Best Friends Forever (14 page)

“Maneater,” which, even at eleven, struck me as highly inappropriate.

“Sara / You’re the poet in my heart,”

Stevie Nicks sang on the tape I’d made. Valerie circulated with champagne. Mrs. Adler closed her eyes, turning in dreamy circles. Her skirt spun out from around her body; her hair flared out from around her head. Val looked proud as she watched. I played my tapes on my parents’ stereo, where the songs sounded so much better than they did on my tinny little boom box. When the first tape ran out, I was ready to go with Sting’s The Dream of the Blue Turtles, but my father intercepted me. He’d worn his tuxedo, the same one he’d been married in, but at some point he’d ditched the jacket and cummerbund and was now slim and graceful in his black pants and white shirt. “I got this, Pal,” he said, setting his empty champagne glass down on the bookcase. His pale face was flushed, his hair was damp and curling over his forehead, and he looked more relaxed, happier, than I could remember seeing him.

He reached into a cupboard and retrieved a stack of albums, flipping rapidly through them until he found the Rol ing Stones’

Sticky Fingers, which he put on the turntable, cranking the volume up loud.

“Brown Sugar” came blasting through the speakers. By the door, Jon was so startled he jumped. Mrs. Adler threw her hands in the air, laughing. My father crossed the room and took her by the hands and spun her, and I was struck by how right they looked together, paired and partnered in a way I’d never seen my father and my mother. My heart gave an unhappy lurch as Mrs. Adler turned around, swinging her hips and smiling over her shoulder at my father.

“Whoo-hoo!” somebody shouted…and

then another couple started dancing, and then two more. Within minutes, our living room was fil ed with people waving their hands, singing along, dancing. Jon leaned against the wal with his mouth half open, like a kid at a fireworks display. Val sidled up to me and cupped her hands around my ear. “Isn’t this great?” she shouted. She poured more champagne into my plastic cup and clinked hers against it in a toast. As

“Sway” turned into “Wild Horses,” Mr. Kominski crossed the room. I held my breath as he approached, but I wasn’t surprised, and I tried not to be disappointed, when he asked Val if she wanted to dance. He led her to the center of the room, where Val smiled up at him, lifting her mouth to his ear to shout answers to the questions he must have been asking, then quickly pressing her lips together, the way she’d been doing lately, to hide her teeth. I sat down on the couch that we’d pushed against the wal , letting the music pound through me. It was okay if boys liked Val better. Someone would love me someday. Even if I wasn’t an obvious choice, I’d be somebody’s choice, some boy’s choice, the way I’d once been Valerie’s.

The wind was howling outside, bending the trees, rattling the windowpanes, but inside we were warm and happy, al of us safe and together.

“Here we go!” one of the husbands shouted. The music skidded into silence, and Mr. Preston snapped on the TV just in time to see the glittering bal begin its descent in Times Square. “Four…three

…two…ONE!” The room exploded with cheers. Husbands kissed wives, and not the polite closed-lipped kisses that Val and I had seen on our babysitting jobs, when the husbands came home from work. Some of these couples were kissing like they meant it.

Suddenly Val was beside me, grabbing my hands. “Come with me,” she said, pul ing me off the couch.

“Where?” I asked as she led me down the hal to the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“Shh,” she hissed. She stuck her head around the corner, waited, then beckoned for me. I stood on my tiptoes, craning my neck. At first what I saw hardly seemed remarkable: my father, with a bottle of champagne in his hand and his white tuxedo shirt clinging to his chest, leaning against the refrigerator, as Mrs. Adler stood in front of him, talking earnestly. Her feet were bare

—she’d ditched the silver shoes somewhere

—and as I watched, she tilted her head up shyly, clasping her hands behind her back. My father said something, and she nodded, breasts bouncing below her tight neckline.

“That’s it, that’s it exactly!” she said. “God. You real y get it. To go from California to a place like this…it’s so smal -minded. Little boxes. Like the song.”

I frowned. That didn’t make sense. Except for col ege and Vietnam, my father had lived his whole life in Il inois, so how could he real y “get it”? And then, as Val and I watched, Mrs.

Adler wrapped her hands around his neck and kissed him.

I sucked in my breath. From far away, I could feel Val grab my hand, could hear her whisper, “Isn’t this great?” I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could stil hear them—Mrs. Adler ( cal me Naomi! ) murmuring softly, my father’s lower tones as he answered.

“I should get my mom.”

Val squeezed my hand harder. “Why? This is perfect.”

I made myself open my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Because we’l get to be sisters,” she said.

“What about my mom?” As I watched, my father reached behind his head, took Mrs.

Adler’s hands from around his neck, and folded them on top of her chest.

“I think,” he told her, “we’ve both had a few too many.”

“Oh, no,” she said, looking at him with her eyes wide, drawing her no-o-o-o into a little girl’s whine. “I’m fine! I’m having fun!”

“Come on,” said my dad, putting one hand on her waist, turning her around, and trying to steer her out of the kitchen. “Let’s get you home.”

She dragged her feet over the floor. “Wil you walk me?”

“Addie and I wil take you,” said my dad. He paused by the edge of the kitchen and saw Val and me standing there. “Val, you want to grab your mother’s coat?”

Val’s face was unreadable as she turned and ran up the stairs. This is perfect, I heard her say in my head. I was furious at Val if she’d meant what I thought she had, and angry at her mother and my father, too (she’d kissed him first, but he’d kissed her back). I was also, I found, consumed by a kind of guilty curiosity. What would it be like if Mrs. Adler and my father got married? What if Valerie and I were real y, truly sisters? My mother could stay here with Jon and take care of him. My father and Mrs. Adler could live in the DiMeos’ old house

—my dad was handy, he could fix it up, scrape off the peeling paint, patch the holes in the wal s, and it would be weird for a while, but people got used to al kinds of things. Val would have a father. We would final y finish her pink-and-green bedroom, and we’d get matching beds that Val had shown me in a magazine, and…

“Here, Mom.” Val’s lips were pressed into a thin line as she helped her mother slip into her coat. Then, kneeling, she slid Naomi’s feet into her high-heeled silver shoes.

“Come on,” she said. “The party’s over. Let’s go home.”

FOURTEEN

“So what happened to your parents?”

Valerie asked as we drove east, along the wide, empty lanes of the Eisenhower Express-way, heading toward Chicago, where Dan lived in one of the high-rise buildings downtown. It was five in the morning, my first al -nighter in years, and I was exhausted, shaky from adrenaline and lack of sleep, but Val looked fresh as a flower, her skin creamy, hair fal ing in curls to her shoulders.

“My dad had an aneurysm the fal after we graduated.” I knew from Mrs. Bass that Valerie had been in California by then

—she’d been able, through her father, to establish residency and enrol in one of the state schools. Mrs. Adler was stil technical y our neighbor, but by then she was spending most of her time in Cleveland with a new man. I’d been in New York for ten days, had settled into my apartment and started my classes in Art Appreciation and History of Painting at Pratt. My dad had been driving home after a day of instal ing windows in one of the big new houses in a development that had gone up in Elm Ridge. According to the drivers who’d been on the road behind him, his car had slowed, then drifted over the yel ow line and through a metal barrier and proceeded almost graceful y down a slope before coming to rest in a pool of shal ow water at the bottom of a ditch. He was just forty-six, dead behind the wheel. He’d had a weak spot in an artery at the base of his brain that had probably been there for years and had final y, quietly, exploded.

I’d been numb as Mrs. Bass gave me the news on the newly activated telephone. I’d felt like one of my father’s puppets, a thing made of wood and wire, as I’d told my new roommate what had happened, and cal ed the dean of students, then a travel agent to book a flight back home. I’d stayed numb as I’d fil ed my suitcase and carried it to the sidewalk and caught a cab to the airport, numb as I’d boarded the plane, and then, when we were airborne, I had remembered a Saturday morning the previous spring. I’d gotten up early and was going through what had become my weekend routine: bury the empty wrappers and ice-cream carton at the bottom of the trash can, put on a pot of coffee, pul on sweats and shoes, grab a bucket and scrub brush from the front hal way, and go outside to scrub graffiti off the driveway. Most mornings my father would come out to help me. We’d scrub, then go inside to drink black coffee once the words were gone. But that morning, he’d said, “You know, Pal, it won’t be like this forever.” The older and bigger I’d gotten, the less physical y affectionate he’d become, but that morning he’d pul ed me close and hugged me roughly, his arms tight around my back.

“I’m proud of you,” he’d said. “You’re going to be fine.” The memory pierced me, and then I wasn’t numb…I hurt al over, burning with an agony I didn’t know I’d be able to survive. In 16D on the plane, I’d doubled over as if I’d been stabbed, sobbing, unable to catch my breath.

My seatmate cal ed the stewardess, who’d regarded me with contempt showing through her makeup. I wasn’t looking pretty, crammed into the tiny seat, the seat belt cutting into my bel y, my cheeks bright red and my face wet with a plaster of tears and snot. “Are you al right, miss?” she asked, and I tried to col ect myself. “My father died,” I blurted.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and handed me a stack of napkins and a can of Diet Coke

—the best she could do, I guessed, under the circumstances.

At home, my mother was sitting on the sunporch, a notebook, with both pages blank, spread open in her lap. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she’d said. Tears rol ed steadily down her cheeks. I thought of al the condolence cards she’d written, how her job had been to find the right words for moments such as these, and how, now that it was her, she’d fal en back on that one phrase that she repeated al through the night and the fol owing days: I can’t believe he’s gone.

The next morning, I’d been the one to take Jon to Marshal Field’s for a new suit, and explained to him over and over why he needed it. He’d remember for a while, then look down at himself, frowning at the stiff white shirt, fingering his tie. “Addie?” he’d say, and I’d take him aside and tel him again.

There’d been an obituary in the paper. I waited to see if Valerie would cal , or send a letter, or maybe even show up at the service or the grave, but she didn’t. She was gone, her mother, too, and I guessed—at least I told myself—that it was likely neither one of them had heard the news.

My father died on a Tuesday. Though he’d been barely Jewish in life, death turned my dad into a believer. He was buried as quickly as we could arrange it, two days after his death, in accordance with the traditions of his faith—in a plain pine casket with a Star of David carved on its top, and a rabbi in a black suit with a black silk cap on his head, praying in a language I’d never heard before as the body was lowered into the ground.

On Saturday morning I woke up early, with the plan of clearing out the basement, packing up my dad’s tools and whatever puppets he’d left. Basement in the morning and his closet in the

afternoon, I thought, slipping down to the kitchen to make toast and coffee. Maybe Jon would want some of my father’s clothes, cuff links or a watch to remember him by.

“Addie.” I jumped, badly startled as I heard my mother’s voice. She was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. She wore her blue bathrobe, and her hair hung uncombed around her cheeks. Her hands cupped a mug I’d painted for her one of my summers at camp: a red heart with the words I Love

You in cursive underneath. “I need to talk to you about something.”

I took my customary seat at the table. I couldn’t stop looking over to the stove, expecting to see my father there with his frying pan, making his famous pancakes, s a y i n g Hey, Pal, did you have sweet

dreams?

“It’s bad news,” my mother began. Across the table, in the dusty shafts of light coming in through the window, she looked old, with veins bulging on the backs of her hands, and her face drawn and haggard. “In May, I found a lump in my breast,” she said. “They did a biopsy and then they scheduled a mastectomy.”

I sucked in my breath. “Oh, Mom.”

“I was going to tel you at Thanksgiving when you came home. By Thanksgiving, I’d be through the worst of it—the surgery and then the chemo—but now…”

“I’l stay here.” I said it instantly. “I can cal the admissions office, I’m sure they’l let me defer. They’l probably even refund the tuition.”

“No, honey. I don’t want that.” But there was no force behind her words, and she was looking down as if afraid to meet my eyes. In the silence, I understood, in a way I never had before, that as much as she’d taken care of my father and helped him navigate the world, he’d helped her do the same thing…and it was my job now.

I’d cal ed the admissions office and arranged for a deferral. My roommate shipped me the clothes I’d barely unpacked, the bril iantly colored Helen Frankenthaler prints I’d just tacked to our wal s. Together, my mother and I found a halfway house for Jon, a homey, wel -run place that his disability checks would pay for. “It’s time,” my mother said. “He should live on his own, he should have as much of a life as he can.”

Jon settled in, getting used to the social workers, the other men, the job they’d found him at the drugstore. Then it was just the two of us.

I drove my mother to the hospital for her surgery and then for her chemotherapy and radiation. On the way home I’d grip the wheel, watching for potholes, inching along as careful y as I could as she sat beside me, pale and silent, with Band-Aids in the bends of her elbows and a plastic basin in her lap. I’d pick up her prescriptions and cook her meals, soft, bland things that wouldn’t make her nauseous or irritate the sores in her mouth. I’d check books and videos out of the library, buy fancy lotions and skin creams when I found them marked down at Marshal s or T.J. Maxx. I taught myself to knit and made her shawls and hats—a jaunty beret in purple wool, a striped ski cap with a frothy pom-pom on top.