Friends Like Us

by Lauren Fox

  Sure as I’m not actually a connoisseur of home furnishings and gardenware, Seth can tell something’s up. He taps my shoulder, shoves me gently to the side. “Oh, shit,” he says, craning his neck, as Nina’s companion—boyfriend, obviously—turns to her and whispers something in her ear. “Shit. I need to leave. Tell Mom we need to leave. We need to leave right now. I need to get out of here.”

  Fran walks toward us with a triumphant smile, high stepping across the long grass in her pink espadrilles. “Mission accomplished!” she says, tipping an imaginary hat at us. Sometimes that’s all it takes: a new expression or funny little quirk to remind me that, emotionally, Fran checked out of our lives ten years ago. And, sure, I’ve spent plenty of time with her since then. But in the deep and fundamental way daughters are supposed to know their mothers, I hardly know mine. And then I feel it all over again. The loss of it.

  “Mom,” I say. Seth is standing still next to me, staring straight ahead. A giant wasp buzzes past, close to his face; he doesn’t flinch. “Great job on the love seat. We’ll come back for it later. Let’s go.”

  She shakes her head. “But I’m just getting started!”

  “Nina’s here,” Seth says, his voice a dull, defeated monotone.

  Fran lifts her face, pricks up her ears like a hungry cat who’s just heard the whir of the can opener. Our mother wants so much for Seth and me to be happy, to find our footing where she lost hers. But to her, our happiness is a home improvement project, only she’s never had the right tools for it. Before either of us can stop her, she’s beelining over to a table stacked with small appliances, toward the petite redhead with the boyfriend at her side and, now, the blender cradled in her arms. Seth slumps even slouchier and covers his eyes with his hands.

  “Nina!” Fran calls.

  “Oh, crap,” Seth mutters. “Oh, Christ.”

  I jog over to Fran, my sneakers smacking the grass, the thighs of my cotton shorts shooshing. “Mom! Fran! Mom!” I call again, louder, outrage bubbling up in my voice: “Mother!”

  And then, just then, Fran stops short, a few feet from Nina, tiny redheaded rummage sale shopper who has finally turned to us, who has pivoted, still holding on to her handsome man, and now he turns his body to us, too, both of them curious, anxious to see what all the commotion is about, Nina’s wide face a question, Who are these people, Josh? Oh, Brad, honey, what are they doing, what do they want? Tim, why is the older one calling me Nina, and my mother puts out her hand to stop herself and she shakes her head, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” because, good God it’s not, thank heavens it’s not, it’s not Nina after all.

  And then, with a swiftness of purpose and a clarity of mind that will shock me later, I hustle us all out of there, away from the rummage sale of quality furniture and mistaken identity and over to Braun’s Bagels and Lunch, home of the worst deli food in the Great Lakes region, and the place that Seth and I have referred to, for as long as I can remember, as Eva Braun’s Bagels.

  We make our way with our food to a small round table in the corner of the empty restaurant. Seth chomps down on a big, pale, puffy bagel—more of a bread doughnut, really, than a bagel.

  “Oh, Sethie,” Fran says, squeezing a tube of dressing onto her salad. “I just wish I could fix this for you.”

  “We are the masters of our own destinies,” he says, chewing and nodding, and I can’t figure out why he’s not more annoyed with Fran, why he’s suddenly cheerfully spouting his personal-improvement aphorisms. Maybe it’s the carbs, lulling him into submission.

  “I can’t eat this,” I say, gnawing on a doorstop slathered with strawberry cream cheese—inexplicably, the only kind they have. Eva Braun’s Bagels is where we used to come for lunch on the weekends, the three of us, after Stan left, and so it holds a certain place in our hearts, a room in the house of our collective memories—if not the cozy living room of nostalgia, then maybe the foyer of endurance.

  Fran nibbles on a wilted piece of lettuce and nods. “Your father told me just the other day that he misses this place. Unbelievable!”

  “Just the other day,” Seth says. “Good one!”

  “Right!” I slide my bagel over to Seth, who begins to demolish it. As far as I know, our parents haven’t spoken in years.

  Fran looks at us. “Well, isn’t it funny the way things work out, but Jerry and I have gone out for dinner a few times recently with your father and Lesley.” She dabs at her pink lips with a napkin and nods to herself. “I really like that Lesley.”

  This is the part in the movie where the main character—restless, drifting, sensitive girl trying to find herself, a coming-of-age story for our time!—does a double take and spits out her water all over her mother. Unfortunately, the only thing in my mouth is the aftertaste of strawberry cream cheese.

  Our mother locked herself in her darkened room and didn’t get out of bed for three months after the divorce. For six months after that, she didn’t go grocery shopping, cook dinner, pick me up after school, or drive me to my piano lessons. So I made my own way. The day before I left for college, a FOR SALE sign freshly planted in the lawn in front of our house, my mother looked me up and down, patted my head, told me that I needed a haircut and never to get married. She is the source of my primal knowledge: that the death of love is a small black hole that sucks your soul right out of you. I narrow my eyes at her.

  “Your hair looks nice,” she says. “It could use a trim.”

  “This is … fucking crazy,” Seth says, laughing.

  “I know,” I say. “I just got it cut!”

  “Well, what can I tell you?” Fran plants her hands flat on the table, blue veins mapping the terrain to coral-tipped nails. “Your father had some tax questions a few months ago, and he made an appointment with Jerry. They hit it off. Jerry suggested the four of us go out, and I thought, Why not? Why not?”

  Just last year, Fran sent me a thick brown envelope filled with photographs and love letters my parents had sent to each other before they were married. You can throw these out if you want to, she scrawled on her note to me. I HAVE NO NEED FOR THEM.

  “I mean,” she continues, “life is too short to be so angry. To hold grudges.”

  Darling, my dad had written in one of those long-ago letters, blue ink on a scrap of white paper. We’re out of milk. She had saved this note.

  I heard them arguing once, late at night, in their bedroom. I’d had a bad dream and was about to push open their door. I must have been about nine or ten; I remember the pajamas I was wearing, soft pink fleece with a poodle on the front.

  You were supposed to take care of me, my mother was wailing, but you … you’re a thief. You are the thief of my happiness!

  Somehow I knew even then that it was a melodramatic thing to say, and I snickered to myself. The thief of her happiness!

  And then, from behind their closed door, I heard my father laugh, too, a loud, mocking, derisive hoot. And suddenly we were allies, the two of us, in our cruelty. Immediately I felt the stirrings of a complicated remorse, a clattering misalignment of my affections. I turned and went back to bed.

  Seth stares at our mother. His mouth is hanging open, a bit of chewed bagel visible. “Would you please close your mouth,” I whisper; he winks at me and opens it wider. What is Fran offering us, with this new information? What is she hoping to give us? Maybe just this: evidence that your mistakes may not be the end of you. I feel a surge of forgiveness—for my parents and Seth, for Ben and Jane, saving the date without me, for us all.

  Fran tips the last of her water into her mouth. She chews an ice cube and looks from me to Seth and back again. “We tried Thai last time. Cajun the time before that.” The ice crunches against her teeth. “Turns out we all get along quite well.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It’s Ben’s idea to go camping. “Because who can say when any of us will ever be able to afford a real vacation?” he argues from his perch on our sofa.

  “I think you have to have a real job be
fore you can take a real vacation,” Jane says. She’s not just talking about Ben; she means all of us. She’s sitting cross-legged on the couch; Ben’s head is in her lap. I’m sprawled on the floor. It’s hot again, and we’ve sunk back into a torpor. We haven’t moved in hours. Maybe days. I fan my face with a magazine.

  “We could drive north,” Ben says. “Somewhere cooler than here.”

  “I … don’t … know.” Jane speaks slowly, as if simply moving her mouth requires all of her limited energy. “The Amsters might need me.”

  The Amsters are a family she has just started babysitting for, to earn extra cash. We love talking about them as if they’re actual rodents: Those Amsters keep such a messy house! That little Amster really loves nuts! I have the vague feeling that babysitting for the Amsters isn’t going to be a good move for her, that with every extra hour of part-time work, with every new bathroom or toddler’s butt she cleans, she’s sliding farther into a fate she won’t be able to climb out of. She’s teetering dangerously close to the edge, to that elusive but irreversible moment when a person tips from full-of-promise to never-quite-lived-up-to-her-potential. But who am I to talk?

  “I want to go camping!” I yell, surprising everyone, including myself. In fact, I hate camping. I hate, hate, hate it. The few times I’ve been—once during my short-lived involvement with a temple youth group when I was fourteen, once on an overnight, the culmination of a miserable summer at day camp when I was ten—were exercises in itchy discomfort, mosquito-riddled, sunburned days full of forced marches and lanyard weaving, and long, stuffy, sleepless nights in smelly tents. I’ve never understood the allure. I’m indoorsy.

  But Jane’s reluctance has jostled something inside me. I don’t want to be a person who hates camping. If I feel so adamant now, at twenty-six, what will thirty-six look like? Or sixty-six? Will I be one of those old ladies who writes angry letters to the editor and calls things “newfangled”? I can’t figure out this newfangled voice mail! Jane doesn’t want to go camping? Well, I do.

  Two days and a four-hour drive later we arrive at Wood Lake State Park (which Jane and I, from the backseat, dubbed Wood Tick State Park), and it is cooler here, in the shade of the tall pines, and it is better.

  Declan, squinting, looks up at the twilit sky. “Ah, did anyone check the weather forecast?”

  “No.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well,” Ben says, “it hasn’t rained in a week. So it’s not going to rain tonight. Isn’t that how it works?”

  “In Ireland,” Declan says, “you don’t have to check the weather. Even if the sky is a brilliant blue when you start out, and the sun is splitting the heavens, you know to bring your rain gear. Because in ten minutes, it’ll be lashing.”

  He’s gazing at the big Wisconsin sky, pinking toward evening, but he’s seeing something else. Lately he’s been talking about Ireland as if it’s a fond relative, a dear, slightly demented great-aunt, the one who makes jewelry out of uncooked macaroni and then gives it to you for your birthday.

  We’re sitting around a campfire that, with the help of a whole book of matches, an entire newspaper, and no skill at all, is burning brightly. We’ve set up our tents, and we lit this fire, and now none of us knows what to do next. In fact, none of us knew what to do an hour ago; I don’t have high hopes for either of our rent-a-tents surviving a light gust of wind. There were so many stakes! We need an expert, but among the four of us, there is none. I look at Declan, balancing precariously on the two wobbly back legs of his canvas chair. “I mean,” he says, “just lashing. Pounding rain. Soak you through and through.” He turns to me and winks. Almost everything he says sounds dirty to me, stained with sex. I feel a familiar lurch, low in my gut. Like learning to play the piano, practice has improved us.

  “In Ireland,” he says again, his cigarette dangling, “would you believe, there are corner shops that sell nothing but umbrellas and Wellington boots.”

  “Nothing but umbrellas and boots,” Jane says. “Yes, I’ve heard that. I also heard that there was some controversy over whether these stores could legally refuse to serve leprechauns.” Jane has a way with Declan.

  “Anti-leprechaun sentiment is unfortunately rampant in my country.”

  I look down at my lap at the pencil sketch I’m doing, of the four of us gathered around the fire pit. For fun, I’ve been drawing us without looking at the paper. Nobody looks like they’re supposed to: Ben’s head is a half inch away from his body; Jane’s left eye floats near her ear. Declan resembles a praying mantis.

  Ben heaves himself up. Bits of leaves and pine needles cling to his jeans. “Maybe we should collect some more of that, what do you call it, wood? To keep the fire going?” He and Declan wander off. When they come back, they toss some twigs into the fire and high-five each other.

  Declan sits back down next to me. “Being outside always makes me crave a smoke,” he says, lighting a cigarette. “Then again, so does being inside.”

  We sit for a long time, staring at the campfire, mesmerized. Ben and Jane roast marshmallows, Declan tears one of his special cheese-mayonnaise-and-butter sandwiches in two and gives me half. Minutes drift by in silence. Ben takes out a map of the campground and marks an easy trail along the lake for a hike tomorrow. “The local flora promises a riot of color!” he reads out loud. “If you’re lucky, Wood Lake’s very own beaver family might make an appearance!”

  Jane rests her head on Ben’s shoulder. I stretch my feet toward the fire. The sun sets slowly, fireflies pop out of the darkness, frogs awake and start calling out to each other, a beautiful, prehistoric bellowing. We say things, like “It’s getting late” and “I wish we’d thought to bring more than just marshmallows and one sandwich” and “How long do you think we’d survive after an apocalypse?” And nothing touches me except the heat of the fire on my legs, my face. I’m in a pocket of glowing light, protected from complicated relationships and huge mistakes, past and future. The night feels perfect. Maybe I don’t hate camping!

  The first drops of rain aren’t enough to send us into our tents, but the next ones are: a sudden, heavy downpour that comes in sharp little knives. Declan looks pleased as he grabs my hand and pulls me toward our tent. Ben and Jane duck into theirs. The rain falls hard on top of us, all around us, as if we’re being stoned. It seems like a miracle that our tents are holding up, an honest-to-goodness little miracle.

  “Are you guys okay?” Jane shouts.

  “Tell my mother I love her!” I call back. Declan flicks on our fluorescent lantern, and a bright, artificial, greenish light fills our tiny tent. It looks like an office in here, a little cubicle in the woods. It feels like old times.

  We’re sitting on our big rumpled sleeping bag, knee to knee. Declan smiles at me and shakes his head like a puppy; droplets spray my face. Why are we in these tents, in these configurations? Why am I not laughing with Ben, or helping Jane find a dry shirt? Because humans couple off, slaves to biology, helpless under the vice clamp of desire. I reach my hand out, rest it on Declan’s arm for a second.

  He inches over to a dry spot on the sleeping bag and stretches his long body out. “I’ve decided to go home for a visit in the fall,” he says. The top of his head touches one end of the tent; his feet skim the other. “For a visit, or maybe longer.”

  I’m cold, all of a sudden; goose bumps rise on my arms and legs, the back of my neck. “ ‘For a visit,’ ” I repeat, “ ‘or maybe longer.’ …” What is he telling me? Come with me, my darling? Good-bye?

  “Well,” he says. He seems to have grown a reddish shadow of stubble in the last few minutes. I’ve never noticed this in Declan, this tendency toward ruddiness. I lean forward to touch it with the same hand that brushed his arm. “Well,” he says again, “the agency. And my apartment in Chicago. I feel … untethered. I don’t know.” His accent lulls me for a moment, with its quick, sharp t’s, and those lovely, rounded o’s like music.

  “Of course,” I say. Of course. It smells like mo
ld and feet in here, that particular musky blend that brews inside a tent, and we’re breathing in each other’s exhalations. I pat my hair, thick as a fur coat in the humidity. “So, what, then? September?” I’m trying to sound breezy, carefree, like a girl who has just been told that the bakery is out of scones: It’s okay, I didn’t really want a scone! A muffin will be just as good! But my voice comes out weird and tremulous and loud. Fuck your scones!

  “Maybe,” Declan says, looking at me now, studying me with a wrinkled brow. I have the notion that things are easier for some people. Declan sits up and takes my hand. “You could come,” he says. “For a while?”

  “Um.” The phrase echoes in my brain, changes shape, meaning, a noncommittal alloy of syllables. Furrow Isle. Could I come 4-0-aisle? Maybe I could. Yes?

  He’s still gazing at me, full of concern, the stepchild of affection. “Will, I really, really like you. But I don’t want to mislead you.”

  “No,” I say. “Yes. I get it. Of course.” My heart goes numb, but underneath that, underneath its Novocained throb I can feel the stirrings of an ancient sorrow trying to thrash its way to the surface: a wretched thing, a blind, albino fish. Who am I in this world? What am I doing here, all alone? All alone forever, or only for a whale? It’s not that I haven’t asked these questions before, or that I’ll ever be able to answer them sufficiently. It’s just that a particular loneliness has been napping for a few weeks. And now, all of a sudden, it’s been zapped awake. The rain stops just as suddenly as it started, and laughter comes from Jane and Ben’s tent.

  “Will!” Jane yells. “I have to pee!”

  “Okay!” I lunge for the tent flap and unzip it, wriggle my way out. “Here I am!” The ground is black and soggy; fresh mud squishes underneath my sneakers. The fire pit is charred and sizzling, and the night air is cool.