Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763) Read online

  She leaned on the stone edge, supposedly to better see the gargoyle glaring down at the front courtyard, the one with the face like a dog, a beard like a goat, and a single horn sticking out of his forehead. Monique and Becky came up behind her. It gave Judy some comfort to hear them breathing hard from the effort too.

  “Wow.” Monique took in the whole sweeping view of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. “Lenny should have put this on the list.”

  “Instead of Le Jules Verne? No way.” Judy’s gaze drifted to the Left Bank of the Seine, to the most iconic structure in Paris. Lenny had chosen two Parisian experiences for his bucket list: One was below ground at the famously creepy catacombs. The other was well above: At a Michelin-starred restaurant on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. “I can’t believe you snagged reservations to that place. When I was here last all I saw getting into that elevator were women in pearls and furs.”

  “Well they’ll have to make allowances for three women who’ve been living out of their suitcases.” Monique grimaced a little. “And did I mention that our reservations are at nine thirty p.m.? That was all I could get when I emailed three and a half weeks ago.”

  “How fashionable,” Judy said. “I’ll try not to faint in my consommé.”

  Monique added, “At least we’ll get an eagle’s-eye view of the nighttime City of Light.”

  “Well,” Becky said with a laugh, “I hope the food is awesome too.”

  With a little start Judy remembered that nighttime Paris would be nothing but streaks and blobs of light for Becky. And then Judy wondered how long it would be before realities like that stopped taking her by surprise.

  “Would you guys mind?” Becky pulled the top of her sketch pad out of her daypack. “The stonework is fabulous here. I want to get it all down in pencil now so I can create it with fondant later.”

  “Sketch away,” Monique said. “Judy and I will linger and have a little chat.”

  Judy kept her gaze fixed on the horizon. Becky, with a hasty clearing of her throat, skittered away very quickly for a vision-impaired woman. Judy suddenly felt like one of her dogs at the vet, backed up and quivering in a corner.

  Judy said, “I thought you worked in the NICU, Monie. Not in the psych ward.”

  “Relax. I just want your advice.”

  Judy didn’t believe that for a minute. Monique was using the back-door technique, asking one innocuous question so that Judy would drop her guard. Judy recognized the technique because she was the one who taught it to Monique for use against a certain guilty, unsuspecting teenager. Judy cast about for a work-around and then remembered the awkward, truncated phone conversation Monique and Kiera had had while they waited to switch trains in Luxembourg. “If you want my advice, Monie, it’s this: Just stop calling Kiera. Text her instead.”

  “That’s not the advice I was looking for.”

  “Text works like an emotional filter. It gives a sense of safe distance.”

  “Duly noted. But Kiera will be leaving in a year—”

  “All the more reason to perfect the technique. If you text her, she doesn’t have to dread the look on your face, or the tone of your voice, and she’ll be more likely to—”

  “I’ll be an empty nester when she leaves,” Monique interrupted, her eyes narrowed as she gazed at the hazy horizon. “And I thought, with you experiencing this situation right now, maybe you could give me a tip or two on how to prepare for it.”

  “And you’re asking me this because I’m handling this life transition with such grace and aplomb?”

  “Listen.” Monique sighed. “If your choice was between complete mental collapse or obsessive landscaping, well, I suppose you chose well.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with mums on the front porch. Or a nice circle of begonias at the base of that cherry tree.”

  “Keeping up with the Merrills has become a very expensive sport.”

  “The truth is, having an empty nest sucks.”

  “This from you, who once told me that when the kids were finally out of the house, you and Bob were going to have sex on the kitchen table.”

  Judy blushed, thinking of what she and Bob had done after coming home from dropping Audrey off at the airport. “I cannot be held responsible for what I say under the influence of multiple eggnogs at the Hendersons’ Christmas party.”

  “Judy, it’s not like all your kids have moved out permanently.” Monique leaned against one of the stone pillars that framed their view of Paris. “Audrey and Maddy are going to come back every vacation. They’ll be back in the summer. It seems like kids live in their parents’ house through their twenties these days.”

  “Have you seen any of my boys lately?”

  Jake was living in Dubai, working at the embassy, practicing his Arabic. He’d already told her he planned to stay there over the summer—depending on the overall political situation—and she couldn’t stop her heart from racing at the news. Robert now lived in Omaha, working for an insurance company. He was so grateful for the employment after an eleven-month job search that he refused to take a vacation day to come see his parents on Thanksgiving. And Michael lived happily in Seattle working for Microsoft, already talking about spending Christmas there with his growing group of new friends.

  “Boys are different,” Monique said. “Even Becky says so. And after Maddy graduated, she came home and lived with you last summer.”

  “For four weeks and two days. As soon as her apartment became available in Boston, she was off to ‘settle in.’” Judy tightened her jaw. She would not unload her issues on a widow who was about to send off to college her one and only daughter. “Kids grow up, become independent, and they leave home, Monie. It’s that simple. They leave mothers behind to stand dazed and wonder what the hell just happened.”

  Mothers who’d dedicated their lives to wrangling popsicle sticks and toilet paper rolls into Native American wigwams, herding entire muddy teams of ten-year-olds from sports to Dairy Queen, and pacing the kitchen praying for the curfew-breaking teenager they are convinced is bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere.

  Mothers who didn’t yet realize that a parent’s last duty was to stand and wave as those children skip away to their own lives, taking with them a hefty chunk of her own.

  “You know, when Bob left the newspaper,” Judy found herself saying, “the company threw a big party for him. There was champagne and the usual rubber chicken dish. There were long, loopy speeches and a pile of gifts. The company celebrated his time there and then sent him off into unemployment.”

  “It was still terrible they let him go.”

  “The newspaper business is volatile these days. It happens. At least they gave him a good send-off and a gold watch.” She felt a heat prickle through her, the onset of the sweaty discomfort. How she hated the new unpredictability of her own body. “Like Bob I’ve worked myself right out of a job, too. I’ve been forced into unemployment. Except with no party and no gold watch.”

  Judy scraped the toe of her shoe against the leaf litter gathered by the edge of the wall, frustrated and embarrassed by that overly simple explanation. A party wouldn’t unravel the complicated knot of her emotions. It wouldn’t ease the creaking of her knees. It wouldn’t bring back her period, which, as of last week, she’d skipped for the second month in a row. But it would have served as a demarcation of some sort: A ritual to separate before and after.

  She’d hoped this vacation would be that marker. But she’d yet to feel the seismic shifting within her, the emotional sign of change.

  “You know,” Monique said, “if you work this analogy to its natural end, you’d realize that after he was let go from the newspaper, Bob soon found a new job.”

  “Lucky bastard.”

  “There’s nothing stopping you from looking.”

  “Eighteen effing applications.”

  Monique started.

  “Every single potential employer turned me down cold.”

  Monique stuttered. “
When did you start this?”

  “January.” She managed an airy little shrug and took some comfort in Monique’s surprise. “Hey, with professionals like Marco given furloughs, I can hardly complain. It took Bob eight months to find his new job, and it pays less than the other. And I made ridiculous limitations when I started my search. I didn’t want to work retail because that meant working weekends and holidays and summers, which are the only times my kids might possibly visit.”

  “What a sneaky thing you are. I didn’t even suspect.”

  “I started local, searching for nine-to-five office work. Everyone kept asking me if I knew all kinds of word processing programs, and spreadsheets and databases and PowerPoint, and all those things that my kids did for me.”

  “You’re looking in the wrong places. You should teach preschool.”

  “Not without a degree in education. And I can’t possibly add another tuition bill to the ones Bob and I are already staggering under.”

  “A teacher’s aide, then—”

  “Requires training too. The ability to handle kids and a clean criminal record are apparently not enough these days. So here I am, still unemployed. Apparently no one wants to hire an unskilled, dried-up, washed-out homemaker.”

  Monique made a tsking noise. “The market has spoken, Judy: You’re utterly useless.”

  “Just kick me to the curb.”

  “Bundle you up like old newspapers.”

  “Right up on the old garbage heap.”

  She’d spoken fluent French and German when she was young. She’d worked for the Children’s Fund at the United Nations. She had a job she had to wear heels to, a boss who liked the proposals she wrote up, and skills that were valuable to a greater cause. The job had been a singular bright light during a difficult transition in her life. Now standing in this gallery watching the tourists swarm below, Judy struggled to parse out the French.

  Voilà, les chimères.

  Après vous, je t’en prie.

  Ça va bien?

  “You’ve raised five amazing kids,” Monique said. “They’re in school, employed, self-sufficient. You should be proud. I forbid you to take this so deeply to heart.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell me how I’m supposed to feel.”

  A sudden rush of emotion overwhelmed her—frustration and helplessness and something else, some rippling anger she was sure was hormonally induced. Of course she was proud of her kids. She’d be proud of her kids no matter what they did. Any mother would. Even the mothers of serial killers must have something they were proud about, because a mother was a mother and thus loved unconditionally.

  “I should come with a warning.” Judy pushed away from the wall. “Beware the Bitch. She’s Menopausal.”

  “My fault,” Monique conceded. “I should know better than to spout platitudes. Some of the meanest things people said to me were platitudes, and they made me furious.”

  “You, furious? In what blue moon was this?”

  “Lenny’s funeral.”

  “Monie, at the funeral you were practically catatonic.”

  “Numb,” she corrected. “I was numb. But I was taking hits by the dozens. Someone would say, ‘he’s in a better place,’ or ‘at least he’s not suffering anymore,’ or—the worst—‘you’re young, you’ll fall in love again.’ People would actually look me in the eye and say things like that while my husband lay dead in a coffin right beside me.”

  Judy felt vaguely unsettled as she searched her memory, sure that she’d mouthed one if not all of those same platitudes. With growing guilt she turned back to the view, sinking her elbows on the stone. Her gaze drifted to the benches by the hedge.

  “See that long stone bench right there?” Judy pointed to the left side of the courtyard. “It was in that exact spot that I was dumped by Thierry.”

  She remembered every detail of the moment. The slant of the sun cutting across the courtyard. The air that smelled so strongly of lilies. The strap of one of her sandals had broken, and it had made a sore spot on her foot where she’d hastily sewn the strap together. Thierry’s hair was pulled back and tied with a little piece of shoelace. She loved that neck, the little hairs, the vulnerable paleness of it. She’d resisted the urge to touch it, to nuzzle it, as he smoked a filterless cigarette.

  He’d hunched over, breathing the smoke deep, avoiding her eye.

  Monique nudged her over so she could plant her elbows on the stone sill right by Judy’s side, their shoulders touching. “We could have gone anywhere in Paris today,” Monique murmured. “We didn’t have to come to a place that held bad memories.”

  “You misunderstand. I chose this place intentionally.”

  “Masochist.”

  “The memory isn’t all bad. I was ass-over-tit in love with that man. Helplessly giddy about him. We’d been traveling for a couple of weeks together, keeping each other very warm at night. I’d just assumed he loved me too.”

  By the time she’d met Thierry, she’d perfected the act of tumbling heedlessly in love. Traveling had a way of shucking the expectations that tended to build around a settled life. Travel became a goal in itself, wanderlust the passion that fed it, and any man with the same sentiment in his heart, an easy target for affection. She’d fallen in love with Thierry not just because he had liquid brown eyes and a way of smiling that made one eye squint more than the other. She’d fallen in love with him because he, too, wanted to work his way across Europe, and if the money held, into Greece and maybe Turkey. He understood her urge to follow the road far, far from where she was, to some exotic destination that would then turn into a jumping point to yet another.

  “The truth was that Thierry was just like the others I’d hooked up with,” Judy said. “He was a common goujat.”

  The word came to her, surprisingly easily, feathering off her tongue.

  “I assume that means ‘gigolo’?”

  “More of what Audrey would call a ‘player.’ Thierry never set himself up to be anything but a man of breezy affections, or our relationship to be anything but one of convenience and common interests. We fell in together, as we happened to be on the same road. At the beginning I had no problem with that. I felt the same way.”

  Monique leaned into her. Her shoulder was warm.

  “But by the time Thierry came along,” Judy continued, “I’d been traveling for over five months. Some of the glamour had worn off. I’d started to feel as if my feet were losing their grip on the earth. It’s difficult to describe.” Judy struggled to find a way to explain how it felt to be rootless for so long, to sense the emotional connections to home and old friends and family stretch so thin, almost to the point of dissolution. “Every step I took farther along those cobblestone paths—every loose, easy, carefree relationship I’d thrown myself into—made me lighter and lighter, until I wondered if I’d eventually just float off the face of the earth. And not a single soul would give a damn.”

  Monique said softly, “And Thierry changed that?”

  “No, I changed it. By talking to him about the future.” Judy glanced at that bench where she’d last seen him. “Within an hour of broaching the subject, he gave me a kiss and took off.”

  He’d startled a flock of pigeons when he’d stood up. By the time the fat birds settled back down, the man she thought she’d loved was gone.

  “Judy…why would you want to remember this?”

  “Because I was a brave and reckless young woman back then, but I was also about as shallow as any garden-variety teenager. I had no clue about what really mattered in life. Until I took my broken heart in hand that day and stood up from that bench.” She cast her gaze over the mansard roofs and the dome of Sacre Coeur in the distance. “When I stood up from that bench, Monie, I finally knew what mattered. So I booked my flight back to the States. Within two years I found Bob.”

  Bob, who rooted her in the suburbs with five fat, happy babies and a brace of big messy dogs. One Bob was w
orth a hundred thousand flighty French Thierrys.

  Monique leaned her head on Judy’s shoulder. “That man sure did shatter your heart.”

  “Yes, he did,” Judy conceded. “And so did Audrey—unintentionally—when she stepped on that plane to California.”

  Monique lifted her head and gave her a quizzical look. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “Audrey’s not leaving you forever.”

  “No, she’s not. But when she threw me that breezy wave, that’s the moment I understood that my life as I knew it was over.” In the courtyard a flock of pigeons suddenly rose up and whooshed to higher perches. “You wanted advice about how to handle an empty nest? I can’t give it to you, Monie. I’m floundering. I just can’t imagine what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Becky braced her sketch pad against her ribs as she stood across from the opening to the Metro station. She sketched the metal archway that held the station sign, Denfert-Rochereau. She adored the loopy script, the chipping green paint, the romantic name. But she kept blinking, trying to clear a film in her eye. Paris was sooty like New York City, with all the cars and the exhaust and the wind kicking up debris. Every time she rubbed her eyes to clear her vision, her eyes just watered more.

  Right. That’s what she needed. Soot in her eyes, interfering with her already shitty vision.

  “Hey, we’re moving.” Monique, standing a little way behind Becky, kept her place with Judy in the line to the Paris Catacombs. She flicked her wrist to look at the face of her watch. “A forty-minute wait. That’s going to kill our plans. At this rate, I don’t think we’re going to make it to Sacré Coeur in Montmartre, Judy.”

  “Crazy tourists.” Judy craned her neck as the group started filing into the little green building. “Who comes to Paris to go wandering underground?”

  “Three women on a mission.” Monique tapped the increasingly tattered itinerary jutting out of the side pocket of her daypack. “Besides, we could spend a month in Paris and still not see everything.”