“With Aaron?” I asked.
She startled, surprised, perhaps, that I had remembered her husband’s name, which of course I hadn’t, not until Lacie had told me she was cheating on him.
“Maybe he’ll come,” she said slowly.
I smiled at her without teeth. “I was just wondering. How’s he doing?”
She looked at me curiously. “He’s fine.”
The thing about a woman like Sophie is that from the moment of matriculation at Horace Mann, she had been in control. Even her wild youth had probably been a calculated wild youth, designed to give the optimum amount of risk-taking without ever venturing near legitimate danger. But after thirty years of perfect management, she had gotten used to her life being managed. She was a bit slow to recognize a threat.
“I just—I remember you said that thing. About his mother. I just wondered how he was doing with all that.”
Beside me I could feel Lacie turn to stone.
“Ohhh, that?” Sophie stuttered out a laugh. “I can’t believe you remember all that. Yeah, he’s fine. We’re doing fine.”
“The thing is that I’m not a controlling person!” Lacie practically yelled out of nowhere. “That’s what pisses me off about this whole situation. He says I’m not giving him space. I always give people space! Everyone thinks I’m the most chill person in the world.”
“You are,” Sophie reassured.
“You totally are,” I added.
“Then what the fuck? I mean really, what the fuck? Why wouldn’t he pick up his phone? I know that motherfucker is glued to it.”
“I mean, just ask him if he’s seeing someone.” As a child I could never resist picking my scabs. I always had to see what was underneath. “You said you wouldn’t care. You said you felt kind of European about it.”
“Somehow the reality is different,” Lacie mumbled.
“I don’t think this line of thinking is particularly productive—” Sophie began.
“I don’t know why we can’t just be practical about it. I mean, people have affairs. That’s the truth. Even really unlikely people cheat.” I turned to Sophie. “You know that.”
“I know what?” Sophie’s chin jutted up.
“You know that people have affairs. All the time.”
Beside me Lacie groaned.
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“I mean, you’re seeing someone else, right? It’s not a big deal.”
Sophie threw her napkin. Literally dropped her napkin, right onto her plate. “How do you know that?”
Lacie turned to me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I thought it was just like, a fact. Hasn’t it been going on for years?”
Sophie had gone white. She was trembling, and beads of moisture had appeared on her upper lip.
“Jesus,” Lacie moaned. “Don’t you remember me saying, ‘Don’t repeat this’?”
“But why did you share it?” Sophie stood. “I told you that in confidence. That wasn’t for gossip.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. I was in fact starting to feel sorry. Somehow in my head it had seemed funny. Or cosmopolitan. Or, I guess, to be precise, I was still pissed about that lame lunch date.
“God, Soph, I’m so sorry.” Lacie stretched out her hand, and Sophie recoiled.
“I’m going to go. Not”—she held up her hand—“because I’m mad, but I’m just—I’m going to go. I’m not mad at you.” Already she was backing toward the door and patting her hair as if her hair needed preparation for departure.
Lacie and I watched her as if she were an actress in a play. We waited to see what she was going to do next, even as we already knew. She put on her shoes. She put on her coat. Her dark head bobbed in the foyer. She sent us one last desperate glance, and then she was gone.
Lacie and I looked at each other. The meal was not even half done. The wine bottle was still beaded. Sophie’s fork remained in her mound of rice.
“I—”
It was lucky that Lacie jumped up at that moment because I had no idea what was coming after that I. She yanked the platter of chicken, marched to the kitchen, and slid the whole carcass into the trash. Lacie never wasted food.
I followed her, and began washing dishes. This was our first fight. It was funny how calm I felt.
“You always do this,” she said after a moment.
“Do what?” In high school I had been a champ at keeping secrets.
“You just, like…you just, like…you’re like—I can’t explain it.”
More silence. I ran the water hot and made myself keep my hands under it. Behind me I could hear Lacie slamming down glasses. I could picture them piling up behind me like little soldiers. What we’re trying to do, I thought, is really stupid. You’re supposed to outgrow your childhood friend. You’re not supposed to move in together and try to build a new life on the ash heap of the old.
“I mean, why would you even say that?” Lacie finally said.
I turned from the sink. My hands were chapped and raw pink from the water. “I forgot it was a secret.”
“All night, you were like, affairs, affairs, affairs! You couldn’t help yourself. You kept bringing it up.”
I said nothing.
“Are you trying to sabotage things between Sophie and me? Is that it? You’re jealous of our friendship? What’s going on?”
“I honestly didn’t think she would care so much.” But I was mumbling. I didn’t believe myself.
“You always do this! It’s like you can’t see yourself, like you think nobody’s paying any attention to you. Take responsibility for yourself!”
She was yelling.
“Okay, okay, I am, I am. I’m sorry. I fucked up. It was really bad. I don’t know why I did it. I’m sorry.”
We eyed each other. She looked pretty. Her cheeks were flushed, and her T-shirt had slipped off one shoulder, exposing a graceful curve of clavicle.
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you. But do you know what I’m saying?”
“Lacie, I really am sorry. I don’t know what got into me. Probably I am jealous of how close you are to Sophie, or something.” I flapped out my hand, a gesture of honesty. “Probably I’m just jealous of her, period.”
“Is that why you asked her to lunch?” She folded her arms.
“What?”
“She told me you asked her to lunch. That you went to lunch. You went all the way to Midtown to meet her at some crappy Indian place on her lunch break.”
“She chose the Indian place.”
“She thought it was weird.”
My heart was shuddering, convulsing in confusion; I couldn’t have said if I was scared or angry. “How do you know all this?”
“She texted me. Then I come home, and you’re wearing my dress. It’s weird, Rose. It’s really fucking weird.”
Deliberately I turned off the faucet. Made a big production of wringing out the sponge. Wiping my hands on a dirty dishtowel, then rubbing them again on my jeans. “I’m new here,” I said, in what I hoped was a tone of great dignity. “I’m trying to make friends. Tell me what is wrong with that.”
“Oh, please!” She almost barked a laugh. “Please stop with the outsider thing, okay? You’re not an outsider. You belong. People like you.”
“I am, though,” and I hated the whine that crept into my voice. “I just moved here. You guys have known each other for years.”
“We’ve known each other for years. Even in high school you were like this. Even in elementary school.”
“Yeah, but I was an outsider back then too. I was a pretty dorky kid.”
“Are you kidding? I was enthralled by you.”
“I was enthralled by you.”
We stopped a minute, panting. “You were so smart,” she fi
nally said.
“I was so smart?”
“Yeah, you were taking all these AP classes, and you won that playwriting contest. I was a little in awe of you.”
“You were in awe of me?” I was starting to get furious. “Because I was taking AP classes? Come on, Lacie. You guys barely tolerated having me around. All the boys were gaga over you. They would practically follow you around.”
“No. Everyone was intimidated by you. We all knew you were this genius.”
“That’s stupid. That’s not true.”
She looked directly at me. “It’s true.”
In the silence that followed there was only the gentle whap, whap of the broom hitting the molding. “Relax,” I told her, and she grimaced and slowed down.
But there was still this pressure in the room. I made a weird chopping motion with my hands. “Not that it did me any good. I’m all ‘youthful promise’ that didn’t pan out.”
“That’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard.” She waved the broom. Dust bunnies flew. “Take that back. I’m serious. Take that back right now.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s not. You’re working on your novel. You went to Iowa, and now you’re writing your novel, and you’re going to sell it for a million dollars. You’re brilliant.”
“You haven’t read anything I’ve written.”
“I read your play. I was in your play.”
“Come on, Lace. That was a hundred years ago. You have no idea if I’m good.”
“I don’t need to read anything.” She spoke with fierce, trembling dignity. “I know you’re good. I just know it.”
It unnerved me, this faith of hers. What did I do to deserve it? I was stabbing her in the back, day after day, word after word, stabbing her. I had just stabbed her. How could she forgive me so quickly? Why couldn’t she see how terrible I was? Her trust in me made me angry. “You don’t even know what my book is about.”
Just then, if she had asked, I would have told her. Just for the satisfaction of shocking her, I would have divulged. It’s strange how you can start to hate the people you’re hurting.
“Writers don’t like to talk about the books they’re writing.” She put down the broom and took up a dishtowel, and when she stepped beneath the overhead fluorescent, I saw the hairs growing on her face. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
So invasive to see those pale, transparent hairs. So corporeal. For the briefest and most liberating of moments I saw Lacie as she was, and not as I wanted and feared her to be: not hopelessly hip, not endlessly smart, not carelessly beautiful, and complex, and always angled away from me, but someone tired and full, a little drunk and petulant; a person betrayed and let down and occasionally exhilarated by her body, like everyone else. A girl with a smattering of soft down on her face.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
“I just think it’s interesting. That’s all.” I rotated my glass a quarter inch and the condensation on the bar smeared. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not interesting. Maybe it’s totally boring.”
“People always remember the past differently. Especially that kind of stuff.”
We were at Applewood, in our usual spot, at the end of the bar watching back waiters carry steaming plates of locally sourced corpses. It had been a week since we had seen each other, and in that week I realized: we had to stop.
Which was why, after composing long, eloquent texts in my head explaining why we had to stop, which I imagined I would send just as soon as Ian asked me out, and then feeling slightly aggravated that he hadn’t asked me out, I decided to ask him out so I could tell him it was over. It was best to be clear about these things.
Naturally, the place to tell him was “our spot.” It was absolutely essential to ruin “our spot” with a nasty fight, so that it would be haunted by unhappiness and we would never be tempted to go there again. Yes, it was a measure of my commitment to ending things that I had chosen Applewood, for as soon as I told him it was over Applewood would be ruined, yes, in just one minute Applewood would be ruined, as soon as I told him this one fascinating new insight into Lacie’s personality…
“It was just weird, this talk. I got so angry that she said she idolized me, when I actually spent most of high school feeling completely left out.” Over Ian’s shoulder the bartender, still with his suspenders and beard, rattled a silver cocktail shaker. “Do you feel like Lacie idolizes you?”
“Me?” Ian pretended to think while I pretended to wait. Really my internal motors were revving in preparation for the brag about to burst from my mouth. “I don’t really think so…”
“It’s just, I feel like Lacie has this idea that I’m some amazing writer, that I’m this genius, but I’m not. All I do is sit at my desk and suffer.”
“I think suffering is mainly what writers do. Especially the good ones.” He looked down at his highball. Part of Applewood’s charm was its solid stemware. It gave your drinking weight. “I honestly have no idea what Lacie thinks of my art. I don’t really care.”
“But do you really not care?”
He said flatly, “I really don’t care.”
He was obviously about to get all high-minded about making the art you wanted to make, and not giving a shit what other people thought, that stupid argument that I had had a million times before, at Iowa, after Iowa, self-righteous speeches about how the best things came from people who didn’t give a fuck (but I gave a fuck, that was the defining thing about me, that was why I was not a Depressed Girl, why I had gone to Harvard, why I was sitting in this bar talking to this man who seemed alternately attracted and indifferent to me: I gave a fuck), and so, to head off this pointless philosophical bullshit, I said, “I got so pissed off I almost told her what my novel was about.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“Nobody knows,” and as if those words had flipped a switch, I suddenly felt eager and sensual and like I knew something about art. Maybe we would fuck later. Yes, we would definitely fuck. After I had told him it was over, we’d both be feeling sentimental.
“Really, nobody knows? You haven’t shown it to anyone?”
“Just my agent.” Ian looked skeptical. “If you talk too much about something while you’re writing it, you kill it.”
Of course killing it was the point. I wanted Leo ink-dead, dead on the page. I wanted his memory sold, printed, published, and reviewed, our lives no longer our lives but public property. Answering the inevitable nosy questions, I would be coy, and gradually the hurt he had caused me would blur.
Ian smiled his inscrutable close-lipped smile. “Maybe you’re writing about me.”
“Ha. You wish,” but my face flushed.
Then he blushed. “Oh my God. You are.”
“No, come on. Think about it. I’ve been writing this book for years.”
“Then why are you blushing? Are you writing about Lacie?”
“No.” But it was pointless to lie. I blushed so hard it hurt.
“Look at you. You are.” He sucked at the dregs of his whiskey, and ice cubes clinked his teeth. “That’s sick, Rose, that’s really sick. Is that why you moved in with her? So you could take notes on her?”
“Oh my God, Ian, no. It’s actually so random that we live together. It’s just a coincidence.”
“Hmm.” He sounded like he didn’t believe me. Our Mennonite poured out a liquid ribbon of gin. Behind us, a woman laughed loudly, like a hawk. “Does it have to do with that fight?”
“What fight?”
“You told me you guys had a fight. Some kind of falling-out.”
At once, that golden Indian summer day came swimming up: the red chiffon curtains billowing with soft breezes, Ian sprawled on the couch and singing my name. It seemed pointless to deny what was so cleanly etched in my memory. “Yeah, we d
id.”
“So what’d you fight about?” Moodily he sipped. “A boy?”
“Jesus! Why do men always think that the only thing women could possibly fight about is a man? It’s so sexist.”
He looked at me, amused. “So you did.”
I laughed. “God, I hate you. You’re the worst.”
“You should get better at lying. Look at you, you’re blushing again.” I ducked my head, secretly pleased. “So what was it? You liked the same boy?”
Primly I crossed my legs and folded my hands. “I’m not telling you any of this.”
“Who got him?”
“Come on, Ian. You’ll just have to read the book.”
He sized me up. After a moment, he announced, “Lacie did.”
“Yeah. But then I slept with him, so I guess I kind of won.”
I meant it as a joke, but he didn’t laugh. There was a terrible, splintery silence. “Oh, no.” His voice had gone quiet. “You slept with her high school boyfriend? Really, Rose?”
I shrugged. “Really.” In that moment I felt deliciously cavalier.
“And that’s what your book is about?” His lips bunched as if tasting something sour. “That makes me feel really weird.”
“You guys doing all right?” Our bartender clicked away our glasses with two hairy fingers.
“I’ll have another,” I said, and Ian looked at me, surprised. “Actually, just a whiskey.”
“Me too.” He sounded resigned.
“Double rye?” the Mennonite asked me.
That was what Ian was drinking. I nodded, then turned back to him. “Look. What’s happening between us, it doesn’t have anything to do with Lacie. Regardless of what my book is about.”
“Right.” He rolled a little red straw beneath his palm. “It’s just. It’s a lot.”
Our drinks arrived. Carefully he turned the glass around in his hand as if he were an alien encountering his first drinking vessel. I waited. I felt like an alien, incapable of guessing what these earthlings considered solemn and what was glib. Ian had seemed glib back at Song, boldly proclaiming I like Lacie, and I like you. Why should something that had happened in high school change any of that?
Everyone Knows How Much I Love You Page 19
