The Friends We Keep

by Jane Green

  “My apartment isn’t big enough to rattle around in,” said Topher.

  “You know what I mean. I have been thinking about both of us, living on our own and not really enjoying living on our own, and I have been wondering if you might consider moving in with me. This isn’t about romance, or sex, but, as it was with Felipe, companionship. I like having someone to sit opposite me in the mornings to chat about what we’re reading in the newspapers. I like hearing someone else moving around the apartment. The guest suite has its own entrance should you wish to bring people back and have more privacy, but I have thought about this a lot, and I think that our personalities are very well suited.”

  “Our personalities are very well suited.” Topher sat back, surprised at the proposition, never thinking this might be a living arrangement he would want. He was one of the biggest soap stars on television, more than capable of looking after himself, financially and otherwise, and yet he, too, missed the conversation, coming home to someone, having someone to talk to.

  “You would have your own life, Topher. I don’t expect rent, and there isn’t much I ask. Occasionally cooking on the weekends, accompanying me to events if you want to come. Mostly, I like having someone around at home. You’re so young that I am also prepared for you to meet someone and leave. I wasn’t surprised when Felipe left, but for now, at least, I thought we could perhaps take care of each other. It would alleviate my loneliness, and I thought it might alleviate yours.”

  Topher sat and thought of his apartment. Of the closets still filled with Larry’s clothes, the memories that crowded into every square inch. He thought of bringing men back to Dickie’s apartment, but he couldn’t quite see it. That wasn’t something he tended to do. In fact, the older he grew, the more he thought he might not be a sexual being at all. Asexual, he thought, at times. A lover of beauty, which was always enough.

  “Yes,” he said, a smile spreading on his face. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

  twenty-three

  - 2005 -

  The alarm woke Maggie with a start, Ben still snoring beside her. Today was the last day of her fertile window, the four days when Ben’s sperm, such as it was, was most likely to survive, and they had had sex every day, even though neither of them was particularly in the mood. Sex had become something of a chore since Maggie started tracking her fertility. If she wasn’t ovulating, there was no possibility of pregnancy, and if there was no possibility of pregnancy, she wasn’t interested.

  They had had perfunctory sex after lunch, after which they both fell asleep. She let the alarm continue buzzing, reaching for her BlackBerry to see if anyone had e-mailed her while she was asleep, cursing as she knocked the large amethyst crystal off her bedside table. She looked over, but Ben hadn’t stirred. He’d take a while to wake up, hence leaving the alarm buzzing.

  She hadn’t meant to nap today—they had a party at their neighbors’ house at three—but she’d slept terribly the night before. Ben had been snoring heavily, which always made her nervous. He only snored like that when he’d been drinking, but since his latest bout of sobriety ten months ago, he hadn’t snored, not like he did last night. He had started coming to bed after her. Last night, after she had taken her temperature and checked her ovulation testing kit, they had gone upstairs and had sex. There was little foreplay, and afterward she lay on the bed with her legs in the air, resting against the headboard, visualizing strong sperm swimming their way to her egg. When she had first done this, years ago, Ben had laughed, lying on the bed with her as she inched her feet farther up the wall. Last night, after Maggie had shifted to put her legs in the air, Ben had gone to the bathroom, put his clothes back on, and went downstairs to watch television.

  When she woke up at two a.m. because of his snoring, she crept downstairs to go through the rubbish bins, hating herself every second. She had no idea what she would do if she found, as she expected to find, empty bottles of alcohol; she didn’t know if it would result in a fight, or in her expressing her disappointment, feeling more like his mother than his wife.

  This was his third time getting sober, and this time, she thought, until last night, this time she thought it was different; this time it was for good. He wasn’t just going to meetings, he had a sponsor, and they met for breakfast twice a week. He was happier than he had seemed in years, less volatile, and she had started to relax, letting go of the need to monitor his drinking. It had been months since she was on high alert, all her senses heightened, furtively monitoring how much he was drinking.

  The relief she felt when she didn’t find any evidence of alcohol in the early hours of the morning was overwhelming. She went back up to bed, slipped in some earplugs, and allowed herself to feel hopeful before drifting back to sleep, knowing they had one more day to have sex, one more day this month to create a child.

  All of their friends had children, as did all of their neighbors here in Somerset, where everything seemed to revolve around children. So many of the fathers worked in London during the week, the wives bonded together Monday to Friday out of boredom, desperate for adult conversation, and Maggie, who had initially felt like she belonged because they were trying for a baby and it would surely only be a few months before she was granted entrance to the same club, was beginning to dread their parties.

  She was now singularly focused on becoming pregnant, trying anything and everything, no matter how esoteric. She had recently read an article in a women’s magazine featuring three women who had been trying to get pregnant for years. None of them had any luck until they each saw a healer who pronounced their homes had “bad feng shui.” All of them had moved furniture, painted walls, and filled their homes with strategically placed mirrors and crystals, leading to all three of them getting pregnant.

  Maggie hadn’t told Ben. She did the research by herself, finding a feng shui expert, and soon their bed was moved across the room, with various mirrors and crystals hanging from windows. It hadn’t worked.

  She got up, turned on the shower, and went to wake Ben. “We’ve got the birthday party in half an hour,” she said, finally managing to wake him. “We can be a bit late, but we have to be there.”

  “Did you finish the cake for them?”

  Maggie thought of the Barney dinosaur cake she had made for Emily and James Sullivan’s baby, who, at a year old, went nowhere without her soft Barney toy. Maggie had made a chocolate cake glazed with a dark chocolate ganache, topped with a Barney dinosaur romping through a field of candied violets. It was beautiful enough for the adults to swoon, and Coco would love the Barney on the top. Everyone would be happy.

  “Cake is ready, and I made tiny Barney cupcakes as well. Come on. Time to get up and jump in the shower.”

  “Did you enjoy that?” Ben said suddenly. “Our . . . session.”

  “Our session?!” Maggie burst out. “Do you mean sex?” Maggie started laughing. “Did you?”

  He shrugged. “I miss you,” he said, his face now serious. “I mean, it was fine, but I miss us kissing. Taking our time. It’s always a quickie these days, and it always feels like . . .” He sighed. “I don’t know. It feels like it’s a job.”

  “It won’t be like this forever.” Maggie planted a kiss on his nose. “I’m feeling really good this month. The fact that we’ve both given up coffee is going to boost our fertility. I can feel it.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Ben pulled her down for a deeper kiss, but Maggie pulled away.

  “Not now!” She got up, slapping his hand away with a smile as she headed to the bathroom. “We’ve got a party to go to.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s amazing!” Emily flung her arms around Maggie when she saw the cakes. “And cupcakes too! Maggie! You’re fantastic!”

  Her mummy friends crowded around, oohing and aahing at the gorgeous cakes. “Would you make a cake for me?” said one. “That’s so much better than the
one I had,” said another, who seemed aggrieved about it. “Can we have your number?” one said to Maggie.

  “How the hell do you have time to make cakes like this?” said another.

  “No children,” Emily explained, before Maggie had a chance to say anything. “No sleepless nights. No small creatures pulling on you all the time.”

  “Oh my God!” said the woman who had asked how she had the time. “No wonder! We would all be making cakes like that if we didn’t have children!”

  Maggie smiled a stiff smile, wishing she could crawl into a hole. She felt deficient enough already, the only woman her age at these kinds of parties who didn’t have children. The last thing she needed was for anyone to point it out publicly. Even though she knew Emily didn’t mean to intentionally shame her, that was nevertheless how she felt. She excused herself and went outside to the garden, where a bar had been set up to serve the adults. Maggie walked past the fathers, gathered around with beers in hand, and went to the bar to take a Pimm’s. She wouldn’t ordinarily drink in the afternoon. She wouldn’t ordinarily drink if Ben was around, saving her white wine spritzers for nights out with the girls, but after that conversation, she needed a drink.

  She downed half on her first swig, and finished the drink by her fourth.

  “Another Pimm’s?” The bartender grinned. “You look like you needed that.”

  “Yes please,” she said, wondering how quickly she could leave. She saw Ben on the other side of the garden, deep in conversation with one of the dads.

  What she didn’t notice, however, was his hand behind his back, hiding his third can of beer.

  twenty-four

  - 2008 -

  Evvie was lying in bed leafing through magazines when Lance came in from the bathroom. She pretended to immerse herself in her magazine, not wanting to look up and meet his eye, very aware that after four years, the honeymoon period was definitely over. Recently he had started looking her up and down when she was naked, or in her underwear, a look that seemed suspiciously like disdain, which had begun making her self-conscious and nervous.

  It had to be about her weight. Admittedly she had put on weight recently, but isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you’re forty and—finally—happy? She believed Lance loved her; she believed that their marriage was real, based on friendship and trust, that she could finally relax and start enjoying herself a little.

  If that meant eating dessert, or allowing herself to have cake when she met friends for tea, or having a late-night bowl of cereal topped with yogurt, honey, and nuts while watching a movie, so what? Isn’t that what normal people did? Isn’t that how normal people ate? If it meant she had taught their cook how to make jerk chicken, coco bread, and patties, what was wrong with that? Normal people ate patties and dumplings in between meals, surely?

  That Evvie had no idea how normal people ate didn’t occur to her. Her entire life had been spent either overeating or restricting. Twenty-odd years of crazy dieting for her modeling career had taken their toll, and the pendulum now seemed to be swinging the other way. Judging from Lance’s recent passive-aggressive comments, it was beginning to show.

  Evvie paused at a picture of a model she had known well when she was young. A model who had a comeback career now that she was in her early fifties, her mane of blond hair now white, a handful of crow’s-feet around her eyes, but as beautiful as she always was. She had instigated a trend for older models. Lance climbed into bed beside Evvie, glancing over at the picture.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Arabella. We used to work together a million years ago.”

  “She still looks fantastic. Look at that figure! How old is she? She must be younger than you.”

  Evvie flinched at the barb. “No. She’s much older. She looks great though.”

  “You used to look like that,” said Lance. “You should get into shape again. And stop with the late-night snacking.”

  The words made her angry and tearful. She still carried shame about eating, about being seen eating, and shame about ever having been, or being, overweight. Lance’s comment burned. She felt her ears and cheeks grow hot. She didn’t want to eat the cereal at night. Lying in bed each night she told herself that tomorrow would be the start of a new day, that tomorrow she would begin the day with a smoothie, eat nothing but salads, and snack on fruit if she had to snack on anything at all.

  Her mornings started well, but by midafternoon she was starving, and the cakes, the cookies, the furtive eating when Lance was at work and the housekeepers were on the other side of the house were both shameful and comforting. And every night, just like tonight, she lay in bed feeling her stomach growing more round, her breasts heavier as she vowed that she would start again tomorrow.

  She knew that Lance wasn’t happy about it, but this was the first time he had said something outright, and she had no idea what to say, wanting only to bury herself under the covers and weep.

  “Put the magazine down,” Lance said. “We need to discuss this.”

  “Are you joking?” Evvie then turned to look at him. “You want to discuss my occasional bowl of late-night cereal as if it’s a serious issue?”

  “The late-night cereal isn’t an issue, but I don’t want to be married to a fatty.”

  Evvie gasped in horror. “First of all, are you really that superficial? And secondly, I’m hardly a ‘fatty,’ as you call it. So I’m not model thin anymore. I’m forty years old and a mother. I’m not supposed to be rail thin.”

  “I’m just telling you what I’m attracted to. It has nothing to do with superficiality. I like my women to be thin. You have always been thin, but the last few months you’ve been gaining weight, and I would like to see you get back to your best self.”

  “What if this is my best self?” Evvie’s voice was bitter, filled with disbelief that they were even having this conversation.

  “Let’s just hope for your sake that it’s not,” he said.

  “I hope you’re kidding,” Evvie said. “Are you actually fat-shaming me?”

  “You can call it whatever you want. I’m telling you that in your role as my wife, you have to look a certain way, and I not only don’t want you putting on any more weight, I want you to lose the weight you’ve put on. What is it, ten pounds? Fifteen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Evvie, which was true, as she had been avoiding the bathroom scale ever since her clothes started to feel tight. She blinked back the tears that had started to form, incredulous that her husband, the man she thought was her knight in shining armor, was turning out to be more controlling than she ever would have dreamed.

  She should have known better. She should have known that you don’t get to have this kind of success, this kind of money, without being some kind of control freak, without being used to having everyone around you do everything your way.

  * * *

  • • •

  When she met Lance, she was the single mother of a six-year-old boy. Since the day Jack was born, Evvie had devoted herself to being his mother. She worked sporadically, modeling, doing catalog work, but because she couldn’t make it to the go-sees, couldn’t travel at the drop of a hat anymore, the work slowly dried up. She found herself an ex-model and a single mother, willing to do whatever she needed to do to work.

  The early days were easy. She had money to burn, dressed Jack in gorgeous Bonpoint outfits, the best of everything. She barely worked, and when she did, she found a network of babysitters to come and look after Jack. But every second away from him was hell.

  Jack was the perfect baby. He was beautiful looking, with caramel skin and large brown eyes, and strangers would sigh over his dimples and adorable smile. His personality was equally sunny, and Evvie knew she had been blessed.

  She left her downtown loft for a smaller two bedroom on the Upper West Side, and then, when the merry-go-round of private school craziness w
as about to start, decided to leave New York and head out to the suburbs. There, the schools were free, and a small yellow bus would pick her son up and drop him off at the end of the road every day.

  She needed to be careful with money by that time. She was plowing through her savings rather than making more, and her bank account was dwindling. She needed to find somewhere with great public schools, and she wanted fresh air for Jack, a place where he could grow up bicycling.

  She found a small house near the railway station in Westport, Connecticut. She started taking on work as a style consultant, helping women organize their closets, coordinating their wardrobes, shopping with them at Mitchells and the Darien Sport Shop. She was always elegant and immaculately put together, even though the designer clothes in her own closet were years old.

  As Jack grew, so did her expenses. She needed more work, and when her friend Kim opened a local coffee shop and asked her to help out, she said yes, relieved. It turned into a regular job to supplement her freelance income.

  This wasn’t the life she would ever have chosen for herself, she often thought. She remembered her stardom, the years she spent modeling, lavishing money on ridiculous bags and shoes and fur coats that were gradually sold off, one by one, after Jack was born. But there wasn’t a thing she would change about her life, given the wondrousness of Jack.

  She was pretty happy, if not rich, the day Lance walked into the coffee shop, impossible to ignore. He carried himself with an air of authority, was charming and brimmed with an appealing confidence. He was not her type at all—she had always gone for pretty boys, whereas Lance was older, and heavier set. But she found him compelling, and once he established himself as a regular, she would look forward to him coming in. It wasn’t just his air of authority and his charm, it was that he seemed like the kind of man who would look after you, take care of things. She may have thought she relished her independence, but being a single mother was hard; part of her was clearly more tired of struggling on her own than she had realized.