Friday Mornings at Nine

by Marilyn Brant

  “In other words, you finally figured out who you wanna be when you grow up, and it’s a chef,” Tamara said, grinning.

  “Yes.” Bridget nodded emphatically. “Yes, it is.” With all her heart and soul, yes! Was she too old? Was it too late for her? God, please make it still be possible.

  Jennifer gazed with affection at their sweet friend. “Then don’t let anything stop you,” she said quietly.

  Even Tamara said, seriously this time, “If anyone could do it, it’d be you.”

  “Thanks, you guys.” Bridget wiped away a small drop of wetness that had somehow collected in the corner of her eye. Why was she always so emotional? Of course, admitting her big dream aloud was only the first step. “I just have to break it to Graham now.”

  “You don’t think he’ll be supportive?” Jennifer asked.

  Bridget shrugged. “There have been a lot of changes for us this year already. Me going back to work. Evan’s food issues. The stress of us not being on the same page in our relationship.” She thought of the post-Hallowiener Party, their blowup and their reconciliation. The fact that they had both been open and willing to work on their issues had set their marriage on the road to recovery, but Bridget didn’t want to push it with Graham. She didn’t want to heap on more changes when he was already making a bunch of compromises on her behalf. “I’m sure he’ll think that I’ve got enough on my plate just trying to make gluten-free dishes for Evan. And, in a way, he’d be right. They are a challenge.”

  “Just not the only cooking challenge you want,” Jennifer discerned.

  Bridget nodded. And though she didn’t tell her friends this, she couldn’t help but worry that Graham’s recent attentiveness was just a temporary thing. A knee-jerk reaction to the perceived threat of another man. That Graham might only be willing to take these few cursory steps as a way to thwart Dr. Luke, but he wouldn’t necessarily stand for any real test. Any major change in their family’s lifestyle.

  “You might be surprised, Bridget,” Tamara suggested, oddly mysterious. “You’ve really been there for your family all these years. I think they know that. I think each of them might be more willing to support you than you realize.”

  Jennifer shot Tamara a curious look when she said that, which Bridget didn’t notice because she was too preoccupied wrestling the residual jabs of guilt she felt. Though Tamara’s statement was awfully kind, it wasn’t strictly true. Bridget couldn’t forget she’d had months of wayward fantasies and, even though she had never once strayed in her marriage, she knew her “moments” with Dr. Luke had been genuine. That, no matter what she tried to tell herself, her attraction and attachment to the dentist wasn’t purely based in “friendship.”

  “I hope so,” Bridget murmured.

  Tamara then turned her attention to Jennifer, who seemed to be weaving in and out of a long and dark procession of thoughts. “You’ve held out on us long enough, Jennifer,” she said, showing uncharacteristically high restraint despite her small, sly grin. “I was half hoping you’d call for an emergency coffee meeting this past Monday to tell us what the hell happened at your reunion last weekend. I didn’t want to pester you, but I’ve been dying of curiosity here.”

  Jennifer bobbed her head. She knew by coming today that she was opening herself up to questions. She’d answer the ones she could. Or at least most of them. Probably.

  So, she told them about going to the CPU party. About seeing David again and about crossing paths with the others in her college group of friends.

  “I was looking for closure,” she told them quietly. “And I got it.”

  Tamara raised a thin brow. “And?”

  “And a part of me is embarrassed. That I’d thought about David for so long and wasted so much time pining over the end of our relationship. Wondering for years ‘what if’ scenarios—what if he’d never left me or what if I’d somehow gotten him back?” She paused. “The truth is, he did leave me, and that said something about him, and about his character, that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I also finally understood what a player he is. I guess, on a number of levels, I always knew that, but we were both so young back then. Some players mature over time. Grow out of the worst of it. David only became more skilled. And more desperate. Seeing is believing, I know. But I didn’t want to acknowledge what I saw for a long time either.”

  “Because it made you feel foolish,” Tamara said, understanding. It had been a double ego blow for their friend, she realized. Not only had Jennifer been abandoned by a guy she had been imagining a future with, but she had been blindsided—something that made any smart girl feel stupid. Women like Jennifer and Tamara would craft almost any excuse not to feel this way about themselves, even to the point of complete self-delusion. Tamara surmised that Bridget was less calculating by nature and, thus, fortunate in not suffering quite so much from this destructive trait.

  “What about Michael?” Bridget asked. “With David out of the picture, how are you feeling about your marriage now? Was it the right decision after all?”

  Jennifer swallowed. This was a valid question. The question that had continued to haunt her for months, in fact. Or years. “Bridget, I don’t know.” She kind of laughed. “And even I am starting to get sick of hearing myself say that. The reunion proved a number of things to me. David’s a jerk and always has been. People who were truly my friends still are. People who weren’t, well, they won’t be inviting me to friend them on Facebook anytime soon. The kinds of bad decisions I was vulnerable to making back then, I’m still vulnerable to now. And, above all, I’ll only hurt people I care about if I keep floating along with what others tell me I should want, and playing these passive-aggressive games with them.” She sighed. “See, it turns out that in my relationship with Michael, I’m the player. But I don’t want to be anymore.”

  Again, Tamara was the one who understood immediately and instinctively what Jennifer was saying. Wasn’t this a bit like Aaron’s accusation of her? That, in his opinion, she was the manipulative one? Only her marital scenario with Jon had mostly played itself out already, while Jennifer’s domestic drama with Michael was still in the rehearsal stages. Though eighteen years was a long fucking practice run.

  Bridget, by contrast, could not fully grasp this whole player conundrum and its implications. She did, however, sense how emotionally distraught their friend was, and she had recently witnessed the discord between Jennifer and Michael firsthand. She knew what it felt like to be at odds with one’s spouse. It made living together a distancing experience. More like bunking with an indifferent roommate than sharing a home with a loving husband. And that was really, really hard to deal with. Even for people like Jennifer, who weren’t overly emotional. Maybe especially then…because their intimate inner circle was that much smaller.

  “What are you going to do?” Bridget asked.

  Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t know that either. But I do know I owe it to Michael and the girls to do something.” Then, having had the conversational focus on her and her foibles for far longer than was comfortable, Jennifer wanted to turn the tide of attention elsewhere. She suspected she knew just how to do it.

  “How are things going for you?” she asked Tamara, very tempted to press their friend on the oversleeping issue, but suddenly not sure if she should push it. Perhaps Tamara would be more inclined to share deeply since she’d had an hour’s proof that both her friends weren’t living in idyllic marriages. But what if she wasn’t? She shot Tamara a distressed look.

  Bridget stabbed at her coffee cake and glanced between the other two women—unable to hide her concern for Jennifer over her marital uncertainties or her confusion about Tamara over her unusual degree of serenity. What was going on here?

  Tamara gulped a few sips of her latte and almost laughed. How often had she been accused of being overly dramatic? Of trying to upstage everyone in a discussion? Yeah. A helluva lot. So, here she was, resisting all urges to blurt out any histrionics, downplaying something huge, and what happened? Sh
e was getting pleading looks from Jennifer and what-the-fuck looks from Bridget. Both of them saying in nonverbal SOS, “Say something!”

  Okay, fine. She’d say it. She could phrase almost anything for shock value, if she tried. But with this news, she didn’t have to try.

  “So, Jon and I had a long talk a couple of nights ago. We’re getting divorced.”

  “What?” Jennifer exclaimed, in about the loudest tone Tamara had ever heard her use, momentarily drowning out even the Bee Gees crooning “How Deep Is Your Love.”

  At the same time, Bridget dropped her forkful of coffee cake and the fork along with it. “Oh, my God, Tamara! What happened?”

  Ah, well that was kind of a long story, wasn’t it?

  It happened this way, Tamara explained:

  After several days in a row with Aaron (about which she admitted to her friends that, yes, they’d slept together but, no, she wasn’t yet prepared to divulge those intimate details), Tamara knew she would have to officially end things with Jon. And soon.

  Some people, she reasoned, might be able to go on living with their spouse after a deliberate act of infidelity, but Tamara wasn’t one of them. She, in fact, could only justify her unfaithfulness because she had determined that her marriage was over. She remained unwavering on this point.

  Jon returned on Tuesday. He had been gone only six days, five nights but, as she had discovered, a lot could happen in that time. Tamara gave him until Wednesday to get settled back into his usual routine, then she suggested carryout for dinner from his favorite restaurant.

  “The crispy duck is especially moist tonight,” he’d informed her, dipping a forkful into the plum sauce. He had a way of spreading out his stuff all over their dining room table, edging farther and farther into her space until she had to physically move to Benji’s old spot in order to have any elbow room. Normally, she found this annoying. That night, she was filled with a tremendous ache for him. For the pain she knew she would be inflicting. No matter how stale their relationship had become, they had weathered years of storms together and, in many ways, she was really grateful to Jon and proud of them both. This point of pure appreciation was, she felt, where she needed to begin.

  “Seeing Benji start college, it reminded me of how young we were when we met,” she said to Jon, her voice wavering a bit. “How we’d barely turned into adults before he entered our lives. For you and me, it was an almost instant family, especially since we’d been such loners before.”

  Jon speared a cucumber wedge and a couple of shredded carrots from his Asian salad. “Yep.”

  “It was hard for both of us, but we did it. We stuck together. We raised him, and he’s turned into a beautiful boy…a young man.” The tears rushed to her eyes, but she blinked them away and beamed her brightest smile at her husband.

  Jon, who was now munching on the end of an eggroll and staring at her a bit strangely, murmured, “Yeah, he’s great.”

  “So, I’m really proud of us. And I’m so thankful for all you did, too.”

  Goddammit. It was so hard to lead into the end like this. So hard to see the dream of their life together fade. But, if she were being entirely truthful with herself, she’d had too many doubts, down too deep, to have ever believed their marriage was right. Maybe that was why she had fought so valiantly for so long to deny the possibility of divorce. She, like Jennifer, hadn’t wanted to believe she could make a stupid mistake like that. And, while it was debatable whether she had stayed with Jon too long while Benji was still at home, now—without their son there—she knew it was too long. The child who had bound them together had left home, taking their family bond with him.

  She snatched a breath and tried to get to the heart of it. “Jon, I think we’ve reached…an ending point.” She couldn’t help it. She started crying and, though she brushed the wetness away, the tears kept coming. “I’m so sorry. I know you don’t like emotional displays.”

  He put down his eggroll and silently handed her a Beijing Bistro napkin. The look on his face was initially one of surprise, but he quickly veiled it with the lawyerlike poker face of neutrality. He cleared his throat. “What are you saying, Tamara?”

  She wiped her eyes again. “I’m saying, the time has come for us to finally separate. Benji held us together for nineteen years. Without him, we never would’ve lasted that long. You know that.”

  He nodded, his expression more deflated by the news than she had expected, but it wasn’t as though he moved to contradict her. She saw him swallow a few times and glance around them—at the dining room, the kitchen, the visible wall of the living room—as if he were saying goodbye to the house already. “So, are you asking me to move out? Planning to go somewhere else yourself?” He sighed. “What are the details you’ve worked through from your side so far?”

  Tears were now streaming down her face. There weren’t enough Beijing Bistro napkins for them all. But Jon had switched to logical, problem-solving mode, and she was required to switch with him. “I haven’t made any formal plans yet, Jon. I wanted to discuss everything with you.”

  His jaw tensed at this, his natural instinct to negotiate obviously rising to the surface, but a rare look of approval flashed behind his eyes in paradoxical negation of any hard-line tactics. She knew then he wasn’t going to pull out all the legalistic guns. That they would be able to do this without excessive antagonism or the need for high court fees. That somewhere, despite the initial shock, he had seen this coming for as many years as she had. And, just as she, felt both the sting and the balm of relief.

  “Well, the first thing we’ll need to do is sell the house.” He scanned the rooms around them once again, in appraisal more than wistfulness this time. “The market’s poor, but I’ll look into it.”

  “The first thing we’ll need to do,” she corrected, “is tell Benji.”

  He nodded. “Of course. He’ll be home next week.”

  “Jon—” She’d been thinking about this, unsure how to ask it. “He’s arriving a couple of days before you return from your next trip. W-What would you like me to do? Shall I tell him when he gets here? He might ask something…about us. Or, would you rather I waited until you got back?” How cold these words were. How dispassionate. As if they were telling their son they were merely redecorating his bedroom rather than disbanding the family unit.

  Jon almost smiled. Sadly. “If you can avoid painting me as a villain, tell him when he gets home. I doubt it matters, really.” He shrugged and pushed away the plate of duck. “You’re sure this is what you want?” he asked her, and finally she detected a hint of the pain that lay beneath his protective mask. Finally, he allowed some of it to show through. The real man, not the shadow. But it was just a sliver and it came far too late.

  She inhaled. Exhaled. “No, Jon. Not at all. But it’s what I need.”

  And, really, that was it, she explained to her friends. She and Jon put away the leftover Chinese. They made a pot of coffee. And they each worked independently for the next several hours on organizing some of their personal things—Tamara in the bedroom and Jon in his office.

  “What do you mean, that was it?” Bridget asked, incredulous. “You didn’t talk more? Yell at each other? Cry together or anything?”

  “Nope. But sometime around eleven, we watched a late-night Seinfeld rerun together. He’d turned on the TV in the living room and, so, I wandered in there and stayed with him. Just for the length of the episode. It was the Soup Nazi one,” Tamara said, as if that explained her reason for not leaving the room.

  Jennifer studied their friend. “No mention of Aaron?”

  Tamara shook her head. “Nah. I like Aaron and everything. He’s a good guy, all things considered. But this wasn’t about him.” She lifted her shoulders and palms, then dropped them. “Besides, what he and I have going isn’t gonna last. It’s just about the sex.”

  “What?” Bridget exclaimed. “Really and truly? How could that be?” She knew Tamara couldn’t possibly believe that! “Aren’t
you even kind of in love with him?”

  Tamara unleashed her most dazzling, win-over-strangers grin. “You’re kidding, right? I’m finally on the verge of being free after almost twenty years of marriage. The ‘other man’ is a dozen years younger than I am and a freakin’ train wreck in his past relationships. Who needs that?”

  “Who, indeed,” Jennifer murmured.

  But Tamara refused to take the bait in any form—subtle or overt. Aaron wasn’t someone a woman could easily describe, and revealing her feelings for him—let alone the details of her nights/days with him and the odd, unsettling vibrations he created within her when they talked—this was not gonna happen. First, she wasn’t a complete bloody idiot. She knew she was in a vulnerable state. She knew she had been skirting the periphery of self-delusion for months or years. And she damn well knew she needed to separate her attraction to Aaron from her desire to be liberated from her marriage to Jon.

  Two different Princes. Two different problems.

  Second, she couldn’t quite bring herself to turn her time with Aaron—chimerical or not—into some cheap, gossipy exercise of Kiss ’n’ Tell.

  No. Just…no.

  Thankfully, her friends let her have her way but, when they finished their lattes and their coffee cake, Bridget squeezed Tamara extra hard.

  “Please call me if you need to talk,” Bridget said. “Even with the crazy holiday stuff coming up. You know I’m here for you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Me, too,” Jennifer added, giving them both one of her unusual side-to-side hugs. “Even if we’re not meeting for a few weeks, we can always get together for an emergency coffee date.”

  Tamara smiled at her friends, genuinely this time. At last not trying to convince anyone (not even herself) of anything.

  They’d all agreed, with the several weeks of holidays coming up, to give the Indigo Moon Café gatherings a rest between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. They did that every year, usually out of necessity. But Tamara appreciated their caring gesture and their willingness to make an exception for her this year, if she called for it. Time with true friends was an unparalleled gift. In the holiday season. In any season.