“Yeah,” agreed James. “I kinda like that, too. There’s no confusion.”
“She’s a good decision-maker,” said Catherine. “Like the time we both worked at the Dairy Queen and I broke the Blizzard machine and . . .”
On and on they went. For over five years now, a variation of the same conversation, from the “Remember whens” to the little mishaps they’d had during the week—missing the train, breaking a dish—that seemed so boring in the retelling and yet so necessary to share with someone. It can be very isolating to think there’s no one who cares when you get a paper cut.
They left all of the “should” at the door. You should move on. You should feel better. You should let it go. Instead, they forged a secret partnership, the kind of friendship all the more powerful because it was clandestine. There was their public relationship—always cordial—and then the intensity of their private connection.
This is what they talked about: James’s inability to date anyone for more than three months (“Don’t want to send the wrong message that I intend to get serious,” he would say). Catherine’s choice of paint color in her dining room (“I know everyone says red stimulates the appetite but it just makes me think of dead animals,” she said, explaining why she’d opted for deep orange). Her belief after every first date that every new relationship had love potential (“You were right,” she would agree following each breakup, whether dramatic or mundane. “He was a toad”). James’s restlessness working as a vice president of design for V hotels—it was a good position yet he felt stifled creatively—and his adamant opinion that he had to stay put for Dakota’s sake. He appeared to pay close attention when Catherine insisted she’d developed a phone crush on her Italian wine importer (“Just the way he asks me how I am,” she trilled. “And that voice—va-va-voom. I get weak in the knees when I see the caller ID”). They kvetched about their shared inability to go more than two weeks without a dream about Georgia, and the fact that they both still craved cigarettes even though they hadn’t smoked in over twenty years.
James listened intently when Catherine told him that her ex-husband, Adam, had remarried and that he and his wife were having a baby.
“I saw it in the goddamn paper,” she’d said, bitterly. “I hate his guts so much. Why should he have any happiness?”
“Who says he’s happy?” James tried to cheer her up but held up a hand when he saw her expression. “Some people get it all when they don’t deserve it. It’s how it goes. And sometimes people don’t.”
Neither one had to explain to the other which category they’d fallen into.
He hadn’t laughed when she very seriously insisted she was going to write a crime thriller called Dead Men Don’t ReMarry, about a serial killer who murders high-profile men who were cruel to their wives. “And the killer also steals their pets and gives them to lonely children who will love them,” said Catherine, gesturing with her hands to make the point.
“Sounds good to me,” James had said. “I am available to read pages anytime.”
In return, she’d given him the ins and outs of winning over Gran in Scotland, had helped him put together a photo album of Georgia and Dakota to take with him as a gift. With James’s salary, Dakota had been able to see Gran more often since Georgia had died than ever before, even though Gran was slower to get about now and had a live-in aide to cook her meals and keep the house. Still, she hung on tenaciously to the farm in Scotland, vowed on every phone call with Dakota that they’d be carrying her out with her boots on.
In short, Catherine and James dumped the niceties and chitchat at the door and proceeded to talk about everything and anything, from sex to work to traffic to what they had for dinner the night before: no holds barred. And, most of all, they talked about Georgia.
“None of this moving-on crap for us,” Catherine would choke out as the evening wore on. She said that same thing every time. “At least we keep it to ourselves. It’s not like we take out those ‘In Memoriam Happy Birthday’ messages in the classifieds.”
Their emotions about the friend and lover they’d lost seemed to be there constantly, like a tiny pebble wedged into a shoe and impossible to remove. They could always feel it, pressing, rubbing, hurting. And yet that very annoyance grew to be reassuring in its familiarity. They recognized it in each other and accepted it. This, then, was its own relief.
“Maybe we should sleep together,” Catherine had once suggested. “You know, crazy over-the-top sex. Lots of huffing and puffing and moaning. That’s how we cope with everything anyway.” The fact that she was staring out the window and absentmindedly chewing on an egg roll made it clear she wasn’t altogether serious.
“Yeah, okay,” agreed James. “This time next year.”
“You know,” said Catherine, peeling her eyes from a bickering couple exiting a cab on a rainy New York night and feeling a twinge of envy, even for the togetherness of arguing, “it’s really the only thing I can think of that would be guaranteed to bring her back. She’d come here and kick your ass if you slept with me.”
“Me? What about you? You’re the instigator!”
“Ha!” said Catherine. “Georgia found you irresistible. How could I resist your charm, the way you chew your beef and broccoli and slop it on your shirt every time. You’re not so perfect, Mr. James Foster. You’re a messy eater.”
“I do? She did? I was irresistible?” And thus they entered the next level of their relationship: spilling all the secret things Georgia ever said about the other. The good and the bad, the surprising and the stuff they already knew. They pored over every conversation remembered, every detail shared, and the results brought a whole new dimension to everything: suddenly, Catherine knew for certain that Georgia thought her old hair color looked overprocessed, and James found out that Georgia had always hated his navy pin-striped suit. And instead of making them feel slighted or angry, the revelations brought new delight. To learn and understand even more about Georgia. It was like finding a hidden cache of treasure, a vault of information they could sift through and in doing so feel as though she was alive. Almost right there. Just inches out of reach.
The dinners became an emotional addiction. An obsession with memory and with grief. But, most of all, it made them feel as though they were able to function the rest of the time, to be available to Dakota, to be professionals in their work life, to have dalliances and sex lives and almost-love relationships. All because they could let their truth out every now and then, could give in to the pain and talk about it, honestly and completely.
No one thought it queer when Anita knit vest after vest for her late husband; they found it an example of devotion.
But Catherine and James knew that world would not make such allowances for them. They were younger. They were supposed to get it together.
“Thank you for not making me feel like a weirdo.” Catherine drained her second Scotch. James well knew she’d cry if he let her have a third drink, what the two of them referred to as a “G.W.” A Georgia Walker. That extra bit of alcohol to push you over the edge of your inhibitions and guaranteed to bring tears.
Sometimes a good cry was what was needed.
“Right back at you.” He mused, every now and then, what his daughter would have thought of these goings-on. He’d suggested to her one time that they cut a slice of birthday cake for Georgia, only to be met with a look of such disbelief that he claimed it had been a slip of the tongue. And James wondered how Dakota would feel if she knew he and Catherine were as close as they were. On the one hand, she seemed to like that he had built solid relationships with Anita and Marty, with her grandparents, and she always looked forward to hanging out with Catherine. But she seemed to see all of it as hers. Her world, one that she’d shared with her mother, and while he was allowed to visit, he was never able to actually reside there. To fully be a part of it all. Instead, James and Dakota had forged their own relationship, had learned how to be dad and daughter. They were close but there was still a certain stiffn
ess between them, something he worried would always remain. He could never fill the hole in her heart for her mother. And the high school years had been hard. He never quite knew the right thing to do.
“Do you know,” ventured Catherine, clearly toying with the idea of a G.W. as she swished the nearly melted ice cubes in the bottom of her glass, “that I think you’re the only man who’s ever been nothing more than a friend to me?”
“I’d have to say the same about you,” replied James, shaking his head a little at the idea. “If you’d told me that first time I saw you at Georgia’s shop, all bee-stung collagen lips and lady-of-the-manor attitude, that you’d become the keeper of my secrets . . .” He paused, then inhaled deeply and let it out slowly.
“Jesus, life sucks.”
“Pretty much,” said Catherine mildly, leaning back in her chair and idly tapping the table with a pack of Sweet’N Low. And then she suggested something she’d never once seriously considered in all the years since Georgia had been gone.
“I’d like you to come with me to something,” she said to James. Her voice was flat as she let out a sigh. It had been a long night, and the Scotches hadn’t really helped. KC’s comments at the shower had bugged her, no doubt. I didn’t plan to become a divorcée with a dead best friend, she thought. But sign me up. Here I am.
“I think it’s time we went to a grief support group, James,” said Catherine, pulling out a sheet of paper from her purse. She’d printed it out months ago, folded it into a square and stuffed it away. “I think it’s time we faced the reality that she’s not really coming for dinner.”
eight
Things like this happen. That’s what people say when they have nothing more useful to provide.
Darwin had been teaching her class on intro women’s studies, the same as every other Wednesday of the semester, when the cramping started. Her first thought was that she was going into early labor, and she was excited. Her second realization was also that she might be going into early labor and she was alarmed. Her due date was far off; she was just shy of thirty-two weeks.
“We’re going to end early,” she said, grabbing her bag and walking out of the room without a second glance.
A stop in the bathroom, a call to Dan, a cab ride to the OB. Within a few hours, Darwin was officially on bed rest.
Not that she was getting any rest, that is. The bed she had all to herself, Dan sleeping on the sofa in order to give her more room to relax. But who could sleep at a time like this? Besides, she couldn’t really ever get comfortable, anyway.
The fear was that she’d launch into preterm labor before the babies’ lungs were fully developed. Too much commotion on her part now and her kids would be taking the train to NICU Central. Or worse.
No one had had to explain it to her. She’d had this potential complication on her list of worries, right near the top.
So Darwin didn’t resist lying on her side, a pillow between her legs, waiting. And waiting some more. She accepted that the only scenery she was going to see for a while were the two steps through the hall to the bathroom.
Before the spotting, she had had quite a different assumption about bed rest.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, she’d often thought, to be ordered to put her feet up, with Dan offering her glasses of organic milk and unlimited foot rubs. She’d snooze, work on her laptop, maybe even watch an indie film on the DVD.
But the real deal was a hodgepodge of boredom and frustration, combined with a sense of inadequacy and anxiety.
Before the spotting, she’d kept at things full tilt, teaching, schlepping her plump butt up and down the subway stairs, going to stretching classes when she’d rather be snoozing. Forever busy: it was part of the whole new myth of pregnancy, in which women looked pencil thin except for their basketball bellies, and kept up a dizzying pace until delivery. The last thing Darwin ever wanted to admit was that something was putting her at a disadvantage, and she worked diligently throughout her pregnancy. No, she didn’t overwork. But she didn’t fall behind, either. She wasn’t about to let her colleagues use her exhaustion against her, brainstorming brilliant papers while she watched yet another episode of A Baby Story.
How stressful to live in a nation where newly delivered moms careen back to work after twelve weeks, forced, by a need for a salary, to buy into the convenient assumption that pregnancy, labor, and delivery isn’t a major medical experience—natural or not. Darwin held fast to her beliefs about the need for longer maternity leave in America but did so even as she went out of her way to prove to her dean and her colleagues that she was just as competent. Perhaps more so.
There was no space to just let things go and wallow in the joy and the changes in her body. To nap guilt-free because she felt tired. And it wasn’t just about the fact that Darwin had a career: she’d spoken—interviewed, as always, Darwin was still a little abrupt—to the folks at her Bradley Method class, and every woman was in the same boat. Even the stay-at-homes fell prey to the new expectations. It wasn’t enough to just cook up a baby in your body anymore. Now an expectant mom had to look great and accomplish everything on her to-do list at the same time.
When she was a teenager, Darwin had wholeheartedly agreed with the common consensus that menstruating was no big deal. But then she experienced the pain, bloating, cramping, back pain, and general grumpiness—in addition to learning how to act like it was just any other day.
“You’re only pregnant.” That’s what she heard more often than she could count. You’re only pregnant.
Yeah, that’s what she was: building another human being with her body.
“Surely there has to be some middle ground between not wanting women to be limited in their education, career, and lifestyle,” she had challenged her students as she stood, heavily pregnant, at the front of the room, “and the cultural pretense that all that is unique about the experience of the human female isn’t extraordinary. We coddle or we dismiss. What we need to promote is respect. Think Aretha. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
At home, she’d made sure to fit in stretching and reading and even cooking. Darwin, never very good in the kitchen, felt an instinctual desire to stuff their tiny fridge-top freezer with casseroles she made from Internet recipes. Often, though, she’d discover she didn’t have quite the right ingredients when she was halfway through, and had to improvise. Substitute a little squash for carrot. Orange food is orange food, right? Dan insisted he ate them when she was sleeping but she suspected—though could never find the garbage to prove it—that he might have been throwing them away.
“That dish was tasty,” he’d say in the morning. “Want me to pick up some carrots on the way home tonight?”
But there’d be no more cooking in the kitchen now. It was all about taking it easy. Thinking good thoughts. Finding her quiet space.
Waiting for Lucie.
Oh, she’d e-mailed, and she’d returned Darwin’s call immediately.
“You okay?” she asked, though the answer should have been obvious.
“Umm, no?”
“Right, no, I mean, seriously,” said Lucie. “Are the babies okay?”
“They’re still on board, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good,” she said, the long pauses between her words indicating that she was most likely not paying close attention. Reading e-mails, perhaps, or editing shots.
“Will you be coming over soon?” It would be nice, she thought, to have Lucie come over. Maybe bring her candied ginger, just as she’d done when Lucie was pregnant. Or maybe Lucie would bring over the layette items that Darwin assumed she must be working up. Surely one of the best lace knitters around didn’t just send her best friend a set of rocking horses, did she? Expensive, indeed, and much appreciated. But something more personal seemed called for, she believed.
“Yes,” said Lucie, after a delay. “Right when I can.”
Darwin had not found the chitchat reassuring.
Look, the truth was that Darwin didn’t have a ton
of friends. She had Lucie, and then she had the other members of the club, and she had Dan. But building relationships remained difficult for her: she often barreled in with her strong opinions and forgot to listen to others’ ideas. It didn’t increase her popularity with the other academics at Hunter, and it didn’t make her a favorite among Dan’s doctor colleagues. So if Lucie seemed to be distancing herself, then what? The prospect seemed bleak.
“She’s breaking up with me,” Darwin told Dan softly as he lay on top of the covers, tucking her in before he left to sleep for a few hours on the sofa. She’d never actually had a boyfriend before Dan, so she’d never suffered the humiliation and confusion of being rejected by someone she loved. Well, certainly her mother criticized her. But it wasn’t as though she expected her mother to stop taking her calls. Darwin might get an earful, but she always answered.
“I guess I’m just not important enough now that she has all the directing stuff,” she explained. “Maybe she’s meeting exciting people who are funnier and more presentable.”
“Maybe,” said Dan, agreeing not because he thought Darwin was right but because he understood she just wanted his ear. She wanted to let it out and not have to debate or reason as she did every day, just wanted to feel a little bit sad and pore through her emotions without interruption.
I woulda made a great psychiatrist, thought Dan as he looked up at the ceiling, stroking Darwin’s forehead, her black hair pulled apart in two pigtails. She was wearing a blue T-shirt that was so large it was roomy even over her ample belly, and she was gesturing emphatically even as she was lying on her side.
“I just wish I knew what I did to upset her,” she whispered. He loved her because she was brilliant, because she was kind, because she was intense and driven just as he was, and because she let down her guard with him and revealed her hidden vulnerabilities.
Dan looked around their room, at the chipped old white melamine dresser they’d had since before they got married, at the wooden desk strewn with papers pushed next to the bed in lieu of a nightstand. It was kind of depressing, he realized, no doubt contributing to Darwin’s malaise.