The Best Friend

by Adam Mitzner

  He looked much like the photograph on the back of his book, except his hair was longer, once again reflecting the shaggy, carefree air of a man who didn’t have an office job. The way I recalled from when we were younger. His attire was also old-school Nicky: faded blue jeans and a black sweater. He wasn’t wearing glasses.

  I had envisioned our reintroduction as akin to the formal greeting heads of state give each other—stiff handshaking before getting down to business. But I walked right into him, even before he opened his arms to receive me. The wisps of his hair tickled my cheek, and his scent instantly transported me back to my younger years. Before motherhood had changed my body, and before cancer had destroyed it.

  He ended our embrace and took a step back. I watched him scan me from head to toe. I knew he was finished when he wiped his eyes.

  I rubbed the top of my head, a tic I’d recently developed. It might have looked like smoothing my hair, except I was barely sporting a crew cut.

  “I haven’t changed a bit, am I right?” I said.

  “Just as beautiful as I remembered,” he lied.

  The sofa was long enough that our legs would not touch if I had taken the spot beside him, but I sat on the opposite chair. It was important to look him in the eye for this discussion.

  “I’m drinking a very nice scotch,” he said. “Can I get you something?”

  For all the limitations placed on me during my illness, alcohol was not one of them, as long as it was in moderation. But, in yet another irony of my life, I had lost my taste for it.

  “No. I’m fine. I actually want to get through the speech I prepared for this. Can I do that?”

  “I flew across the country to hear it. But after, I hope you’ll talk to me in a less rehearsed way. And that you’ll also give me the opportunity to say some things too.”

  I nodded to confirm that his request would be granted. Then I heard the words aloud that for nearly twenty years had been relegated solely to my mind.

  “I think you know, but there was a time when I truly thought that I could never be as happy as I was with you, Nick. And the last thing I want to do is to reduce Carolyn’s life to a sign from God directed at me, but after she died, the way she died, I knew we could never be together. And I understand why you went to California after, and why you broke away from me, and from Clint too, even after all he did for you.”

  “Should I explain myself?” he asked. “Or do you want me to wait until you’re finished?”

  “Let me say a little more. Then I’ll let you have your turn. I promise.”

  He smiled and gave me a curt nod.

  “Then the oddest thing happened. You and Clint both had this crazy success, almost overnight. His I understood. He deserved it. But—”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Sometimes—”

  I interrupted him. “You don’t know this, but after . . . when you were already in LA, but not for very long, I gave up singing. Acting too. I thought I was undeserving of anything good ever happening to me. And I needed to make it up to Clint in any way I could. To me, that meant giving him children and being his wife. I got pregnant with Ella even before your first book came out. That’s when the strangest thing of all happened. I became happy. And not just a little bit. I woke up one day and realized that I was happier than I ever thought possible.”

  He didn’t protest. Maybe it was because I’d asked him not to interrupt. Maybe he’d already intuited everything I’d revealed.

  “And now I’m going to die. And I thought—of course. This is the payback. I didn’t deserve to be happy. But the worst part isn’t about me. It’s that my daughters, and Clint too, are going to suffer worse than me. Charlotte, our younger daughter, she’s only nine. That’s got to be the worst possible age for a girl to lose her mother. Ella is fifteen, which, now that I think about it, isn’t any better. This is going to be the worst thing that ever happened to all the people I love. And . . . I know it’s irrational on some level, but I blame you, Nick. I do.”

  “Is it my turn now?” Nick asked.

  “Yes,” I said, while nodding.

  “First off, Anne, it’s so good to see you. Of course, I’m devastated that it took this news, but I’m glad you called me.” He exhaled deeply. “There are things about me too that you don’t know. Like the fact that a few months after I got to Los Angeles . . . I tried to take my own life. Sleeping pills.” He shrugged. “Of course, I’m still here, so it didn’t work. Maybe because I didn’t really want to do it. Just wanted to say that I tried. That I was that grief-stricken. I don’t know.”

  He looked at me as if he wanted my sympathy. I was unwilling to grant it to him.

  “Kafka once said, one should never doubt one’s own sense of guilt,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If you feel guilty, you’ve done something to feel guilty about.”

  “I suppose that’s true. But is there ever a time when you can be forgiven? It’s been a long time since what happened between us. I didn’t even get the girl in the end.”

  He smiled at what he must have thought was a witty comment, but I thought it cavalier, as if he were discussing the plot of one of his novels and not real-life people whose lives had been forever diminished because of the mistakes they’d made.

  “Carolyn was murdered, Nick. Time doesn’t change that.”

  “I know,” Nick said quietly, almost in a whisper. “I can’t even begin to tell you how . . . sorry I am.”

  “About what, exactly?” I asked, a sharp edge to my voice.

  He looked confused by the question, although I couldn’t imagine why. “Everything,” he said.

  “Everything. That’s almost as useless as saying nothing. I really want to know, Nick. Tell me. Specifically. What are you sorry about?”

  “That I fell in love with you. That it ended my friendship with Clinton. That we were not together in the end. Carolyn . . .” He stopped for a beat. “Like I said. Everything.”

  26.

  October 31, 1985–January 1986

  Nick called me the day after his Mischief Night declaration of love. It was Halloween, which was why when he reached me on our home phone, I was trying on a costume, deciding whether I could actually perform at a downtown club dressed like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

  “I’ve been beating myself up since we said goodbye, and I wanted to apologize.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just stick to the plan and forget it ever happened.”

  “Yeah, I agree . . . And I know I have no business asking you this . . . but it would help me get there if we could talk it out a little bit. There’s so much that I wanted to say last night but didn’t, and what I did say came out differently than I’d intended.”

  We met a few hours later. We talked, but not for very long. The bulk of our time together that afternoon was spent in his bed.

  For that, I have no excuse. Of course, that’s not how it seemed to me at the time. A myriad of justifications propelled me to break my marriage vow. That I was starving for affection. That Clint and I were heading for divorce anyway. That Nick was the aggressor, and had he not pursued me, it would never have happened.

  That when there’s infidelity in a marriage, both parties are to blame.

  The truth, however, is black-and-white: I betrayed a man whom I had promised not to betray. And I did so with his best friend. Even setting forth the reasons I assuaged myself with at the time suggests a lack of contrition that is not true. What I did was wrong. I have no excuse.

  As we said our good-nights, I told Nick it was a onetime thing, something we’d both needed to get out of our systems. Now that we had, neither of us would speak of it again.

  I’m sure Nick didn’t believe me. Few women turned him down. But when he suggested we meet again the following week, I refused. Another invitation came after that, and I told him that I’d meant what I said.

  Nick and I didn�
��t speak again for several weeks. I imagined he was biding his time, waiting for my resolve to crack. Maybe he was thinking that I would make the next move when I realized I couldn’t live without him.

  Then, right before Thanksgiving, Clint told me that he’d made plans for the two of us to have dinner with Nick and the latest woman he was dating. Clint had met Carolyn previously and thought I’d like her too.

  Our double date was at a red-sauce Italian place a few blocks away from Nick’s apartment. Nick and Carolyn were waiting in the vestibule when we arrived. The men shook hands, and then Clint leaned over to kiss Carolyn’s cheek. When he did, Nick did the same with me. It was when we were in this embrace that I caught sight of Carolyn’s hands on my husband’s back.

  On her left ring finger was an engagement ring.

  “Anne, this is . . . well, I guess I might as well let the cat out of the bag right away,” Nick said. “This is my fiancée, Carolyn.”

  Clint looked at me, and I tried my best to smile.

  “When did all this happen?” Clint asked.

  “I proposed the other day. And for some reason that only Carolyn knows, she actually said yes. Then, because I didn’t want her to change her mind, I suggested we get married right away.”

  “So you two need to keep December 28 free for us,” Carolyn said.

  I was happy for Nick, or at least I tried to be. The fact that he’d moved on so quickly confirmed that I’d been right about him all along. He’d never loved me. I was something he had wanted for a moment, perhaps to prove something to himself, and he had forgotten about me as soon as a shiny, new thing came along.

  Most of all, I truly believed that his engagement meant our one-night stand was now firmly buried in the past. It seemed like one of those rare situations in which a tornado makes a direct strike, but miraculously no one gets hurt.

  Privately, Clint predicted that Nick would never walk down the aisle with Carolyn. “I don’t know what possessed him to ask her to marry him,” he told me. “The last time we talked about her, Nicky said he was thinking of ending it. But I guess it’s just Nicky being Nicky. He’s always fancied himself as this Great Gatsby character, and so he’s become enamored of the idea of this whirlwind romance that’s swept him off his feet. But trust me on this, in a few weeks, he’ll realize that marriage is forever and he’ll slam the brakes.”

  But when the last weekend of the year arrived, my husband stood beside Nick as his best man, toasting what Clint said would be one of the great love stories of our time. Along with the other guests, I sipped champagne in agreement.

  At some point during the reception, someone convinced Carolyn that it was tradition for her to dance with the best man. When she grabbed Clint’s hand and took him onto the dance floor, Nick asked me if he could have the honor.

  He held me at a respectful distance, and we began to move to Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings.” I ran through my head various things to say and settled on, “I think you and Carolyn are going to be very happy together.”

  He didn’t reply. In fact, other than saying “thank you” when the song ended, Nick and I didn’t exchange another word for nearly a month. Then, in late January, he called me at home at a time he knew Clint was in the office. He said it was important that we meet.

  It had been almost three months since our one and only time over the line. He was now a married man, and so I had every reason to believe that the urgency in his request was about something other than his desire to get me back into bed. About his novel, perhaps. Or maybe he needed marital advice. I convinced myself it could be many reasons, and that I was flattering myself with the thought that he still wanted me in that way when he now had Carolyn.

  Even so, I could have declined his invitation. That’s what I should have done. And I did, at least once, maybe twice. But he said it was important, and he needed only a few minutes of my time.

  So I agreed to meet him at a bar in midtown. He was already sitting in a booth in the back when I arrived. He must have just gotten there himself, because he didn’t have a drink, even water, in front of him.

  As soon as I sat down, he handed me a box in the distinctive Tiffany’s robin’s-egg blue.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  I slid the white satin ribbon off the corners. Inside was as beautiful a necklace as I’d ever seen. A platinum pendant with a large sapphire, surrounded by smaller diamonds.

  “I love you,” he said. “I thought about getting you an engagement ring, but I thought . . . considering that we’re both married, that would be unseemly.” He grinned sheepishly. “But I wanted to give you something to show you that I was serious. I tried being without you, Anne. You know I did. Hell, I married someone else to forget you. I’m sorry, but it didn’t work. I love you as much now, probably more, than I ever have. And I know that you love me. That means we should be together. We’re not doing anyone any favors by pretending otherwise. That includes Clinton and Carolyn, and it especially includes ourselves.”

  My first thought was that, despite the absence of alcohol on the table, he must be drunk. But when I looked at him more closely, he stared back at me, sober as a judge. My eyes fell to the pendant, if only to break away from his stare.

  Since then, I have taken solace in telling myself that I was not in love with Nick as much as I was in love with the feeling I had when I was with him. It was like a perfect drug high—a feeling you never want to end. I realize now that it’s the refrain of all addicts and adulterers.

  He must have paid for the hotel room before meeting me at the bar. I suspect he used the Hilton’s ATM to get the cash, which undoubtedly was how the police later knew to flash his picture to the desk clerks there. When we parted, unlike the prior time, I didn’t say that we’d never again be together. Instead, I told him that I loved him.

  The next time I spoke to Nick was the following day.

  That was when Clint brought him to our home and told me that Carolyn had accidentally drowned in the bathtub.

  27.

  Hours after I returned from the Four Seasons, Clint casually asked me what I’d done that day. In response, I stroked my stubbled scalp and lied to my husband for the last time in my life.

  “I just went for a really long walk in Central Park. It was something I had wanted to do while I still could. Just walk aimlessly and look at everything one last time.”

  “Is there anything else on that list?” he asked. “Something I can help with, maybe?”

  “No. My bucket is empty.” I laughed, realizing I had the metaphor wrong. “I guess I should say, my bucket list has been fulfilled. All I want to do now is love you and the girls as much as I can for as long as I can.”

  He nodded, as if to say he understood, but I could tell he had something else on his mind. Something he wasn’t quite sure how to ask me.

  Given the state of guilt and paranoia brought about by my meeting with Nick, I assumed Clint had found out how I’d spent my day. Or maybe he hadn’t but was aware of the deeper secret I’d kept from him and wanted it out in the open, once and for all.

  Over the years, there had been a handful of times that I’d thought Clint was on the brink of confrontation. Sometimes it came when we were arguing, and at others, in moments of tranquility. Circumstances in which he looked at me in such a way that could only mean he knew. More than that, actually. It told me that he had always known.

  There were other moments, however, when I was certain that my secret was safe. Those times when he looked at me with the starry eyes that made me feel more loved than I could have ever imagined. Ironically, it was in those instances that I most wanted to tell him. To relieve myself of the burden I’d been carrying, or at least ask him to share the weight with me.

  Neither of us had ever said a word about it.

  Clint’s silence might have been unintentional, a product of his not knowing. I often told myself that my silence was the right thing. That telling Clint would have been selfish. Or perhap
s we both kept our peace because we feared that the truth would break us, and so we caged it, as if my secret were a wild animal that could never be tamed and could only hurt our family.

  That night, contrary to what I’d told Clint, I realized I did have one last item on my bucket list: to set the record straight.

  I gathered the strength to make a final confession.

  “There’s something else that maybe we should talk about,” I said, my voice halting with each word. “Something, I don’t know, that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.”

  I’m certain that my tone and demeanor conveyed that what I was planning to impart was of the gravest concern—if only because that was the expression I saw on Clint’s face as I spoke.

  At least at first. But as I fumbled to form the words to confess my greatest sin, Clint broke into a wide grin.

  “I know what you’re going to say, but there’s really no need.”

  Of course, he didn’t. Or at least if he did, he was trying to trick me into thinking he didn’t with some comic relief.

  “Is that so?”

  “Absolutely. There is only one thing that matters to me now that you could possibly say, so that has to be what’s so important. Because if it were something else, you’d know it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Yeah? What do you think it is?” I said through a smile, my way of letting him know that I had dropped the weightier subject that had started us down this path.

  “With the caveat that reading your mind has never been my strong suit, I would say that you’re worried that I won’t be able to go on without you.”

  When he finished saying this, Clint was no longer smiling. In fact, he looked even sadder than I’d felt when I began this conversation.

  “And,” he continued, filling the awkward pause, “I’m sorry to tell you that the answer is that I won’t.” He forced another smile. “But on the positive side, I will go on because I don’t have any other choice, and because Ella and Charlotte need me to do that. Actually, I think the main reason that I’ll go on is that I know it’s what you want me to do, and even after you’re gone, I won’t want to disappoint you.”