Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763) Page 10

  “I used to sing to make my kids laugh when they were cranky.” Judy cast a gaze toward the cluster of German revelers singing at the stern of the boat. “You know, I recognize that drinking song. A couple of rugby-playing Austrians taught it to me in a biergarten in Salzburg. Should I sing it to cheer you up?”

  Monique shook her head. “Please don’t.”

  “Maybe I’ll just join their party. Torture them with my rusty German. They look like they’re having fun. Want to come along?”

  “Judy!”

  “I’ll do it, you know. Somebody’s got to do something. I know Lenny didn’t send you on this cruise, Monique, so that you could spend it weeping into a German beer.” Then Judy’s gaze shifted. A sudden break in the clouds cast sunshine upon the smile that broke across her face. “Ah, Lenny. Impeccable timing.”

  Monique turned to follow Judy’s gaze. The boat had just rounded a jut of land that had, until now, obscured the view upstream.

  Against the sky stood a castle, perched alone on a windswept hill. Not a crumbling ruin or a set of stone walls, but a fanciful creation that looked like it had been plucked from some children’s book of fairy tales. It had conical turrets, shaped like the princess hats that Monique used to make out of cardboard for Kiera with scarves cascading from their pointed tips. A central keep was topped by neat crenellations, and the top of each window was perfectly arched. It was a cliché of a castle, the kind of building a little boy would draw for his knights to play upon.

  Drawing in a sharp breath, Becky pushed up from the railing. “Judy, is that real, or did you spike my beer?”

  Then, with a start, Monique realized that a little boy had dreamt this up, or at least, a scarily similar version of it. On Brian’s seventh birthday, Becky had concocted one of her fantasy specialties, covered in white fondant. By Brian’s precise instructions, she’d topped several towers with pointy, slate-gray roofs. Then she’d constructed an inner keep complete with crenellations through which Brian put his miniature knights, aiming their arrows toward a horde of invaders beyond the wall.

  Becky fumbled with her daypack. “Can we get off here? Can we tour it?”

  Judy grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Marksburg Castle is the boat’s next stop. If I understood the German right, I was told that we can leave our luggage at the Braubach tourist office, walk up, take a tour, and be back on the boat in a couple of hours.”

  Becky stared at the castle as if she feared that, if she looked away, it might disappear as abruptly as it had appeared. Watching her friend’s amazement, Monique felt a loosening sensation in the middle of her chest, an odd unfurling of tension. She’d come to Europe for lots of reasons. For herself, for Lenny, for Judy. But one of the most important was to see Becky just like this—startled, amazed, and completely distracted from her troubles.

  Monique blinked up at the breaking clouds. The sunshine warmed her face as Judy leaned in close.

  “I’d say Lenny knew what he was doing when he wrote that list, Monie. Maybe better than we’ll ever know.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  You guys are out of your freakin’ minds.”

  Judy leaned against the wrought-iron railing on the stairs just outside the third German hotel they’d occupied in as many days: First in Cologne, then in Koblenz after touring the Marksburg Castle, and now in tiny Cochem on the banks of the Moselle river. She watched in growing consternation as Monique and Becky snapped on rented bike helmets. The air was soft and warm, washed clean by a recent rain. Sun glittered on the river just across the street from the hotel, and the blue sky stretched over the wooded hills on the opposite bank.

  It spited her to admit it, but it was a beautiful day for a bike ride.

  “Judy, it’s not going to be that rigorous.” Monique pulled off the helmet to adjust the straps. “It’s going to be an incredible trip along the banks of this loopy river, and it’s all flat biking to Moselkern.”

  “Eleven-effing-miles.”

  Monique made a pffft. “I’ve seen you walk Goldie and Chocolate. That makes you a suburban warrior.”

  “Just because I allow myself to be dragged along a park path by two dogs doesn’t mean I’m willing to sit on one of those rented torture devices.”

  Judy eyeballed the two paint-chipped, battered old bikes. Fahrrad. She’d nearly forgotten the German word for bicycle. She’d biked all over Strasbourg when she’d been employed there. She’d used that word nearly every day, telling coworkers that she’d biked to school, or that her bike was locked up just over there, or querying friends if they had a Fahrrad. Her mind had erased the word from her brain. Just like she’d fumbled Fahrradverleih when trying to ask the Portiersfrau at the hotel desk where her crazy, hyper-athletic friends could rent bikes.

  To think she’d once been fluent in German.

  “You’d do fine, Judy.” Monique slipped the helmet carefully over her cascade of braids. “I know you would.”

  “Says the woman who does kickboxing twice a week.”

  “Says the woman who used to do fifteen loads of laundry a week.”

  “Give it up, Monie. I’d be like gum on your sneakers, holding you both back.”

  “Then take the train.” Becky wrestled her arms through the straps of her daypack. “It’s a sixteen-minute train ride from here to Moselkern, and the train runs on the half hour. You told me that yourself.”

  “Yeah, before you guys ate too many sausages and cheese at brunch, had some kind of protein seizure, and committed to this bike ride marathon.”

  Monique said, “It’s on the itinerary.”

  Ah, yes, the word of God. “Lenny’s list mentioned a bike ride, darling,” Judy said, “it didn’t specify the Tour de France.”

  “Then skip the bikes and meet us there.” Becky shrugged until the pack lay comfortably against her spine. “You can’t miss the most beautiful castle in all of Europe. Burg Eltz is my fantasy castle squared. When are you ever going to be able to do this again?”

  Judy felt her will waver. Becky looked so very happy today. Yesterday, as they’d explored Marksburg Castle, Becky had been as excited as a teenager touring a rock star’s crib. Gone was the gray aura of impending doom. For the first time since they’d stepped off the plane at Heathrow, Becky was honestly enjoying herself.

  But there was still an ugly reality that could not be completely, or safely, ignored. “Becky, how’s this bright sunlight going to work for you? It’s a busy road.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Becky crouched to tug at the laces of her sneaker. “If I stay right behind Monique, following close in her wake, then I won’t be surprised by anything rushing up in my peripheral vision. I can do this.”

  Judy thought that there might be an element of plain, stubborn determination overwhelming Becky’s common sense, but she wasn’t going to be the one to squash it. “So here’s another question. Once you guys park your bikes at Moselkern, it’s another three miles to Burg Eltz. Uphill. Are you going to catch a cab? ”

  “It’s a beautiful hike through the woods.” Monique unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water. “You read the raves in the guidebook about the view as you approach from the hiking trail.”

  “I stopped reading at the words ‘hiking trail.’ You both know I’m not the hike-bike-climb-the-rock-wall type.”

  She waited for Monique to catch her in that lie. After all Judy had hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with Audrey, Kiera, and Gina’s Girl Scout troop. She’d done an all-night-walk-around-the-park to raise money when a classmate of Michael’s was diagnosed with leukemia. That was at least six years ago, before her knee started going wonky.

  She was saved by Becky, who pinched a thin roll of skin at her waist. “I ate Mosel toast for brunch. Ham and peach on toast slathered in melted cheese. It’s going to take lots of miles of biking and hiking to burn it off.”

  Monique took a quick swig of her water. “If I eat any more bratwurst, roasted potatoes, or goulash, I’ll have to buy new clothes in Paris.”

&n
bsp; Judy snorted. “Oh, horrors.”

  “Ha. Ha.”

  “Eleven miles of biking and three freakin’ miles of hiking uphill,” Judy sang. “Ladies, I rest my case.”

  Monique tucked the bottle into the holder on the bike. “You liked touring Marksburg Castle yesterday, yes?”

  “My knees doth still protest.”

  Monique glanced at Judy’s knees and frowned. “I should have insisted you ice them last night.”

  “My knees are fine. Achy, but they’ll recover. Can you tell me what’s wrong with wanting to sit on a couch and read a book for a couple of hours? Or linger in a café, nursing a glass of some sweet Moselle wine until you guys get back?”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Monique agreed, “for after.”

  “Burg Eltz, Judy.” Becky leaned forward, quivering in excitement. “Burg Eltz.”

  Monique swung a leg over the bike. “And we’re only here for one day.”

  Judy stewed, sensing the prickling discomfort and sudden flush that usually preceded a full-blown hot flash. She didn’t like to disappoint people. Her urge was always to accommodate—to attend that ballet recital and then zoom off to the karate test, to help at the bake sale and also run the craft table at the school fund-raiser, to gussy up for a dinner with Bob’s colleagues even though a migraine pounded behind her right eye socket.

  She wondered if that urge were a mother thing or just a woman thing. She wondered, too, why these days she felt more and more like a grumpy contrarian, someone less and less inclined to say yes.

  “We’re in every city for only a day.” Judy stepped back into the shade of the awning, climbing up one stair to the hotel. “This is the fifth city we’ve been to in as many days. So today I’m going to sit for a little while. Soak it in for a change.”

  “I know it has been tight,” Monique said, “but in Paris we’ll be doing a lot of nice, calm—”

  “Monie, darling.” Judy felt the words rise up her throat before she could even attempt to tamp them down. “I’m a mother of five who’s just shepherded the last bird out of the nest. Can I sit down now?”

  Becky froze where she crouched, retying her shoes. Monique straddled the bike, balanced taut on her toes. Judy avoided their eyes by glancing down the Moselpromenade to the riverside stretch of colorful hotels and shops. She knew one block away from the river lay the real Cochem, a little medieval town with winding streets and quaint half-timbered buildings that she could probably tour in a leisurely hour. If she had a yen to see a castle, she could lean forward and look up a bit down the road to see Reichsburg, an ancient stronghold that had been rebuilt in the Neo-Gothic style on a bluff. And all through the area there were plenty of native-speaking Germans she could eavesdrop on, trying to hone her old skills.

  The heat that had started in her cheeks now spread all over, making little beads of sweat start to pop up on her neck and her upper lip. She looked at both of them, so bright-eyed, so fit, so eager. Monique looked livelier than she had for a while, less grimly determined now that she wasn’t working to check something off Lenny’s list. Both of them had come off the Rhine with new energy.

  But in Amsterdam Judy had discovered that she was no longer the twenty-two-year-old girl who’d tripped so easily across the continent. She’d outgrown that silly little pip both mentally and emotionally, and that was a very good thing. But after five straight days of ceaseless travel, and after laboring up the steep stairs to Marksburg Castle, an uglier, less palatable truth had emerged: She no longer had twenty-two-year-old stamina—or knees.

  “Oh, go, both of you.” She waved her hands at them, as if she were shooing her children off to school. “Have a great time and take lots of photos. You can tell me all about it later over a nice bottle of Riesling.”

  Monique hesitantly put her feet in the pedals. “Only if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  They climbed on the bikes and slipped between the cars into the bike lane. Her heart did a little stutter as Becky risked a collision by glancing once, over her shoulder, to give her a last wave. Judy stood on the stoop of the hotel, watching them weave through the traffic until she could no longer see them.

  Then she leaned against the wrought-iron railing. She winced at the sharp stab of pain in the back of her knee. She let her weight bring her down, until she all but bounced on the cold stone step. A chill seeped through her jeans. The pressure of the hard surface threatened to put her legs to sleep.

  Well, she got what she wanted.

  But, damn, it hurt to wave her youth good-bye.

  *

  Judy emerged from the Paris Metro to the ringing of the bells of Notre Dame.

  She glanced across the bridge at the front of the church. Behind her Becky tripped up the Metro stairs. Monique seized the post that arched over the exit and stood beside Judy, taking in all of old Paris, all at once.

  “Flying buttresses.” Becky stepped dangerously into the stream of pedestrian traffic, blinking as if the light glared through the amber lenses of her glasses. “The rose window and gargoyles. Can we tour Notre Dame first?”

  “Definitely.” Judy looked both ways and headed across the street. “I’ll even lead the charge.”

  Small cars zipped along the road. Boatloads of tourists on the river’s bateaux mouches waved and shouted and raised glasses of wine to their fellow tourists hanging over the edge of Pont Saint-Michel. The October sun beat down warmly, washing the island in sunshine. Judy soaked in the ambiance, moving amid a flood of natives speaking French, some of it vaguely comprehensible to her ears.

  “Brianna and Brian are going to love this.” Becky dug in the outer pocket of her backpack for her camera. “They adore the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame. They have no idea that this is a real church.”

  “I’ll buy them gargoyles from the gift shop,” Judy said.

  “I’ve got dibs on the most hideous one.” Monique swung her arm over Judy’s shoulders and struck a pose as Becky focused. “It’ll loom over Kiera while she’s in college. She’ll probably call it ‘Mom.’”

  “Hey, back up a little, you two. I want to get both towers in the picture.”

  Judy smiled but her gaze was everywhere but at the camera. It was on the glimmer of the Seine River on either side of the island. It was on the little artist tables lined up against the stone walls by the bridge. It was on the sharp-cut little hedges in the front courtyard and the stone edging that served as benches. Nothing had really changed. If she thought long and hard enough, she could pinpoint the exact spot where her heart had once been broken.

  “So what’s on the agenda first?” Becky slipped the camera in the pocket of her khakis and shrugged her backpack into place. “Guided tour?”

  “Let’s do the towers,” Monique suggested. “The guidebook said there’s a gallery where we can see the gargoyles and a great view of the whole city if we climb to the belfry.”

  “Perfect,” Judy quipped. “We’ll be three bats in the belfry.”

  “How are those knees?”

  “Functional.”

  Monique frowned. “You’ve got to go easy on them, Judy. There are four-hundred-odd stairs involved in this little tour.”

  “These knees have done this climb before. They can damn well do it again.”

  “I don’t know. There are a couple of tough physical things coming up on the list. When we get to Interlaken—”

  “Let’s worry about Switzerland when we get there, okay?”

  “I’m getting the sense that you don’t want to talk about this, Judy.”

  “Ding-ding-ding.”

  “Okay, then, can we talk about your midlife crisis instead?”

  Judy answered by swiveling on a heel and leading them to the tower entrance on the Rue de Cloître Notre Dame. This was not the first sharp comment Monique had made since she and Becky had returned from Burg Eltz yesterday. Their bike ride had left the two of them limp and exhausted, but Judy could tell by the way they looked at her that the
ladies had spent a good amount of time on that hike talking about her. They made a point to spend dinner showing her the photos on their digital cameras, Becky’s charcoal sketches of the fabulous castle, and telling funny little anecdotes about the other hikers they came across in the woods.

  But they’d increased the pressure this morning. Monique had been full of prickling, provocative questions. Sensing the increasing attention, Judy had made a point on the train from Cochem to Trier to chat with the nice British woman who sat next to her, on holiday with her daughter. And then, on the train from Trier to Luxembourg, and later on the TGV to Paris, Judy had pointedly directed the conversation to their guidebooks and the question of how to best spend their few precious days in the City of Light. She figured if she showed some indication she was getting back into the spirit of the holiday, then her oh-so-energetic, irritatingly youthful friends would stop asking questions she had no intention of answering.

  And why should they focus a single ounce of concern on her? She hadn’t lost a husband—her relationship with Bob was solid and sexy and wonderful. She wasn’t going blind—she could see quite well that she had five grown, successful children, a razor-thin but strengthening financial security, and a sturdy if somewhat life-battered house. The embarrassing truth was that it was her internal scaffolding that was collapsing, the foundations of her identity cracked and surging in an inner upheaval that flummoxed and embarrassed her. She hadn’t summoned this, she didn’t trust it, and she was only marginally beginning to understand it herself.

  The last thing she wanted from her two grieving friends was pity.

  “Eight euros a head,” Judy said, as they approached the entrance to the tower. “Buck up, you two. Me and my aging knees are going first.”

  She would regret this later, she knew she would. She creaked up the narrow, circular steps to La Galerie des Chimères, every step causing new pressure on what she’d decided to label her “sports injury.” Fortunately, Becky lagged a bit behind because the tower was dim and the ancient worn stairs uneven. After the first misstep Becky seized Monique by the waistband and proceeded with exaggerated care. The delay gave Judy a moment to catch her breath in the open air while she waited for Monique and Becky to finish the climb to the gallery.