Friends and Strangers

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “Did Andrew and Elisabeth tell you that Clive is—very old?” she said.

  She sometimes found it helped to make a situation sound worse than it was so that the truth, which might otherwise be troubling, would instead come as a relief. Like in high school, when she wept to her parents that she had bad news and was ashamed of herself, allowing them to conjure up an unwanted pregnancy or a drug addiction, before telling them she had gotten a B in chemistry.

  “Nobody tells me anything,” George said. “How old is very old? My age?”

  “Eww, no!” she said.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Sam grinned. “That’s not what I meant.”

  George expertly navigated his way through the twists and turns of the airport. He didn’t need to slow down or consult the signs to check which airlines landed at which terminal. The cars going in every direction felt to Sam like a video game. But George was unruffled.

  He pulled out of a lane of cars stuck at a standstill, crossed to the far right, and sailed into the arrivals area.

  “You’re good at this,” Sam said.

  “I’ve done it a few thousand times,” he said.

  Sam saw Clive before he saw them.

  He stood on the curb, a suitcase by his side. He was taller than everyone else around, and his hair was spiked up in that way he wore it when he was going out for the night. He wore jeans and leather sneakers and a red zip-up top that she knew had the Nottingham Forest team logo printed on one sleeve.

  “There,” she said, pointing. “That’s him, that’s Clive.”

  George pulled up right in front of him.

  When Sam got out of the car, a smile spread across Clive’s face.

  “Babe!” he said. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  He picked Sam up off the ground, then placed her back on her feet and kissed her.

  “Come on,” she said. “I want to introduce you to George.”

  Sam walked around the car and got in back, leaving the front seat for Clive.

  Before she could say anything, he opened the other door to the back and slid in beside her.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Hello, George,” Clive said, reaching over the seat to shake his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Same here,” George said.

  He started driving.

  She wished she could apologize to George without making Clive feel bad. Or somehow explain to Clive that George wasn’t their Uber driver, that he was doing this as a friend. She had assumed that was understood.

  Sam tried to ignore her irritation.

  “It’s so nice of you to do this, George,” she said. “Taking the time out of your day for us.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said.

  Before they even left the winding roads of the airport and got back on the highway, Clive was running a hand up her thigh. Sam pushed it away, meeting his eye, nodding toward George.

  Clive looked injured.

  She reached for his hand and held it, a small concession.

  Every other time they had seen each other after being apart, they leaped right to the physical. When she arrived in London for the summer, he went down on her in a cab, something she thought of now with a mix of excitement and shame. On her most recent trip, they made out so brazenly on the Tube ride home from Heathrow that an old woman splashed water on them to make them stop. Without that element of the forbidden, Sam felt unsure how to begin.

  “How was the flight?” she said.

  “Dreadful. A small child kicked the back of my seat the whole way.”

  “That’s the worst,” George said.

  “I’ve got a massive headache. Do either of you have any ibuprofen, by chance?”

  The way he said the word bugged her. I-boop-rofen.

  “Sorry, I don’t,” she said.

  “Not on me,” said George.

  They were silent for a minute. “Pretty Woman” played in the background. If it were still just the two of them in the car, Sam would tell George how much she’d loved this song as a kid, how they blasted it at their neighborhood block party every summer, and all the dads danced around like fools, beckoning to their wives, who sat at picnic tables in the middle of the street, pretending not to see them.

  Clive leaned forward. “George, mate,” he said. “Would you mind changing the station? This song is so treacly, it makes my teeth hurt.”

  Sam’s body froze. There was no way he could have known George had chosen the music, but still she felt horrible.

  “I like this song,” she said.

  George switched to talk radio. A segment about an ICE raid in Texas, the mass deportation of a hundred people, some of whose children were left home alone, awaiting their parents’ return from work.

  “Obama won’t let them get away with that,” Sam said.

  “Your Obama has deported more people than any other president in history,” Clive said to her.

  “Where did you hear that?” Sam said.

  “I read it in this top-secret document called the newspaper.”

  She hated when he got like this. Perhaps he felt insecure, and so he had to overcompensate. When Clive was in this sort of mood, Sam avoided making any arguments about anything, because she didn’t want to hear him say that her point was obvious, or simplistic, or that she was thinking all wrong.

  “Clive, my man,” George said. “Are you a fan of the English Premier League?”

  They started talking about Newcastle United. Sam stared out the window.

  She was almost certain George had no interest in soccer. He had probably looked it up online, done his research, so he’d have something to talk about with Clive. George was that kind of person.

  * * *

  —

  Once they were at the dorm, Sam led Clive straight to her room.

  She needed that reliable connection, her skin against his, to remind her of what Clive meant, to help them get back to normal.

  He kissed her at the top of the platform stairs and dropped his bag just inside her room. Clive closed the door behind them.

  15

  Elisabeth

  THE WEEKEND IN THE CITY was Andrew’s idea.

  Elisabeth saw it as an attempt to smooth over the fact that things between them had been terrible since Christmas. Her betrayal, which would otherwise have done them in, she was certain, had to be endured because they were married, they had a child. The god-awful tension might linger on for weeks or months or years, during which they still had to talk about what to eat for dinner and whether they needed paper towels. They both understood this without discussing it.

  Elisabeth found it reassuring in a way. Things were rocky, but neither of them was going anywhere. At least not yet. She missed Andrew, though. He was there, in her presence, but not the same.

  Since the baby, since the move, they’d had spats about money, and their parents, and whether to have another child, and who was doing more. The things they had heard married people argued about, and yet she remained surprised when it happened to them. But they always made up quickly.

  This was something else.

  Every time she allowed herself to think of how she had jeopardized them for her ungrateful sister, Elisabeth wanted to scream or cry or beg him to forgive her. Andrew kept asking why she’d done it. She didn’t tell him that the decision had been a selfish one, that she couldn’t bear to give her father the satisfaction of Charlotte coming to him for help. When she thought of this now, Elisabeth could see how deranged her own thinking had been. Had the timing lined up, she might have tried to blame it on pregnancy hormones or postpartum psychosis or something. As it was, she’d given her sister the money long before all that, and so she could only sit with the fact that she had done a stupid thing for a stupid reason.

  She hadn’
t spoken to any of her family members since Christmas, which wouldn’t have been unusual under normal circumstances, but seemed noteworthy given how they’d left things.

  In mid-January, Charlotte sent a text: I’m doing a spiritual cleanse for the New Year. To that end, I want to say I’m sorry for the misunderstanding and I hope you know I still intend to pay you back someday.

  Elisabeth read it over and over again. She sent a screenshot to Nomi. They decided her sister needed an editor. If Charlotte had simply said she was sorry, without calling her own devious behavior a misunderstanding. If she hadn’t mentioned the cleanse or added that amorphous someday.

  Elisabeth didn’t reply. By then, she knew for certain what she had probably known for a long time but been unable to admit to herself. The money was never coming back. Their savings were gone.

  A week after Charlotte’s text, a letter from their father’s accountant arrived. It contained a check for three hundred thousand dollars, made out to Gil. The letter specified that the money was to be used for his education and living expenses.

  Elisabeth was enraged. Even more so because her father had involved Gil.

  “It just happens to be the exact amount Charlotte owes me,” Elisabeth said.

  “He’s trying to find a way around that,” Andrew said. “To respect your wishes, sort of.”

  The check now sat on her dresser, a question mark. Andrew thought she should accept it. Elisabeth couldn’t believe he would ask her to. But she told him she would consider, if it would help fix things between them.

  The situation at home was bad enough already when, the first week of February, Andrew received an email telling him he had not been selected to attend the conference in Denver he had been planning on for months. For a day or two, he seemed adrift, but then he doubled down, as if he would prove them wrong by sheer force of will. He was working harder than ever now, staying even later at work. Sometimes Elisabeth wondered if he was just trying to escape her.

  She was pleased he had taken Monday off so they could stay an extra day in the city.

  “I made an appointment for a couple’s massage on Monday morning,” she told him as they finished packing on Saturday.

  Gil sat on the floor, pulling each item from the suitcase as soon as she placed it inside.

  Andrew scrunched up his nose.

  “A couple’s massage? You really want to?”

  “It’s not for me and you, it’s for me and Nomi.”

  “What time? I made us an appointment for noon that day.”

  “With who?”

  “Dr. Chen?”

  He said it that way, like he wasn’t sure.

  “You’re kidding.”

  In all the months they had spent doing IVF, Andrew had never once been the one to contact the clinic. So this was why he wanted to go to the city, she thought. Not to smooth things over with her, but to accelerate the new-baby conversation. Or maybe it was both.

  In one of their many arguments since Christmas, Andrew reminded her yet again that he had only agreed to IVF in the first place because she promised they wouldn’t leave any embryos behind.

  “We have two,” she said when he brought it up. “If the first one works, then what? Will you be able to leave the other? Because three kids? I just can’t.”

  “I don’t know,” Andrew had replied. “I guess we would cross that bridge when we got to it. We should be so lucky, right?”

  Now she said, “You made an appointment without telling me?”

  “We said we’d sit down with Dr. Chen the next time we were in the city. I figured I’d save you the call.”

  Elisabeth was trying to decide how mad she should be when the doorbell rang.

  She went downstairs, thinking of how, under normal circumstances, she would have called Andrew on this odd decision. But after what she had done, he had all the power. She couldn’t say anything.

  She opened the front door. Sam was there, beside a guy Elisabeth could have identified as British without hearing him speak a word.

  He was tall, so tall. Too tall.

  “You must be Clive,” she said.

  “Pleasure to meet you, madam.”

  He extended a hand and a crooked, mischievous smile.

  Elisabeth had an immediate, visceral dislike of him. His silly outfit. The way he addressed her, as if he were Sam’s peer instead of hers. He looked all wrong standing next to sweet Sam, her baby face covered in makeup for the first time Elisabeth had ever seen.

  Still, she said, “Come in. I’m so glad we’re doing this.”

  Andrew came down with Gil and said hello.

  What happened upstairs was forgotten, for now. Elisabeth was happy to focus on her husband, on getting out of the house. She couldn’t look at Clive.

  “Gil checklist,” she said to Andrew. “Jacket? Stroller? Diapers? Wipes? Cream? Pack ’n Play? Toys? Puffs?”

  “Check check check check check check check and check,” Andrew replied.

  The baby whined.

  “He’s tired,” Elisabeth said.

  She took him from Andrew’s arms and began singing softly, the song she sang each night at bedtime: Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, baby Gilly.

  Andrew came close. He joined in on the second verse: Eyes are closed, eyes are closed, eyes are closed, my little sugar. One eye closed, two eyes closed, go to sleep, baby Gilly.

  Gil grinned up at the two of them. Elisabeth knew he would be asleep as soon as the car started rolling.

  “Aren’t they adorable?” Sam said.

  “I’m taking notes,” Clive replied. “That’ll be us before long.”

  He stood behind Sam and wrapped his arms around her. Elisabeth wanted to snatch Sam away, to carry her to safety. For the first time ever, she wondered if she ought to call Sam’s mother.

  * * *

  —

  Elisabeth insisted that Clive ride shotgun, but he said he would rather sit in back with Sam.

  Gil’s car seat was on the passenger side. Sam sat behind Andrew. Clive was in the middle, knees protruding into the front seat.

  For the first hour of the journey, Elisabeth kept glancing at them in the rearview mirror. They were holding hands. At one point, he whispered, “Give us a kiss.”

  Elisabeth looked away.

  His accent was not the buttery Hugh Grant variety she’d been imagining, but something unrefined, coarse.

  When the baby woke up, Clive was annoyingly good with him—he made Gil laugh. But he also kept sneezing. Elisabeth pictured the germs, collected on his transatlantic flight, now filling the air inside their car. Clive said it was only allergies, but no one had allergies at this time of year.

  Even though Andrew was driving and should not be checking his phone, she knew he would, and so she sent him a text: If this guy gets the baby sick, I will murder him.

  Andrew read it a few minutes later, but didn’t look at her.

  He was annoyed when she told him she had invited them.

  “They won’t be with us,” she said. “We’re only giving them a ride. This way, we get to go out on our own without Gil one night.”

  “Because there are no babysitters in Manhattan,” Andrew said.

  “None that he knows and loves.”

  The traffic was brutal. Brake lights as far as she could see.

  By hour three, for no reason whatsoever, Clive began to whistle.

  Elisabeth thought she might hyperventilate. They were trapped in a car, with this too-tall man, this creep, and it was her fault. She took out her phone for distraction. The BK Mamas were embroiled in a debate about whether to change the group’s name to BK Caregivers, since the current name was sexist (ignoring dads) and elitist (ignoring childcare workers). They were taking a poll. There were already three hundred responses in the comments section from ever
y angle of the argument. She began to read them, each so incredibly heated you might mistake this for an actual problem.

  She had read through thirty or so and texted Nomi screenshots of the most hilarious ones, when Andrew asked, “Have you ever been to New York before, Clive?”

  “No. Never even came to the States until I met Sam.”

  “You’ll love it,” Elisabeth said. “It’s the greatest city in the world.”

  She put her phone in her purse, admonished herself to try harder.

  “I’ve lived in London for years, and Barcelona before that. But I’m a country boy at heart,” Clive said. “I want to convince Sam to move to a cottage after we’re married, get some sheep and a few dogs.”

  Sam giggled, her meaning hard to decipher.

  “Don’t forget the honeybees,” she said. An inside joke, perhaps.

  Elisabeth ignored this, and said to Clive, “Did Sam tell you I met one of her professors and he thinks she’s seriously gifted? One of the best he’s ever seen?”

  She could feel Andrew’s eyes on her, wordlessly pointing out that she was stretching things. But Christopher had said that, or something like it.

  “Of course he thinks so,” Clive replied. “She’s brilliant. I have one of her paintings framed in every room of our flat.”

  Our flat, Elisabeth thought. His and hers.

  “It’s true,” Sam said. “The place is like a shrine to me.”

  Elisabeth faced front. It was worse than she thought. Sam wasn’t some plaything for this guy. He actually wanted to marry her.

  In an attempt to talk about something not related to their relationship, Elisabeth asked about the royals.

  “Did you ever see Will and Kate out at a bar or anything, back when they were in college?” she said. “I’ve heard stories like that from people, and they make me so jealous.”

  Sam squealed. “She’s so beautiful. I love her clothes. I would die if I saw her out at a bar.”

  “Why?” Clive scoffed. “The royals are a bunch of inbred parasites, mooching off the people and doing nothing for anyone but themselves.”

  “Oh, Clive,” Sam said, like the statement was somehow adorable.