Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Read online

  “You never gave it up. Do you have any idea what you could make in a year by hiring yourself out as a private nurse?”

  She started. “So—it’s all about money?”

  “Yes.”

  Without hesitation. She stared at him. In the unforgiving light, she noticed his perfectly trimmed hair, the barber-smoothness of his cheek, and the flawless weave of his dark-blue suit. Was he really doing this for the money? Sculpting perfect bodies for the ladies who could afford it? Inserting saline implants? Padding buttocks? She wondered if Colin, while making love to her, had ever envisioned slicing a half-moon just under the rise of her tiny breast and slipping in an implant to give her better proportion.

  She crossed her arms. She should never have come to Los Angeles.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Sarah. You know money always helps. Money allows me to work a couple of weeks a year for The Smile Train.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “Money allows me to make a real difference—”

  “Colin, why did you ask me to come here?”

  “I wanted you to see this.”

  “Why? We said our good-byes in Bangalore. It was over. It didn’t work out. I was going back to my life, and you,” Sarah said, gesturing to the photo on the desk, the one whose face she could now see, “you were going back to yours.”

  She was Asian. Probably Thai or Vietnamese. Exotically thin, wearing something slim and black and elegant. The photo was taken from slightly above, and she wasn’t looking directly in the camera. Her hair fell across her shoulder like a blue-black waterfall. Colin stood behind her, raising a glass of champagne, his eyes crinkling in laughter. The woman was laughing, too, her teeth unbelievably white against red lipstick.

  She had a nice face. Open. She wasn’t afraid to wrinkle her nose as she laughed.

  “I always had a hard time saying good-bye,” he explained, running his hand over the top of the frame, discreetly turning the picture away. “And you’re not an easy woman to forget.”

  She felt easy to forget. Standing there in her comfortable worn cotton, she felt like a little brown wren. That woman would know what clothes were appropriate to wear to a plastic surgeon’s office; that woman would know how to act in a country club.

  He dropped his voice, and it rumbled over her. “You must think I’m an absolute shit.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “The two of you, you’re like the two halves of me. Both of you—better halves. I’m not being fair to either of you. I’d made my choice, without reservation, until you took me by surprise. And suddenly I was in your world again, and I was back there—in Paraguay—all over again. Revisiting decisions I’d made in life, decisions that I was not sure were the best.”

  Sam had been right. The sex between her and Colin had been brief, hot, and memorable. It had been crusader sex. And that was all.

  She shuddered with the realization that she’d wasted so much time… on a fantasy. “I still don’t know why you asked me here.”

  “To see if it’s real, if this is real—if we are real—in my world. Listen.” He paced restlessly. “Money is not always a bad thing. It’s necessary—it’s the oil that makes the gears move in any business.”

  Money again.

  “I mean… if you have money, you can direct it any way you choose.” He ran a hand through his hair, and every strand fell, maddeningly, right back into place. “I can’t do what you do. I can’t spend months, years, off in underdeveloped countries, administering the care that so many people need. But I can provide the means for others to do it by proxy. That’s partly why I’m in this business, Sarah. It’s not just so I can have a Jaguar and a villa in Beverly Hills. It’s so I can use the money to make a real change. I could use someone to help me spend my money.”

  Oh, heaven help her. He was bribing her with a donation. “Colin, you know who I work for. You can make any donation you want—”

  “I’m not offering to finance your work, Sarah, I’m offering something bigger. I’m offering you a chance to be the one who distributes that money, to be the one who helps raise it, and gets it into the hands of the people who really need it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what rich women do around here,” he said, gesturing to the great stretch of Los Angeles outside his window. “They start charitable organizations. Hold fancy luncheons. Raise funds. See to it that the money is spent wisely, that it gets to where it has to be.”

  She gestured to the photo, twisted askew. “Sounds like her job.”

  A muscle flexed in his cheek. He’d gone pale, but she could see the shadow of his beard on his cheek. “I did plan… But if you were to tell me that you could live this kind of life… if you were to tell me that, after everything you’ve seen today, you could still look at me and see Superman…” He smiled sheepishly as he spread his arms and made himself a tall silhouette against the southern-California sky. “If you could do that, Sarah, then things would change.”

  She wasn’t looking at the photo, but she felt nonetheless the hot gaze of the woman within. The elegant laughing woman with the glass of champagne, obviously enjoying herself at a formal function. There’d be a lot of formal functions as the wife of such a successful doctor. Charity balls, hospital fund-raisers, nights at the symphony. Cooking dinner for colleagues and attending the functions of high-profile clients. She could see it, suddenly, as if she were the woman in the slim elegant black dress, sitting at tables eating overcooked chicken and regaling the guests with tales of Africa and India and South America, telling them about Guinea worm and cases of polio still extant and other tropical diseases that should have been wiped off the face of the earth long ago. She’d be trotted out—the oddity, that little brown wren that snared Dr. O’Rourke—the public-health nurse who has been there in the developing world, who has cleaned the oozing sores of the afflicted. She could see them: the powdered and hatted women, the smooth-browed fifty-year-olds, the young tennis-skirted wives of power moguls. She could feel their stares upon her, gazes full of disbelief and shuddering horror. Surely they’d sign plenty of checks to hear her tell them what the world is really like outside their arctic offices and high-ceilinged homes. She’d gather a fortune in international aid. Then she could take that money and send it directly to someone who could really do something about a situation, someone still on the ground.

  Someone competent and strong and wise.

  Someone like Sam.

  She squeezed her own arms. She couldn’t mock this. It was honest work; it was good work. She wasn’t a fool. She knew that, without money, there’d be no insecticide-embedded nets or donations of rice. But her head ached thinking about the tight high-heeled shoes and the dresses she’d have to wear, and the glasses and glasses of liquor. Her jaw started to ache thinking about the talking and the talking and the talking. And her heart started to ache, too, because, though worthy, this kind of work best belonged to elegant young women who could wear black strapless dresses and wrinkle their noses while laughing over a glass of champagne.

  She’d sensed it would come down to this, since the very first moment she’d Googled him in that apartment in New York City. What she’d feared most of all was disillusion and heartbreak, and she wasn’t feeling either of them now.

  She felt gratitude that he still cared for her enough to offer her his life, and himself, in spite of all their differences. She felt regret, solemn and sincere. Regret that they hadn’t remained in contact over the long years, a contact that would have diminished the fantasy she’d built up of the man she’d known briefly—but intensely. She felt grief, too. Grief that they’d both willingly, and for capricious reasons, let go of a passion that could have blossomed into a rare and wonderful thing. And the strongest emotion of all, the one that overtook all the rest—was a profound sense of relief.

  Relief.

  “Sarah?”

  Oh, Colin. Rachel was right. I’d housed my heart in a cage all these years. A lovely, gilded cage, bu
t a cage nonetheless.

  She walked toward him. She reached for his face. She slid her fingers along his jaw, then she curled them behind his neck. His gaze flared as she pressed against him, her batik cotton ridiculously bright against his sober suit. She let her eyes flutter closed, and she breathed deeply.

  Yes, he was wearing cologne or aftershave or whatever men wear, and it was subtle and strangely intoxicating. Inside began the familiar quiver, the growing desire, and she let herself feel it with an almost scientific detachment. She blindly arched her neck for the kiss. He scraped his chin against hers, and it startled her, the slickness of the move and the lack of stubble upon his face. He rubbed his lips against her mouth, then released her long enough to thrust his fingers through her hair, to hold her head fast as he closed his mouth more tightly over hers.

  Colin. The only man she’d thought she would ever love. The memories came thick and fast, unfurling like an old eight-millimeter tape crackling through a projector, like the ones her parents had saved of their early trips abroad. She remembered Colin driving up with Sam in a cloud of dust, and she remembered the six tense hours of surgery. She remembered Colin, sweaty, running his fingers through his disheveled hair, yearning to help, and irritated at how easily his best intentions were thwarted. She remembered Colin leaving in Sam’s car without saying good-bye—and leaving Sarah behind.

  She’d spent the next fourteen years dreaming of him, while he was on another continent, thinking she was his better half.

  It would have been pretty to think that it was the sound of the intercom that finally ended the kiss—that it was the smooth and efficient voice of his secretary alerting him to the arrival of his next patient. Sarah knew Jo would say that would have made a better story. The truth was more powerful. Long before the secretary buzzed Colin, Sarah had pulled away from Colin’s kiss.

  Colin’s kiss didn’t taste like rain.

  With a low growl, he separated from her, leaned over, pressed the intercom, and, switching to his professional voice, told his secretary to get his next patient settled in room three.

  He took a minute before looking up at her. “I can’t say I’m surprised. I didn’t think you’d stay.”

  “I’m honored that you asked. But I think we both know that this is not going to work out.”

  “I’m fourteen years too late.”

  “Maybe.” Maybe not.

  She felt lightheaded and woozy, but not from the kiss. She trailed her fingers along the edge of his desk for balance, to keep herself steady. The door was not so far away.

  He straightened and buttoned his suit coat closed. “Where will you go now?”

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t think that far ahead, not yet. “I suppose I’ll go back to New York. I’d like to spend a couple of days with my friends.”

  She’d like to visit Rachel’s grave, too. Let her know how it all turned out. Maybe ask for a little advice.

  “Sarah.”

  She paused with her fingers on the doorknob. She swallowed, through the thickness of her throat. Colin stood silhouetted against the window, solid but a little smaller, now that he’d mentally shrugged off the cape.

  “I know I’ve come up short for you.”

  “No, you haven’t.” Her fingers tightened on the knob. She wanted to be honest. She wanted to be kind. “You’re finding your own way to change the world. Just because it isn’t the same as mine, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  Trust your instincts.

  “Sarah-belle, I’m glad you came.”

  “I am, too.” She meant it. She’d needed to see this. A girl can’t heal without taking the full dose of bitter medicine. “I got what I wanted, Colin. I finally got a proper good-bye.”

  He gave her a wistful smile. “In that crazy, dangerous world you’re going back to, if you ever find yourself in need of a hero…”

  Oh, no, Colin. I won’t be calling. It’s long past time to put you up on a shelf.

  “… if you need a hero, go look in a mirror.”

  chapter fifteen

  Please, Jo, just don’t go blaming me if you get fired for taking another day off, okay?” Kate said, as Jo steered her rented BMW into the Lincoln Tunnel. “I appreciate you driving me home… but I just don’t have any more room for guilt.”

  “Hell, sugar, no one is going to the office before noon today anyway.” Jo downshifted as the lanes converged. “We all worked like dogs prepping for yesterday’s disaster; no reason for any of us to hurry in and face the blame. Besides,” Jo said, letting go of the gearshift long enough to reach over and squeeze Kate’s hand, “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you face that angry wolf of a husband of yours all alone.”

  Kate’s gaze fell to the tissue she was crushing in her hand. It was dry; she’d used up her tears last night, sobbing into the arm of Jo’s white sofa. Silently, so she wouldn’t disturb Grace. Silently, so she wouldn’t rouse Jo—after the two of them had stayed up past midnight sharing a bottle of wine.

  Jo had come right out with the truth last night, without even the thinnest layer of sugar. Jo told her that the family had run out of peanut butter, and Tess missed the Friday game because of the lost cleats. They were getting calls about overdue videos, and Michael’s robot project was already days late. A pile of papers teetered on the dining-room table, and Kate’s motherin-law refused to deal with it. Anna had been eating Pop-Tarts for breakfast every day because Paul kept forgetting to pick up milk.

  Nightmares roiled Kate’s few restless hours of sleep. Rocking in a canoe littered with empty bottles, lost sneakers, and fluttering permission slips, she searched in vain for the oars. The canoe wobbled dangerously, and she tried to grip all three of her screaming kids as the tip of the canoe turned toward the rapids.

  Jo flicked on the windshield wipers as they emerged on the Jersey side of the Hudson River to a quick, short-lived splatter of rain. “Kate, plug in my iPod. I’m itching for some music.”

  Kate perused the music on Jo’s iPod, then plugged it in and chose some bluesy Nina Simone.

  Kate settled back in the seat and brushed the tissue fuzz off her jeans. She’d deliberately chosen the soccer-mom outfit today—jeans, sneakers, a comfortable sweater. She’d resisted Jo’s entreaties to wear something sexy and slip down to the local salon for a quick blowout, opting instead for a ponytail and a pill-worn sweater borrowed from Jo’s closet. She wanted to look familiar to Paul. Unthreatening. She wanted to show him she was ready to take up right where they’d left off.

  Not that he really missed me.

  Tucking the tissue between her knees, Kate tugged the sleeves of the sweater over her knuckles as Nina wailed through the speakers about a marriage gone wrong.

  “Stop mooning over there,” Jo said, nudging her shoulder. “I told you: The situation isn’t beyond repair. Fifteen years of marriage and three kids isn’t going to go away with one wifely nonsexual transgression.”

  Kate managed a wan smile.

  “Whatever happens,” Jo said, as she took a sip of her coffee and licked the foam off her top lip, “you can always come and crash with me.”

  “We can share expenses. Raise cats.”

  “Oh, no, honey, no cats. I’ve got enough trouble raising Grace, thank you very much.” Jo glanced at her phone. It vibrated on the console between them to the tune of Ray LaMontagne’s “Trouble.” “It’s the office. Gotta take this, Kate.”

  Jo slipped her coffee back into the cup holder, pressed a button, and put on her work voice. Kate picked up her own cup—a hot chocolate, complete with whipped cream—and cradled the comfort in her hands.

  Strangely, while flying down a Jersey highway with its orderly lanes and enormous signs and polite drivers using their directional signals, she couldn’t quite work her mind back to the state she’d been in after she’d made that first jump from an airplane. Why had she thought that dumping all her responsibilities, so suddenly, was such a great idea? Why did she think she could improve her marriage by walking aw
ay from her family for nearly two weeks? Now, with her butt planted firmly in a fancy foreign car, looking out at gas stations and office buildings and neatly trimmed landscaping, the idea was as exotically foreign as a herd of cattle leaping over the guardrail and wandering onto Route 3.

  Unforgivable.

  She rolled her shoulders and flexed her head, trying to work out the kink in her neck from using an armrest as a pillow. For two full days, she’d gone over it and over it and over it, trying to figure out how to make things right. She felt so thinly stretched that, if it weren’t for the windshield of the car, the gusty October wind would cut right through her bones. She knew this much: What was done, was done. Today she must try to look to the future, and change things for the better, from this moment forward.

  She would. She would go back to her family. She would have a long talk with Tess’s coach. She’d barter with Michael’s teacher for time, patience, and a bit of indulgence. She’d keep Anna home from school one day and spend the morning with her so they could romp in Anna’s favorite park. She’d scrub the house from attic to basement, fill the pantry to bursting with food, cook macaroni and cheese and roast a chicken and bake honey-wheat bread from scratch. She’d handle the paperwork, one piece at a time, and make lists of what needed to be done. With time, and the captain back on deck, the Good Ship Jansen would be sailing smooth waters again.

  That would be the easy part.

  Jo disconnected the call with a heavy sigh. “No word yet on the Artemis account.” She pulled out the earpiece and tossed it on the console. “It’s just a delay. I know I wouldn’t hire us. We looked like a bunch of squabbling hens yesterday.”

  Kate shifted, laying her cheek against the back of the buttery leather seat, glad for a distraction from her own toilet-swirl of a life. “Is the account important?”

  “Oooh,” she said, “it’s the biggest catfish in the pond, girl. It’d keep the revenues in the black for another year. It’d be a nice trophy for me, too. But in the grand scheme of things, Kate—you know, poverty, hunger, Grace’s mental health—it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference how many people buy a perfume called Mystery.”