, our bodies smashing together like a sandwich, alternating layers of desire and embarrassment, I’m wondering if maybe guys do find it incredibly hot, Take me from behind, or whatever, the “or whatever” tacked on not as an admission of cluelessness, but as an invitation to unimaginable kinkiness.

  Declan whispers something that I don’t quite catch. I remind myself that I want to be here with him; I’ve wanted it for three years. I think about Jane and Ben and wonder where they are. Declan shifts his attention from my belly button to my right knee.

  I take a deep breath. “That drives me crazy!” I say.

  He stops, looks up at me, his eyes squinty and intent. “Oh! Sorry!”

  “No, no! In a good way.” I pat his head, and then immediately regret it.

  He nods and returns with great focus to my leg, his fingers stroking and squeezing, a lusty orthopedist. I lean back and consider the night we’ve had—how, since Marcy, Ben and Jane have begun to seem to me a single, warped entity, a creature at odds with itself. Ben and Jane. I want them to know something, to understand … I’m not sure what. I take a deep breath. “Oh, that’s so good!” I say, like I’m calling to someone in another room, as if I’m eating a hot-fudge sundae someone made for me in the kitchen. “Yes! Yes!” I sit up and pull Declan toward me; he’s on his knees, smiling and familiar. I have a twinge of guilt for this mild subterfuge, but it’s all in the service of a greater good. “Yes!” I say again, and then the thesaurus in my mind slams shut, and I resign myself to more moaning.