A Clean Slate

by Laura Caldwell

  “What’s going on with Sam’s divorce?”

  “What’s not going on, now that’s a better question. Are we in the air?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cole opened his eyes. He slammed down his window blind, then, after a second, raised it again as if to double-check something. “It’s quite messy. She wants the kids and is trying to restrict his visitation rights for no good reason except to mess with him. It’s killing the poor bastard.”

  “Why are they getting divorced?”

  “Ah, they got married too young. Right out of university. If you met her, you’d never even think they were together. They just don’t match. But old Betsy, she was willing to stick it out because of Sam’s money.”

  “So he’s wealthy?” I thought of Mella’s mention of family dough.

  “He’s not, but his family’s filthy rich. Once he got out of school, Sam wouldn’t take any of it, and this made Betsy very unhappy. She kept trying to talk Sam into borrowing some family cash so they could buy an apartment or a better car, but he wanted to do it on his own. I think little Betsy got pregnant just to make Sam see that they would need more money, that they would need his family’s money, but he’s always refused. And he did do it on his own, although, of course, he doesn’t make anything like his father. He got into publishing by himself, and he’s worked his way up slowly. It’s what he wants, but Betsy finally got fed up and filed for divorce.”

  “It’s so sad for the kids.” I thought of my mom’s two divorces, of Dee and me always wondering about our dads. Sam didn’t seem the type to run from his family, however, and I said as much to Cole.

  “Oh, he’s a dedicated father,” Cole said, “unlike me.”

  I’d been drifting off about Sam and didn’t know if I heard him right. “What did you say?”

  He tugged at the collar of his shirt again and peered outside at the diaphanous white clouds. “Nothing.”

  “You said Sam was a dedicated father, unlike you. What did you mean?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you…do you have kids?” The thought struck me as inordinately bizarre. Coley Beckett—bristly photographer, previous hard-core partyer…and daddy?

  “One,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Back in England. She’s four.”

  It dawned on me then. “That was the little girl in the photos, the ones you had me develop.”

  He nodded, and I thought back to that day—Cole sniping at me about the need to get the pictures just right. The way I’d left him sitting in his studio, staring at the little girl. He’d said she was his niece, and I’d never given it a second thought.

  A flight attendant came down the aisle with a flimsy smile, asking if we wanted a drink. I waved her away, afraid she might break the spell, afraid Cole might clam up.

  “So were you married?” I asked.

  “Ha. No.”

  “Dating someone?”

  “No.”

  “Well, who was she? Some model?” When he didn’t say anything, I jumped to conclusions. “Was it Britania?”

  “Jesus, no!” He looked at me, annoyed, but then just as quickly the expression disappeared from his face and he only looked sad. He groaned and rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “It was right after the debacle with Britania,” he said, looking out the window. “I wasn’t sure where else to go. I didn’t know if I’d ever work again. So I went back to England with my tail between my legs, and I basically lived with my mum and dad. I didn’t tell them anything about New York. They thought I was still on top of the world, and I wanted to believe it, too, so I drank for about three weeks straight. I bought cocktails and dinners for everyone in that little pissant town, trying to show them that I was still the big man….” He drifted off.

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  “Well, one night, I was with a lovely girl named Amanda, although I can barely remember a thing about it. She came to my mum’s house a month or so later and told me she was pregnant. I was a stereotypical arsehole. I said it wasn’t mine, I said she’d been sleeping with a fleet of blokes. It scared me so much that I took off and moved to Chicago. But she got my address from my mum, and she kept writing me. I went home when she had the baby, took a paternity test and…”

  “And she was yours.”

  He nodded.

  “Wow.” The concept of Cole as a father was overwhelming, confusing. “What’s her name?”

  “Josie.”

  “And so how often do you see her?”

  “A few times a year. Amanda married this very nice bloke, and he’s basically her dad.” Cole bit his bottom lip, a vulnerable action the likes of which I’d never seen.

  I reached over and patted his forearm. It was a hopelessly inadequate gesture.

  “But you see, Sam’s different from me,” Cole said. “He’ll never leave those kids.”

  I nodded. Sam had a life he was devoted to a thousand miles away from me. It was just as I had thought.

  We arrived back in Chicago on a Monday afternoon, and the first thing I did was call Laney at work. All my selfish hopes that she was missing me, worried about me, pacing her office when she couldn’t get hold of me, turned out to be complete fantasy.

  “Hey, Kell,” she said in a lazy sort of tone.

  “Hey,” I replied, just as noncommittal.

  A pause.

  “How’ve you been?” she said, as if nothing had happened between us, as if I was just going to say “fine” and ask her the same thing.

  “Great!” I infused my voice with enthusiasm. “Just got back from the Caribbean.”

  “What? What were you doing there?” Her voice was excited, and just for a second, it really was like the old days.

  “I went for work. With Cole.” I filled her in on some of the more glamorous parts—working with the supermodels, how I’d gotten to take some of the shots—and she made the appropriate oohs and ahhs. I was dying to tell her about Cole’s crush on her, and about Sam, too. I wanted to give her every detail and hear her usual analysis, but I held back. There was something mildly withdrawn in her voice that told me we weren’t exactly fine.

  “So what’s going on with you?” I said.

  She sighed. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Can you meet me at Uncle Julio’s in half an hour?”

  “Of course.” Maybe it would be okay.

  Ten minutes later, I hailed a cab to the restaurant, but when I saw Laney sitting at one of the wooden tables there, I knew the stalemate wasn’t over. She was ramrod straight on the stool, arms wrapped tightly around the bag on her lap, her lips pressed together. It was the face she made when she was unhappy, when she was really pondering something that troubled her. And the worst part—symbolically at least—was the lack of margaritas on the table. Whoever arrived first always bought the first round.

  I walked slowly toward her, wanting to postpone the conversation. In those few seconds as I approached her, I saw a progression of all the Laneys I’d known—the girl on the yearbook staff with the big bangs, the younger sister in the crazy, loud household, the punk-wannabe college girl, the eager advertising babe, and finally this polished woman with the red coat and the stylish hairdo. I was as proud of her as I had been of Dee. It’s cliché, of course, to say that your best friend is like a sister, but the conclusion was true. She was family to me, and yet now I wondered if I was about to lose her.

  I slid onto the stool opposite her. The place wasn’t crowded yet, and so we had the long table to ourselves.

  “You look tan,” she said.

  “Really? I tried to wear a hat.”

  She smiled a small, almost wistful grin. “With your complexion you’ve got to wear at least 30 SPF.”

  “I know.” She was always telling me that when we went on vacation together.

  She blew out a puff of air. “So here’s the thing.”

  Oh, God. We were getting right to it, whatever it was.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” s
he said.

  “Wait. Before you get there, can I just say I’m sorry for not telling you about Ben? I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Kell, it’s okay. Just let me get this out, all right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve been a bad friend.”

  “What?” I was the bad friend here. I was the one who’d relied on her too much, who’d conveniently forgotten to tell her that I was seeing my ex again.

  “It’s true.” She put her bag on the table and crossed her arms. “I’ve been getting upset at you lately. Annoyed, I guess you could say, and it wasn’t really about Ben. It was more to do with your job with Cole, how you were turning your life around.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, to tell her that I hadn’t turned anything around, but rather that I’d just pissed away a chunk of the year.

  Laney kept talking, though. “As upsetting as it was this summer to see you so down, I got used to it. I guess what I got used to was taking care of you.”

  She shot me a look. I shook my head. What was she talking about?

  “C’mon, you know how it is at my house. I’m always Laney the crazy one, Laney the fuck-up. And the guys I date, they don’t rely on me for anything except to look good. And yet this summer when you were depressed, I was Laney the savior. In a messed-up way, I think I actually liked that you were so out of it.”

  “No, that’s not true,” I protested. “And however you felt, it doesn’t matter. You helped me when no one else did, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

  A waitress came by. “Can I get you ladies a swirl?” she said, her voice chipper. “It’s margarita and sangria mixed together.”

  “No, thank you,” Laney and I said in unison. The waitress dropped the cheerful face and walked away.

  Laney leaned closer to me over the table. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I liked being the caretaker. I didn’t try very hard to get you to see a doctor. I didn’t call your mom, or even tell Ben how bad it had gotten. I didn’t do anything because I wanted to be the one who was looking after you. It’s sick, but when you came out of it, I started feeling strange. I think I wanted you to go back to being depressed. And that’s why I got so clingy, why I kept talking to you about doctors and memory loss research. And that’s why, when I realized that you were turning to Ben again and not me, I just sort of lost it.”

  “Well.” I had to pause for several moments after that, still trying to process all she’d said. I tried to be mad at her for it, but how can you be mad at someone who loved you, who took care of you despite everything? “Lane, it’s okay. Really. I don’t blame you at all. In fact, I’m still grateful.”

  “Listen, I’m no saint. I’ve got to be honest with you. I tried to sabotage your job.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t really know I was doing it at the time, but do you remember that night we had drinks with Cole?”

  I nodded.

  “I asked him why he’d been run out of New York. I made some ridiculous toast about taking it up the ass. I was trying to get you in trouble, Kell. I was jealous, I think, that you had this new job you were so excited about.” Her voice nearly broke. “I’m a bitch, and I can barely stand myself.”

  “Honey, it’s okay.” I reached across the table and stroked her shoulder, thinking about that night. I’d assumed it was just the vodka that had made her tongue so loose, but ultimately there was no harm done, so I hadn’t given it another thought. Besides, I loved her like a sister. Still did.

  “It’s not okay.” She shook off my touch.

  “Sure it is. We’re always okay. It’s me, right?” I leaned forward and peered at her downcast face, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Let’s just forget it. Call it even.”

  “No. I need to figure this out. I’m messed up. I think I need to start seeing someone. Do you have Ellen’s number handy?”

  We both laughed—rough, short laughs that quickly ended. I wasn’t sure if she was serious.

  “I have to be by myself for a while, all right?” As she said this, Laney looked at me with pleading eyes. “Can you understand that and just give me a little time?”

  “Isn’t that what this last week was for?”

  “Yeah, but I still need time to sort it out on my own.”

  “How much time?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “When?” I had to stop her from leaving, had to stop her from doing this, because it felt very much like she was breaking up with me.

  “I’ll let you know,” she repeated.

  I felt a surge of anger in my gut then. How dare she just cut herself off from me, from our relationship? You didn’t walk away from fifteen years of friendship and say, I’ll let you know, like they do at the end of a job interview.

  I opened my mouth to tell her this, but Laney took a deep breath and said, “Okay, Kell, I’m sorry, but I’ve got something else to tell you. I can’t believe I didn’t say this earlier, but Jess called me this morning. She was looking for you.”

  I gave a curt nod. There’d been a message from Jess on my machine, too.

  Laney’s eyes took on a pained expression.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  She reached out and rubbed my leg. “Oh, honey,” she said, and she sounded like she used to, when we were friends forever, always.

  “What?” I asked, letting myself feel annoyed in order to block out the flutter of panic.

  She squeezed my knee. “Ben got engaged to Therese. She’s pregnant.”

  25

  I sat on the couch in my apartment, stacks of unopened mail on the coffee table in front of me. In my mind, I kept repeating Laney’s last words—Ben got engaged…. She’s pregnant—in the hopes that the repetition would give them meaning. But instead my brain only answered with a dull pain in my temples. Another one of my goddamn headaches.

  Had Therese gotten pregnant on purpose? Was that all it took to make Ben change his mind about marriage and kids? Was that all I would have had to do? Just chuck my little white birth control pills instead of swallowing them dry in the morning? The thought of intentionally getting pregnant made me sick. It seemed so horrifyingly retro, so fifties. And then another thought dawned on me. Wasn’t I supposed to get my period today? Because of the pill, I was like clockwork nearly to the minute, so that I could always expect my period by ten in the morning on every fourth Monday—this Monday to be exact. I looked at my watch. It was 6:30 p.m. I ran to the bathroom and dropped my pants. Nothing.

  No, no, no, no, no, I thought. There was no way I’d gotten pregnant from my night with Sam. In addition to the pill, we’d used a condom. It would be some kind of freak medical miracle if I’d gotten pregnant. But then what was the explanation? Flying? Wasn’t it true that air travel could mess up your cycle? Unfortunately, it sounded to me like an old wives’tale.

  I moved back through my darkening living room and sank onto the couch again. I tried to imagine myself pregnant, but nothing came, no images of my bloated abdomen, of the discomfort, the joy—nothing. Shouldn’t I be able to picture myself in a filmy romantic daydream with a flowing dress over my ripe belly, traipsing through a flower garden to meet my smiling husband? Maybe it was because I wasn’t involved with anyone right now. Maybe that was why it was so hard to envision. Strangely, this was the first time I’d ever actually attempted to imagine myself pregnant. It had always been a goal of mine to have kids, one I’d held since high school at least, but in actuality, I saw now that it was more of an assumption than a goal. I’d always assumed I’d have kids. I’d taken for granted that I would get pregnant eventually, after I got to a certain stage, a certain age. And yet now I couldn’t even picture it. What was wrong with me?

  I thought about Ben then, experiencing a shot of pain with the realization that he was getting married, that he was having kids. Ben, the one who wanted to travel, to have fun. Was he happy about it? Was it what he’d wanted all along, just not with me?

  I picked up the
phone and dialed my mom’s work number. She wasn’t someone I usually turned to in a time of crisis, but there seemed to be no one else.

  “The Biz,” she answered in a world-weary voice.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s Kelly.”

  “Sweetie!” Finally, someone who wanted to talk to me.

  “How’s work?” I asked. It was a safe question, one I’d gotten used to leading with since Dee died.

  “Complete craziness. Madonna’s becoming a master yogi, so you can imagine the press.”

  “Yeah. Wow,” I said, although, as usual, I couldn’t imagine why anyone cared.

  After a few more minutes of celeb gossip (Michael Jackson had bought a gorilla; Nicole Kidman was going brunette) I filled my mom in on everything—my job with Cole, my thoughts that I should find another analyst position, the way Ben and I had been seeing each other again and the fact that he was now a husband-and-daddy-to-be. I skipped the issue of my memory loss, not wanting to dump too much on her. I hadn’t confided in her in so long for fear that she couldn’t handle it after Dee’s death, but it struck me now that maybe I was the one who couldn’t handle it. Maybe I didn’t want to talk about what was wrong in my life and I’d just used my mother’s allegedly fragile mental health as an excuse. Because she responded emphatically, immediately and with definite opinions and advice, just as I’d hoped she would.

  “Ben,” she said, her tone strong and dramatic, as if she was making an official proclamation, “is a complete schmuck.”

  I laughed despite myself.

  “And as for your photography job, Kelly, I think you’re right. It was a diversion, something you could do because you had a little extra money in the bank, but it’s not going to last you for the rest of your life. You have to be able to take care of yourself. You can’t assume you’ll meet someone and get married and that he’ll do it for you.”

  I knew she was speaking from very personal experience, but I also knew there was truth in her words. My mother was the hardest working person I’d ever met. She’d single-handedly raised two kids, with no financial or emotional support from anyone, and although I’d always wanted a different life than the one she’d had, I respected her opinion immensely.