For a second, the man stared at Sam. Then, as the other men at the bar erupted into hoots and laughter, he removed, with great delicacy, Sam’s hands from his shoulders, stood up, took off his hat, and said, “Ma’am, I believe you have me confused with somebody else.”
Sam’s eyes widened, and she gave the man a smile that had the grace to be abashed and that confirmed Will’s suspicion, from their phone conversation, that Sam Denham-Drew was a little out there but was overall a good egg. Gesturing toward Will with one red-nailed hand, she said, in a further demonstration of good-eggedness, “Sir, I was playing a little joke on my friend here, pretending I didn’t recognize him, and I am mortally sorry if it embarrassed you. I can be thoughtless.”
The man, and every other person in the restaurant, looked over at Will, and, feeling suddenly scrawny and overgroomed, Will stood and gave the man a forlorn thumbs-up.
“Me as him, huh?” said the man, chuckling. “That is funny.”
“See?” said Sam to Will, as though the whole display were part of some conversation they’d been having. “Funny!”
“Hilarious,” said Will.
When Will put out his right hand to shake Sam’s, she batted it away and grabbed his left.
“Ha! No ring!”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Up close, Sam’s face was pretty in a surprisingly ordinary way, bare, apart from the lipstick, snub-nosed, pale and freckled, like eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg.
“Unless,” she said, “you’re one of the ones who refuses to wear one?”
“I’m one of the ones who refuses to wear one because he’s not married.”
“God, I hate those guys,” seethed Sam. “Expect your wife to sport an ‘I’m taken’ diamond that can be seen from space but won’t wear jackitty shit yourself.”
Before he could catch himself, Will laughed.
“What?” said Sam.
“You’re just so—mad.”
“I know,” said Sam, sighing. “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m full of rage.”
“Will you hit me if I ask you if you want to sit down?”
Sam appeared to consider this, then wrinkled her nose and said, “Nah, I’ll sit.”
Will walked around the table and pulled out a chair for her. She stabbed a finger in his direction. “Don’t even start with the gentlemanly crap,” she said. “I’m in a vulnerable place.”
“Sit the hell down,” said Will.
“That’s better.”
A teenaged female server in a T-shirt with a pink pig face on it and the words HOPE YOU’RE BIG ON PIG walked over. Her hair was dyed a sooty, shineless black. Will would’ve bet money that she hated having to wear that T-shirt. Will waited for Sam to order a drink and was relieved when she asked for a Diet Coke with lemon.
“The lemon’s not an affectation,” she told Will. “I really like it better that way.”
“I believe you,” said Will, and ordered a ginger ale. As the server walked away, Will saw that the other end of the pig was on the back of her shirt. “I think I was expecting you to get bourbon,” he told Sam. “Possibly a double.”
“Because of the rage thing,” said Sam, nodding. She mimicked throwing a drink in his face. “A ‘Take that, asshole!’ kind of drink.”
“And because of the smoking,” admitted Will, with a grin.
“Oh, I only smoke on the phone,” said Sam. “It’s one of my rules.”
“I see.”
“And when I drink, which I do from time to time, I hate to say it, but I lean toward the pink and frilly,” she said and quickly added, “But I know you don’t drink at all.”
“I do, actually,” said Will. “Not a lot, but sometimes.” He smiled. “Not in the middle of the day when I have to turn around and drive two hundred miles, but if you’d ordered that double bourbon, I would’ve had no choice.”
“Can’t stand to be outdone by a girl?” asked Sam. “Or can’t let a lady drink alone?”
“Both,” said Will.
“Whoo!” said Sam, snapping her fingers. “Cat would hate it that I know you drink and she doesn’t. Know, I mean. Not drink. Which she does. Not like a fish or anything, but if you were married to Jason, you’d throw back a glass of wine now and then, too.”
“I’m sure I would.”
“You said you’d tell me about Pen’s kid. So tell.”
“Her name is Augusta. She’s about to turn five.”
“Is she yours?” asked Sam, clasping her hands pleadingly under her chin.
“Nope,” said Will. “I’ve never even met her.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sam snorted and rolled her eyes. “Like that means anything. Like fathers who have never met their kids aren’t a dime a stinkin’ dozen. Stinkin’ deadbeats.”
“Rage, again,” observed Will.
“Sorry,” said Sam.
“Maybe you should just run over Joe with your car,” said Will. “Get it out of your system.”
“I just might,” said Sam. She folded her hands primly on the table. “Pray, continue. About Pen and her kid. She’s married, I take it.”
“No.”
“Oh, no, she’s a widow.” Sam pressed her fingers to her lips, a reckless move, Will thought, considering her lipstick.
“Not a widow,” he said.
Sam’s eyes widened in amazement. “Well, I’ll be damned. Divorced? Little Miss Perfect is divorced?”
“That’s not a name Pen really embraces,” said Will, “believe it or not. And no.”
The server came back and handed them menus. “We have a couple of specials today.”
Impatiently, Sam waved her away with the menu, as though she were a fly. The server gave Will a look with her black-rimmed eyes that said What the fuck? as clearly as if she’d said it out loud.
“Sorry,” he said. “Would you mind coming back in a few minutes?”
She lifted one painfully thin shoulder, mumbled, “So be it,” spun around on her heel, and left.
“Whoa-ho-ho-ho, Nelly! I am stunned. I am thunderstruck,” said Sam, her jaw dropping open. After several seconds, she closed her mouth and said, breathlessly, “Our Penelope has joined the ranks of the unwed mothers. Holy frijole.”
“He wanted to marry her,” said Will and immediately felt stupid for defending Pen, who didn’t need defending, although he couldn’t resist adding, “She wasn’t interested,” which wasn’t the complete truth but which felt pretty good to say, nevertheless.
“Cat would fall. Over. And die,” said Sam and did a dance in her chair.
“Speaking of Cat,” prompted Will.
“All in good time, my friend,” said Sam with a laugh. “We haven’t even ordered yet.”
They both ordered the pork barbecue, a.k.a. “enough pig to pop your buttons,” which caused Sam to merrily point out that she didn’t have any buttons, standing up and turning around to reveal their absence along with a generous expanse of freckled back, which caused the server to appear to contemplate stabbing herself in the jugular with her pencil.
“Take your time,” said Will to the server, in an attempt to cheer her up. “We’re not in a hurry.” It was the only thing he could think of to say.
The server didn’t even look at Will, but lifted two listless fingers in a “V” that certainly did not stand for victory. “Your meals come with your choice of two vegetables,” she said.
Will ordered fried okra and slaw. Sam ordered French fries and macaroni and cheese. “Mac and cheese,” she said, clapping her hands. “My favorite vegetable.”
“Got it,” said the server in a voice of bottomless despair.
When she had slumped away, Will said, “Okay, we ordered.”
Sam began to talk about Cat.
AS SOON AS HE HAD PULLED OUT OF THE BARBECUE JOINT PARKING lot, Will called Pen, who answered with lightning speed and by saying, “How is our girl?”
Will smiled. “How” not “where”—even in the middle of their burning quest to find Cat, “how” came first. That is just s
o you of you, Will thought in Pen’s direction. He wished he had a better answer for her.
“Still funny, according to Sam,” said Will, deciding to start with the positives. “Still ‘the cutest little fairy princess person in the whole world.’”
“I assume that’s a direct quote?”
“The entire thing was something like, ‘How could you and Pen have let the cutest little fairy princess person in the whole world marry that box of rocks?’”
“We tried! We did everything we could, and it only made things worse,” protested Pen. “Did you tell her that?”
“I think the question was mostly rhetorical. When I pointed out that Cat hardly ever made up her mind, but when she did, she was about as easy to stop as an elephant stampede, Sam knew what I was talking about.”
“So: funny, stubborn, fairy princess,” said Pen nervously. “All good, but there’s more to it, right? I can tell by your voice.”
“Well, yeah,” said Will, “I guess there is.”
“Tell me that Jason wasn’t hurting her.”
“No. Nothing like that,” said Will.
“Thank God,” said Pen vehemently. “I mean, I didn’t really think he was, but thank God all the same.”
It felt suddenly wrong to be talking to Pen but looking out the windshield at the highway with its ruffle of flimsy trees and occasional cataracts of kudzu on either side, its green signs and billboards (DON’T LET DARWIN MAKE A MONKEY OUT OF YOU said one). For a moment, Will considered heading north, driving without stopping until he got to Philadelphia so that he could sit in the same room with Pen as he told her what Sam had told him about Cat’s life since they’d last seen her. Not that it was an unusually tragic story. It wasn’t unusually anything, really, and this had struck Will, as he knew it would strike Pen, as the saddest thing about it: their bright star of a friend spending the last six years living a life of ordinary disappointment.
“Tell me,” said Pen, sighing, “plain and straight.”
“She didn’t like living where she lived,” said Will.
“Oh, no. Was it awful?”
“Not by most standards. Strip malls, subdivisions, chain restaurants, typical midwestern suburban stuff.”
“Hell, by Cat standards, in other words.”
“‘Soul-killing’ was what Sam said she called it.”
“Except, you know what?” said Pen quickly. “It didn’t have to be. You know how it is: places are places, but more than anything, they’re the people you’re there with. So I’m guessing that means she and Jason weren’t happy together.”
She said this thing about places as though it were self-evident, when it was something Will had never even thought about before. He wasn’t sure she was right, not universally right. Certainly, he knew New Yorkers who didn’t really believe life happened anywhere else or people in Asheville who couldn’t imagine living without hills and co-op groceries and a shiny downtown like something out of a movie. In truth, he suspected that his own mother was one of those people for whom place in and of itself mattered. But, as he considered all of this, Will realized that he agreed with Pen: there were people he could live with anywhere and have that place be home.
“Will?”
“Sorry. Driving.”
“Oh, good. Safety first, sonny boy. I need you in one piece.”
Will smiled at this. “Getting back to your question about Cat and Jason. I think Jason was pretty happy. Cat wasn’t. Sam said she fell out of love a couple of years after they moved to Ohio.”
“Nobody falls out of love,” scoffed Pen. “They just realize they were never in love in the first place.”
“Nobody?”
“Nope. Nobody, nobody. Especially if they’re Cat and they’re married to Jason.”
Will laughed.
“I hate thinking of Cat unhappily married,” said Pen. “Cat hated being unhappy. Why didn’t she just leave him?”
“Well, she did,” Will reminded her.
“I mean earlier. What kept her there? They didn’t have kids, right?”
“That brings us to the next thing Sam told me.”
Sam had cried at this part of the conversation. When Will had gone to the bar and gotten her a fresh napkin to dry her eyes with, she’d only cried harder and ordered him to “Stop being gallant, goddammit.”
“It’s like what you said,” Sam had told him, once she’d settled down. “When she really made up her mind, Cat was unstoppable. Getting pregnant became a project with a capital ‘P.’ Nothing mattered more. Maybe nothing else mattered, period.”
“They had trouble?”
“It just kept not happening. Or happening and then un-happening. Over and over. It wore her to a frazzle, physically, mentally, spiritually. I hated watching it.”
“Was it because of the epilepsy?”
“They didn’t think so, but they didn’t really know. That was the worst of it, not knowing why. She and Jason tried everything, spent thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, on in vitro. And then there were the charts and the Internet support groups and the herbs—chaste tree and cohosh and whatever the hell else—and the acupuncture and the homeopathy. I think she would’ve tried witchcraft, if there’d been a witch around to show her how, which there wasn’t where we live.” Sam had taken a long sip of Diet Coke and eyed Will. “You probably have witches where you live.”
“Entirely possible,” Will had said.
Sam had begun to tear up again, then, waving her white napkin in front of her eyes as if she was either fanning them dry or surrendering.
“I remember the day—and this was just less than a year ago—when she came over to my house to tell me that the doctor had advised them to give up and start looking into adoption. ‘Some things just aren’t meant to be,’ he had told her, like he knew. Like he was God or Fate or whatever. Cat was completely racked with sobs, this little tiny thing in a flowered dress bent over double. Broke my heart. I just gathered her up in my arms like a puppy.”
“I’m glad she had you there,” said Will.
When he told Pen about this, she said, “I wish we’d been there, Will. My poor, poor, beloved girl. Thank God for Sam.” Then she said, “I’m trying to think of how to say something without sounding cold-hearted.”
“Like maybe it was nature’s way of saying that a guy like Jason has no business trying to transmit his genes in the first place?”
“Ouch!” said Pen. “Not that cold-hearted. Geez, Will. I was thinking more along the lines of: Why would Cat work so hard to have a baby with Jason, when she didn’t even like him that much?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, I said the same thing to Sam. And she had apparently, at some point, not when Cat was bent double with sobbing—she was clear about that—asked Cat a similar question. Although what she said was something like, ‘Do you want a baby so much because you think it will save your marriage?’”
“Bully for Sam. And what did Cat say?”
“Sam said Cat gave her a look like the thought had never occurred to her, and she said, ‘This isn’t about me and Jason. It’s about being a mother. I’ve been stockpiling love for my baby for years. You can’t even imagine how much.’ ”
“Oh,” said Pen. “That’s a little disturbing, right?”
“Kind of makes you wonder where Jason fit in.”
“I think I need to put that away and think about it later,” said Pen. After a silent few seconds, she said, “And then, on top of everything, her dad dies. It must have shattered her.”
“It sounds that way,” said Will.
Pen growled in frustration, “How could this have happened? When I think about the Cat we knew—. I mean, who ever gave off more light than Cat? Her future should have been shining; it should have been resplendent. Or at the very least, fun. I will never, never, in a trillion years understand why she married Jason.”
“I’d like to know,” Sam had asked Will at one point in their conversation, “what’s your take on why Cat married Jason?”
<
br /> “Who knows?” Will had said. “He was definitely crazy about her. I thought it was a little creepy even, the way he worshipped her, all the presents and the surprise trips and showing up wherever she happened to be. Borderline stalking is what Pen and I thought, but Cat loved it. So maybe that was it. Except that he wasn’t the first guy to fall for Cat that way, and he probably wouldn’t have been the last.”
“She is inherently adorable in every sense of the word,” Sam had declared.
“Exactly. But he didn’t just adore her. He deferred to her in everything. He asked her advice about any decision he had to make: what to order for dinner, how to vote. It’s true that she was smarter than he was, and he was smart enough to know that. Still, it was kind of nauseating to watch. What amazed us was how Cat ate it up.”
“Now, don’t get mad at me for saying this,” said Sam, “but maybe it felt good because maybe no one had ever treated her that way before.”
“We listened to Cat,” said Will. “We always wanted to hear what she had to say.”
“Of course, you did! I do, too. Her take on things is always funny and kind of weirdly brilliant. But I’m talking about asking her advice, looking to her for wisdom and suchlike. That’s different, right?”
Will had sat and considered this for a long time. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he said. “But the thing is that, back then, Cat was, I don’t want to say ‘careless’—”
“Impulsive?” suggested Sam. “Flighty?”
“Not a lot of looking before she leaped. She got herself into some tough situations that way. So, if we didn’t trust her judgment that much, it was probably because she didn’t use it very often.” Will felt bad saying this, but it was true.
“You want to know what I think?” Sam had raised one very pale eyebrow very, very high.
Falling Together Page 20
