Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Read online

  Kate leaned up against the wall and felt her senses spin as if she were falling from eight thousand feet but her chute hadn’t deployed, and all she could see was blue sky and green earth, blue sky and green earth. Below loomed the concrete face of the target zone and it was coming up fast—

  Kate started, and her eyes flew open, and—here she was—slumping against the wall, a useless American standing in a rural Indian clinic doing absolutely nothing but gaping at all the world’s misery.

  What am I doing here?

  She knew what she was doing here. She’d come here with Sarah. She’d wanted to walk into Sarah’s impossibly exciting life. She’d wanted to see exotic places and eat strange foods. She’d wanted to come a hairbreadth away from danger. She wanted to gather tidbits for future dinner parties. I once rode an elephant through the jungles of Mysore when… She wanted to unfurl National Geographic tales over canapés so Paul’s overeducated business associates and their fabulously chic working wives wouldn’t avoid her like the jean-wearing, spittle-shirted, mushy-minded housewife she’d become.

  So Paul would look at her—really look at her.

  Kate buried her face in trembling hands. She’d taken Rachel’s leap, but it had blown her so far off course, halfway across the world, to a place where she was more useless than ever.

  It was too much. Her skin prickled from the miasma of sickness and antiseptic, and a haze came over her eyesight, threatening her with another swoon. She strode away from the waiting room to get her blood pumping. She didn’t know where she was heading. She only knew that she couldn’t stand here any longer. She strode past the two operating rooms with their flickering lights and clusters of white-jacketed doctors. She strode with no destination in mind except to get away from herself.

  She ran smack into Sam.

  “Ruddy hell!” He gripped her by the arms. “Kate? Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  She met his gaze. The scars that traced his cheeks gave him character and strength, like the pits and chips on the face of an old Roman statue. Sam was opinionated, and funny, and competent, and lived a life so full of meaning and interest, and so much more important than hers.

  His hands curled around her arms. “You look wretched. Come here.” He drew her into a room full of old equipment and wiring, scattered with tools. “Are you not feeling well? You’re paler than usual.”

  She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t put her thoughts together. She kept looking at his mouth and thinking it had been so long since she’d been with Paul. Sam was tall and excitingly unfamiliar, all of him. He was handsome and kind. He tightened his grip on her arms, even as these thoughts flickered through her mind.

  “Kate, don’t go barmy on me. You know there’s only one woman I want looking at me like that. Did something just happen out there?”

  She shook her head. In the dim room, her wedding ring glinted. Her wedding ring. She thought of Paul, somewhere in New Jersey, struggling with the three kids. Tess. Michael. Anna.

  “I’m sorry.” She rubbed her face with her hands, wishing she could rub away the shame. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Only the coldest heart comes to a place like this and leaves unaffected. Clearly, it’s time for you to go home.”

  “I hope I still have one.”

  “Of course you’ll have one.”

  No, Sam. It’s not that simple. Paul is so angry.

  “Come on.” He drew her into his embrace and patted her shoulders. “Nothing is ever as bad as you think it is.”

  She pressed her cheek against his chest. His heart beat steady and sure. Sam was a good man. She was a fool. She didn’t belong here. This was Sarah’s life. Whoever Kate had been once, long ago—before she’d given up her job and her freedom for a husband and family—that woman was gone. Maybe, despite Rachel’s urgings, despite Kate’s own feelings of excitement these past weeks, maybe that woman should have stayed dead and buried.

  Suddenly, Sam went rigid.

  Kate looked up. He stared, lock-jawed, at the open doorway, where Sarah stood in the hallway, watching.

  chapter twelve

  What the fuck is going on?”

  The words slid out of Sarah’s mouth like slivers of steel.

  “Easy, Sarah,” Sam said. “Kate is having a hard time of it.”

  Sarah glared at them. Why didn’t he loosen his grip? Kate looked pale, but perfectly capable of standing on her own. “Hard time of what?”

  “She can’t take it all in. She’s a green recruit. She’s not like you.”

  What the hell did that mean? Not dreamy and disconnected? Not short and frizzy-haired and socially awkward? Not fashion-challenged or blithely ignorant of important details? No, Kate was the fierce and capable one; all tasks done impeccably with taste and style; even her kids turned out flawless. She never did anything half assed or by the seat of her pants, like Sarah was trying to do right now, searching for candy to give to a kid with late-stage lymphoma because she had nothing to offer that would really help.

  Sarah glared at Kate. To think she’d been worried about Blondie during the drive. To think she’d been worried that, in spite of the vaccinations, Kate had come down with malaria or typhoid or some other tropical malady. Instead, Kate had succumbed to a different kind of fever—with the strapping black Brit who had the irritating ability to unnerve Sarah with nothing more than his tall and brooding presence.

  Kate ducked away, muttering something about finding a bathroom. Sarah didn’t bother warning her that the only bathrooms were the squat-toilet kind and not a place for lingering. She’d find out soon enough, and Sarah was still reeling over the vision of Kate and Sam embracing. A red haze threatened the edges of her vision, even as Sarah told herself that Kate hadn’t been herself in weeks, not since the first skydive. The angry haze lingered even as the softer part of her nature argued that Kate was crashing, finally, to earth.

  But Sam should know better.

  Sam stepped closer, then leaned in the doorway, crossing his arms. “What are you more angry at, Sarah? That I might have kissed Kate? Or that I might have kissed her instead of you?”

  “Stop.” Sarah pushed the memory deep, deep inside. She thought she’d made it clear to him: What had happened on the trip to the mountains was irrelevant—just a lapse of judgment in a time of stress. “Kate is a married woman.”

  “And vulnerable,” Sam added. “And missing her husband. A heart is a fragile thing.”

  Sarah drew in a tight breath as a thought assaulted her. “Did you two have crusader sex in the jungle?”

  “Only one of us is indulging in crusader sex,” he retorted, “and it’s not me.”

  If her face got any hotter, her skin would sizzle right off her bones. Surely it must be written all over her body, Colin’s kisses like bruises on her throat, the imprint of Colin’s hands all over her skin, and, mostly, the guilt she felt, and the shame.

  “Don’t change the subject. This is about you taking advantage of my friend—”

  “Oh, no, Sarah-belle, it’s about a lot more than that.” Sam pushed away from the doorway. He took one step too close. Close enough for her to see his bitter chocolate eyes, and the intensity brewing in them. “It’s about getting entangled with someone you hardly knew, at a time when you were lonely and vulnerable—”

  “Exactly. You know better than to do that to Kate.”

  “—and then dreaming that experience into some great bloody opera-love, dreaming it bigger with each passing year, until the weight of it suffocates you. Blinds you so much you can’t even see what’s right in front of your eyes—”

  “You’re wrong, Sam.”

  “You should have put him up on a shelf. You should have labeled the relationship for what it really was: a great shag overseas. But, no, not you, Sarah, not the minister’s daughter who has only one heart to give, one big heart, who made the terrible mistake of giving that heart to a man who took advantage of you when you wer
e vulnerable and lonely—”

  “Enough.”

  She swung the clipboard as if she could strike the words right out of the air. A pen shot out, clattered against the wall, and slid down the hall. The red haze dimmed her vision, thankfully, because she didn’t want to see Sam’s face and look into those fierce eyes. This Sam unnerved her. She’d encountered him once before, under an acacia tree on the border of Lake Tanganyika, when he’d seized her rain-wet face in his hands and kissed her until she couldn’t think straight.

  She seized the clipboard to her chest, shielding her heart. “I should expect no better,” she said, hating the husk in her voice, “from you.”

  His nostrils flared. “Someday you will forgive me for those rifles.”

  “It’s a hard thing to forgive, when a gunshot patient bleeds out on the table—”

  “I was given two choices: The guns go through, you get your medical equipment, and I survive—or the guns go through, your equipment is sold on the black market, and I’m dead in a ditch. Tell me, which moral choice is the better?”

  She shut her eyes. She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to argue the point. The world she lived in was riddled with ugly moral compromises. You want the bags of flour driven inland? Pay a bribe at the port, bribe the driver, bribe the sentinels at every one-mile-marker checkpoint, and don’t forget the armed rebels greeting you at the end, who’ll take all the food for their own soldiers. A harsh world chipped away at her hopes and expectations. A harsh world bred impossible compromises.

  “And since we’re speaking of moral compromises,” Sam said, leaning in, “why don’t you tell me, Sarah-belle, which is worse: me kissing a married woman, or you banging an engaged man?”

  Hours later, Sarah found Kate crouched behind the clinic with her head between her knees. The face she lifted to Sarah was blotched with misery.

  Sarah absorbed the jolt of guilt like a quick shot of bitter medicine. She hadn’t been very forgiving this afternoon. When she’d turned on her heel and left Sam, she’d made no effort to find Kate. Instead, she’d stepped right back into work, losing herself in the much larger problems of patient after patient after patient. Now she meandered to Kate’s side and leaned against the wall.

  The plaster exuded heat; Sarah felt the burn through her shirt. “You’ve been here all day?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Sarah gestured to the edge of the jungle, not ten feet away. “See any tigers?”

  “Saw a couple of monkeys.” Kate scraped her hands through her tangled hair. “That’s all the wildlife back here. A couple of monkeys and a big blue jackass.”

  Sarah slid down the wall. The rough surface of the plaster caught the fibers of her shirt. She rifled through her skirt pocket, then pulled out a lighter and a thin hand-rolled cigarette, tied at both ends with colorful string. Licking the tip, she put it between her lips and flicked the lighter.

  Kate managed to cock a brow. “Hard day, huh?”

  “Not really.” Sarah blew a stream of sweet-smelling smoke. “Not any harder than most.”

  “You’re smoking a joint.”

  “It’s a bidi. A poor man’s cigarette.” The fragrance of cloves curled around her. “They spice it to mask the taste of cheap tobacco. The patients kept foisting them on me. It’s rude to refuse. Want one?”

  “Will it make me forget the day?”

  “No. But it’ll keep away the flies.”

  Kate reached for it. “That’ll do.”

  They sat in silence, enjoying the perfume of the clove cigarette. Sarah made a smoke ring and watched it wobble and widen as it rose into the canopy. “So,” she said, feeling low and unworthy, but unable to help herself as the mild narcotic hit her system, “Kate Jansen’s got a thing for Samuel Roger Tremayne.”

  “Oh, no, no, no.” Kate covered her face and then just as quickly lifted it from the cradle of her hands. “I’m an idiot. Sam just caught me as I fell.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, eyeing her through a smoky drag, “he caught you with his lips.”

  “Lips? No! We didn’t kiss. Sarah! We didn’t kiss! He just held me. It was a nonevent—really.”

  Relief was a wicked, treacherous thing.

  “Listen, I’m a mess.” Kate grasped her hair in two fistfuls. “I’ve jetted off and abandoned my husband and kids. I’m the most reviled creature in the world. I’m the Bad Mommy.”

  “That’s a little harsh.”

  “I’ve got to go home. I’ve got to make things right.”

  “Kate, I’m sure they’ve adapted.”

  “You don’t understand.” Kate crossed her arms, grasped her shoulders, and squeezed. “Everyone thinks I spend my time at home watching soap operas and whipping up gourmet meals… but I’m usually draining pots of pasta and tossing in bottled sauce, or I’m racing around town looking for poster board and the right kind of cleats, or I’m patching the crumbling walls, or managing a fever while I’m on the phone planning the next school fund-raiser. I’m always on the edge of losing it. I came here thinking I could revitalize my marriage, and all I’ve done is dump all that on Paul.”

  “Finally, you’re crashing.”

  “I’m changing my flight when we get back to the hotel. I want to leave tomorrow morning.”

  “Frankly,” Sarah said, twirling the bidi between her fingers, “I thought you’d have crashed long before now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “After finals, your junior year of college, you rented that beach house on your father’s credit card. Invited half the dorm. Introduced mosh-pit diving at the local bar.” Sarah adjusted her unwinding ball of hair so it lay in a pile on one shoulder. “You partied like an animal for four days. Two of them on a sprained ankle.”

  “I just blew off a little steam. I had finals and GMATs practically the same week.”

  “Then you completely popped your cork senior year. Remember when you climbed that ridge topless, and those two rangers—”

  “Hey, it was a tough semester.”

  “Kate, I don’t know much about your home life, but something tells me that this breakdown was inevitable. And a long time coming.”

  A crease deepened between Kate’s brows. She plucked a thread loose on the hem of her Punjabi suit, now wrinkled and sweat-stained.

  Sarah nudged her with a fist. “For what it’s worth, when you go off the deep end, you’re a hell of a lot of fun.”

  Kate laughed in a way that was half a sob. Then she sank her head on Sarah’s shoulder. The sun dipped in the sky, taking the keen edge off the day’s heat. The tops of the trees danced with a rogue breeze, shifting the dappled light, and the air was charged with the threat of a late-season rain shower.

  Kate asked softly, “How do you do it, Sarah? How can you be so calm, so unruffled… doing this?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes and avoided answering by filling her lungs with smoke. After her conversation with Sam, this was the last thing she wanted to discuss. Right now, she didn’t feel very much like a stouthearted, self-sacrificing, morally incorruptible relief worker.

  She released a long fragrant plume of smoke. “I get paid.”

  “In cigarettes,” Kate muttered, reaching for the flaking remnant. “Nasty ones, too.”

  “Kate, I tell you about this stuff all the time.”

  “No, you don’t. You just ask for money.”

  “For food, for supplies, for bribes. If I actually talked about this,” she said, waving a circle in the air, “I’d spoil everyone’s appetite for Pinot Grigio and bacon-wrapped dates.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Look.” Sarah rubbed her eyes with the butt of her hand. Her lower back ached. Even crouched against the wall, she couldn’t stretch out the pain. “You and I look at the world with very different eyes.”

  Kate jerked with a humorless laugh. “Hey, I don’t think rose-colored glasses could filter out any of this.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Sarah took back the cigarette and rol
led its wet tip between her fingers. “Do you remember when I stayed with you and Paul one year, over Thanksgiving?”

  “Sure. Your parents were overseas doing a missionary stint.”

  “Tess was only a few years old. I think you were pregnant again.” Sarah pushed her skirt between her knees and slipped so she was fully seated on the ground. “You had this incredible centerpiece. You filled a bowl with wheatgrass, and evergreens you’d clipped from the neighborhood, then piled on blue-and-silver ornaments.”

  “To match the chair covers. Saw it in Family Circle.”

  “All weekend I kept looking at the thing.” Sarah took a final deep draw on the cigarette and pressed out the butt as she exhaled the last of the smoke. “I kept thinking: How much time did you spend on it? And where in the name of God do you find wheatgrass? And why were you trying so hard to make your house look like the cover of some magazine?”

  Kate shrugged, bewildered.

  “Do you know what Jo once said to me? She confessed that her job in this world is to set up impossible ideals. To create an image so powerful that even good, honest, striving people—people like you, Kate—will do anything to attain that unreachable expectation.”

  Kate went very still. Her lips parted, and she searched some place well beyond the jungle.

  “That’s what I meant when I said that you and I look at the world differently.” Sarah patted the wall over her head. “This clinic, this place—just imagine how crazy I’d be if I thought all the problems here could actually be solved.”

  In Sarah’s mind rose the memory of that sweet little girl with the crooked braids, lying bloody on a pallet in the clinic.

  “But,” Kate muttered, “that’s different. I just want what’s best, for Paul, for the kids—”

  “What you think is best? Or what Michael’s teacher thinks is best, setting up that ridiculous log-cabin project? Or what those magazines think is best?” She nudged her with a shoulder. “You have to trust your instincts more or you’ll sacrifice your sanity. You’ll be trapped chasing rainbows.”