Friends and Strangers

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “Hers, mostly. And Ian and Chevy, Rowan and Dave B. A few others. I don’t even remember who. My brother and Nicola.”

  “All of them knew. Your mom knew. The kids. Nobody ever let on in front of me.”

  “I don’t think anyone thought it was relevant.”

  “An ex-wife? Irrelevant?”

  “They were so happy for me when I found you,” he said. “You’re my soulmate. I’d been depressed over everything with her. It wasn’t just the relationship ending. I was broke. I had to move out of our place and into this awful bedsit. Then into Ian’s spare bedroom. It was humiliating.”

  “You two had your own place,” she said, like a fool.

  Of course they did. They were married. But she had never pictured him as someone else’s.

  “Laura made good money, but she’s materialistic. She made me buy her this ridiculous diamond ring. I’m still paying it off. I felt worthless. Then I met you. You accepted me for who I am.”

  “When did she leave you?” Sam asked.

  “It would have been the November before last.”

  “Five months before we met.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “At first, everyone thought it was a fling between us. I think even you and I thought so. I didn’t think you needed to hear about that. I tried not to be with you, in the beginning. I purposely didn’t ask for your number when we met. And then when I did call you that first time, I decided I shouldn’t ask you out. I know you’re too good for me, Sam. But I fell in love with you. I guess everything with her left my head. It didn’t matter anymore.”

  “Were you divorced yet when we met? Are you even divorced now?”

  Her teeth chattered as she said it.

  “Yes, I’m divorced now,” he said. “I wasn’t then, technically. I was in every sense but the paperwork. I wasn’t in touch with her. She’d already gone back to Spain.”

  “So all those years you lived there, you were with her.”

  “Yes. She wanted me to be some working stiff. I worked for her father’s company in Barcelona. Then she wanted to be in London all of a sudden, so he sent us. We were happier in London, or I thought we were. We got married. Her idea. But we had only been married six months when she left. Sam, I swear to you, it’s not a big deal. You’re being childish.”

  “You lost your job because her father was your boss.”

  “Right.”

  “I need to go,” she said. “My friends are waiting. Listen, my parents asked if you could maybe not come to graduation. They think it will be strange for my grandmother. Plus, there’ll be too many people to wrangle, you know.”

  “You’re joking,” he said.

  “It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Good night.”

  * * *

  —

  Sam woke to five text messages from him, asking her to call as soon as she was up. There was a text from her mother too, apologizing for how things had gone between them, but not going back on what she’d asked.

  There was no word from Elisabeth.

  It all felt like too much. When Sam saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror, her neck was covered in pink, splotchy hives. She lifted her T-shirt. They were all over her stomach too.

  She heard footsteps, and then Isabella appeared in her fluffy blue bathrobe.

  She was trailed by a sophomore wearing boxer shorts and an enormous T-shirt.

  Sam ignored the presence of the sophomore.

  “Please don’t talk about me behind my back,” she said.

  Isabella blinked. “Sorry?”

  “You know what I’m referring to.”

  “Sam. Is that you? Am I dreaming?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Isabella.”

  Isabella looked at the sophomore, who was pretending to be immersed in the application of toothpaste onto toothbrush.

  “Elisabeth says you’re worried about Clive and me. You think our relationship is a big mistake. How come you never felt the need to say anything to me about it?”

  “Christ,” Isabella said. “Why did she tell you that?”

  “I wasn’t aware that you two hang out,” Sam said.

  “I ran into her at CVS. It was a casual conversation.”

  “Do you know how often I hold my tongue when it comes to the shit you do?” Sam said.

  “Yes!” Isabella said. “That’s what friends do, isn’t it?”

  “Friends support each other,” Sam said. “Real friends. Which, not surprisingly, you’ve never had, have you?”

  Isabella looked for a second like she might cry, and then her face turned angry instead.

  Sam pushed past her into the hall.

  * * *

  —

  She called Maddie at lunchtime, not wanting to go back to the dorm to eat.

  She sat in the grass outside the library, listening to the phone ring, terrified that it would go to voice mail.

  Then Maddie picked up.

  Sam heard an ambulance siren in the background. She heard Maddie walking down a windy city block, a sound like someone crushing a paper bag.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Maddie said.

  “Not much. Just my whole life is falling apart.”

  Sam told her about the job offer, about her mother, about Elisabeth, and Clive and Isabella.

  “In one day, I’ve gone from feeling like the luckiest person alive to like I can’t trust anyone,” Sam said.

  “You can trust me,” Maddie said. “Are you and Clive breaking up for real?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”

  “I can’t decide that for you.”

  “Yes, you can. You know me better than anyone. Please.”

  Maddie sighed. “Come here. Take the job. Live with me. You don’t have to stay forever.”

  “Now that Elisabeth and I fought like that, maybe she called them back and said not to hire me. Maybe I don’t even have the job anymore.”

  “Sam. You do.”

  “I can’t afford to live there on what they’ll be paying me, and with my student loans.”

  She wanted Maddie to talk her into it.

  “Can I?” she added with a smile.

  Sam could hear Maddie smiling back. “We all feel that way when we get here, but we manage. You’ll figure it out.”

  “No one ever thinks they have enough money,” Sam said.

  She plucked a gray, feathery dandelion from the ground.

  “Good point,” Maddie said.

  Sam blew the soft petals into the air.

  “Elisabeth told me that.”

  * * *

  —

  All day Tuesday and Wednesday, Sam wondered what would happen on Thursday, when she was next supposed to babysit. She waited for some sign from Elisabeth. She wasn’t going to show up and pretend nothing had gone on between them. Then again, she couldn’t imagine not showing up to work. She’d never done that in her life. And she needed the money. Not just her weekly pay, but whatever Elisabeth planned to pay her for the portrait.

  By Wednesday night, she still hadn’t heard anything.

  In the morning, she thought she had a sore throat. Maybe she was too sick to work. Maybe fate had decided for her. But no. After a shower and a cup of coffee, to her great annoyance, Sam felt fine.

  Her heart raced as she walked to Laurel Street. When she pushed open the back door, she swore she could feel Elisabeth’s presence on the other side.

  But she found Andrew in the kitchen instead, feeding Gil scrambled eggs.

  “Elisabeth had an early call with her agent,” he said. “She went down to her office a while ago. She seemed nervous.”

  Sam wondered how much he knew.

  After a brief silence, she said,
“I can take over from here.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Great. Thanks.”

  Elisabeth didn’t check in by phone or text like she usually did.

  Sam was confused. She was the one who had been lied to, and yet she had shown up.

  Andrew called the house while she was giving Gil his lunch.

  “Can you stay late tonight?” he said. “Like six? Elisabeth has a friend coming into town for dinner, so I’ll be getting home before her. Sorry, she only just told me.”

  “Sure thing,” Sam said.

  So Elisabeth was leaving him to deal with the mess she’d made.

  Would they ever speak again? Sam was mad enough that she almost didn’t care, but it made her sick to think of not seeing Gil after today. Was he old enough to wonder where she’d gone? All the times she had imagined the future, Sam thought they would send pictures and updates, maybe see each other once or twice a year, here or there, wherever there was.

  She smiled through tears as she wiped his hands and face. She rocked him to sleep instead of letting him cry himself out, which was for some reason what you were supposed to do. Sam didn’t lay Gil down in the crib for his afternoon nap. She held him to her in the rocking chair until he woke up. They played for the rest of the day. She didn’t look at her phone once.

  When Andrew got home, she said in a rush, “Would you mind paying me now for today and Monday?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Let me get my wallet.”

  While he went to find it, she whispered “I love you” to Gil, and kissed his soft, fat cheeks as many times as she could.

  She got home a few minutes later and searched around for Andrew’s cell number. She found it on the “In Case of Emergency” contact list Elisabeth had given her back in September, which sat crumpled at the bottom of her book bag.

  She sent him a text.

  Hi! It’s Sam. I’ve just realized the rest of the semester is going to be super hectic. There’s no way I can work tomorrow and next week. Sorry for the short notice.

  Andrew replied, Okay…hope everything is all right. Will we still see you Sunday for dinner?

  Sam didn’t respond.

  * * *

  —

  On Sunday, with two weeks to go until graduation, George arrived to take her to her final discussion group meeting. Sam thought of saying she couldn’t make it, but when George called the night before and said he was going to pick her up, he sounded cheerful.

  “We’re having a bon voyage for you,” he said.

  He didn’t mention Elisabeth. Maybe he didn’t know, Sam thought. Or maybe the two things could remain separate.

  But as soon as they were in the car, George said, “Andrew thinks something is up between you and Lizzy. Is that true?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” Sam said. “If that’s okay.”

  “You two are such pals,” George said. “Whatever it is, you’ll work it out.”

  Neither of them said anything for a bit, and then George said, “You haven’t mentioned your friend in the dining hall lately. How is she? Did she get her childcare issue worked out?”

  Sam looked at him. “I need to tell you something. But it’s really awful, so I’m going to look out the window when I tell you so I can’t see the disappointed look on your face.”

  George chuckled. “All right. Out with it. You’re making me nervous.”

  Sam still hadn’t told anyone but Clive about the letter she’d written to President Washington. She hadn’t been ready yet to own it. It was too shameful, too embarrassing.

  But now she told George.

  “Gaby didn’t understand that I was just trying to help,” Sam said. “Or maybe she understood, but she didn’t care. I feel like she thinks I’m this privileged person. Like Isabella. Or Elisabeth. When really, I couldn’t be further from it.”

  “There are a lot of different kinds of privilege,” George said gently. “Education, for one.”

  “I’ll be paying off my education until I die.”

  “Still,” he said. “It makes all the difference. You should know that. Take it from someone who never dreamed of going to college. You’ve got your calling card now.”

  Sam felt chastened, even though she knew he wouldn’t want her to.

  “You meant well,” George said. “I have no doubt. But you never should have sent that letter without asking them first.”

  “They wouldn’t have let me send it,” she said.

  “Right,” George said. “Exactly.”

  Sam had done to Gaby almost the same thing Elisabeth did to her, but with far worse results. Would George say that Elisabeth had meant well too? Sam wanted to be forgiven, but she didn’t want to forgive.

  They did not speak for the rest of the ride, until he pulled into the parking spot in front of Lindy’s Bakery. Through the window she saw the old men seated around their usual table. Red balloons tied to an empty chair.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, Sam talked to Clive for the first time in a week. She’d been ignoring his calls.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as soon as she answered. “I should have told you sooner. Please don’t let this come between us. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she said. “But I think I should take the job in Brooklyn. For now, at least. We can do long distance for a while. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

  They both cried. After they hung up, Sam kept crying. She told herself it wasn’t over. They hadn’t broken up. But she saw his niece and nephew, Freddy and Sophie, gone from her life. She saw the house in the country Clive had so often described, gone.

  She thought of having to make an online dating profile and be out there, alone, like everybody else. Lexi had told Sam that every guy who liked her profile asked, “What are you?” or “Where are you from?” When Lexi said, “Chicago,” they’d say, “But where are you from?” And then there was the guy who sent Isabella a picture of his penis with a ribbon tied around it on her birthday.

  The idea of it made Sam cry even harder.

  Isabella walked in then, and froze in the doorway.

  “I’ll kill him,” she said. “What did he do to you?”

  Things between them had been strained. But Sam laughed.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I did it to him.”

  Isabella came and sat beside her on the bed, hugged her tight. She didn’t let go, and she didn’t say a word, which was the perfect thing.

  * * *

  —

  On the Thursday before commencement, Sam arrived at the president’s mansion. Every light was on. The house glowed from within like a jack-o’-lantern. Out front, a banner reading CELEBRATE WOMEN! obscured the second-story windows.

  Sam went around to the back.

  The dinner was meant to honor the college’s top one hundred alumnae donors and their guests. Events like this were a showcase. The steak would be of the highest quality. The wine would cost fifty dollars a bottle. Five kinds of pie would be served. In a hundred and fifty years, it had never been otherwise.

  Usually the best part of working an event like this was getting to eat the food. But tonight Sam wasn’t hungry.

  The kitchen was bustling when she entered. Women from dining halls all over campus were busy cooking, preparing, arranging. They spoke to one another in Spanish, moving extra fast. One of them handed Sam a tray and pointed her down a long hallway, where other student waiters were coming and going.

  “Smoked salmon and cucumber,” the woman said.

  Stepping into the packed living room full of women in neat suits and floral dresses, Sam felt unbalanced. Her hair was tied up in a bun. She wore a white button-down and black dress pants, per the instructions on the job sheet someone from RADS left in her mailbox. The shir
t was old, and too tight. It strained open at her breasts. The pants needed ironing, but she didn’t have an iron at school.

  She lay in bed the night before, imagining herself confronting President Washington. She wouldn’t, of course. The confidence she possessed when silently delivering a monologue to her pillow seemed to have left her now.

  Months ago, she had been so excited to come here, to be in the woman’s presence. Now Sam just wanted to get through it and get paid.

  She approached a cluster of blondes in their sixties.

  “Smoked salmon and cucumber?” she asked.

  They waved her away.

  Sam went toward a trio of youngish alums, each with a glass of white wine in hand.

  “Smoked salmon and cucumber,” she said.

  One of them took a cocktail napkin from the tray and put a single canapé on top.

  “Are you a student?” she asked, her voice full of excitement.

  “I am.”

  “What year are you?”

  “A senior.”

  “What house are you in?”

  “Foss-Lanford.”

  “No way! One of my best friends lived there!”

  Sam smiled wide, then turned toward the other side of the room. She knew from experience that she would have this exact conversation at least ten more times tonight.

  She wished she had gotten the chicken skewers with peanut dipping sauce, or the mini-sliders. Then the women would have approached her, instead of the other way around, and she could have gotten away with making less conversation. She didn’t feel like talking.

  Fresh flowers sprayed forth from every surface: cherry blossom branches as tall as she was on the sideboards, white roses cut down to just a few inches stuffed into round white vases on the end tables, and long-stemmed roses, hundreds of them, in larger vases, filling the surface of a table in the center of the room. Sam wondered how much the flowers had cost. How much this whole evening had cost.

  The crowd parted. There, by the fireplace, stood President Washington in a navy skirt-suit and pumps, a silk scarf tied around her neck. She seemed to be lost in conversation with two white-haired women beside her. Sam watched as President Washington kissed each of them on the cheek and then excused herself.