With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  “Do we require a special occasion to toast ourselves?” He stopped slightly short of a smirk. Oh, my God, what if this man is asking me to marry him? My mind instantly inventoried his less attractive qualities, beginning with his braying laugh. But there wasn’t a diamond twinkling in the bottom of my flute, nor did the waiter deliver even an opal hidden in an escargot. “Julia de Marco, I like the way you think,” Arthur said, raising his glass. “Thank you for being in my life.”

  We drained the champagne, and the waiter asked us if we’d like a refill. Arthur answered immediately. “No, we’re ready to order. We’ll start by sharing the mussels.” Cheapest thing on the menu.

  CHAPTER 3

  Talia

  “Henry needs new sneakers. Don’t forget to take him to the shoe store,” I said to Tom.

  “Since when do I ever forget?” he answered, kissing me goodbye.

  Since never. “Don’t let that son of ours talk you into the kind that light up.”

  “Do I look like the kind of dad who can be easily coerced?”

  You do. I am definitely Bad Cop, though, as my bubbe would point out, Tom’s the parent who resembles a Cossack. “Should I stop at the supermarket on the way home?” Our cupboards were sadly bare.

  “Don’t bother. We’ll figure dinner out later.” Tom beamed. My husband, like a trick candle that burns bright no matter what. “You’ll be late. Just go.”

  I let two trains go by my stop in Brooklyn before I wedged myself into a third, where I stood for forty-five minutes between a tourist’s backpack and a hugely pregnant woman whom people fortunate enough to have seats were actively ignoring, then got off at Manhattan’s Union Square and walked seven blocks to my office, arriving barely in time for a staff meeting. While our team crafted what we were sure our clients would agree was a stellar pitch for roach motels, I used every trick I knew to stay awake. Three hours passed before I got to return to my desk and sort through the pile of paper our intern handed me.

  That’s when I saw it. The message was from the much-touted June Rittenhouse, whom I knew by reputation as my field’s top-gun headhunter, a woman who handles positions in companies known to pay exceedingly well, a list that does not include the ad agency where I work. “Urgent,” the acid-green note shouted. It was addressed to Chloe Keaton.

  I reached for the phone to dial her number. Chloe and I aren’t just close friends. We go back to Dartmouth, where we briefly met when we were both visiting our boyfriends for homecoming. After graduation, we recognized each other at a prissy women’s hotel. Now we share a copywriting job and are in almost constant communication. Chloe’s cell phone had rung twice when an evil voice in my head began to speak. I call her Mean Maxine.

  Why should Chloe get all the breaks? Maybe June Rittenhouse is cold-calling and simply works in alphabetical order. You, Talia Fisher-Wells, are equally talented—maybe more talented—and need a better job ten times as much as Chloe does. Or the headhunter might be mining candidates for a position neither Chloe nor you would ever want, in a suburb of, say, Bismarck.

  Mean Maxine snarked away until, unconvinced and disgusted, I shut her down and got on with my work, even taking several calls from Chloe. She asked for her messages. I gave them to her, all but one.

  On the ride home, from within my bag the green stickie continued to shriek, I belong to Chloe. Mean Maxine hooted back, No way. Talia, don’t be a fool. The debate segued into one of my least favorite quotidian themes, life’s mysterious, unjust collision between money and luck. By the time I walked into our apartment in Park Slope, I’d worked myself into a lather. This never bodes well for Tom. I sat at our kitchen table and opened mail, which today contained not only bills but an article featuring restaurants in Rome. Think about it, my lovelies, Jules had scrawled on the top in her back-slanted handwriting. Diet domani. Jules, Chloe, Quincy, and I were planning to get together to hash out plans for our annual trip, and as if it were a presidential primary, Jules had been campaigning. She is nothing if not strategic.

  I kvetched aloud. “Why am I the only person who ever has to think about money?”

  Tom groaned, folding his arms over his broad chest. “Is this a question I’m expected to answer?” He hates when I bitch, as much as I resent the lectures he can’t resist giving about how I notice only the world’s haves. On this subject, we hit an impasse fast, because I like to point out that if he applied for membership to the have-not club, they’d reject him based on genealogy. What’s more, innuendoes suggesting that my value system is out of whack strike me as cheap shots because I think Tom and I agree that I, Talia Fisher-Wells, qualify as one of the good guys. I keep my carbon footprint dainty, and I’d compost if our backyard were bigger. Each month, I find four hours to donate to a food co-op in exchange for a deep discount on rutabagas and twenty kinds of beans. On a scale of 1 to 10, my materialism barely scratches 5. If I belonged to their tribe, the Catholics might canonize me.

  “Forget I broached the subject,” I said. “In fact, why don’t you go for a bike ride?” With that, Tom did, but I continued to ruminate, farklempt, even after I parked Henry at the kitchen table and watched him scribble with his fat crayons. Shouldn’t Tom be able to comprehend how frustrating it is that my three friends on speed dial happen to be preeminent haves? These perfectly agreeable people never blink before buying another pair of shoes they want, a verb they confuse with need. When their roots grow in, they make an appointment, not a purchase from the drug aisle. They use their airline miles to upgrade, since they don’t have to hoard them for a ticket, which in my case is for my twice-yearly visit to my parents in Santa Monica.

  Am I envious? Yes. And I think of this defect as more pathetic than my inability to calculate a percentage. I recognize that I lead a blessed life, and I am not a woman who flings around that adjective casually. I am healthy, with a husband, and not just any husband, but Tom Wells, a loving mensch, smart and funny. I have Henry, our delicious little boy. I have a job that engages my brain and student loans that are 75 percent paid off. Yet despite how often I remind myself of my considerable privileges, Mean Maxine points out the economic chasm between my life and my friends’ lives, which every year yawns more profoundly. Next to any one of them, I, Talia Fisher-Wells, am a third-world country. What I need—no, want—from my husband isn’t judgment. It’s sympathy. And I wouldn’t mind if he produced a bigger income.

  “That Maine is cheap isn’t even the point,” I complained to Tom, who soon enough returned and was unloading locally grown vegetables from canvas bags we carry to the food co-op in our bikes’ baskets. “I’ve got it worked out. We’ll stay at your family’s camp. In September the ocean’s practically a swimming pool. We’ll hang around the lake, hike and bike, and go to lobster pounds every night.”

  “Preaching to the choir, babe,” Tom said as he began to rinse a head of buttery green lettuce while he entertained Henry with silly faces. “I’ve gone to that dump every year of my life.”

  “It’s authentic.” Last year, when Chloe and Xander moved into their brownstone, her decorator talked her into buying moose antlers to hang over her fireplace. I’m fairly certain that beast’s ancestor hangs in Tom’s family’s living room, shot by Grandfather Wells. “Chloe just spent a thousand bucks on two new Hudson Bay blankets.”

  “Dammit, no one can accuse my family’s blankets of being new.” Tom pounded his fist in mock indignation, which made Henry wave his pudgy hands. A crayon bonked Pontoon, our dog of indeterminate parentage and large appetite, who was snoozing under the kitchen table. The animal shook his hairy snout, and Henry started giggling so hard I couldn’t get him to look in my direction, even when I called “Henry Thomas” three times.

  “Where does Mrs. Keaton want to go?” He never fails to be amused by the fact that Chloe’s husband, Alexander Keaton, has evolved from being someone who used to intern for Al Gore into a guy who quotes Wall Street Journal editorials. Does Tom expect that because Xander was raised in Tennessee he should sing son
gs with lyrics like the squirrel ate the cat and the cat ate the dog and they all danced a jig on the leg of a hog? Since college he and Xander have both grown, in opposite directions.

  “Chloe wants Vegas.”

  “Does she like the slots or the craps table?”

  “She likes to flip a coin between Fendi and Gucci.”

  “Remind me why you’re friendly with her.”

  “Because she’s the best present you ever gave me.” Tom and Xander, who were in the same fraternity, had been pleased when their girlfriends formed a mutual admiration society, one that in recent years has been more enthusiastic than their own. It’s also not a small thing that Chloe regards me as the ultimate source of motherly wisdom, although Henry’s only four months older than Dash.

  “If you’d admit you can’t afford these trips, they’d work around it,” Tom said. “These women are your friends. Trust them. They deserve some credit.”

  There he went, being reasonable. How did I wind up married to an emotional mutant, a man envious less often than I vote? Tom takes far too much devilish delight in the fact that his family’s quaintly rotting vacation home was shabby before the term got affixed to chic. He would walk two miles out of his way to resole his boat shoes rather than buy a new pair on sale.

  “I hate to plead poverty.” What I wouldn’t say was that the disparity in our personal economics came from our husbands. Chloe and I earn an identical salary, down to the decimal point. Xander runs a hedge fund, for which he is rewarded in capital-C compensation. Tom teaches high school English and gets rewarded hardly at all, but as I remind myself often, Mr. Wells is everyone’s favorite teacher, and thanks to his schedule, on the days when I’m in the office Henry only has to stay with our sitter—Agnes from downstairs—until three-thirty, which is when Tom usually arrives home. This gives father and son plenty of guy time and me peace of mind. Another fact I refrain from pointing out, at least to Chloe, is that Xander goes for days without seeing Dashiel awake.

  “How about if I cook tonight?” Tom scooped up Henry and brought him to the sink. “I’m thinking fusilli with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.” He rinsed Henry’s sticky fingers as quickly as if they were ten baby carrots.

  “You cooked last night.”

  “That’s your problem,” Tom said with a grin. “You keep score. I swear you have a spreadsheet hidden somewhere.”

  I walked over to my lanky husband, pushed back his reddish hair, badly in need of one of his fifteen-dollar haircuts, and thought, You I will always love, always trust, and always respect, and every one of those things is more important than money. “Talked me into it,” I said. “I’ll do Henry’s bath,” I called out as I walked to our small bedroom in the back of the apartment.

  An extra half hour alone was like a slice of cheesecake with none of the calories. I could swallow it in one immense gobble by napping, or I could savor it in multitasking nibbles as I read a few pages in the book I’d started reading last month—no, last fall—and called my mother or watched TV. While I was savoring my options, the phone rang.

  “Hi there.” Chloe sounded even more chirpy than usual. “Jamyang said yes.”

  “Going to give her a day off for the Dalai Lama’s birthday?” Mean Maxine inquired. Xander had lobbied for a Chinese nanny so that Dash could learn Mandarin, but Chloe thought a Tibetan child care worker would bring serenity to Brooklyn Heights.

  “My only concern is she’s seriously gorgeous,” she said. “Jamyang is this exquisite creature with long, silky hair.” Not unlike Chloe, I thought, who’s gone through life being compared to a doll, while I—taller, with sharp angles everywhere—live in fear that someone might notice my uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. “She’s starting Monday, so I’ll be back at work next week.” Finally. For the last month, with Chloe between nannies, I’d been handling our job solo. Then again, Chloe had filled in for me when I visited my parents last winter. Such was our deal.

  Chloe and I had started to brainstorm for a sales pitch when Tom stepped into the bedroom, holding Henry’s hand. “Dinner in five,” he said. “Pasta awaits.”

  “Tom’s cooking again?” Chloe asked. “No takeout over there in the Slope?”

  As if the Fisher-Wells family would ever splurge on ordering in. “You know our dirty little secret. Tom loves to cook, and don’t get him going on stain removal or he’ll whip up a poultice so fast your marble won’t know what hit it.” Tom had acquired his domestic engineering technique courtesy of his parents’ housekeeper. “Got to go,” I said, “but I’ll think in my sleep and e-mail you in the morning.”

  After taking Pontoon for a walk, Tom topped off dinner with peach cobbler as we did a rundown of Henry’s latest, most winning accomplishments. That’s when Tom asked the question I was expecting. “Have you made up your mind?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” I answered calmly, although my insides were swing-dancing.

  He pushed up the bridge of his wire-rimmed glasses, an anxiety indicator as reliable as another man’s grinding teeth, and gave his fork the kind of attention due a fossil as I said, “Not even a choice, really.”

  For so many summers I’d stopped counting, Tom had worked at Camp Becket in the Berkshires, where I’d join him most weekends—for the last three with Henry in tow. The unspoiled lake and equally unspoiled boys who benefited from his patient attention as athletic director; the accommodations in the stone lodge bearing the name of the original Henry Thomas Wells, Tom’s grandfather—it was a needlepoint throwback to an era before stress became a verb. Everything said 1960, including Tom’s salary. His camp contract was on the desk, as was the contract for option B, a grown-up summer job: doing research at Xander’s firm. When Xander had offered the position, my first thought was that pity might be the catalyst. My second was that if this was what Tom could earn for twelve weeks of slave labor, the Keatons were even wealthier than I’d guessed.

  Tom had said that if I wanted him to work at Xander’s company, I’d only have to shout go and he’d suit up for Wall Street. I felt he was a wimp for not making the decision himself, and said as much. Taking Xander’s job was what I wanted, but I wanted him to want it, too. “I can live without the suspense,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, drawing out the word. “I’m going with”—I looked at my plate—“option C.” For Tom to try to finish his dissertation.

  Tom’s relief was almost visible. “You’re really on board with this?”

  “Yes,” I said. No, I thought.

  Not for the first time, I’d voted my heart instead of my head. Since Tom’s academic effort would contribute a grand total of nothing to the family coffers, it would mean us doing without. What we’d be sacrificing, specifically, I wasn’t sure. Tom and I didn’t operate within a budget; we simply tried to economize with panache. Cabs and Broadway shows? Never. Metrocards and free nights at the Brooklyn Museum? Now you’re talking. Let me loose in a thrift shop and I can dress myself with such je ne sais quoi that I get assaulted by rogue fashion stylists who want to know where I found my shmattes, my rags. Dinners out? We invite friends over instead: ten times the work, one-fifth the cost. Stoop sales? The Fisher-Wells Olympics.

  Tom had been finishing his thesis for years, but since we’d become parents, his work had slowed, with those hours previously dedicated to research funneled into Henry. Our child was our own blue chip, but one who’d made our expenses soar. The logistics of family life make my head ache. If I weren’t working, Tom would have plenty of time to write, but we require my paycheck, the heftier one in the family, even though my job is part-time.

  Henry Thomas Wells Ph.D., would be able to teach college. “The degree is an investment,” he often says. Not exactly like buying Google in 2004, but the ticket to the kind of position Tom wants and deserves. He got up from his chair, pulled me toward him, and said thank you with his well-educated lips.

  Kissing led to more-than-kissing, and this accounted for why I slept only five hours that night.
I got up in the morning, took one look at Tom, and wished I’d had the nerve to say, Stop chasing the degree. Grab the money job. It won’t kill you to work as hard as all the other guys on the Street and take the burden off your poor wife, who—if you haven’t noticed—feels as if she’s single-handedly tugging a barge upstream. But I am bred to try to do the right thing; I said none of this.

  A day went by, then another. Tom and I put ourselves through the monthly ritual of trying to decide which bills to pay in full and which to let slide. Agnes raised her rate. Our washing machine went on the fritz, forcing me to drag our clothes to the launderette blocks away. An old friend from college sent one of those listen up—life is not a dress rehearsal chain e-mails to pass on or risk dire consequences. It was falsely attributed to Maya Angelou, but creepily resonant just the same. I found more gray hairs.

  Meanwhile, the stickie scoffed at me every time I opened my tote, where it was hidden. I had almost managed to convince myself that June Rittenhouse had never called, except that as I was leaving the office one night, I picked up the phone. Again, she was asking for Chloe.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, but Ms. Keaton’s taking personal leave,” I said. “When will she return? I honestly don’t know—she’s away because of a … family emergency.” I took a deep breath, then another. Mean Maxine growled. Say it. “This is Talia Fisher-Wells—the two of us share our job. May I help you?”

  June Rittenhouse gave me an appointment.

  CHAPTER 4

  Chloe

  “When you wash the baby’s laundry, please use this.” Jamyang said nothing as I raised the barbell-weight container from the shelf. “It’s fragrance and dye free.” I moved on to nontoxic, hypoallergenic, and biodegradable. Jamyang offered a nod, which made her hair sway, its shine catching the light filtering through the window. “Have you ever used one of these?” I pointed to the washing machine, whose porthole appeared to have escaped from an ocean liner.