Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Page 14

  Jo said, “Now, there’s some beauty queen for you.”

  Grace couldn’t keep her eyes off the doll. “She’s got pretty hair.”

  “It comes with a brush,” Jo said, eyeing Grace’s own wild mop. “It’d be fun to brush her hair. You made a great choice, kiddo.”

  No one had noticed this before. Not Jessie, or Grace’s grandparents, or even Rachel, all so overwhelmed for so many months. Who would have expected that a child of Rachel—the super-athlete, the adrenaline junkie, the most tomboyish of tomboys—would grow to become a girlie girl?

  It really couldn’t be this simple. Children were complicated, irrational, and uncontrollable. She must be fooling herself to think she could solve all problems so easily. It wasn’t the purchase of a simple toy that put this glow on Grace’s face. Jo sensed she could buy Grace every overpriced gadget in the store and it wouldn’t make the kid any happier. Grace loved the doll, yes, but what she loved more was the attention. Someone was listening to her, hearing her wishes, acknowledging them as important.

  The phone jumped in her purse. Jo reached in and curled her hand around it. Held it tight.

  She thought about her job: the vice-presidency she’d worked eighty-hour weeks to acquire; the paycheck that bought the caramel lattes and single-malt scotch that washed away the lingering, bitter taste of the canned vegetables and two-day-old bread of her youth; and the swelling F-U fund that would someday secure her freedom from drudgery and obligation—twin traps from which her own mother escaped only by dying.

  Jo’s phone vibrated violently in her hand.

  Grace looked at her with Rachel’s fathomless brown eyes, full of unguarded, quivering hope, and Jo did what she had to do.

  She shut off her phone.

  chapter eleven

  With unguarded, quivering hope, Kate lounged on the queen-sized bed in her hotel room. Paul was coming. Kate knew it. The last time they’d spoken, he’d promised to look into flying to India. There’d been a warmth in his voice she hadn’t heard in all their other angry telephone conversations—two a day since she’d arrived—a warmth and promise that had melted her bones.

  He hadn’t called her since. It had been forty-eight straight hours. Which could only mean one thing: He was—right now—on a plane to Bangalore.

  Rubbing her knee with her bare foot, she toyed with the ribbon of her red silk negligee. Make-up sex between them was always hot and intense. She’d bought this nightgown just for him, just for that. The tissue still lay crumpled on the floor, the bag discarded in a corner. Last night, online, she’d checked airline flights between Newark and Bangalore. Taking into account a change in Frankfurt, and half a day for settling things at home and work, she’d calculated that he should be sweeping into her hotel room any minute now. She would have to remind him to bolt the door behind him, so Sarah’s usual early-morning arrival wouldn’t interrupt them in the lusty middle of things.

  She wondered if he would bring flowers from the airport. She wondered if he’d remembered to bring the chocolate body paint going stale in the drawer of their bedside table. She wouldn’t care if he came empty-handed—because, without a doubt, the man who walked through that door would be the one gift she ached for the most, the Paul she’d married, the surfer boy with the wicked sense of fun, and the man who would bring excitement back into their lives.

  She’d already forgiven him for all the nasty things he’d said to her since she’d come to India. That had been nothing but noise and fury fueled by shock, confusion, and frustration. Any sharp transition such as this was like birth; the pain was necessary to remind you of its importance. She hadn’t forgotten that it had taken a jump from eight thousand feet to shock her back to herself.

  The doorknob rattled, and Kate leapt out of the bed. Her hair, loose and freshly blow-dried, swung across her vision. She tripped over a pair of her running sneakers, lying in the middle of the floor, and the door swung open before she reached it.

  “Sa—Sarah!” Kate stopped short. “You’re here!”

  Sarah froze, blinking, with her key card in hand. She wore the same tie-dyed brown skirt and crinkled white cotton shirt that she’d been wearing when she’d slipped out of the room the night before. Her face looked freshly scrubbed.

  Sarah gave Kate a steady gaze, like she was rising up from deep water. “Hey.” She raised one eyebrow as she took in the sight of Kate’s negligee. Then, with a sudden tight expression, Sarah glanced toward the bed. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”

  “No, no, not yet.” Kate kicked away the jeans she’d shucked on the carpet last night. Then she ducked around the edge of the door and looked up and down the long hallway. “It’s Paul. He’s due to be here any minute.”

  “Oh? Paul. Lucky man.” Sarah did a strange little shake and then slipped into the room, tracing the ochre stain on Kate’s forearm as she passed. “Is that for him?”

  Kate glanced at the vine that climbed up to the third finger of her left hand. “Yes, I had it done in the marketplace yesterday.” She closed the door on her disappointment and leaned back against it. “Sam found me the best henna artist, a woman who must have been a hundred years old.” Kate gave Sarah a thorough look-over, from the pinched skin between her brows, to the stiffness of her shoulders, to the careless way her wrinkled skirt dragged on her girlish hips. “Sam and I wanted you to get hennaed, too, but you were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

  “You washed it too soon.” Sarah strode deeper into the room, ducking under the strap of her hemp purse before tossing it on the bed strewn with her rucksack and scattered sandals. “It’s supposed to be darker than that.”

  “I know.” Underneath the red silk, Kate had a deeper-ochre image—one she hadn’t yet washed—of an intricately scaled snake. The reptile wrapped up her side and stretched halfway down her groin, its mouth open and its forked tongue pointing south. “It’s done for brides, you know.” Kate steadied her gaze on her mysterious, terribly uncommunicative friend. “You should have it done, Sarah. For your and Colin’s pending… engagement?”

  Sarah stiffened over her rucksack, its mouth spilling clothes. “I’m not Tess, Kate. Find someone else to mother.”

  “I’m not mothering.” Kate pushed away from the door and slid a hip onto her own bed, upending the spread of a newspaper, whose pages fanned to the floor. “Well, all right, maybe it comes out that way. Hell, that’s all I’ve been doing for years. But, honestly, Sarah, I’m trying just to be a friend. Isn’t that what I’m here for? You’re spending so much time with this guy, yet you’re tight as a drum about him. What’s going on? Has he mentioned anything about his fiancée?”

  Sarah yanked off her shirt with more force than necessary. Her bra was held together by one hook, and the elastic on the band was beginning to fray.

  “Oh, Sarah.” Kate sighed as the silence stretched. “This is not good—”

  “Kate, I really don’t want to talk about it now.”

  “What’s it like,” Kate persisted, “sleeping with a man who has another woman on his mind?”

  “We don’t talk about her.” Sarah pawed through her bag and tugged out a skirt the color of a tropical sky. “We don’t talk about Stateside. At all. We talk about Paraguay. We talk about his conference and my work in Burundi. We don’t get much opportunity to talk anyway.”

  “Hot sex will shut a guy right up.”

  “Will it? I wouldn’t know.” Sarah tossed the skirt on the bed and searched for a top to match. “Colin and I had ‘hot sex’ the first night, and since then he hasn’t really touched me.”

  Kate stilled. Certainly she couldn’t be serious. Kate didn’t think there was a single day in the first five years of their relationship when Paul and she didn’t go at it like nymphomaniacs. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. It was one of the simple truths of their marriage.

  Her breasts were suddenly heavy; her lips, moist and swelling.

  Hurry to me, Paul
.

  “C’mon, Kate, despite what Jo believes, not everything is about sex.” Sarah balled up her old shirt and hurled it into the corner of the room vaguely designated for laundry. “Colin wants me there. In his bed. He told me so. And in the middle of the night, things can get…” Sarah pulled the band out of her ponytail, shaking her hair free. Her face started to redden as only a freckle-faced minister’s daughter’s face could.

  This Kate understood. “He’s fighting it, then.”

  “Hell if I know.” Sarah grabbed her clean clothes and pressed them against her midriff. “The Hutu have it right. Just build a hut and offer the father some cattle and a goat. It makes things so much simpler.”

  Kate scooted out of the way as Sarah strode toward the bathroom. The last time Colin broke Sarah’s heart, it took a good year and a half for the girl to recover. Sarah had spent six months with her family in Vermont, chopping firewood and feeding chickens and wandering the paths of the Green Mountains. It was Rachel who’d finally pulled her out of it and brought her to New York. Sarah had thinned to a wraith by then, hollow-cheeked and haunted.

  Rachel wasn’t here anymore.

  Kate reached out, tracing Sarah’s arm as she passed. “I’m worried about you, Sarah-belle.”

  “Clearly.” She swiveled on one foot and gave Kate a weary, winsome smile. “But I really can’t talk now. I need to shower and get downstairs. Colin’s leading a surgical team to a village south of here. It’s been delayed but they’ll be operating today. He asked me to join them—they could use an extra nurse. I have to meet them in about twenty minutes.”

  “Oh.”

  Sarah looked at her, sharply. “Is that a problem? Looks like you won’t want me around once Paul arrives.”

  “Will it be dangerous, this trip?”

  “Listen to you.” With the edge of her foot, Sarah shoved aside an empty bottle of water, then paused with her hand on the bathroom doorknob. “It’s dangerous only in that it’s India, Kate—civilized, democratic, overpopulated, and totally unpredictable. I’m not in the least bit worried,” she said, closing the bathroom door behind her, “and so neither should you.”

  Kate chewed on the edge of her lip as Sarah turned on the shower. Paul was due today, but Kate didn’t know when. Planes could be delayed, connections missed. Perhaps he’d had some difficulty clearing his desk at work. She didn’t relish the idea of lounging around all day in a state of heightened sexual tension, just waiting for him to show up. Yet here in Bangalore she’d done every touristy thing: all the gardens, the marketplace, the Hindu ruins, and the palaces. She wouldn’t mind pushing her adventure just a little further and taking the rare opportunity of seeing Sarah at work. And digging more information out of her, too.

  She’d just have to ruin Paul’s surprise.

  Ten minutes later, after punching in two dozen numbers to put the call through, Kate held the phone to her ear, waiting for someone at home to pick it up. Paul’s mother answered.

  “Barbara? It’s me, Kate.”

  “Ah, the runaway bride.” Barbara paused, and through the crackling of the connection, Kate heard her suck deeply on a cigarette—probably a Virginia Slim. “You still in India?”

  “Can’t you tell by the connection?”

  “Good for you, good for you.” Barbara exhaled loudly. “So—have you seen my no-good thieving ex-husband yet? He’s probably bald, with a paunch, and wearing one of those red togas.”

  “Barbara, I told you before, I’m in India—not Nepal. Slim chance I’ll see him here.”

  Not that Kate would even know what he looked like. All Paul had of his father was a few thirty-year-old photos of a full-bearded, scrawny, shirtless guy in low-slung jeans.

  “You never know where the bastard is. If you do see him, punch him for me. A couple of times. And let him know who it’s from.”

  “Sure will.”

  “And take a few extra days while you’re there. Have yourself a good time. Now I understand why you called me here, sounding like a maniac.” Barbara made a hoarse, deep sucking noise again. Kate hoped she was smoking on the deck and not in the house. “This place is a madhouse. Phone rings all the time, the mail is six inches high, the doorbell rings constantly, strange women come and drag your kids around, and the laundry grows in the basement like ’shrooms in manure.”

  Kate closed her eyes. She didn’t want to know. Didn’t even want to imagine. Barbara—who had raised Paul in a California commune—lived quite carelessly in clutter. An attitude, Kate thought—as she scanned the dirty glasses and discarded clothing and shoes and candy wrappers of her hotel room—she was only beginning to appreciate.

  “But keep away from the opium dens out there, Kate. It’s not like weed. Opium will ruin you.”

  “Don’t worry, Barbara, I’ll stay clean.”

  “You want to speak to the grumpy old man?”

  “Right.” Kate grinned. “Like he’s around.”

  “Oh, he’s around, all the time. Underfoot. A damn nuisance. Pissed at you, oh, he’s pissed at you, girl.”

  “I know.”

  “He can’t keep away from this house, though. He took three days off work this week.”

  “Um-huh.” She’s covering. Just in case I call the office.

  “Right now he’s doing some project with Anna. Something about making a loom to weave cloth—crazy stuff. In my day, Paul wove a few strips of colored paper into a placemat, and it was done. Ten minutes, tops. And he did all the work. He spent his three hours in kindergarten singing ‘Kumbaya.’ He turned out all right without all this institutionalized brainwashing busywork. Hey, here he is now. Want to talk to your woman?”

  Kate stilled. In the background, she heard the rumble of a voice.

  No.

  Paul couldn’t be there, in New Jersey. Right now, he was on a plane thirty-two thousand feet above her hotel, slowly descending into Bangalore’s BLR airport.

  They fumbled with the phone. Kate shot up, flexing her hand over her belly, fighting a sudden swell of emotion.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice eager. “Are you at the airport?”

  She tried to swallow. “Paul, I thought that you were coming here.”

  “Newark or LaGuardia?”

  “Here, Paul. Here.” She paced along the edge of the bed, scraping her knee against the sheets they were supposed to be making love upon, all the long day. “To Bangalore. To The Chancery. The last time we spoke, you said you’d think about coming—”

  “You’re still in India?”

  “Of course. Waiting for you.”

  He made a short, angry noise that cut cleanly through the crackling of the satellite connection. “Well, I’m here waiting for you, Kate, because you said you’d think about coming home early.”

  “You told me you’d think about coming here!”

  “And I did. I thought about it. For about ten seconds. And then I realized, Hey! We have kids! One of us has to take care of them!”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t need the mommy-guilt. She’d taken care of things before she left, as she always did. Running the house like a well-oiled machine even when she was not there. Running it so well that all anyone noticed was the rare screw-up.

  “The pantry is full of food.” She filled her hand with the silk of her negligee, then pressed her fist against her racing heart. “The bills are paid for the month. I did every scrap of laundry I could before I left. Your mother is there—”

  “She doesn’t drive, Kate. She’s ‘limiting her carbon footprint.’ ”

  “I made arrangements—”

  “Things keep coming up.”

  “You could ask—”

  “I don’t know these women. I could be sending the kids out with serial killers and pedophiles—”

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Paul.” She swallowed, her throat dry. “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty-four straight hours.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you for over a week.” His anger vibrated t
hrough the wavering connection. “I’ve been waiting for you to climb back on a plane, make your way here, and come to your senses.”

  She wandered to the window and pulled the rope to open the blinds. Below spread the grand, well-tended boulevard that faced the hotel. Beyond, she could see the spires of two mosques, and the tarps that marked the edge of the marketplace.

  “Paul, if you were here, we could rent a motorbike.” She smiled, dreamy. “We could wander through the city. Everyone rides on them here. Even the women, in their saris. They ride sidesaddle, behind their husbands. They hold on tight.”

  “You do that, Kate, you go do that with Sarah. Scoot around on motorbikes through the streets of Bangalore. Meanwhile, I’ll shuttle Mike to practice, cook dinner, dash out at eleven p.m. to buy that special shampoo for Tess, yank a comb through Anna’s ridiculously long hair, and burrow through the mess in the playroom looking for Tess’s lost cleats.”

  Through the opened slats of the blinds, Kate looked up at the blue sky streaked with high, white clouds. Just after Tess was born, when Kate had felt so weak, so vulnerable, so helpless—when she was so sure she couldn’t possibly take care of this tiny little baby—Paul had morphed before her eyes. He’d opened his long-fingered hands and held Tess so perfectly. The baby’s small head had filled his palm, and his hands didn’t tremble like Kate’s did. They’d been living near Malibu at the time. She’d been so grateful when he told her he was swearing off surfing for a while.

  Is that when it happened?

  Or was it when he contacted the headhunter who found the job in New Jersey? The one that paid a good deal more than what he was making at a struggling start-up. He’d taken it, though it meant shucking the blue jeans and buttoning into a collared shirt—because the corporate position meant they would have the financial freedom to let Kate quit her job and stay home. Raising kids in day care, he’d said, reminded him too much of his wildly unconventional youth in the southern-California commune.

  She twisted the rope that closed the blinds, cutting off the view. “Call Kathy Hayward to drive Mike. Her boy is in the same class. The phone number is on the board.” She turned her back to the window and clutched her arm as if she were cold. “Use lots of detangler for Anna’s hair, and wash it every other day. Tell Tess to check for her cleats by Hannah’s trampoline—that’s where she usually loses them. And your mother is there for one reason: to cook dinner.”