Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763) Page 4

  “One summer later,” she continued, throwing all caution to the wind, “I suggested that filling Lenny’s bucket list might be a fabulous way to spend what was probably your last free summer with Kiera. Before Facebook and boys and the whole generational social scene sucked that girl into the inevitable teenage void.”

  “I’d just started at the neonatal ICU.” Monique gesticulated with a two-pound weight. “That’s the summer when I hadn’t accumulated enough hours to justify taking off for two or three weeks of vacation.”

  “You had enough hours last summer.”

  A puff of air expelled violently. “Kiera was working for that producer.”

  “Kiera will be working next year too. And probably every summer through college, and every year through the rest of her life.”

  Monique opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again, but no sound emerged.

  “Monie, hanging around in Munich sounds like a great time for you and Lenny, but think about this. Why would you want a teenager around? What makes you think Lenny wrote that list for Kiera anyway?”

  Monique stopped dead in her tracks. She blinked as if she had something in her eye, and then squeezed her eyes shut altogether. Her reaction told Judy what she’d always suspected. Lenny hadn’t said anything about bringing Kiera along.

  Judy stumbled forward with the dogs and then pulled mightily on the leash, digging the heels of her walking sneakers into the gravel to try to stop their forward motion. She was halfway to the corner of the park before the mutts finally relented, panting and sniffing around the large granite stone that marked the park entrance.

  Monie followed more slowly, scraping the path before her. “Tell me this,” Monie said, a ribbon of annoyance in her voice, “how can I not bring my daughter on the last trip her father and I ever planned?”

  Judy noticed with a twinge of guilt the tightness of Monie’s long, slender neck. “Your daughter doesn’t want to go.”

  “She’s not thinking straight.”

  “She’s behaving just like any other teenage girl facing the prospect of going to college. She’s pulling away from you.”

  Judy saw the white line forming around Monie’s lips, and a further tightening of the cords of her throat.

  “She’s supposed to pull away from you.” Judy stepped onto the side of the path as two joggers approached from beyond Monique, sweaty and gripping iPods and not really paying attention. “It’s what she’s hard-wired to do. That’s why she hit you with UCLA last night. She’s warning you she’s growing up. Going away.”

  “Believe me,” Monie said darkly, “I know she’s going away.”

  “And by hitting her with that bucket list, she knows you’re going away. And not just to Europe. She’s thinking ‘If Mom is doing that bucket list, then Mom is moving on.’”

  “I hate that expression.”

  Monie dropped the weights on the ground and then sank into a crouch, dragging her fingers through her braids. The dogs rumbled over and sniffed at her, nudging their noses against her forearm to try to get a lick upon her face. Judy reeled up the leashes and then finally pulled on the collars until the dogs sat back, heads cocked, tongues lolling, wondering when the crouching Monie was going to uncover her face and give them the vigorous ear-rubs they deserved.

  Monie opened one palm and peeked up at her. “I hate you, you know.”

  A muscle spasmed in Judy’s chest, a tightening pull of regret. “I suppose I could have been more diplomatic.”

  “You’re right.”

  “There’s something about turning fifty that severed the link between my tongue and discretion.”

  “No, I mean you’re right about Kiera.” Monique planted her hands on her knees and pushed herself up to her full height. “Damn it.”

  “Honey, I’m five teenagers ahead of you. Wisdom or insanity, that’s the choice.” Judy glanced at her watch and then toward the street, searching among the strolling moms, skateboarders, and joggers. “Becky’s late. She should have been here by now.”

  Monique dusted off the seat of her yoga pants, and then started shaking her legs to loosen them up after their brisk walk. “She’s probably shampooing another rug.”

  “Are you going to ask her?”

  Weary, pleading brown eyes looked up at her. “I don’t know, Judy.”

  “Personally, I think you should.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I can look after Kiera while you’re gone.”

  “That’s not it. My mother would love to move in for the two weeks.” Monique bent over to retrieve her hand weights, rolling them over in her palms. “Kiera would love the home cooking. My mother would spoil her rotten as usual. The thing is, Kiera is not my only worry.”

  Judy shifted her attention to the dogs who were now doing their best to water every sapling in the area, thinking with irritated resignation that Monique was determined to find an excuse—any excuse—to put off what the woman most feared.

  “It’s the logistics,” Monique said. “They have me in knots.”

  With a grunt Judy backhanded that lame excuse. Before working the NICU Monique had been an emergency room nurse, juggling patients, handling crises, coordinating care, as efficient and quick-on-her-feet as anyone Judy had ever known. “This from you, the woman who raised enough money to fund the entire crew team during school budget cuts? The woman who has juggled a full-time job and an ultra-needy brainiac like Kiera all by herself? The woman who—”

  “I’ve never been to Europe.” Monique appeared to be counting the stitches in the pleather ends of the weights. “The only trips out of the country I’ve ever taken have been to family in Trinidad.”

  Judy rolled her eyes. Judy had traveled through Europe as a twenty-two-year-old with nothing but a rucksack, a train pass, and ignorant bliss.

  “The truth is,” Monique said, “I’ve never had to do anything but check that my passport was up to date, make a reservation, and let family know I was coming. I’ve been online trying to work things out with hotels and airline tickets but it’s so complicated. So many languages.”

  “This is the twenty-first century, babe. When I was living in Strasbourg, I’d be practicing French or nailing down the verbs with a native German, and everyone I spoke to would immediately switch to English.” A memory hit her with a startling vividness of the painted, half-timbered, steep-roofed buildings of the old city, with their “sitting dog” windows and jutting dormers. “It was months before I realized that it wasn’t that they couldn’t bear an American butchering their language—they just wanted to practice English.”

  “Well, there’s also the issue that this wouldn’t be a chartered bus tour.” Monique rolled kinks out of her shoulders. “It’d be hectic and draining in an If-It’s-Tuesday-This-Must-Be-Belgium kind of way. To save time, I considered sleeping on an overnight train.”

  Air hitched in Judy’s throat as she remembered the time she’d taken an overnight train from Paris to Amsterdam. She’d slept on the top bunk, rocked in the berth, and dozed to the sound of rattling wheels. The scent of a clove cigarette had drifted up from the lower bunk. Whenever they passed through little towns, the train had sounded its long, mournful whistle.

  Monique continued, “It’s all so problematic. I’m going to have to figure out how to read complicated train schedules in multiple languages, and decipher taxi fares and learn the tipping customs—”

  “Oh, cry me a freakin’ river.” The dogs lunged, catching sight of another squirrel. Judy righted herself while they tried valiantly to pull her arm out of its socket. She reminded herself that the young girl who had tripped lightly through Europe had subsequently vaulted herself back home to marry Bob and birth five children and plant her feet firmly in suburban American soil.

  That girl was dead.

  Judy shook herself out of her odd reverie. “That’s the whole fun of travel, Monique. Learning new customs. Screwing up along the way. You’ll figure it out.”

  “And then the
re’s Becky and her disability.”

  “Becky’s not blind yet.”

  “Yeah, but Lenny’s got some hairy things on the list for a blind woman. Walking through the catacombs of Paris, for one. She is already night blind.”

  “So she can shop on the Champs-Élysées while you look at old bones.”

  “In a city she’s never been to? Come on, you’ve seen how she’s been behaving. She hardly leaves the house.” Monie straightened from touching her toes to fix Judy with her sharp hazel gaze. “I could use a second hand.”

  “You mean helping you convince Becky to go along with you? If she has any sense, she’ll jump at the opportunity.”

  “I’m asking if you’ll come with us.”

  Judy heard Monique’s words but she wasn’t sure she’d heard them right, and her mind did somersaults as she struggled to understand what was just offered. The dogs took advantage of her inattention and broke from her inertia, dragging her in skittering steps farther down the path. She stumbled after them, yanked just as fiercely into memory.

  She’d had long hair that fell to her waist. She’d had flexible knees and no marriage or mortgage or children. She’d had an internship at the European Parliament, as a translator and coffee-fetcher, briskly walking through the echoing halls, shifting papers from one office to another, filled with a sense of international purpose. And after the internship was done, she had money in her pocket and a crew of Belgian and French buddies who were thinking of tripping off to Marseilles. The world had unfurled before her, one winding cobblestoned street at a time. She’d wandered across the continent, sleeping in hostels and on park benches, working the grape harvests, eating from street vendors, basking in the sunshine.

  It flooded over her, the hot, hungry, swift-footed joy of it.

  “Wow,” Monique said, stretching her arms over her head, “I didn’t think it was possible to shock you into silence. But it’s not a joke, Judy. You can even choose a destination or two, as long as it’s not too far off the path—”

  “This is crazy.” Judy yanked sharply on the leash, dragging herself and her dogs and her senses back to Monique’s side. “I’m not going to be a cliché, Monie.”

  Monique paused in her stretching, cocking her head in confusion.

  “It’s in all the books. Middle-aged guys in crisis buy little red sports cars and take up marathon running. But middle-aged women trot off to Europe to ‘find themselves’ and end up shacking up on the Adriatic coast with Italian lovers.”

  Monique sputtered.

  “Besides, to fund this new level of midlife crisis, I’d have to dig into Audrey’s tuition money.”

  “No, no.” She waved a finger. “You’re not going to spend a single penny. This is all-expenses-paid. Lenny left me enough, and it’s been in high-interest CDs ever since.”

  “You can’t have that much.”

  “Wasn’t I prepared to take both Kiera and Becky? Now Kiera’s out.” Her face was a sudden rictus of pain. “There’s enough money for three. Maybe not for an Italian lover though. That’s all on you.”

  Judy opened her mouth but no words formed. She mustn’t think of the young woman she once was. She’d cast that girl aside when she’d returned to New York, giving up wanderlust to tumble into Bob’s welcoming arms.

  No. She must think logically.

  She thought about the mums she was going to plant in the side garden. She thought about the shutter on the front of the house that was peeling and needed to be taken down, scraped, and repainted. She thought about her mother’s antique vanity made out of bird’s-eye maple that she wanted to sand down and refinish. She thought about the attic paint job that had been “waiting” for approximately thirteen years, since she and Bob had renovated the attic themselves, as a room for their oldest boy to live in. Back then they’d finished the Sheetrock and laid a rug over the old attic boards, but Robert couldn’t wait so he moved in. The next thing they knew he was moving to college.

  A family now scattered, like so many dandelion seeds to the wind.

  “Look, there’s Becky.” Monique glanced over to where the tall, slim mother emerged from around the railroad tracks. The blonde kept sure to the path, her head lowered, her special sunglasses with the amber lenses covering half her face. “I’d like to ask her about the trip today. That is, if you’d join us, Judy.”

  And in that moment, standing in the dappled sunshine under the broad branches of a sycamore tree, Judy felt the swirling energies that had bedeviled her for months coalesce in one singularly fierce idea.

  Europe.

  “Oh, God,” she said, sucking in a breath so fast that the cool autumn air braised the base of her lungs. “Oh, God, Monie, yes.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Becky felt vaguely foolish as she stood in her room with the suitcase open on the bed before her. Through the closed door, she could hear the last sleepy, read-me-another-story mutterings of her children as her motherin-law, who’d be helping Marco out in the two weeks Becky would be gone, put them to bed. The muted roar of a football game slipped up the stairs from the den, where Marco watched TV. Becky fingered her passport, six months away from expiration, last used on a driving trip to Quebec City before Brianna was born.

  Monique’s offer for a trip to Europe had been a shock. It was as if it had emerged out of one of those foggy places in Becky’s vision. She’d run full-speed into it, only to come out stunned and seeing stars, wondering what the hell she’d just hit. She’d said yes, of course. Everyone in the neighborhood had been trying to help her, all in their own lovable, awkward ways. She’d become “That Neighbor” now, the one the whole coven whispered about, shared concern for, fussed over, like when Mrs. McCarthy down the street had breast cancer.

  Becky appreciated Monique’s offer. She really did, even now, as she slipped her passport in the purse at her feet and for the fifth time pulled out the clothes and toiletries and shoes she knew she could more artfully puzzle into the carry-on suitcase. But the feeling she couldn’t shake was that Monique’s crazy, heartfelt, unbelievable offer to show her the castles of Europe was a mildly reprehensible distraction from what she should be doing. Like learning the exact number of stairs in her house from one landing to another. Or studying Braille. Or memorizing the milky shade of cappuccino that formed the inner ring of Brianna’s eyes.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Her spine tightened, and she bent over her suitcase, refolding the yoga pants and sports bras with increased intent. The door squealed open, and Marco came in, swinging it closed behind him.

  She didn’t look at him, but she was aware of him anyway. His dark mess of crisp Italian hair. His broad longshoreman’s shoulders.

  He said, “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

  She sensed the surprise in his pause. “Everything is harder to fit than I expected.” She reached for the compact tin of her wax oil crayons and tried to wedge them upright against the side of the suitcase. “I can’t overpack. We have to be mobile.”

  He flicked his watch off his wrist and set it on the bureau. “The car for the airport is coming at five a.m.”

  “I can sleep on the plane.”

  “You’d better. I’ve seen Monique’s ten-page itinerary. You’re not getting much sleep once your feet hit the ground.”

  “I’m almost done.”

  She felt a tingling at the back of her neck, a certainty that came of twelve long, difficult years of marriage. Marco had something on his mind. It would have been better if she had finished packing earlier, if she’d been asleep when he came upstairs—or at least in bed feigning sleep. She could have avoided that awkward moment when Marco would look at her under the brooding ridge of his brow, a question in his dark eyes. Right now, sex was the last thing on her mind.

  Marco seized his T-shirt by the back of his neck, dragged it off his shoulders, and then balled it into his hands. He opened the closet door and tossed it into the laundry. She busied herself rolling a slinky, deep blue rayon dress, her
one choice for evening wear, a dress she’d last worn on her and Marco’s ten-year wedding anniversary.

  “I heard your mother reading to Brian and Brianna,” she said, casting about for anything to fill the tense silence. “She must have been at it for a good hour. She’s likely to coddle and feed them so well that they won’t want me to come home.”

  “That’s Mom’s way of showing you that you don’t have to worry about the kids. All you have to worry about is enjoying the vacation.” He pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans and glanced at the face. “This was incredibly generous of Monique.”

  Becky heard the undercurrent of meaning, the vague discomfort that Monique was gifting Becky something luxurious and much-needed, something he, as a man temporarily out of work, could not provide.

  “She is as big-hearted as always,” Becky said, “bringing both Judy and me along.”

  His gaze flickered to the notebook lying next to the open suitcase. “You’ll get to sketch. That’s good.”

  “Castles, castles, castles.”

  Unwittingly, her gaze slipped to the drawing hanging on the wall near the closet, a framed sketch Marco had playfully drawn of this old house, just after they’d committed to buy it. Upon Marco’s rendering with all its sharp corners and straight lines, she’d made a few fanciful renovations with his wry approval—adding two turrets, topped with flags.

  “I’m glad she talked you into this, Beck.”

  She paused at the use of her nickname, at the low timbre of Marco’s voice. That sound always rippled through her, like a low mournful note of a cello in a darkened room. She hardly ever heard it anymore.

  She spoke in careful, even tones. “I’m glad too.”

  “Last week I thought you were going to back out.”

  “It was a moment of panic.” Nudged by the knowledge that someday she’d be a blind mother in a kitchen full of pots of boiling water and hot grease and sharp knives and small children. “I’m fine now.”

  Then with a sliding drop of her stomach it overwhelmed her all over again, the explanations the doctors had repeated while she struggled to understand. How the photoreceptors of her eyes were slowly deteriorating. How they had been failing for perhaps all her life. How the rods—sensitive to low light—were the first to go, which is why night blindness was her first symptom. She had argued with the specialist. She’d told him that she’d always had perfect vision in the right light, able to read up close and see the whole landscape in the distance. But in his flat, unarguable voice, the doctor informed her that her vision was tunneling, and within that good sphere, there were spots already deteriorating. She wouldn’t necessarily notice it, he’d said, because her brain struggled to fill in the information. But those watery little rings of spaces would eventually grow and merge, and eventually her brain would no longer be able to fill in the blanks.