Best Friends Forever (36 page)

Jordan made al the right noises, offered al the right praise and words of encouragement, saying “nice work” and

“good job” and “I’l check in tomorrow morning,” and cut Hol y off before her voice could soften as she asked how he was doing. And then, as the hands of the clock slipped past midnight, he did the thing he’d resisted doing for the more than twenty-four hours since he’d heard the news: he dialed Patti’s

number,

her

cel

phone

number,

which

was stil the same as it had been in the days when they’d lived together.

She answered on the third ring. “Jordan?”

Hang up, he told himself. Hang up right

now. Instead, he asked, “Remember when we used to play Scrabble?”

From two thousand miles away, he heard his ex-wife sigh. “Oh, Jordan.”

“Remember? In the hospital that last time? You spel ed ‘ fromage,’ and I chal enged you because it was a foreign word, and then they came to give you that shot…”

“Epidural,” said Patti. She sounded unhappy. He’d made her unhappy. As usual.

“I was right, you know,” he said. “You can’t use French.” He squeezed his eyes shut. His face was wet. Sweat, he figured, or maybe he’d spil ed some voodoo. “Guess where I am.”

“Wherever you are, I hope someone else has your car keys,” said Patti.

“Key West,” he said, pronouncing each word careful y. “I am in Key West conducting an investigation.” Shit. He’d been doing al right until “investigation,” but that hadn’t come out so wel .

“Jordan,” said Patti. “Are you seeing someone?”

“A woman?” he asked stupidly. “No, Patti. I don’t want that.” Only you, he thought. Only my wife.

“Not a woman, a therapist,” said Patti.

“Oh. Yes,” he lied.

“No, you’re not,” Patti said. Before he could try to insist that he was, she continued. “Do you know what I think you should do? Get yourself some Tylenol, and a big bottle of water, and take the Tylenol, and drink the water, and go to sleep.”

“I can’t,” he said querulously. “I’m investigating, remember?”

“Your investigation can wait until morning,”

she said.

“Maybe I’l move down here,” he said, and gulped a mouthful of his drink. “It’s very warm.”

He set his bucket down and wiped his face with the washcloth he’d brought from the bathroom. “There’s palm trees. Jimmy Buffett’s got a restaurant.”

“That sounds nice,” she said. She was humoring him. It was the same tone he imagined she used with her remedial reading

students. That’s excel ent work!

Good job sounding that out!

“Come here,” he said. “There’s an airport. You fly to Miami, then connect. Or I’l drive back up and meet you. Just bring a bathing suit. I can buy you whatever you need.”

“Oh, Jordan,” she said. She made a noise into the telephone, and he thought he’d made her cry.

“I miss you,” he said, and that was true, but it wasn’t the biggest part of the truth, which was that he missed being a husband, having a home to come back to at the end of the day, having a wife across the table, next to him on an airplane or in a car; a wife who knew his whole history: how he’d gotten stung by a jel yfish in the Bahamas and tried to pee on himself to make the stinging stop, how he hated beets and little airplanes and the smel of gasoline; a wife who would sing

“I Loves You Porgy” in the original political y incorrect dialect when she was drunk.

“Water,” said Patti, from her warm bed in Chicago. Undoubtedly, Rob Fine, DDS, was at her side, maybe curled up and snoring, or maybe glaring at her, squinting and pissed, knowing it was only a handful of hours before the alarm clock rang, sending them out of their beds.

“Tylenol.”

“I heard you had a baby.” For a moment, there was silence, and he thought that she wasn’t going to answer, or that maybe she’d hung up.

Patti’s voice, when she final y started talking,

was

proud

and

shy

and

embarrassed. “Rob and I adopted a little girl from Guatemala. We brought her home three weeks ago. Her name’s Lily, for my grandmother.”

Lily. Lily had been their girl’s name. He rubbed his palm over his wet cheek, thinking he wouldn’t be able to force his voice around the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry about ‘fromage, ’

he said. “I should have let you have the points.” But he was talking to a dial tone, which eventual y became an unpleasant beeping, which turned into a mechanical voice. If you’d like to make a

cal , please hang up and try again. If you

need help, press zero for an operator.

I need help, Jordan thought. He gulped from his bucket, then lay on the bed and closed his eyes and pictured Patti, Patti in heels and a tight black skirt he’d liked, walking briskly down a hal way, towing a wheeled suitcase behind her, maybe holding a little girl’s hand; Patti steering a rental car through the streets that led toward the ocean, driving along with a cup of coffee in the cup holder, trying to find him.

After forty-five minutes of lying there, he decided that if he couldn’t sleep, he might as wel work. He picked up his car keys and his Voodoo Bucket, and went out to continue the hunt.

FORTY-SIX

“Dan?” It was morning, Monday morning,

and Chip Mason was shaking his shoulder.

Dan groaned, squinting in the light. Merry

had dropped him off at Chip’s on Sunday

morning. He’d hurried to the door, almost

running, desperate for Chip to answer and

shoving his mouth close to his friend’s ear

when he did. “Don’t you go al Holy Joe on

me,” he’d hissed. “This woman is batshit

insane, and you’ve got to let me in.” Startled,

Chip had looked past him, at Merry’s

minivan, then opened the door.

“You got any beer?” Dan had asked,

making his way to the kitchen and hoping

that Chip wouldn’t ask what had happened

and how he’d come to be driving around in

Holy Merry Armbruster’s minivan.

“It’s nine in the morning,” Chip had said.

“Don’t be an old woman.” Dan opened the

refrigerator, where of course there was no

beer. There was milk, and apple juice (apple

juice? What kind of grown man drank that?

), but nothing stronger than Sprite.

“What happened?” Chip asked as Dan

lifted the green plastic bottle to his mouth

and commenced chugging. And there must

have been something in his voice, a familiar

tone somewhere between skepticism and

indulgence—oh, Danny, what did you do now?— that reminded Dan, bruisingly, of his mother. That was what it had been, he

realized, feeling stunned and sick, back at

Merry’s…the way she’d looked at him, not in

anger but in disappointment. In sorrow. His

mother had been the one who would pick

him up when he’d get suspended, the one

who’d drive him home when he got benched

from the footbal games, and each time

she’d ask him that question, then sigh and

say, You’l be the death of me. He put the soda down on the table. When he and his friends had gotten in trouble for

painting shit on Addie Downs’s driveway

(Downs Syndrome, they’d cal ed her, a name

he’d thought of himself that never failed to

crack him up), he’d given his mother the

bare minimum of information. They’d painted

some graffiti, just a prank, no big deal, the

freakin’ vice principal had it in for him, he’d

said. He’d reminded her that Addie had

been the one to accuse him—falsely, he

took pains to point out—of messing with

Valerie Adler. He didn’t say that Addie had it

coming, but he let the implication hang in

the air and linger. Only that time, his mother

hadn’t sighed, hadn’t indulged him. She’d sat

him down at the kitchen table—he was a

foot tal er than she was by that point, a

hundred pounds heavier, but she could stil

scare him—and had looked at him steadily

before dropping her eyes and starting to cry.

“What?” he’d asked. “What, Ma?”

She’d wiped her face and looked at him,

eyes blazing, looking…It took him a minute

to sort out, and when he did, he had felt that

same sick, stunned feeling that came over

him in Chip’s kitchen. His mother had looked

ashamed. Do you know what it’s like, she

asked him, to raise a son who’s no good? Do you have any idea how it feels?

He’d started to protest, to launch into his

litany of excuses—no big deal, it was just

paint, it would wash right off—only, midway

through his recitation, she’d gotten to her

feet and turned her back on him. I’m done with you, she’d said. I’m done trying. And even though she’d cooked his meals and

washed his clothes, had dropped him off for

the first day of col ege and made

Thanksgivings and Christmases for years,

what she’d said that day was true. In some

way that was undefinable but undeniable,

apparent mostly in the absences and

omissions, in the things she didn’t ask him

about (girlfriends, future plans), she’d given

up on her only son. He had disappointed

her. He had broken her heart.

Slowly, he sank down in a chair at Chip’s

kitchen table. “What happened?” his old

friend asked again. Dan shook his head.

Then he’d lowered it into his hands and sat

there with his eyes shut until Chip told him

that services were starting soon, and Dan

surprised both of them by saying, “I’l come.”

That had been his first time inside a

church since he’d left his parents’ house.

When Chip, looking al official up in front of

the altar, had said “Let us pray,” Dan had

dropped his head so fast he heard his neck

crack. He’d spent the afternoon on his

knees again, stil not talking, not answering

when Chip asked what was on his mind or if

he wanted to talk about it. Instead of

thinking, he washed Chip’s floors with a

brush and bucket he’d found underneath

the sink, then worked over the bathroom

grout with an old toothbrush. Even with al of

the cleaning, even with the praying and the

fasting (which was mostly inadvertent, since

it turned out he was so hungover he couldn’t

actual y keep solid food down), he couldn’t

get Valerie Adler out of his mind, Valerie’s

face in the country club parking lot, twisting

as she told him he’d ruined her life, and a

younger Valerie, her face blurred with tears,

her hands pushing at his shoulders, saying, Please. Saying No. Valerie’s pleas getting mixed up with his mother’s voice, quietly

asking if he knew what it was like to raise a

son that was no good.

Chip had made them dinner—spaghetti

with jarred sauce, a salad from a bag. Dan

couldn’t eat. “What’s wrong?” his friend

asked for the third time…and that time he’d

told.

“She said she’d tel her father,” he’d

groaned to Chip by the end of it. “And you

know what I said? I said, ‘You don’t even

have a father.” He’d squeezed his eyes shut,

hating the stupid teenager he’d been, drunk

on cheap beer, taking what he wanted,

breaking his mother’s heart. Chip had

listened while Dan told the story, bringing it

up like a hunk of rotten meat, talking until

his throat was hoarse and Chip spread a

sheet on the couch and told him to get some

rest.

Now it was morning. Dan got up from the

couch, stil dressed in the clothes Merry had

given him, the too-short pants, the shirt that

smel ed like someone had died inside of it,

probably while smoking an entire carton of

unfiltered cigarettes. He jammed his feet

into the tight rubber boots and looked at the

doorway, where Chip was waiting.

“Can you take me somewhere?”

He waited for Chip’s nod, then went to the

kitchen, where he found a glass and drank

two glasses of warm, mineral-tasting tap

water. It occurred to him that this might very

wel be the last thing he’d drink, the last

thing he’d taste as a free man, and the

thought made him gag and sent him reeling

over to the kitchen table. He col apsed into

a chair. Chip watched him for a moment,

then crossed the kitchen and gave Dan’s

shoulders a squeeze. Dan got to his feet.

“Where are we going?” Chip asked.

“I’l tel you,” said Dan. He got to his feet,

bracing himself, getting ready for what he

knew was coming. “Get in the car and I’l tel

you.”

Chip nodded, picked up his keys, and led

Dan out the door.

FORTY-SEVEN

Don’t drive, Patti had said. But Jordan didn’t have to listen to Patti anymore. “Bad gums,”

she’d said, and he’d believed her. Dentistfucking Patti and her new little girl. Jordan unlocked the rental car’s doors, got behind the wheel, and started driving, up one street and down the other. Key West wasn’t that big. He bet he could hit every house in the place by sunrise.

He made his way to a neighborhood cal ed the East End, a series of narrow streets, each one lined with trim wooden cottages set on postage-stamp lawns. He drove slowly, seeing whose lights were on, looking at the license plates of the cars in the driveways. After an hour or so of this, he slowed and then stopped in front of an ancient green station wagon with Il inois plates that he’d last seen speeding away from Crescent Drive.

He sat back behind the wheel and stared past the car at the dark windows of the little white cottage, snug behind a yard ful of red-and-pink blossoms and the spiky leaves of palm trees. Gotcha, he thought, and waited for the feeling of triumph to flare in his veins. Nothing happened. He just felt lonely, and sad, and sick.