The Interestings (41 page)

What did the smile even mean? Probably just
, Isn’t it humiliating, all this attention?
Or else,
I know you’re bored, and I am too.
Or else, simply,
Hello, over there, Jules Jacobson-Boyd, friend of my youth, soulmate, pal.
But whatever it meant, it caused her once again to feel that old, familiar, pressurized sensation that what she and Dennis had was small and sad. By the time they took the subway home and walked up all those flights, Jules’s narrow high-heeled shoes had sliced up the tops of her toes. Inside the apartment they both pulled off their clothes and Jules stood in the bathroom with one bloody foot in the sink, jamming it under the faucet. Dennis came in and said, “You look like a crane.”

“I feel like a crane. Sort of awkward and stupid. The opposite of Ash’s enchanted sprite. That was a Marco Castellano, by the way.”

“What?”

“That’s my point.” She thought of how they were living a life now that was still in the end of its early stages, that was full of friends and love, and the tendrils of two careers, all of which would have been absolutely fine, if it weren’t for their best friends, whose life was so much finer.

But Dennis said, “You know, if I had wanted an enchanted sprite, I would have gone into an enchanted forest and found one.”

In the bathroom doorway his tie had been sprung, his cummerbund opened. Dark, strong-bodied Dennis was much better looking than Jules was, but it never bothered her, because he was not someone who would betray her with another woman. Now his bigness, his handsomeness, his dignity, his refusal to be intimidated by the glamorous evening and by a Marco Castellano impressed her. She didn’t have to compare their lives with their friends’ tonight; she didn’t have to do that at
all,
she realized, and it was an astonishing relief. Instead, Jules was drawn toward the hypnotic, inexplicable powers of her husband, who was so beautiful and unquestionably directed toward
her,
his dark eyes sweeping up and taking in the length of her. The bathroom usually seemed so small and inadequate; now it felt filled up with Dennis, a substantial man over whom she had claim. This had nothing to do with Ethan and Ash; this was for her alone. Everyone else was banished, and the private scene was beginning.

“Oh yeah?” Jules said, just for filler. “You’d have gone into an enchanted forest?”

“Yes, I would have,” Dennis said, and he took her by her arm and pulled her out of the microscopic bathroom, with the aqua shag carpeting that the previous tenants had crudely installed with a staple-gun, and into the moderately larger bedroom, where he lay her down on their bed. She smiled up at him as he pulled off the remains of his tuxedo, an outfit that he only ever needed to wear for events that had to do with Ethan and Ash. Then he helped Jules unzip her dress, which had left a pink zipper mark up her back, as if demarcating the place where the two sides of her body had been assembled in a factory. They were freed from their Ethan-and-Ashwear, those outfits that seemed much more mature than the people who had worn them, even though they themselves were not too young anymore.

They had to have used a condom that night; they must have, they almost always did, though they’d had a lot to drink on this occasion so it was possible they hadn’t. Jules wasn’t planning on getting pregnant yet. The sex that night, she later remembered, was unusually gripping, employing all four corners of the bed, with the sheet ending up twisted like a rope. Dennis was ardent, magnificent, and purposeful, pushing the scene forward, keeping each moment turning into another moment. A book that had been lying splayed open on Jules’s night table—a series of case studies about eating disorders that she’d checked out of the social work library at Columbia, where she still had privileges—somehow ended up across the room, accidentally thrust into the dusty space beneath the bureau. It wasn’t found until nearly a year later, at which point more money was owed in fines than the book was worth. But she had already stopped looking for it, because by that time Aurora Maude Jacobson-Boyd had been born, and life was different.

•   •   •

I
n September 1990, three months after Aurora arrived, Ash gave birth to her own daughter, Larkin Templeton Figman. At first the two women enjoyed the animal haze of motherhood together, and for once Jules got to be the expert, giving Ash nursing tips and sleep advice. She tossed off phrases like “nipple confusion” with pleasing authority. One morning, though, Ash called very early and sounded different. She didn’t seem overwhelmed in the way she’d often been since Larkin was born. This was something else. She said she’d like to come over, if that was okay. She had the driver take her uptown, and she brought Larkin with her in one of those Swedish papoose-style pouches. Jules still felt self-conscious when Ash or Ethan came to the apartment, though lately she’d perfected a false attitude of seeming not to care how the place looked—how disheveled it was, how crammed with baby goods, the stroller blocking the hallway, the onesies drying on the shower rack until they were crisp. Ash sat tensely in Jules and Dennis’s living room, refusing the offer of a cup of coffee or anything to eat. She settled onto the couch, arranging herself and the baby, and looked at Jules intently.

“You’re scaring me a little,” said Jules. The apartment was otherwise empty; Dennis was in Central Park with Aurora and the gang of mothers and nannies and babies with whom he sometimes spent the entire day. Jules had seen two clients in the morning, and was now home for the day. She would do a phone session later on with a woman who had broken her ankle and couldn’t go out.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do that. Look, I know you’re having a bad time yourself over here, what with Dennis and all.” The way Ash spoke, her voice so cautious, made Jules think this was going to be another Goodman conversation. They hadn’t had one of those conversations in many weeks; the babies had mostly distracted them from all thoughts of him. Now Jules felt that Ash might say something like, I just wanted to tell you that Goodman is in rehab again. Or, Well, get this: Goodman actually got himself into architecture school. Or, Goodman is dying. Or, Goodman is dead. Instead, Ash said, “I really need to tell you something, Jules. I have to tell someone, and you’re the only one.”

“All right.”

“Well, you know how my parents were really upset when everything started falling apart at Drexel? The investigations and all that?” Jules nodded. “And then after the bankruptcy, my father retired early and got that payout?”

“Yes. But you said things were okay,” said Jules.

“They are okay.”

“All right,” she said, waiting.

“I think my father’s been enjoying retirement, actually. And, well, my parents apparently started
thinking.
And they called me over to their apartment and began saying things about how their money flow was going to be different now. It’d be fine, they assured me, but it wouldn’t be so liquid. I didn’t understand why they were saying this; it took me forever to get it, because they just didn’t want to come out and actually say it. But finally I realized where this was going. Finally I
got
it. I said to them, ‘Is this about Goodman?’ And my parents looked at each other kind of sheepishly, and I knew that that was exactly what this was about. My mother said something like, ‘We weren’t going to say anything, but we’ve been taking care of him for a long time, and he can barely work, and he has certain expenses, like anyone. And you and Ethan are so extraordinarily financially secure now, I mean, that’s an understatement, and if it were at all possible to transfer this responsibility over to you, it would really make a difference to us.’ ‘But only if you really want to,’ my father actually added, as if it were all my idea.”

“So what did you say?” asked Jules, though this whole family scenario was so far beyond her understanding. Her own mother cut out coupons for frozen yogurt and sent them to her.

“I said, ‘Well, if it’s important to you, I guess I could figure it out.’ Goodman can’t get a steady job, as you know, nothing professional, nothing that pays well. Plus, he isn’t trained to do anything. And as for his pickup construction jobs, his back problems are pretty bad. He got a stress fracture in his lumbar spine not too long ago, and he can’t really do much physically anymore. He needs physical therapy, and he doesn’t have a steady income. Plus, someone has to pay for his plane tickets when he visits us. And pay for all his little occasional habits, shall we call them. It all adds up.”

“Wow,” said Jules. “I’m shocked.”

“I know. Me too. Obviously I can’t ask
Ethan
for the money. My parents know that. They were always impressed that I never told him.”

“Are you sorry you didn’t?” Jules asked. She’d always wanted to ask this, but there had never been an acceptable moment before.

“Oh, sometimes, sure,” said Ash easily. “Because we talk about everything. Everything but that. And I can’t ever go there with him. It’s way too late for that, and I don’t know that he would recover. I want my life and my work to be
honest
, but I had to be faithful to my parents when they asked me to, you know I did, and now I can only go so far with the truth about this. Ethan and I barely talk about Goodman in any context anymore; he assumes it’s too painful for me, and that’s not completely untrue. It is painful. All of it, the way it happened. What Goodman might’ve become.”

“I wish Ethan knew,” Jules said in a low voice. “He just makes everything better,” she added before she could think not to.

“I know what you mean,” said Ash. “He’s the person I always want to go to when something’s wrong. I really wish I could tell him every detail from the start. But I can’t.
I did what they wanted. I was their good child, their
gifted child
. I went along with the whole package, and it’s not like I can suddenly say to Ethan, Oh by the way, love of my life, person whose child I’ve given birth to, I’ve been in contact with my brother all these years, and my parents and Jules know about it too, but you’re the only one I neglected to tell.”

Jules said, strongly, “Tell him, Ash. Just do it.” Dennis had sometimes said that one day Ethan would probably find out anyway. “Life is long,” Dennis had said.

“You know I can’t,” Ash said. “He’s the most moral person, Jules, which of course is generally a quality I love about him. And he doesn’t hold back.”

“So what are you going to do? Do you have access to money that he wouldn’t know about?”

“The short answer is yes. And it’s not as if Ethan sits around and does the
bills
each month. We have someone who does that. There’s so much coming in, and so much going out. I don’t need to answer to him, or to Duncan, who handles our money now. Obviously, the main thing is to do it with an invisible hand. It makes me extremely nervous, because I’m not very good with money, or with anything that has to do with numbers, but I guess it’ll work. I have to make it work.” She shrugged, then stroked the flattish back of her baby’s head and said, “Somebody has to look out for Goodman now. And I guess it’s me.”

•   •   •

I
n the early years of motherhood, Ash and Jules continued their fantasy of a close friendship growing between their daughters, imagining it as a mirror of their own friendship. The girls did become friendly, and thought fondly of each other throughout their lives, but they were so different from each other that a close friendship between them eventually was more of a gift that they tried to give their mothers than something arising naturally.

“
God
are they different,” Jules said to Dennis after spending a day at Ash and Ethan’s. The girls were four years old then; Ash and Ethan had recently moved into the large brownstone on Charles Street, a graceful plaque house that rested in the sun in a choice part of Greenwich Village. Inside the house, despite the presence of a four-year-old daughter, and now a difficult two-year-old son, Morris Tristan Figman, known as Mo, calm and order were commonplace. This had a great deal to do with the Jamaican couple, Emanuel and Rose, who were employed as houseman and nanny, and oversaw most aspects of the family’s daily life. They were the most unobtrusive staff, a courteous husband with a shaved head, and his attentive but playful wife. The rooms were immaculate, the children were clean and looked after, and so were their parents.

A big playroom upstairs resembled a first-class airport lounge—carpeted so no one could get hurt, and decorated not in the garish colors that children were supposedly drawn to but in muted tones, softly lit. There was a trampoline and a vat full of balls. There was a slide and a bouncer and life-sized stuffed animals. Jules imagined one of Ethan’s assistants having called FAO Schwarz, saying, “Give us what you’ve got.”

What a place to grow up, she thought—to have such surroundings and such inventive, unruffled parents. Jules sat on one of the pale couches with a glass of wine handed to her by Rose, and she took a long drink, wanting to feel a softening and polishing along her throat and chest, so that she did not have to create a depressing split screen in her mind:
this
place,
this
life, and her own apartment, the walk-up on West 84th Street where she and Dennis and Aurora now lived in chaos and tight finances and the dominating blur of one person’s clinical depression.

Aurora tore through the Figman and Wolf playroom, yelling, “I am an army sergeant! I am the king!” The sergeant/king thrust herself deep into the pool of balls while Larkin, sitting on a window seat with an actual chapter book, watched her, impressed. Mo was asleep in his nursery, Ash had explained, which was an amazing feat, but then again, Rose was a genius with Mo, who was generally miserable at two, always shrieking and unable at naptime to give in to the necessary bonelessness of sleep. Though Jules tried to shush Aurora so she wouldn’t wake him up, Ash said she could be as loud as she wanted, because the walls were extremely thick here, and no sound ever penetrated.

Ash noted, “I see that Aurora likes to take control. Maybe she’ll run a network.”

“No!” said Aurora, her face flushed and triumphant. “I am the army man! I run
everybody
!”