The Best of Enemies

by Jen Lancaster

  Luckily, Sars granted me a reprieve.

  “’S okay.” She shrugged, adjusting her giant horn-rims. “We can play whatever you want.”

  Sars was the first female I ever met who could keep up with my brothers and me. Sure, she had that doll collection, and, yes, her mom bought her a lot of frilly stuff, but she never forced any of it on me, and despite her feminine proclivities, she could frontload a jump on a dirt bike better than any of us. (Pro Tip: you compress the suspension in order to keep the throttle steady before hitting the lip of the ramp.) Sars caught air like nobody’s business, largely because she understood the geometry behind the sport. She always launched herself at precisely the right second.

  She was brilliant and fearless back then. She’s still brilliant now, but much more circumspect.

  Of course, Sars always said that I was the real adrenaline junkie between the two of us. She claimed I was attracted to anything that made my pulse race.

  I’m not sure that’s completely true.

  The simple explanation is I don’t care to sit still. I can’t stand to be bored. I’d rather climb Kilimanjaro than laze on the sand with a fruity drink. Give me a campsite over a beach with cabana boys any day of the week. My comfort zone is discomfort. I feel the exact same way about what I do for a living, too. Would I prefer to have kept my first job out of college, covering the Home and Garden beat before going home to my cozy lakefront apartment? Or would I rather report on what it’s like to sleep in fighting holes, with nothing but dirt walls as protection from mortars?

  Fighting holes. No question about it.

  Life’s too short to be cautious. That’s why I pursued a pilot’s license when my peers were working on their learners’ permits. Was I the only girl in my class who didn’t have a date for prom? Yes. But was I also the only girl who could execute a perfect aerial barrel roll?

  Would I have rather slow danced to Ace of Bass with some high school junior who believed I owed him my innocence because he sprang for a tux? Or felt the rush of soloing over Lake Michigan for the first time?

  Honestly?

  Maybe I’d have attended prom if any of the boys I liked saw me as a date and not just a pal, but given the benefit of twenty years of hindsight, I believe I did what was best for the long run.

  Bobby, one of my brothers, credits Tom Cruise for all my life’s choices.

  When other kids were watching Punky Brewster, we were wearing out the family copy of Top Gun. To this day, Bobby, Teddy, John-John, and I can quote every single line from memory. Before you ask, yes, my mother had a Kennedy fixation. Among other things, I’ve never forgiven her for saddling me with the middle name Bouvier. I’m not often one to express myself in text language, but OMGWTF? Bouvier? Want to know who thinks the name Bouvier is absolutely hysterical? Every girl in middle school, save for Sars.

  What I’m saying is that after hundreds of viewings of Top Gun, I perpetually feel the need for speed. So, when the F-16s fly their sorties overhead, I’m never afraid. I’m jealous. Wish it was me on that hop.

  My brother John-John married a total girl named Heather. They live in Atlanta where my brother develops software and they have three-point-five children. (She’s pregnant. Again.) She spends her days redecorating their museum-quality home. Exactly how many shades of beige are there? Seems as though Heather’s found quite a number of them.

  I’m forced to exchange pleasantries with Heather when I check in with John. I tell her about the roadside bombs the Ordnance Disposal Team have been defusing along the main drag, and she tries to relate by expressing her frustration over slow-moving SUVs in the carpool lane.

  As though her experience was somehow commensurate.

  During one assignment, I was embedded with an all-male Airborne infantry unit and had to hike six kilometers through the burning desert to take a shower at the camp where women were stationed. Heather empathized, explaining how John-John wouldn’t let her put a jetted tub in the guest room bath.

  I just can’t with this one. I really can’t.

  Bears a mention that girls are defined less by age and more by state of mind. Last winter, Bobby dated Lindy, a woman fifteen years his junior. Even though Lindy wore precariously pointed shoes and had a whole complicated hair-straightening routine, she also medaled in the X Games, designed and manufactured her own line of custom snowboards, and for fun, she’d scuba dive in dangerous hotspots like the Blue Hole in Egypt on the Red Sea. Wasn’t a trace of girl on her.

  Sadly, Lindy was too mature for Bobby and they broke up shortly after I met her.

  That reminds me, I owe Bobby a call.

  It’s two thirty p.m. here, so in Aspen, Bobby should just be rolling in from après-après-ski about now. After almost ten years of college—and a dubious claim of having graduated—he moved to Colorado to give snowboard lessons. He’s forty and he still lives with roommates. Yet I can’t disparage his lifestyle because he’s the happiest person on earth.

  The Internet’s cooperating here today—service is sporadic—so I’m able to connect fairly quickly via Skype.

  Bobby’s wind-burnt face fills my screen and he smiles with his whole soul. Bobby’s hair is much longer than the last time I saw him, and the very tips are still blond from his summer spent bartending on Martha’s Vineyard. “’S’up, G. I. Jack?”

  “Living the dream,” I reply. No sarcasm here—I am living my dream. “How’s the powder at Buttermilk?”

  “Fresh to death, baby!”

  “Nice.”

  “They keepin’ you busy?” he asks.

  I could make (and to an extent have made) a career of answering that question alone. There’s a saying that war entails long, hot, dusty stretches of boredom, punctuated by brief bursts of unimaginable terror. Hate how true this is. A few years ago, an AP reporter was traveling in the armored Land Rover two cars up from my position in the convoy. Had the Afghan missile been a single degree off its trajectory, he would have been the one to cover my passing, instead of the reverse.

  No easy day.

  Sometimes, the tedium here is palpable, but I know firsthand that monotony’s better than the alternative. I’m always enthralled by the way the servicemen and – women attempt to fill the void. They’re pros at distracting themselves from the sheer loneliness of being so far removed from everyone/everything they love. I keep a professional distance, but the troops here remind me of so many summers ago after my mom was gone, back in the days when my brothers and I were in charge of amusing ourselves while Dad was at work.

  Yesterday, I witnessed two warriors battle almost to the death . . . in a potato sack race. This event was immediately followed by a competition to see who could keep a stick upright, using nothing but their foreheads to balance as they spun in circles, growing more and more dizzy with each rotation. As for the Second MEB, Second Battalion, Third Marines’ epic remake of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”? Catch the YouTube video—my words won’t do it justice.

  Never an easy day, but sometimes a good one.

  There are other days when these same merry jokesters will spend ten hours defusing an insurgent’s booby trap. These bombs contain confetti, which brings to mind birthday parties and glitter, and not the nails, bolts, and screws that absolutely tear victims to shreds. The dichotomy of any given twenty-four-hour period fascinates me and I’m in awe of our troops’ strength and commitment. Whether or not I believe this or any war is justified is irrelevant, because it’s my honor to chronicle every aspect of our soldiers’ heroic service.

  I probably don’t need to mention that my love for these servicemen and servicewomen is inversely proportional to my distaste for girls.

  But I don’t say any of this to Bobby. Instead, I respond, “Busy enough.” I’ll elaborate when I see him in person. Sometimes he needs me in front of him to temper the harsh realities I report. He’s truly tenderhearted. A decade ago,
he found a litter of kittens dumped by the side of the road. He fed them with an eyedropper every four hours until they were grown enough to feed themselves. Bobby held on to every one of those cats, rejecting each qualified adoption offer. “Where are you and the crew heading after ski season this year?”

  My brother stays in Aspen until the snow melts, and then he and the cats head to summer gigs in that year’s playground-du-jour for the beautiful people. Given what happened with our mom, her parents set us all up with a small trust fund. Mimi and Poppy pretty much dropped out of our lives afterward, so this gesture was the least they could do. The amount’s fairly negligible, but it’s enough supplemental cash to keep Bobby from ever having to wear a so-called monkey suit and work in an office.

  I’ve never touched my share of the trust. Don’t want it.

  Bobby’s lived all over—Nantucket, the Cape, Southampton, Ibiza, Montenegro, the Cayman Islands, and St. Barts, to name a few. He’s always hanging out with celebrities in his line of work. Reese Witherspoon is a pal—apparently she and her husband fell in love with his twist on the Bloody Mary last summer. He says the trick is to add fresh ground wasabi and ginger, which turns a stodgy old brunch standby into something indescribably delicious. He calls his concoction the “Bobby Mary.” His inside scoop on the rich and famous is wasted on me, but his lifestyle brings him joy, so I’m glad.

  Bobby says, “My summer plan? It’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Top Gun quotes will never lose their charm.

  Bobby always elevates my mood far more than any prescription SSRI ever could and I find myself grinning back at him. “No, Maverick, really—where are you off to next?”

  Bobby suddenly becomes serious. “Gotta level with you, Jack. This life of skiing bumps all day and partying all night is taking a toll on me. I’m finally settling down and going corporate.” He holds a straight face long enough for my heart to skip a beat over such a drastic change, and then he can’t contain himself.

  We both laugh until our stomachs hurt. Bobby seeking salaried employment is as likely as me slapping on a pair of panty hose and hosting high tea.

  He’s wiping the tears from his eyes when he remembers something. He roots around on a coffee table where Jean-Claude Kitty (brother to Tomba-Cat and Bode Meowler) perches on top of some manner of detritus. Bobby gently moves his cat and digs until he finds what he’s seeking. He holds up a newspaper article in front of his webcam. “Check it out.”

  While I give him points for actually reading a newspaper, it’s too blurry for me to see on my end.

  “You understand I can’t actually read that, right? Summarize, Bob.”

  “The story’s about Trip. Spoiler alert—he just got richer. The article says his returns are topping off in the twenty percent range.”

  “No surprise there.” (Save for that Bobby understands what “topping off in the twenty percent range” means.)

  Sars’s husband—James Preston McArthur Chandler III, aka “Trip”—is no ordinary businessman. A Fortune magazine reporter once said that Trip “possesses the bravado of Donald Trump and the swagger of Jay Z.” To me? Swagger’s not a selling point. I personally prefer Toby Keith—he’s done so much for the troops. But because Trip’s such a force of nature, Wall Street absolutely worships him and the media follows suit. Last year, People magazine included him on their annual World’s Most Beautiful roundup.

  Trip’s a dynamic presence, perpetually swanning about in one of his hundreds of pastel cashmere sweaters. He always looks as though he just stepped off a yacht . . . generally having just stepped off his yacht, The Lone Shark. Chandler Financial Group, CFG if you’re in the biz, practically has a license to print money, despite the current financial climate. I’ve always speculated that his success stems from listening to Sars back when she helped him establish the company. But he’s far too arrogant to give her the props she deserves and she’s too modest to request it.

  Honestly?

  I’m the only one not riding the Trip Love Train, but I keep that information to myself. Sars radiates contentment whenever I visit her at Steeplechase Manor (yes, her home has a name), so I bite back my scorn and mistrust on the rare occasion we’re all together.

  But my feelings toward Trip are a benign contempt. At least he’s always pleasant. My dislike for him doesn’t keep me awake at night. Plus, I do my best not to fight with people anymore because I’ve found it’s never worth it.

  Working as a war reporter has definitely refined my perspective on conflict. The entire news cycle is dictated by rivalries, whether it’s the box scores from the Midtown Classic or the number of gang members shot on the south and west side in my home base of Chicago on any given summer weekend.

  My theory is that sometimes enemies are beneficial because that relationship forces each party to improve. Just look at Maverick and Iceman; I maintain they were both better pilots due to said rivalry.

  When I was in sixth grade, Miss Meyer assigned us our first real essays. The assignment was to write five pages on anything we wanted. Most of my other classmates penned themes about dogs or their soccer team or what they did over summer vacation. Sars turned in a theme called “The Benifits of a Single World Curency.” Funny, but even then she had a head for business, if not for spelling.

  Anyway, I explored the War of the Currents in my essay, which refers to the feud between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. I speculated that their mutual hatred drove their success. Personally, I joined Team Tesla the second I read how Edison electrocuted an elephant using high-voltage AC to prove how dangerous it was. (Thanks for the lightbulb, pal, but you’re still deplorable.)

  There are so many famous rivalries in history, all of them with a story I’d love to have told. Shedding light on the roots of conflict is what drove me to journalism in the first place. What would it have been like to cover the story of Alexander Hamilton versus Aaron Burr? How fascinating to have been a beat reporter when rivals settled tiffs with duels.

  Or what if I’d been around when Stalin faced off against Trotsky over control of the USSR? This enmity changed the face of Soviet politics. (Arguably not a net positive.) Better example—how much more skilled of a chess player was Kasparov after playing against Deep Blue? Or Ali and Frazier—their animosity forever upped the standards in boxing.

  Or what about Sammy Hagar against David Lee Roth?

  Perhaps Van Halen versus Van Hagar isn’t quite the same in terms of rivalry and competition, but some fortunate reporter at Rolling Stone wrote career-enhancing column inches on that particular battle of the bands.

  Documenting the conflict between enemies lights my fire. Gets me out of my sleeping bag in the morning. I wish I had a true and worthy nemesis, an Edison to my Tesla, a Jobs to my Gates, a Nixon to my Frost, driving me ever forward in the pursuit of being the best journalist I can be.

  Nope.

  Figures that the number one slot on my personal enemy list is Kitty “Flipping” Carricoe, a girl to the nth degree.

  Had I not hated her so much, I might not have been so eager to take my first overseas assignment. I should give her due credit for being so damned contemptible. If I hadn’t left the States, I’d have never embedded, thus I’d never have been nominated for a Pulitzer for international reporting or have written and sold my memoir Girl O’War. (Wasn’t keen on the title, but my editor insisted. After forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, I admit he was right.)

  I’m about to reply to Bobby when someone leans over his shoulder. The first thing I see is tanned cleavage, encased in a snug T-shirt featuring a beribboned, cartoon cat face. She plops down in Bobby’s lap, obscuring most of his face with her ample Hello, Kitty-covered rack.

  “Ohmigod, is that your sister?! Hi! Hi, hi, hi! I’m Melody, Bobby’s girlfriend!” she says. “I totes can’t wait to meet in person! He’s told me a scrillion things about
you!”

  Bobby narrows his eyes. “Nope, not me, never said anything like that. In fact, Jack, I don’t like you. I don’t like you because you’re dangerous.”

  I reply, “That’s right, Iceman. I am dangerous.”

  Then he chomps at me Val Kilmer–style and we both crack up again.

  The best thing about my relationship with my brothers is the shorthand we’ve established over the decades. We don’t need a lot of words to connect with our shared history. One snap of my brother’s teeth brings forth the recollection of a hundred games of street hockey, long treks through the Skokie Lagoons, and sitting side by side on the old couch in the dusty family room, surrounded by a never-ending stream of fat Labrador retrievers, watching our favorite movie for the umpteenth time.

  And, if I delve deeper, which I’m not often wont to do, the wordless memory of how we were there for one another in the years after we lost our mother. Without her, we were unmoored, rattling around in our Saint Louis home like loose marbles in a box until my dad brought us together with what we considered the greatest movie ever made.

  Once we finally accepted she was gone forever, Dad took the job in Illinois, which was for the best. We couldn’t move past our loss in the old place. My mother was everywhere—in the bright pink flowers still lining the front walk, in the way her spicy perfume lingered in her closet long after it was emptied, in how every knickknack had been arranged just so. Moving to Evanston was how we excised her ghost.

  “I don’t get it,” Melody says, interrupting my reverie.

  “We’re quoting lines from Top Gun,” I explain, attempting to remain patient for Bobby’s sake. She seems puzzled, so I elaborate. “The movie? Came out in 1986?”

  She giggles. “Well, no wonder I’m confused! I wasn’t born until 1993!”

  Bobby’s expression turns plaintive and even though we’re seven thousand miles away, a single glance tells me he’s pleading for me to take it easy on this one. He must have a soft spot for her, too.