With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  Proudly and privately, Chloe had learned to wear her resilience like a scarlet coat. But for that day’s brunch, she had sent regrets.

  Regrets, there were plenty of those; the guilt in the room imperiled the oxygen. If only I hadn’t, Jules thought. From Talia: What a fool I was to think that a friend, close and loyal, was as easy to find as a penny on the street. And from Quincy, a realization: Sometimes you need to blink and move on. That morning the women recognized that being together was like rediscovering a pair of lost slippers. Their friendship still provided comfort that improved with time. They knew one another like a new friend never could, with a shorthand that understood when to react and when to overlook, when to boost and when to protect.

  “Henry has such lovely manners—and he’s gotten so tall.”

  “J.J. is your little clone.”

  “All I see is Jake.”

  “Sienna’s got your eyes. Those lashes!”

  They lavished honeyed words on one another’s children, determined to brush away histories as tangled as the roots of stubborn weeds: Why did you do that to me? Did I mean so little? How could you be so careless with my feelings, my future? Will she forgive me, ever? What was I thinking?

  “The house—show us those pictures again.”

  “Three stories! It’s a mansion!”

  “It’s not.”

  “How far below zero does it get?”

  “What’s the second J for?”

  “Jubilee.”

  How could she?

  All of them instinctively made sure that everyone got equal airtime.

  “I love what you’ve done with the dining room walls.”

  “Matching paint to a Japanese eggplant? Who’d have thought?”

  “How are your parents?”

  Certain questions they would never raise. Why had Quincy abandoned them? Her move six months earlier had seemed impetuous, which their Quincy was not. Would Jake, Yankees fan, be able to root for a team called the Twins? What next, ice fishing? Had Talia started looking for another job? Would Tom ever finish his Ph.D.? Or Jules and Arthur surprise them with a wedding? Was there true love between them, or had Jules given up on that?

  They knew better than to ask each other why Chloe hadn’t joined them. She was a greater presence in her absence than she might have been in the flesh. Jules thought that she could explain why Chloe had stayed away—she was still absorbing and adjusting to the shock of reduced circumstances, of deception, of disgrace. But Talia thought their quarrel was to blame. Quincy, however, didn’t care about explanations. Having come all this way, she was trying not to take Chloe’s behavior as a rebuff. And so the three women splashed in the shallow end.

  “Please tell me you didn’t bake this yourself.”

  “I can’t even bake a potato.”

  “What are we drinking? I love it.”

  “Refill?”

  “Sienna needs a change. Artie?”

  “Listen up, folks. Henry is going to count backward from one hundred.”

  “Did you read why Chinese kids are so much better in math—something to do with the way the numbers sound in their language?”

  “Then tell me why Chinese Americans still do better in math when they’re taught in English.”

  No one could.

  “Your new business, Jules—genius.”

  “No, buddy, you can’t go outside alone. Go play with your cars in the living room.”

  “Seconds? If you don’t eat this, I will, and I have ten pounds left to go.”

  That day they weren’t thinking, She’s getting fat. She’s getting gray. She’s getting crow’s feet. She’s getting pissed. Conversation swirled like milk in coffee, keeping their moods light while they sized each other up—kindly. She’s already lost her baby weight. She’s wearing Arthur’s ring. She looks good with long hair.

  They were careful not to speak of newer friends claiming loyalties—the other mother and son Talia would be meeting at the park, the linguistics professor Quincy had started to run with along shady lakeside paths, the woman Jules had met for cappuccino after Little Maestros. Jules didn’t know what had made her feel the bigger fool, that at Little Maestros she was paying as much as the price of an opera ticket for Sienna to shake her diapered booty to Stevie Wonder CDs or that the other woman was the grandmother of the infant she accompanied, and had taken her for the same. At forty-four!

  Mostly, they thought, I’ve missed her, and her, and her. I’m homesick for what was, because try as you might, you can’t outsource love. They regretted their cavalier actions and assumptions, these women who’d been casually arrogant enough to assume that friendship could blast—and last—through anything.

  When they thought about the future, they were overcome with what might not be—the books and movies they might never discuss; the vacation photos they might not see; the shopping trips not taken to choose a dress for a milestone, one celebrated without them; the whoop of glee the other might not hear about promotions or a child’s college acceptances and first love. It was entirely possible that they might not know the woman next to them as she turned fifty, sixty, more, became a grandmother or a widow or a glittering success, when she lost her mother or found her passion; that they would not wind up, as they’d once imagined, as little old ladies sharing a house, making sure the next woman took her meds and didn’t break a hip. They wouldn’t be holding hands at the end, in a hospital.

  Or maybe they would.

  They were fragments, starting to forget how it felt to be young and whole, a vase balanced in its symmetry, ready for flowers in bloom. To play it safe, they paged through the old times, finding memories that felt more vivid than the morning’s headlines.

  “Remember that first New Year’s Eve at our apartment, when we rolled out homemade fettuccini and hung it to dry on the shower curtain rod?”

  “That pesto—I’ve never eaten any half as good again.”

  “My God, we were insufferable. That’s when pesto was our definition of sophistication.”

  “When we didn’t know pine nuts from a pair of balls.”

  I liked us then, they all thought. I liked us better. Does every woman get a little harder with each year, her true self slicked by strokes of enamel dried to a diamond finish?

  “What happened to the mix tape that boyfriend of yours made?”

  “Dumped it along with him.”

  “His name? It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “The guitarist whose hair was longer than mine? Clive.”

  “No, the tech guy.”

  “Him! I can’t remember what he even looked like.”

  “Daryl?”

  “Darren?”

  “Devin! He made it up. You would, too, if your parents named you Milton.”

  “Hey, Milton’s my middle name.”

  “Arthur Milton Weiner, open that last bottle, will you?”

  “The chairs you found on Ninety-second Street—why did we leave them behind? I’m pretty sure they were Knoll.”

  “Serves me right. I just thought they were ugly.”

  “How about when we tried to form our own book club? Quincy, were you the one who insisted on The Witching Hour?”

  “No, that would be me,” Jules said as she got up to clear the table. Talia and Quincy followed with armfuls of platters, but when they deposited them on the kitchen counter, Jules said, “You have to see Sienna’s room. C’mon upstairs.”

  When they entered the baby’s bedroom, Quincy and Talia wondered whether, should they ever have daughters, they too would be taken hostage by the sugary rush that makes mothers of girls think they are raising a princess. The walls were covered in lilac-sprigged paper, the floor plushly carpeted. Obedient pastel bunnies and Steiff teddies lined pristine white shelves. Over the lace-swathed crib a mobile of iridescent purple butterflies dangled in the air. Quincy oohed and ahhed while Talia walked to Sienna’s library, which was tucked under the eaves, near the front window. Yes, there was her gift, a first-ed
ition Babar.

  Hearing a car, she pulled open the starched white curtains to peer outside. A taxi was pulling away. Then the doorbell chimed “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

  “Arthur installed it for my birthday.” Jules shrugged. “Who knew he was handy?” She laughed, but Quincy detected pride, and when Jules’ back was turned, she offered Talia a conspiratorial wink.

  “Expecting something?” Talia asked.

  “Nope, nothing,” Jules said, and walked to the stair landing. “I’ve got everything I want.” Before either of her friends had a chance to consider whether this was an expression of thanksgiving or conspicuous consumption, she shrieked, “Artie, get that, will you?” and returned to Sienna’s room. That was where they were, marveling at a rainbow of dresses, when Chloe shouted, “Anybody home?”

  Quincy let out a whoop and bolted down the stairs, skipping the bottom step. The women embraced like loving sisters, and as Talia watched, she yearned to do the same. She wondered if she would ever hug Chloe—or be hugged by her—again. She waved from the top of the stairs. Chloe returned the gesture in her direction, but it was Jules, behind Talia, who asked, “How’d we get so lucky, Mrs. Keaton?”

  Talia wondered, for the hundredth time, why she’d let small things get in the way of a big friendship. When she’d finally shared the story with her mother, who’d asked again and again why she’d stopped mentioning Chloe, Mira Fisher raised her voice. “Feh! You let that tzimmes with the job and school come between you and a friend? Why?”

  “I don’t know, Mommy” was all she could say. “It seemed important at the time.” Defensible, which was not the same as legal and on a separate continent from right.

  Chloe hung her coat in the closet next to the Blues’ parkas, which were red, and put down a large shopping bag. Peeking from the top was the trunk of a stuffed elephant. “An hour ago I realized that if Quincy went back to Minneapolis without my seeing J.J., I could never live with myself.” In the early afternoon light, with her hair pulled into a ponytail. Chloe looked as young as when they’d all first met. But they blinked, and suddenly she was like the rest of them, possibly wiser, definitely older.

  “I was wondering when you’d show up,” Jules said as she walked toward Chloe, leaving Talia behind, wondering what Chloe truly thought of the photograph of the two of them, both pregnant, that she’d recently sent. The thank-you note had been gracious. Talia saw it as headway. There was no other way to see it, unless she wanted to be a cynic.

  “I’m glad you did,” Quincy said, draping her arm around Chloe’s shoulder.

  “Hey, that’s what friends do,” Chloe said, pulling out the elephant for James Jubilee Blue, a kitten for Sienna Julia de Marco, and a shark for Henry Thomas Wells IV. The other mothers gushed thanks and thought: Yes, friends give and friends receive. Friends love and friends accept love. Friends find the good in one another. Friends keep secrets, especially when they’re not asked, because no one needs to ask them.

  “Friends crash their friend’s party because the hostess has always cooked way too much,” Jules said.

  “Is that one of Jules’ Rules?”

  “Of course. You must be starving. I’ll heat something up.”

  Chloe turned to look at Talia while Quincy gazed at Jules. Friends get over things.

  “You’re right, Jules, that’s what friends do,” Talia said. Although she knew that was not all friends do for one another, all four of them felt, at that moment, as if they could sing their histories like the lyrics to a favorite show, one that was sold out, enjoying a well-deserved revival.

  “Wait, let’s take a picture,” Talia said. “I want to remember this.” She reached into her bag and handed a camera to Tom.

  They smiled for the camera, children in their arms. Talia did remember that day, and so did Quincy and Jules and Chloe. They remembered with love, forever.

  Acknowledgments

  It’s my hope that no friends have been harmed, infuriated, or stood up as I have allowed myself to become ego central in the writing of With Friends Like These. I could never have completed this novel without friends like these: Betsy, Dale, Rochelle, and Vicki, my four sister-friends, as well as the Barbaras, the Carols, the Ellens, the Janets, the Judiths, the Lindas, the Lisas, the Nancys, the Patricias, the other Betsy, and the other Sally plus Anita, Betty, Cathy, Charles, Chaya, Craig, Emily, Evelyn, Ina, Janey, Kristine, Leslie, Marilyn, Margaret, Margie, Marlena, Michele, Ovie, Paul, Ruth, Sharon, Shelley, Sheri, and Sherry and last but in no way least Vivian, queen of nitpicks. Thank you all for your warmth, humor, and good common sense.

  Caitlin Alexander, you are a talented editor. I am in your debt for your patience and encouragement, along with many others on Ballantine’s superb team: Libby McGuire, sharp-eyed publisher; Kim Hovey, associate publisher; Steve Messina, a production editor of great patience; Sue Warga, copy editor; Robbin Schiff, art director; Diane Hobbing, who created the graceful interior design of this novel, as well as Cara Petrus, who crafted its frisky illustration and cover design; Kristin Fassler and Quinne Rogers, whose capable hands have handled marketing; and, of course, Jynne Martin, an outstanding publicist.

  Christy Fletcher, thanks for your flawless judgment and consistent enthusiasm. Gratitude, too, to Melissa Chinchilla for your energy in selling foreign rights to this book as well its older sisters, and to Swanna Mac-Nair for your spot-on comments and continued help.

  Laura Ford, you’ve caused me to wonder, what editor isn’t, at heart, a social worker? I appreciate your support and friendship.

  Robert, Jed and Rory, you are my team, forever in my heart. Thank you never stops.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SALLY KOSLOW is the author of The Late, Lamented Molly Marx and Little Pink Slips. Her essays have been published in More, O: The Oprah Magazine, and The New York Observer, among other publications. She was the editor in chief of both McCall’s and Lifetime, was an editor at Mademoiselle and Woman’s Day, and teaches creative writing at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College. The mother of two sons, she lives in New York City with her husband.

  www.sallykoslow.com

  With Friends Like These is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Sally Koslow

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Koslow, Sally.

  With friends like these : a novel / Sally Koslow.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52181-1

  1. Female friendship—Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3611 O74919W58 2010

  813′.6—dc22

  2010014957

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.0