The Friends We Keep

by Jane Green

  “Honey.” The deputy fashion editor of the magazine they were shooting for was present for the shoot, and took her aside. “I have no idea if this is not enough sleep, or your hormones acting up, or whatever the fuck else it might be, but I am sending you out for a walk, and I suggest that when you come back, you have decided to wake up on the other side of the bed.”

  Hormones, thought Evvie, realizing she was premenstrual, except . . . where was her period? And she remembered this from before. Her boobs were big, and her jeans were tight.

  She went for that walk, straight to the Duane Reade on the corner, where she bought a pack of pregnancy tests. She came back to the studio and headed for the bathroom, peeing on the stick while sitting on the toilet, numb, not thinking about anything.

  The line was blue. Evvie found herself smiling. Surely this couldn’t be. And this would be terrible, this wasn’t what she wanted at all, but she was smiling as she pulled the second test out of the box and peed on the second stick, and that, too, produced a blue line.

  Evvie wrapped the tests in toilet paper and put them in her bag. She couldn’t quite believe it and knew she’d have to keep looking at them to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

  Or was it a nightmare? She washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror, thinking that she wasn’t ready for a baby, that she hadn’t ever thought about this. But even as those thoughts flitted through her mind, she saw that she was smiling, and she wrapped her arms around herself and hugged herself, and it was the first time in five weeks she had felt happy.

  “Thank God for that,” said the fashion editor when she walked back in. “You’ve reset?”

  Evvie had nodded, and the rest of the photo shoot went swimmingly.

  * * *

  • • •

  She wouldn’t be able to tell Ben. Obviously she couldn’t hide a baby from Maggie, even though she was barely in touch with her these days, but she could play with the dates, tell everyone the baby came early, or late, or something to throw Ben off ever knowing. She would figure it out. And she was in New York, far away from Somerset, where Maggie and Ben were living. No one would know. She would keep the father a secret from everyone, say it was just a one-night stand.

  As she had anticipated, Ben phoned her, the first time they had spoken since she left his hotel room nine months before.

  “Is it mine?” he asked, his voice filled with a mixture of hope and fear.

  “It isn’t,” she said. “I’m so sorry. The baby is a month early. I had a boyfriend when we . . . met . . . in New York. I’ve checked the dates. I’m absolutely sure.”

  Ben was skeptical. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because,” she lied, “quite apart from the dates not matching up, I had my period right after you left. It’s a physical impossibility. I’m sorry.”

  Ben had sighed with what sounded a little like relief, a little like disappointment. “Thank God,” he said finally. “I couldn’t bear it if . . .”

  “It’s definitely not yours,” she said, with all the conviction she could muster. It was fine, she told herself. Because she’d make sure Ben never saw the baby.

  Jack was the image of Ben. From the moment he was born, it was like looking at a tiny Ben. When she sent out announcement cards, she made sure it was an artful shot of Jack swaddled in a blanket, fast asleep, his head turned so you could barely make out his features, let alone what he looked like.

  She deliberately removed herself from her friends. She had the odd phone call with Topher, but allowed barely anything with Maggie. She let the friendships drift, immersing herself in raising Jack, in a love that was unlike anything she had ever known, unlike even the love she had for Ben.

  Her love for Jack was all-consuming, filling a hole she had been unaware of having. Over time, she stopped thinking of him as a miniature Ben, but simply as Jack, remembering only that he would never be able to meet her old friends, and she would never be able to do what everyone she knew was doing, sending Christmas cards with pictures of their children.

  The older Jack grew, the more like Ben he became. He had Evvie’s coloring, her hands and feet, but everything else was Ben. Everything else had to be kept a secret. Maggie could never know, and so, over time, their friendship became birthday cards and Christmas cards, then just Christmas cards (generic, no pictures of children anywhere in sight), and then, nothing at all.

  twenty-two

  - 1999 -

  Topher opened the medicine cabinet and avoided looking at the left side. Larry’s razor was still there, his deodorant, his cologne. Occasionally, when Topher was feeling particularly morbid, he would pry off the lid of the cologne and inhale deeply, allowing himself to be swept back in time, but it had been two years since Larry died, and he was trying to do it less. He couldn’t bring himself to clean it out though. Not quite. Larry’s pill bottles were still there, the cocktail of drugs they had prayed would work, Crixovan, Viracept, the protease inhibitors that were seeing incredible results, but not for Larry.

  He had been the picture of health, until a small red lesion popped up on his inner thigh. They both pretended it was nothing, until more appeared, and within a few months Larry was a hollow-eyed skeletal shadow of his former self, dying in Topher’s arms in a quarantined section of the hospital.

  His funeral was mobbed by everyone who had ever been to his gym, and many who hadn’t. Larry had been beloved by everyone who knew him.

  Topher pulled out his own deodorant and examined himself in the mirror. How lucky he was to have escaped; God knows which gods exactly were looking out for him, but someone, some of them, had to have been.

  Topher looked good, as he should, for a soap opera star at the top of his game. He had just been offered a part in a movie with another up-and-coming actress, Kate Hudson. His agent was convinced this would be the beginning of his transition from soap opera star to proper superstardom.

  But Topher wasn’t so sure. He didn’t want to move to Los Angeles and give up the relative anonymity he had in New York. Here, people recognized him, but they left him alone. He liked walking everywhere, couldn’t imagine driving in LA, even though he had great friends there, friends whose wooden house built into a hillside in Laurel Canyon was one of his most favorite places in the world.

  He didn’t think he wanted superstardom. He loved being on the soap, but it was grueling, and every day felt much the same. If anything, he thought he might like to try theater, and where better than New York for theater? He turned to look approvingly at the muscles in his back. He hadn’t been back to Muscleman since Larry died. He went to the cheap gym on the next block, and pushed his body to its limits in a bid to assuage his grief.

  His exterior didn’t match his interior, that was for certain. Handsome and now buff, he looked as if he were ready to take on the world, but inside he still felt numb, still felt, ever since Larry died, that his own life wasn’t over, exactly, but that he would never be as happy or fulfilled again. Topher was thirty; even though logic told him he had a whole life ahead of him, he still spent much of his time living in the past. It was easier than living in the present. Two years on he had learned to live with the grief, and a few close friends helped, the most unexpected of whom was Benedict, whom Topher was meeting for lunch today.

  Topher had first met Benedict soon after he moved to New York. He had been invited out to a wealthy writer’s Hamptons beach house. (Oh, the irony! The writer, while published and successful, was in fact a trust-fund baby who would never have been able to afford his lifestyle on writing alone.) Topher was then a young pretty boy new to the scene, eye candy for the older gay couples that mixed in this wealthy circle, moving from Upper East Side apartments to the Hamptons in summer, and Palm Beach in winter.

  Topher took the jitney out to the Hamptons, his bag packed with shorts, polo shirts, and a copy of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, the more gruesome scenes of w
hich he had to read with his eyes half-covered, skimming paragraphs so the images wouldn’t lodge themselves into his mind forever.

  He had taken a cab out to what he thought would be a simple beach house, but that turned out to be a beautiful old shingle estate, with immaculately clipped high privet hedges and a heavy wooden gate that opened automatically for the beat-up taxi.

  A crowd of men were already sunning themselves by the pool, steaks and freshly picked corn from the farm down the road starting to sizzle on the grill when Topher arrived. He greeted his host, George, waved at the crowd of men, noting that the vast majority were quite a bit older, a few twinks his age scattered among them, before he went upstairs to change.

  His bedroom was in the attic, undoubtedly one of the more modest rooms in the house given that he peeked into a giant bedroom on the second floor. The attic bedroom was small, under the eaves, with whitewashed floors and a woven cotton blue and white rug, a pretty blue and white quilt on the double bed, and a selection of excellent beach reads on the old wooden nightstand. Topher adored the room immediately, far preferring it to the grand chintzy bedroom he had glimpsed downstairs. He put his clothes away, neatly folded, pulled on a pair of swimming trunks, and looked out the window to where the glimmering water of the pool beckoned.

  Groups of men were standing chatting, gales of laughter shimmying up to Topher’s attic window. They were standing around the barbecue, a couple sitting on the edge of the pool, cooling off with their feet in the water. On the far side of the pool was an older man, very tan, in bathing shorts and a loose white shirt. He had a tumbler of something like a gin and tonic on the table next to him, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and he was buried in what looked like—Topher recognized the cover—a biography of Sarah Bernhardt. He looks interesting, thought Topher, who skipped down the stairs and stood on the edge of the pool, aware that he was young and trim and quite probably invited because of his pretty looks, before climbing onto the diving board and executing a perfect swan dive.

  He didn’t look at the older man in the white shirt, but hoped that he had made a splash, in more ways than one. Topher swam underwater until he reached the other side, knowing he would emerge at the feet of the man who might, if luck was on his side, have unglued himself from his book to watch Topher.

  Topher emerged from the water, running his hands over his hair so it sat sleekly on his head like a seal, flashing a wet grin at the man, who was indeed now looking.

  “Well,” said the man, revealing a handsome smile. “This day suddenly got an awful lot brighter. I’m Benedict. Who are you?”

  Benedict claimed Topher as his for the weekend. They went to bed together that night, and a handful of times afterward, but the chemistry between them was less sexual than platonic (as it so often was for Topher), and as the sexual part of their relationship fizzled out, they quickly became close friends, with Benedict taking an almost paternal, mentor-like role in Topher’s life. He was a theater producer, part of an elegant old-world New York, with a glorious Upper East Side apartment filled with heavy, swagged silk curtains and round tables, layered with chintz tablecloths edged with tiny silk pom-poms, the grand piano covered with silver-framed photographs of Benedict with every famous actor and director imaginable.

  Topher was an excellent companion for Benedict, who he quickly started calling Dickie, the only one who was allowed to call him such a frivolous nickname. They saw each other regularly, until Topher met Larry, at which point he saw Benedict less, largely because he was busy learning to be in a proper relationship, and because Larry wasn’t comfortable in Benedict’s sophisticated world. Topher still saw Dickie from time to time, during the day if he had a day off, when Larry would be at the gym.

  When Larry died, Benedict showed up at the funeral, and came back to the apartment for the service. When everyone left, Topher was desperate for them to stay, desperate not to be left on his own with his memories and his grief, and Benedict stayed. He didn’t ask if he was wanted, he just cleaned up quietly and then pulled out the sofa bed, telling Topher that he was staying and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  That weekend, Benedict picked Topher up and drove him up to his country house in Litchfield, Connecticut. It was a gracious old house on North Street, with a large wraparound porch that held a swing and a deep wicker sofa. Dickie sat Topher on the sofa, made fresh lemonade, tucked a blanket around his legs when it became chilly, and sat, quietly, saying nothing as Topher sobbed.

  Benedict picked Topher up every weekend that summer, and by the end of the summer, Topher started to feel like he was almost human, all of which he owed to Dickie, who never asked anything of him, never made a move, never expected anything in return. Once, Topher had started to kiss him, not for any reason than he thought it was what Dickie must have wanted, presumed it was why he was being so nice to him, but Dickie had calmly pushed him away, smiling, saying that wasn’t what their relationship was about. And Topher felt relieved.

  Since then, they met for lunch every week. Often, Topher would accompany Dickie to the theater, and Dickie, knowing that Topher had bigger ambitions, would introduce him to everyone for when he was ready to leave the soap opera. It wasn’t what you knew, he always said, it was who you knew.

  But the security of the soap opera was something of a relief for Topher, once Larry died. He wasn’t ready for another change, other than perhaps something to alleviate his loneliness. He missed having another body in the apartment. He missed having someone to talk to, someone who would help with paperwork, and contracts, all the things Topher hated. Of course, his agent helped, but Larry had always talked everything through with Topher, often picking up on small things the agent had missed.

  Topher missed companionship. He could have reached out more, to old friends, but in the beginning they had all reached out to him, and he had been so sick with grief, he hadn’t wanted to see anyone. They had all left him alone after a while, leaving messages saying they were there for him for whatever he needed, and he should get back in touch when he was ready. By the time he felt ready, it had been too long. He didn’t know what to say to those friends he hadn’t spoken to for months (in some cases over a year) so he didn’t call, instead withdrawing, his life outside of work becoming more and more isolated.

  Dickie was the only one who refused to leave him alone. When Topher told Dickie he wasn’t feeling well and had to cancel lunch, Dickie would just show up, knowing the doorman would let him in. He’d lean on the buzzer until Topher had to open the door, insisting on Topher getting dressed and coming out. Topher never wanted to go, but afterward, when he was back home alone, he was always glad he had been out.

  Today they would be going to Michael’s for lunch, which Dickie loved, for he ran into everyone he had ever known. At night, they would often go to Orso for a pre- or post-theater meal; Dickie treated it like his own personal party, moving from table to table to greet, hug, and charm.

  Today, Topher decided on a jacket but no tie, soft leather Italian driving shoes, and no socks. He slipped some small black-and-white portraits into his jacket pocket—wherever he went there were fans, especially midwesterners on vacation in New York who would be in Times Square, and he tried to have something on hand to sign and give away. This was what he was frightened of giving up, he realized, if he left the soap opera. The validation, the recognition that he was someone who mattered.

  * * *

  • • •

  Dickie insisted on dessert, as he always did, a cappuccino for him, a mint tea for Topher. He stirred his three sugars into his cappuccino and looked at the table in the way he did when he was preparing for a serious conversation.

  “Oh dear,” Topher said, attempting to preempt whatever it was he suspected he had done wrong. “You have your serious face on. Whatever I’ve done, can I just apologize now so we can move on?”

  Dickie smiled, the creases around his eyes now deep from the sun
. In his early fifties, he had only grown more handsome, and many was the time Topher had wished for a greater libido, or more chemistry, or something that would make their relationship romantic. But it didn’t seem that it was something either of them particularly wanted, so he chose instead to admire Dickie as a fine figure of an older man.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong, darling boy. But you’re right, there is something I wanted to talk to you about. As you know, I have been rattling around in my large apartment for some time, ever since Felipe left.”

  “Ah yes, the handsome Felipe.” Felipe had been a “friend” of Dickie’s who had lived in one of the guest rooms for the past six years. Their relationship had been platonic (although no one quite believed there weren’t some benefits), and wasn’t quite understood by anyone. They weren’t sure if Felipe took care of Dickie, or if Dickie took care of Felipe. Dickie had a cook, and a cleaner, so there were no domestic duties, and it was rumored he lived rent-free, so if there was no sex, and Dickie swore there was no sex, then it was friendship, companionship, which would have been understandable had Felipe not been so handsome (and, it was rumored, something of a gold-digger). He had in fact left after starting a romantic relationship with a wealthy real estate investor in Palm Beach, and now lived with him in old Palm Beach grandeur on a water estate.

  “You know Felipe and I didn’t have a romantic relationship. In fact, he had his own dalliances that he kept private, and I, occasionally, had mine.”

  “You did? You’ve been keeping things from me!”

  “Oh, there’s nothing to tell. They are, after all, only dalliances. An old bachelor like me doesn’t want to get involved with anyone romantically, not now. I’m too selfish and too set in my ways, but, I do like having company in my home, and it has to be the right kind of person. I have been thinking of you, rattling around in your own apartment . . .”