My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  Then there had been all the parties. Daphne’s had been pleasant enough, low-key, relaxed, intimate—well, he always enjoyed being around Daphne, and Alexandra and Carey Ann had had a good time too. The day before Christmas Eve the English department had held, late in the afternoon, an informal Christmas party to which spouses and children were invited, and Jack had wanted Carey Ann and Alexandra to come—he had really wanted them to come. First, because he wanted Carey Ann to get to know the people he worked with so when he told her about them she understood what was going on, and because he thought she’d like them and like being part of his life, included. Then, too, he had to admit to less charitable feelings—he wanted Hudson Jennings and any of the rest of the department who had seen Carey Ann come steaming in with the baby in her arms, or heard her crying, to see Jack and his family as a happy and united whole, not squabbling and tense as they had been that day. But Carey Ann had chosen to take Alexandra to the kiddie party that her playgroup was giving with a bunch of other mothers and children. They had even arranged for a Santa Claus to visit. Jack understood how that party would be more fun for his two girls; still, he missed them. He drank too much spiked eggnog and got home with a terrible alcohol-and-sugar headache.

  That night they had had to go to the Jenningses’ for another Christmas party—a formal one, without children. That had been pretty dreadful. They had sat in stiff subservience with some other junior faculty members, nodding politely and laughing deferentially as Claire expounded on the history of certain seasonal traditions, and Hudson, their chairman and hero, sat in almost dutiful silence. Jack was sure he was going to get it from Carey Ann when they got home, and what could he say—it was a boring party, Mrs. Jennings was a drip and a humorless snob. But to his amazement, Carey Ann had taken the entire thing lightheartedly. “Poor dried-up old guys!” she had said. “I’ll bet you they never fuck. Oh, honey, let’s never let ourselves get like that!” And they had made love with abandon, reveling in their youth and health and energy. That night in bed had been the best part of the entire holiday for Jack; it was the only time that Carey Ann really paid any attention to him.

  Christmas Eve the three Hamiltons had gone to the Curriers’ for an early dinner. They had been invited because Shelby Currier and Carey Ann had become such good friends, and Alexandra enjoyed playing with little Aaron. Watson Currier’s brilliance in chemistry was legendary and he looked pleasant enough, but Jack had never met another man with such capacity for silence. Perhaps he had visions of chemical formulae dancing in his head; whatever, he hardly spoke all evening. While the women and children laughed and chattered, Jack and Watson sat with glasses of Scotch, brooding at the fire. If Jack asked Watson a question, the man would, with obvious effort, drag himself up out of whatever deep pit of thought he was mired in, and reply, but his replies were monosyllabic, sometimes little more than grunts. Jack gave up. It was enough that Carey Ann and Alexandra were happy, and there were worse things to do than to sit drinking good Scotch by the fire. They ate dinner with their plates on their laps, because of the children, who got silly and played a little game of being dogs and cats and mice, crawling to the adults’ knees to mew or squeak for food, which the adults obligingly dropped into their offspring’s mouths. It did keep the little ones happy and involved so that at least the mothers could carry on their conversation. Jack, being so uninterrupted by Watson, listened to the women talking and admired them for their ability to sustain a train of thought, an idea, over and through the clamors and intrusions of the children. He had not realized that Carey Ann had such talents—no, it was that he had not realized before now that this actually was a talent deserving of respect.

  Then they had gone to a local church to watch a Christmas pageant, which thrilled Alexandra, who went wild over the baby Jesus, calling out, “Baby! There’s a baby!” What, Jack wondered, did Lexi think she was? Was she glad to see another living human creature smaller than herself, or did she identify with the baby? At any rate, her ecstasy wore her out and she went to bed easily, giving Carey Ann and Jack plenty of time to put out the Santa Claus stuff.

  That night in bed, Jack tried once again to convince Carey Ann they should have another child, and once again Carey Ann gently and reasonably refused. Then—what had come over him? gotten into him? he wondered secretly, and Carey Ann asked the exact questions point-blank—he asked Carey Ann to come home from Kansas City sooner than she had planned. Not to be away for two entire weeks.

  Carey Ann swooped down all over him, kissing him with silly smooching sounds. “What’s come over you? You are so adorable! Oh, you sweet ol’ honeypie, I’ll miss you too, but, Jack, I’ve been looking forward to this trip for ages. I have so many friends I want to see, and we’ll just have to spend forever talking about stuff, so many things have changed. And then there’s Daddy and Mommy, they don’t think two weeks is long enough for me to be with them. Besides, Jack, it’s going to be a real treat for me, I can tell you. I won’t have to cook or do dishes for two whole weeks.”

  Jack watched while a gap the size of the universe opened between him and his wife. This special effect of their marriage seemed to be happening more and more these days. Forget getting Carey Ann to change her mind—he couldn’t even seem to get her to see his point of view. Even while they made love, he felt estranged from her. In fact, it was sort of awful, their lovemaking that Christmas Eve. He could tell that Carey Ann was doing it out of charitable intentions, not passion. Well, she was kissing him and cuddling and fondling and moaning and all that stuff, but he knew she was doing it from gratitude and benevolence, a sort of marital noblesse oblige. Still, his body responded.

  Which was why he felt so very odd the next day. He woke up, with Carey Ann lying next to him, and felt the most awful ache of loneliness. He was lonely for his wife and she was right there. He was intolerably melancholy all day long, even while taking pictures of his daughter going saucer-eyed over her Christmas loot. Even while he helped Carey Ann pack, while he drove his wife and child to the airport in Boston, where they boarded the giant plane that would fly them across half the continent to Chicago and then on down to Kansas City. Carey Ann, her face flushed pink with excitement and happiness, couldn’t stop kissing him. She was nearly jumping up and down with pleasure. She waved and waved and had Alexandra wave and wave as they climbed the ramp and entered the gleaming airplane. Then they were gone.

  Jack stood out at the window, watching as the slender silver jaw of ramp clamped up closed and shut. He felt his loneliness hurting him. His loneliness filled him and transformed him and confused him, so that he was like an adolescent, wild with loneliness, which, in spite of the night before, expressed itself all throughout his body as a powerful, demanding, desperate sexual lust.

  Seventeen years ago, the Millers had spent Christmas with the Krafts. Daphne, pregnant with Cynthia, was just surfacing from the murky and somnambulant depths of morning sickness. She was exhausted all the time (although soon, within a matter of days, she would begin to feel the superhuman strength and optimism she felt for the rest of her pregnancy) and she was still subject to attacks of nausea, when the world wavered before her sight like a distorting mirror at an amusement park, and she would have to shut her eyes tight and lean against something, or sit down, to keep from throwing up. She constantly ate crackers and even carried plastic sacks of saltines in the pockets of her coats.

  “You do not feel like cooking for Christmas,” Laura told Daphne. “Don’t be foolish. Let me do it. I love to cook. I am healthy. You cook when I am pregnant! Besides, Otto will be home, I will want to cook his special favorites, his delicacies; he will be expecting that.”

  Otto was on sabbatical that year and was spending it in Germany. Because Hanno was now four and in preschool, and because the Krafts were such zealots about their son’s education, Laura had remained in the States rather than disturb their child in his formative years. Otto came home once that fall semester, and for a prolonged stay at Christmastime, but Daphne wished
he would never come home, would stay away forever. She and Laura had such a good time without him around. What golden mornings they shared! Joe would go off to teach, and Hanno would go off to preschool, and Daphne would crawl back in bed—in the mornings she was almost paralyzed by her sickness. If she moved at all, she would vomit and nearly faint. Tucked up among the covers, a towel over her eyes—for even light, in those first three months, made her dizzy—Daphne would talk to Laura on the phone. For hours. About everything. It was like reliving her life. It was like reliving Laura’s life too. They examined every detail, described each major moment, until Daphne had as clear a vision in her mind of the striped black-and-white dress Laura was wearing when she met Otto, as she did of the clothes she wore the day she heard Joe Miller defend her to George Dobbs. Laura was jealous of the way Joe and Daphne’s relationship had begun; nothing nearly so romantic had happened between her and Otto. And as the weeks passed, it grew clear that Laura envied Daphne much else besides. Laura did not love her husband with the passion that Daphne felt for Joe. Or had felt for Joe before she entered into the overpowering world of pregnancy.

  Daphne, curled among blankets and pillows, unmoving, blotted by her body from participating in the present, grew bored, and began to move more freely in the world of words, in her past, finally into the dark secret depths of her marriage. Laura told her details of her sexual life with Otto. Daphne reciprocated. Or tried to. There wasn’t much to tell Laura those days, because Daphne had no interest in sex at all, and in fact was so sick that when she and Joe did make love, all her attention was focused on not throwing up while he toiled in and around her, an ocean of sex rocking the boat of her body into such seasickness that she clutched at the sheets.

  When Otto returned home four days before Christmas, his presence became a barrier between Daphne and Laura. The long luxurious morning phone calls ceased. Daphne lay in bed, her strength returning, wondering what Laura and Otto were doing. She could not find out—Otto was there all the time, Laura never had enough privacy to call Daphne for a real talk. For three months it had been as if Laura and Daphne were the primary pair; the real couple—and now here Otto was, back again, claiming his wife, breaking the women’s alliance, and when Daphne tried to turn to Joe, she realized there was something missing now. He had gone further and further away from her, into his work, into the complicated fields of his intelligence, and Daphne, who had before been like a light, shivering and diffuse all around his life, now was shrunken and concentrated into a single beam that illuminated only one small corner of his life. He did not find her swelling belly attractive. He was not excited about the baby. He was increasingly aloof, and even when Daphne began to emerge from her cocoon of nausea, so that she was there, engaged, when they were making love, what she felt more than anything else was a cold loneliness that made her want to cry out urgently for help. But if she tried to speak of this to Joe, he turned away. He said, “Nonsense.” He went to sleep.

  That year on Christmas Day Joe and Daphne went to the Krafts’ in the late morning, after they had exchanged Christmas gifts and opened the gifts sent to them by relatives. Joe and Otto wanted to spend the day cross-country skiing, working up an appetite for the Christmas feast Laura was preparing. The Millers’ house that year had been scarcely decorated for the holidays—Daphne had been just too out of it to do much. By contrast, the Krafts’ house was a Christmas fantasy. Laura had hung every window, lintel, and picture frame with evergreens tied up with red ribbon. In front of their huge picture window stood a fat Christmas tree, bearing small fat candles in little saucerlike pieces of crinkled tin, as well as apples, tangerines, gingerbread cookies, and exotic glass and metal ornaments in vivid stained-glass colors. The air was fragrant with cinnamon and almond, and the friends began the day with a brunch of stollen, scrambled eggs, champagne, and coffee. Daphne gave thanks aloud that her morning sickness had receded just in time to let her appreciate the holiday food.

  Little Hanno wandered around the table where the four adults sat, playing quietly with the toys he had received on Christmas Eve. From time to time he would climb up on a chair to munch at his food and watch the adults, who laughed more and more as the champagne disappeared from the bottles. He was a good child, angelic on that day, with his blond hair curling in a halo around his head. Laura had knit him a navy-blue sweater patterned with white snowflakes, which he wore tucked into his gray leather lederhosen. He looked like a child from a fairy tale, and acted like one too; he was so good. Finally the men, after making a roaring fire to return to, pulled on their boots and coats, packed the Krafts’ gunmetal-blue Mercedes with their skis and poles, and drove away to the countryside. Laura and Daphne were left alone—Daphne felt a delicious thrill of anticipation at the thought of an afternoon alone with her friend. Well, almost alone—they would take Hanno for a long walk, and later, he would nap.

  “Hanno,” Laura said the moment the men had driven off, “how would you like to listen to your new read-along record while Daphne and I do the dishes? Then we’ll take you for a walk.” She settled her son by the stereo in the living room, closed the brass curtains so that the fire could not spark out onto the rug, and led Daphne into the kitchen.

  That day Laura was wearing cherry-red velour slacks and top with black velvet boots; the slacks accentuated how very long and sleek her legs were. She had pulled her long thick brown hair up into an elaborate twist—in Germany, she said, women of a certain class did not wear their hair down in public. Daphne was wearing an old maternity sweater that Laura had given her, a blue silk thing that flared out from the bosom. Underneath was one of Daphne’s own blouses, white silk with lace at the cuffs and neck. She had expanded so much that she couldn’t button the blouse at the breast or waist, but the sweater was high-necked and hid this. This was the first time Daphne had put on maternity clothes, the first time she had realized that she really would have to wear maternity clothes.

  “Let me see your stomach!” Laura commanded when they entered the kitchen. This room was warm from the heat of the oven and aromatic with Christmas fragrances; it was like entering the cave of a witch.

  Obediently Daphne raised her blue sweater. Her white cotton underpants covered her pubic hair but could not stretch any further; her belly swelled out in a full rosy bowl above the strip of cloth. Her silk blouse hung down unbuttoned, parted like curtains, revealing the drama of her body.

  “No stretch marks yet,” Laura said. “Good. Here. I had Otto bring this for you from Germany. You must do it like this every morning first thing when you get up, every night last thing before bed. Then you never have stretch marks.” She opened a large jar of cream and began to massage it into Daphne’s skin. “Like this, little circles,” she said, demonstrating.

  Daphne looked down at her stomach, which had become such an “object,” and watched as her friend swept the cream around in little swirls until it had dissolved into her skin. Laura’s light and efficient touch was both relaxing and stimulating; Daphne stood smiling, and wished it would go on forever. Joe did not touch her like that anymore, just to caress her, to make her feel good, without sexual motives lurking—had he ever? (Had she ever wanted him to?)

  “There!” Laura said triumphantly, and capped the bottle. “You should be grateful I got this for you. It is very expensive and very hard to find. It’s only sold in Germany.”

  “I must pay you for it,” Daphne began.

  “Oh, don’t be silly!” Laura said. “Of course you will not pay me for it! What are friends for?” She leaned forward and hugged Daphne. Their breasts bumped together and their perfumes mingled brightly in the brief embrace.

  “Now!” Laura said. “We must clean up the kitchen quickly so we can do something else before we start cooking dinner! You clear the table. I’ll rinse and stack the dishwasher.”

  As Daphne moved from room to room carrying dishes, she seemed to be moving in and out of white flashing light. It had snowed for the past three days, and now the sun was out—an absolut
ely perfect Christmas Day, a white Christmas, sparkling. The sun on the snow was so brilliant through the modern house’s great picture windows that it almost chimed, luring, and Hanno jumped up in the middle of the recorded story and ran to his mother, crying, “I want to go outside and play!”

  “Just one moment,” Laura said. “Let me start the dishwasher. There. Now, where is your snowsuit?”

  Daphne pulled on her boots and coat, then watched as her friend bundled up the little boy. It seemed to Daphne that when Laura bent over to tug on Hanno’s snowpants, her face took on a puffiness around the eyes, a white and vulnerable tint. Daphne looked away, looked back. Laura had straightened and was pulling on her own coat—the warm luscious fur Daphne envied. She smiled at Daphne, but still Daphne thought her friend’s face looked slightly bloated, as if the skin was tense with withholding. Had Laura been crying? Laura turned to look at Daphne, and her glance was moist.

  “Ready? Here we go!” Laura said gaily. She pulled on black sunglasses against the winter glare. How beautiful she looked, how European! The sleek hair, black fur, long red legs, high black boots.

  The two women pulled the little boy on his sled down the street toward the local park. Hanno sat, a little king, holding on with one hand, eating snow with the other. The runners of the sled made shussing noises in the snow. The air glittered.

  “Otto is having an affair,” Laura said.

  Daphne tripped on a crust of ice and snow. She grabbed on to her friend’s arm to right herself, and in doing so, stopped them both.

  “Laura!” she said, looking her friend in the eye.

  “Mama!” Hanno, the little despot, yelled, unhappy to be halted.

  Laura began walking again. Her voice was low. Daphne, walking next to her, studied her friend as she talked: she saw the swollen eyes brim and spill their tears.

  “It has been the most horrible time of my life,” Laura said. “He will not sleep with me. He has promised her he will be true to her! And I his wife!”