Friends from Home

by Lauryn Chamberlain

  She shrugged. “I just mean that someday you’ll know. You know, that there’s just more to life than, I don’t know, trying new restaurants or making more money. Eventually you just want to be with the person—the family—who really loves you.”

  “Well, I think there’s already more to my life than—” Michelle looked at me, brow arched in a manner that was hard to read but that looked more like a warning than an invitation. I steadied myself. “Never mind, I get it.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “No, it’s just, I don’t know. It’s just weird being back home. Forget it.” I rearranged my face into an expression that I hoped looked bright and unbothered, the one I used in photos. “Tell me more about those centerpieces.”

  “Are you sure?” Michelle asked in a moment of awareness. “I feel like I’ve bored you enough with those for one day. Want to do something else? Get a pedicure? I’ll pay.”

  “You don’t have to pay,” I said, knowing at the same time that if she insisted at the register, I wouldn’t fight her. Money meant different things in our lives, as much as I tried to pretend otherwise. “But, yes, let’s go. And you can talk to me about the flowers during. It’s fine, I swear.”

  Michelle found my hand and squeezed it. “You’re the best best friend in the world,” she said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Michelle spent the first ten minutes of the pedicure in a passive-aggressive text-message fight with Marcia over the font on the wedding invitations. When she was confident that she had won, she dropped her phone into her monogrammed Michael Kors tote and turned to face me with an expression that bordered on apologetic.

  “Well, I won at least.” She shrugged. “It’s Darcy who’s doing the invitations, anyway, so I didn’t want her caught in between me and Mama. She’s a calligrapher, you know,” Michelle added, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be impressed.

  “It’s nice that she’s doing it.”

  “Look, I know you think Darcy is a little over-the-top sometimes.” Michelle looked at me levelly. “But when you’re around her more often, she’s a great friend, I swear.”

  That wasn’t the way I remembered it from school—Darcy’s contribution to the group mostly seemed to be starting gossip, like in the case of the “I Touch Myself” drama—but I didn’t say anything. Michelle smiled at me expectantly, wondering if she had convinced me of Darcy’s loyalty.

  I smiled back, almost giggling, but it was really because the technician had started to pumice my feet. I had gotten a couple of pedicures in high school as part of my mom’s well-meaning effort to have us bond through a girls’ spa day, a strategy we abandoned after a few attempts. I didn’t mind doing it with Michelle once in a while, but I had never liked them. I couldn’t stop being ticklish any more than I could get used to someone else touching my feet. When Ritchie and Dana went I usually sat next to them in an unoccupied chair and sipped a coffee, saying I didn’t want to spend the money. Which was partially true.

  “You literally have the world’s most ticklish feet,” Michelle said when she heard me laugh. “I don’t get how you don’t like this.”

  “I don’t get how you don’t like Westworld, but here we are.” I had tried to convince Michelle to stay home for a marathon of the HBO show, which I had already seen, but I would never give up trying to get her into it.

  “It’s just . . . too graphic.”

  “We’ll always have Gilmore Girls.” Michelle and I had watched the entire series together, and we loved it down to the last sappy detail.

  “True. Anyway”—she leaned toward me conspiratorially, resting both her forearms on the left armrest of her chair—“I do have something to tell you that’s not about the wedding.”

  “Wait, let me guess. You’ve ordered that blender thing that Sylvie wouldn’t stop talking about at the shower. A Vitamix.”

  “I already have one.”

  “Should’ve known. Hmm, you’ve finally decided to change your condo color scheme from coral accents to mint green?”

  “You’re just the worst,” she said, laughing.

  “I am. But seriously, you know I’m just jealous that you know how to pick a color scheme at all.”

  I had never cared much about interior design, but this envy was actually rooted in truth. After we moved to Alabama, my mom redecorated our house every few months on a whim. Redecorating is a loose term; she bought yards of cheap fabric at wholesale to fashion into “curtains”—bright electric yellow when she needed cheering up, near black when, inexplicably, she decided that too much light was getting in. The secondhand floral sofa always stayed, but new knickknacks were invited in every so often to deck the coffee table and the mantel over the faux fireplace. I had liked the safari phase (I kept the ceramic elephants, purchased at a garage sale and each missing part of its trunk), but I was sorely against her fifties revival effort. Fiestaware is heinous enough; knockoff Fiestaware is something else entirely.

  Marcia redecorated somewhat differently. The Davis house changed every five or six years in keeping with the trends of the time, but the furniture was always a variation on cream—it had to feel “clean,” Marcia said. A professional decorator was always consulted. And now, whether learned or inherited, Michelle had her mother’s eye.

  “Well, you always have me for décor advice,” Michelle said. “Even if you never take my suggestions.”

  “Okay, really, tell me: What’s the big nonwedding news?”

  “I’m thinking about quitting my job. For real.”

  This didn’t shock me. Michelle had been at the jewelry boutique for two years, and while it seemed like an ideal fit for her interests, I had always seen her working somewhere bigger. Her degree was in social media marketing—a modification, as she had started out at ’Bama declaring business until she backpedaled during her sophomore year, but it made sense; she was better with people than I could ever hope to be, and she could sell anyone on anything.

  “Wow, Miche. If you’re happy, that’s great. What are you thinking about doing now?”

  She looked at me, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you have a new job lined up for when you leave? Or are you going to start looking?”

  “No, Julie, I’m not—I’m not looking for another job. I’m going to focus on my Instagram and really getting a style blog going. What good is a social media degree if I can’t use it on myself, right? Plus, we’ll be so busy with the wedding, and then moving to the new house, and then who knows . . .”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

  I told myself to ask more questions. To be understanding. But anger bubbled up inside me, and I felt like I had to clench my teeth together to keep it from erupting out of me. To keep myself from lashing out with something I’d regret. Must be nice not to have to work. Must be nice to have always had everything given to you.

  While that was my first childish thought, my bigger worry was that Michelle would regret this. She could do anything, couldn’t she? She had been the only student to get a 5 on the AP calculus test our senior year. She’d been surprisingly fearless in science class, dissecting our frog when the stench of formaldehyde had made me nauseated. That didn’t mean she had to be a surgeon or a mathematician or even anything at all, but could this possibly be the life she really wanted? Decorating the new house, issuing style tips on her fledgling blog, waiting for Jake to come home?

  “Julie, say something.” I hadn’t realized I’d gone silent.

  “Sorry, you surprised me.” I swallowed. “Um, this is what you want?” I thought about things Michelle had said she wanted when we were growing up. The jewelry business, a big backyard for catching fireflies, to move to France. To have great adventures.

  “It is. Look, it’s nice getting a discount on bangles at the store, but I’m not doing anything so important there.” Then she looked a
t me pointedly. “I know you might not understand because all y’all in New York define yourselves by your jobs or whatever”—she said jobs as though it was in quotation marks, like she doubted what we actually did all day—“but it keeps you so busy all the time we can hardly talk. So, for me, I’d much rather focus on seeing if I can work for myself, and taking care of the move, and I can always go back to something if I want to.”

  I was still irked by her comment about “jobs.” “I’m busy because I’m working two jobs right now,” I pointed out, resisting the opportunity to add that most of the money from the freelancing went directly toward traveling for her wedding events. “But I love working in publishing. Like, it’s not just a hobby.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have to work a second job because your first one doesn’t pay you enough to survive,” she said matter-of-factly, flicking the page of a magazine.

  This was actually a very good point. “Well, you’re right about that, anyway.”

  “Hey, actually, have you ever thought about going to law school? Way better money. A lot of Jake’s friends actually started out as English majors. There’s a lot of reading in law!”

  That stung. I knew Michelle was a little oblivious to what my work meant to me, but I hadn’t expected her to say something like that. I would never go to law school. Still, I didn’t want to fight with her about why, so I turned the conversation back to her news.

  “Anyway, so, you’re . . . happy?” I finally asked. “Taking the time off, I mean?”

  “It’s always been my plan at some point.”

  “Some point” had meant when she had kids, a realization that seemed to creep slowly up the back of my neck like a vine, making me shiver. I shook off the thought; I wasn’t even close to ready to contemplate that. “But at this point?”

  She nodded slowly, staring just past me, a faraway but contented look in her eyes. The shift was nearly imperceptible, but as a smile curled at the edge of her lips I could tell that she had dropped out of her default mode. She no longer seemed to be trying to sell the idea to me, and, paradoxically, it made me more willing to listen. “I am happy.”

  “Well then. I’m happy for you. I am. And I can’t wait to see how the blog turns out.”

  “Hey, maybe you could feature on it,” she said, cheerful and animated again. “I’m thinking more of a southern vibe, tailgate style and everything, but you could be our trendy New York guest!”

  My hometown friends seemed to think that fashion sense was something you were gifted upon booking a one-way ticket to New York, like they handed it out along with luggage tags at JFK. “Oh, definitely. ‘Ten Ways to Style Black Leggings with Black T-Shirts.’”

  “Always stealing the spotlight,” she teased, her voice warm and honeyed with affection, though I imagined we both silently knew that I never had.

  I looked down at my toes, now glossed with a dark red. Michelle’s were bright pink. “Your toes look good.”

  “Yours, too. Anyway, about the job—I just wanted to tell you. My schedule will be different. I’ll be doing a lot with Mama, too, volunteering and starting Junior League. But I’ll probably have more time to visit you.”

  “That’ll be nice,” I said automatically. Would it? Now that we were seeing each other more often for wedding planning, a part of me missed the relative peace of our annual Christmas visit and biweekly phone calls. I remembered a time many years ago when it had been easiest to be with Michelle alone; outsiders were intruders, breaking the spell that existed between us. Resentment—anger, even—would coil tightly in my stomach like a snake when someone walked into a room where the two of us sat alone in rapt conversation. Leave, I would practically hiss. Leave us alone.

  Now I was desperate for someone else to walk in and break the silence.

  “So. Random question game—go,” I said, a desperate bid for a new subject.

  Michelle and I had always played this game growing up. The premise was simple: Ask the first question that came into your head, and the other person had to answer as fast as possible. The question could be silly—“Do you eat mac ’n’ cheese with a spoon or a fork?”—or deep, like “What’s your biggest fear in life?” In the past, it had prompted some of the biggest laughs Michelle and I had ever shared, and also some of the most serious talks. Whatever the questions, it made me feel like we were on the same wavelength. I didn’t know how else to grasp that now.

  “Okay, um. Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt?” she asked.

  “Depp, obviously.”

  “No way, Brad. Your turn.”

  “Day at the beach or day in the mountains?”

  “Are you seriously asking if I would go hiking? Pass.”

  I started laughing. “So . . . beach?”

  “The random question game is boring if the answer is obvious, hon.”

  “Okay, fine. Your turn.”

  “Top three things you’d take to a desert island.”

  “Duh,” I said. “Sunscreen, water, and a book. A bag of books, if that counts.”

  “Always too practical.” She shook her head. “It’s supposed to be fun. Assume the necessities are there.”

  “Come on, what would you take?” I kicked off the salon flip-flops and got ready to stand up.

  “A cooler of wine and Skinnygirl margaritas, a phone with unlimited battery.” She paused. “And you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  After landing at JFK on Saturday night—Michelle had protested my leaving a night early, but it cost $150 more to fly back on Sunday—I headed directly to Mark’s apartment. I found him exactly where I expected: on the couch watching SportsCenter and drinking a glass of scotch. Somewhere around our unofficial one-year anniversary, I started finding myself able to intuit his movements, his reactions, his text-message responses. On good days, I found this to be a sign of intimacy, something that I had never truly captured with anyone other than Michelle. Sometimes it seemed like I had the ability to hear a thought enter his head, as clearly as a door squeaking open at the hinges. Other times, I worried it was a sign of boredom.

  I dropped my suitcase by the door and walked over to join Mark on the couch, kissing him on the cheek before grabbing a glass for myself and then curling up on his chest under the blanket.

  “So,” he asked, turning down the volume on the TV. “How was it?”

  I raised my eyebrows at him and sipped my scotch silently. I wrinkled my nose; too bitter.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “The scotch? Yes. The shower? It was beautiful, except when I felt like a total outcast. Also, Michelle is quitting her job. Permanently, apparently.”

  “Well, good for her if that’s what she wants to do?” Mark had a habit of framing his opinions as questions when he wasn’t sure I would agree with him.

  I shook my head. “I just don’t understand how she’s so sure it’s the right thing to do. That’s a huge decision.”

  That was something I had never found the right words to explain. What Michelle wanted no longer made sense to me the way it had when we were younger, but at least I could see she knew exactly what it was she wanted. I would have given anything for the certainty I had heard in her voice when she turned to me at the nail salon and said, “I am happy.” I had so much want, I sometimes felt, and I needed a receptacle to place it in. Something big enough to hold it. I had no trouble seeing what was in the negative space. I didn’t want to get married at twenty-five. I didn’t want to quit my job. I definitely didn’t want to move back to Langham. But I still couldn’t see my bigger picture.

  “Anyway, I have to go back home again pretty soon, for Christmas,” I reminded Mark. By Michelle’s wedding, I would have spent more time in Alabama than I had in any year since graduating high school.

  “You’re sure it’s cool that I don’t come with?” Mark looked forward to his hometown Christmas traditions—high school reunion night at the
local bar on December 23, church on Christmas Eve, bundling up for a long walk through the snow after presents had been opened on Christmas—but he had charitably offered to spend a couple of days in Alabama this year so long as he could be back with his family before Christmas morning. But his being there wouldn’t make it any better, and I didn’t need to ruin both our Christmases.

  “Yeah, it’s fine. I’ll manage.”

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Mark said, putting his hand on my knee. “Let’s go out. I’ve been studying for the GMAT all day.”

  I didn’t want to talk the Michelle situation to death any more than he wanted to keep thinking about the GMAT. “That’s actually a great idea,” I agreed.

  * * *

  • • •

  I had taken Mark’s suggestion to go out to mean that he wanted the two of us to go to dinner or out to a bar. What he actually meant was that he wanted to assemble “the guys” and get bottle service at a club.

  He was on the phone with someone he kept calling “J-Dog” when I came out of the bathroom. He held his hand over the receiver and whispered that I should invite Dana and Ritchie.

  Screw it, then, I thought. We’re all going out.

  At the risk of sounding boring, I had never loved the bottle service club scene. Not when Ritchie and Dana surprised me with a trip into the city for my twenty-first birthday, and not when we had the one wild, illegal-substance-fueled night after Dana took the bar exam. (Okay, fine, I liked it a little bit that time.) But clubs mostly seemed like they were designed for the Michelles and Danas of the world: those who looked model-attractive enough in spandex dresses to make people fake-laugh at their inaudible jokes over the sound of the DJ’s throbbing bass. I preferred a quieter dive bar with a separate back room for dancing to nineties throwbacks. After a weekend of contemplating cobbler recipes and ogling silicone kitchenware, though, I decided I could make an exception.

  * * *