The Friends We Keep

by Jane Green

  Tonight was one she had been dreading. A gala at Sotheby’s, where she would be paraded around on his arm as he leered at other women with his male business associates.

  Now, as they stood in the bathroom, he grimaced as he looked at her breasts, his eyes narrowed. Her heart started pounding in frightened anticipation of what he might say, of what he might do.

  “A morbidly obese wife,” he sneered. “Jesus Christ. How in the hell did I end up with such a disgusting pig of a wife? It’s time you had a gastric bypass. I don’t know why we didn’t do it earlier. We’ll get you looking halfway decent again. I’ll get Doris to make an appointment on Monday. I can barely even look at you now.”

  He walked out of the bathroom then, and Evvie exhaled, unaware she had been holding her breath. She looked at herself in the mirror, trying to drown out his voice with more positive messaging of her own.

  “You are strong,” she whispered. “You are a wonderful mother. You are smart and capable. You are a good person. You are beautiful.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” she whispered to herself. “You know why you’re heavy. And you are better than he is. You deserve more.” She rolled her shoulders back, shook out her hair, and despite wanting to crawl into bed, she plastered on her best smile, and slipped on her shoes.

  * * *

  • • •

  The cocktail hour at the gala was interminable. The rooms were packed, the music blaring, people yelling to be heard over it. The stark white walls of the gallery were hung with works by Degas, Monet, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, Sisley, all of the greats, but everyone was ignoring the paintings, too busy looking around to see who was who, and what they were wearing.

  The gowns were magnificent. Jewel colors draped around aging women who were size zero, their tan, bony shoulders exposed in silks and satins, their hair sprayed into coiffed helmets, their cheekbones unnaturally high and round as they chattered excitedly with their friends. They were accompanied by husbands in black tie, many of whom appeared to be thirty years older than their wives, until you looked at the wives’ hands, bejeweled and wrinkled, the only giveaway of their age. The men stood together as the women admired their dresses, showed off their jewels, subtly eyed each other up and down to make sure they were wearing a more expensive, more exclusive outfit, a bigger necklace, better jewels.

  Through it all, Evvie stood, and smiled, air-kissed people she knew, made small talk with the wives of Lance’s colleagues, even though she knew they did not think much of her, these New York society matrons. She knew they judged her and found her inferior, the ex-model, half-black, once-single mother who would never, ever be good enough for them.

  She became aware of a woman staring at her, a woman who seemed to have been staring at her throughout the evening. She was an actress Evvie vaguely recognized from a popular television show. She was petite, and pretty, and worked on. Her lips were pouty in the artificial way that immediately told Evvie they had been plumped, her breasts the sort of large melons Lance loved. Her arms were toned and tanned, and her hair a waterfall of glossy blond.

  Evvie found herself catching the eye of the blonde enough times that she was wondering if perhaps they had met, or—unlikely—that Evvie had done something at some time to offend her, for her gaze seemed hostile. But then, standing in a circle of people, chatting (although Evvie never felt as if she was standing in the circle, but always just outside), the blond woman was there, and they were being introduced.

  “Ally, do you know Lance Colton and his wife, Evvie?” Carl Steenberg said as the actress shook her head. “Lance, Evvie, I’m sure you know the actress Ally Majors.”

  “Good to meet you,” said Lance, shaking her hand.

  “How do you do?” said Evvie, surprised by the firmness of Ally’s handshake. She looked so delicate, as if she would be one of those people who limply placed their hand in yours before sliding it away. But in fact she looked Evvie straight in the eye and gripped her hand, shaking it firmly.

  “So lovely to meet you,” Ally said to Evvie. “I can’t take my eyes off your dress. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

  “Thank you so much.” Evvie wanted to warm to the compliment, yet there was a lack of warmth in the woman’s tone. “I loved the show you were in, with Rob Lowe. It was one of my favorites.”

  “God, that was a long time ago. But thank you. It was huge fun.”

  “Will you excuse me?” Evvie needed to get away. “I must visit the restroom.” This was the trick she always used to get away when she was uncomfortable, excusing herself to go to the restroom, or to get another drink, or to get some air—anything for a few moments of peace by herself.

  She wandered through the crowds, aware that curious eyes were watching her, that there were people wanting to say hello. She stopped to greet Rena and Jason Pilalas, and Ian and Debbie O’Malley, before excusing herself, performing an old trick from her modeling days, walking off and keeping her eyes trained on the middle distance so everyone became a blur, a smile on her face, careful to avoid making eye contact.

  Just as she reached the other side of the room, she turned and saw the group of people she had been standing with, the actress, Ally, now deep in conversation with Lance. As she watched, her husband reached over and placed a hand on Ally’s backside, pulling her slowly up against him. Ally smiled the most intimate of smiles, dancing her fingers up his arm, before removing it and looking around to check that no one had seen.

  Her eyes landed on Evvie’s. She immediately composed her features into a cool gaze before whispering something to Lance. It was obvious that they knew each other very well, that they had known each other—Evvie guessed in the biblical sense—for some time.

  Ally started walking toward Evvie, who turned on her heel and left for the bathroom, hoping the actress wouldn’t be able to follow her in the crowd. She headed downstairs, to the quiet bathroom, moving quickly. Once there, she locked herself in a stall, taking deep breaths.

  So her husband was having an affair. How did she feel about it? Neither shocked, nor surprised, nor upset. Resigned, perhaps. And maybe relieved. In fact, she felt something she hadn’t experienced in a long time: a smattering of hope. If he was involved with someone else, perhaps he would leave her alone. Perhaps he would spend even more time away. This certainly explained why he had been spending so much time in the city as it was.

  The door to the bathroom opened, and Evvie heard her name.

  Damn.

  She walked out of the stall and faced Ally, who was standing there prettily, her hands on her hips.

  “So. You know.”

  “That you and my husband are having an affair? I do now.”

  “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but it’s not just an affair. He is in love with me.”

  A glimmer of hope sparked in Evvie’s chest. “And how do you feel about him?”

  “The same,” Ally said, in a monotone. “He says you will never divorce him, but I don’t believe that to be true. I understand you’ve gotten used to the lifestyle, but why would you want to stay married to a man who no longer loves you? Why not get out now, while you are still . . . relatively young . . . and have a chance to be happy yourself, and to let him be happy.”

  “You want to marry him?” Evvie asked, trying to hide a smile of disbelief, of . . . relief. Maybe this was the hand of God reaching down and opening up the tiniest of exit doors.

  “I do. And he wants to marry me.”

  “Why has he not said anything to me?”

  “Because he knows you will fleece him.”

  “I have no interest in fleecing him,” Evvie said. “If you want him, you can have him.”

  Ally’s mouth fell open. “That’s it? It’s that simple?”

  “I don’t have the energy for the fight,” Evvie said. “He’s yours. You can tell him that I’ve taken the car back to the house, and I wi
ll be out by morning. Good luck,” she said, wanting to add, You’ll need it. But she refrained. She was too selfish to warn the woman about what she was getting into. And she doubted Ally would listen. Evvie had heard the rumors about Lance, and had chosen to ignore them herself.

  This was clearly not what the actress had been expecting. She stared at Evvie, lost for words. Holding her head high, Evvie walked out of the building, and to the corner, where she texted her driver. Within minutes, she was inside the car and pulling away from the curb, and Evvie realized the dream she had been dreaming for years seemed to have unexpectedly come true. She started to smile as a great weight lifted from her shoulders and the smile turned to a laugh, and soon she was laughing so hard, it brought tears to her eyes.

  twenty-eight

  - 2016 -

  It’s so beautiful,” said Karen, wide-eyed, at Emily’s house. “I don’t know how you did it.”

  “I had help,” said Emily. “I’m much too busy with the children, but I definitely had a big hand in everything. My decorator came up from London, but I was forever e-mailing her things I’d seen and loved.”

  The men were in the living room with drinks and nuts as Emily gave Karen and Maggie a tour of their newly renovated kitchen. After ten years in the house, Emily had decided the kitchen was completely outdated, and they had knocked through into what had been the den, to create a giant kitchen and family room.

  Maggie had loved the old kitchen. It had been cream, with butcher-block countertops and a large Aga, which Maggie had never fully understood, given that Emily never cooked.

  The new kitchen was stark and modern. The bleached wood herringbone floor was, to Maggie’s mind, the most beautiful thing about it. There was an island now, ten feet long, with a huge slab of marble waterfalling over the sides. The flat-fronted cabinets were black, and the splash backs a polished horizontal slatted wood. It looked like it had just stepped out of the pages of House & Garden. Maggie missed the old Fired Earth tile splash backs that reminded her of a sunrise. This wasn’t a kitchen she would want to cook in, however beautiful it may have been. The thin brass stools at the countertop repelled rather than invited—the whole room was a triumph of form over function.

  Two women in white shirts and black trousers were bustling around the kitchen getting food ready.

  “Something smells delicious,” said Maggie. “Is it lamb?”

  “Lamb stuffed with pine nuts and apricots. And a Moroccan couscous. I’ve found the most fabulous caterer in Bath. I’ll give you her number.”

  Karen burst out laughing. “Have you tasted Maggie’s cooking? No offense, but she doesn’t need a caterer!”

  “You never know,” said Emily. “What if she and Ben are having a party?”

  Ha, thought Maggie. Nothing would be less likely. Now that Ben was working in London again, they socialized less and less. She only saw him on the weekends, and they hadn’t been invited anywhere for ages. This, Emily and James’s dinner party, was the first event they had been to together in months.

  “I’d kill to have a kitchen like this,” said Karen, her eyes still wide. Maggie thought of Karen’s own kitchen above the pub, dated but well used and well loved, copper pots and pans hanging from hooks drilled into the brick wall above the range.

  You wouldn’t, thought Maggie, eyes darting nervously toward the living room as a burst of laughter came through from the men. Ben was drinking again. She didn’t know this until tonight, when James offered him a vodka and he accepted, saying, “Just a small one.” He didn’t meet Maggie’s eyes.

  She had given up trying. In the old days this would have set her on high alert, would have ruined her night, but she didn’t care anymore. He had been looking terrible, the whites of his eyes yellow, his whole body seeming bloated. He had been to the doctor months ago, and had returned saying he was fine, and would be going to a meeting that night. She presumed the doctor told him to stop drinking, but he didn’t say anything more, and she didn’t ask.

  “Those boys!” Karen rolled her eyes at the burst of laughter. “A few drinks in them and they’re wild. That Ben.” She shook her head affectionately as she looked at Maggie. “He’s the life and soul. I don’t know how you’re not exhausted!”

  “Me neither.” Maggie gave a tight smile.

  One of the ladies looked at her watch. “We’re ready to sit down when you are.”

  “Great,” said Emily. “Let’s serve the first course in about ten minutes.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Maggie had lost count of how much she had had to drink. In the old days she refused to drink in front of Ben, lest it encourage him or pull him off the wagon. These days she didn’t care; it was easier to get through a night like this when she had something to take the edge off.

  There was a new woman in town who apparently sold marijuana edibles. They were all the rage among the yummy mummies, according to Karen, who said she’d long ago eschewed the witching hour glass of wine for a gummy bear or a pot lollipop.

  Karen had bought some lollipops and given a couple to Maggie, but she hadn’t tried them. Her only experience with weed had been long ago at university, and all she could remember was falling asleep.

  Her drug of choice, if you could call it that, was red wine, and tonight she had had just enough to be able to ignore Ben, who was laughing so hard, he was wheezing. But everyone around the table, apart from Maggie, seemed hooked on every word of the funny story he was telling.

  “. . . so the woman in the comments section said how horrific foxes were, and that no one would be saying that if a fox had massacred their chickens and turkeys, and a man wrote underneath . . .” Ben couldn’t speak for a few moments, loose with laughter as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “‘My chickens are cunts.’”

  The table exploded into raucous laughter, except for Maggie, who managed a wry smile. She had laughed out loud when she read the original David Sedaris story, but it wasn’t quite as funny for her, coming from the mouth of her husband, who, at that moment, was shaking with laughter so much that he spilled his red wine.

  Maggie looked around the table, at everyone having a great time, all of them adoring Ben, whose introvert tendencies went AWOL when he drank. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and as she passed Ben’s chair, he reached for her.

  “My beautiful wife,” he crooned, holding out his hand as she sidestepped his grasp.

  “Sorry!” she lied. “Desperate for the loo.”

  * * *

  • • •

  By half past eleven, Maggie was done. James had broken out his vintage whiskey collection, and Maggie didn’t want to watch her husband get legless.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Too much red wine and a bit headachy,” she said, kissing Emily and thanking her.

  “I’ll put Pete in charge of getting Ben home safely.” Karen put her arms around Maggie and gave her a tight hug. “Not that he’s much better. Boys will be boys, eh?” She laughed as Maggie attempted a smile.

  “You don’t need to put Pete in charge of Ben. It’s fifty yards away!” said Emily, who was herself a bit tipsy. “I’m so glad we did this. Your husband is hilarious. We ought to do this much more often. How long has it been since we got together? I think it’s been years! We definitely won’t leave it this long again!” She gave Maggie another hug before Maggie stepped out the door, grateful for the cold air as she walked home.

  She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but woke up, sometime later, thinking she had heard a bang. She turned the light on in the hallway and called out.

  “Hello? Ben?” There was no answer. She walked downstairs, seeing the front door was wide open, and the grandfather clock in the hallway said it was twenty past one. She closed the door and locked it, knowing that the bang must have been Ben.

  She found him in his office, his “nightcap” spilled all over the fl
oor, Ben slumped against his desk, blacked out, with vomit on his shirt.

  Maggie stood in the doorway, looking at her husband. In the old days she would have forced him awake, taken off his clothes and thrown them straight in the wash, scrubbed the carpet clean, and helped him upstairs to bed. She would have been furious, upset, would have insisted they have “a talk” in the morning, when he was sober.

  This time she felt nothing. She backed out of the room, turned off the lights, and closed the door. Let Ben clean up his mess when he finally woke up.

  PART III

  present day

  twenty-nine

  - 2019 -

  Maggie paused in the hallway, where silver-framed photographs clustered on a polished walnut table, and picked up her wedding photo. There they were, her little group, Evvie and Topher, she and Ben looking so young, so unprepared for what the future would bring. She should have put the photograph away after the funeral, but she felt too guilty. Her penance was keeping the photograph out, pretending that their marriage had been perfect, that Ben had been perfect, even now, three years after his death.

  Much of the time Maggie still couldn’t believe Ben was dead. Oh, what irony, that he was on his way out to try to surprise her in a last-ditch bid to save the marriage, just as Maggie had decided to leave. They had been unhappy for so many years, this house that they had both once loved feeling like a prison, a constant reminder of what they didn’t have, neither children nor, as time went on, anything that bound them together, until the wedge between them became insurmountable.

  Ben dealt with it by falling off the wagon more times than Maggie could remember. She knew each time he had started drinking again, and every muscle in her body would tense as he lay beside her snoring, as the same old patterns started again, her monitoring the alcohol everywhere in the house, him lying about where he had been and what he had been doing.