Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763) Page 5

  Right now those blanks in between were big enough to eclipse the sight of a small fawn, running in front of her car.

  No, this trip wouldn’t help anything. As far as she knew, only Jesus was on record curing the blind.

  “Beck, maybe we should reconsider the phone situation.”

  She glanced up. Marco stood by his bedside table, his attention fixed on his phone as he scrolled through email.

  “There’s no reason.”

  “I could call tomorrow, add international service.”

  “It’s an unnecessary expense.” She wiggled a pair of flats between her cosmetic case and her sneakers. “I agreed to this trip only because it won’t cost us anything.”

  He went silent for a moment, the only sound in the room the nudge of his finger on the face of his phone. Since the furlough from his job began, mentioning “expenses” or “costs” or “money” was a fresh new way to bring tension between them.

  “Bring your phone,” he said. “I may do it anyway.”

  “Monique and Judy both have cell phones with international service. Their phone numbers are tacked up on the bulletin board downstairs.”

  “So we can play international phone tag if there’s an emergency?”

  She raised her head to look straight at his classic, proud Roman profile. “If there’s an emergency, Marco, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it from Munich or Paris or Monaco.”

  “It’d be nice to be able to communicate easily.”

  With a spasm of irritation, Becky thought, oh, yes, it would be nice to be able to talk easily to her husband again. But the bed that stretched between them may as well have been a moat without a drawbridge. It had been so long since she and Marco had engaged in an easy conversation that even these lame efforts only made her nerves tighten.

  She could pinpoint the day the troubles began. It wasn’t the day he’d asked her to take in Gina, his twelve-year-old daughter from a failed teenage relationship. During that time they’d had conversations that lasted for days about the logistics of bringing into their growing family a brooding, emotionally wounded girl whose mother had just been jailed on drug-trafficking charges. Marco had confessed his long-simmering guilt about leaving his daughter to be raised with someone who showed increasing signs of instability and bad behavior. He’d frankly admitted his failings and asked her with great feeling and deference to try opening her heart and their home to this troubled fledgling.

  She’d agreed, wholeheartedly.

  The real trouble began a few years later, when Gina was brought home in a police cruiser, stinking of vodka and vomit, after she’d disappeared for three days into the Bowery with her nineteen-year-old slacker of a boyfriend. That night, Becky and Marco had been at one another’s throats, arguing about the appropriate response, the need for discipline, for changes in expectations. She’d accused him of behaving like the guilty, absent dad who indulged his child in the hopes of establishing friendship rather than standards of appropriate conduct. He’d accused her of hardening her heart against his daughter; he accused her of not even trying to understand Gina’s temperament. That accusation pinched, because she did understand Gina’s craving for independence. But for a few twists in their respective fates, Becky could have been Gina.

  Since then, the hurts and misunderstandings and differences in opinion had just accumulated, leaving nicks and scars where no nerve endings grew anymore. Long, deep carapaces of hard tissue streaked their relationship, ridges of separation neither one of them dared to approach, whole swaths of emotional real estate now bereft of feeling.

  “You know what, forget your phone.” Marco tugged on the blankets, flipping them aside so he sat on the sheets. “Just don’t bring it at all.”

  Becky paused mid-zip, glancing across the bed at Marco’s back as he fiddled with his bedside clock to set the alarm.

  “It’s a good idea to take a couple of weeks apart.” The muscles on his shoulders flexed as he clicked through the numbers on the clock. “We both could use a breather.”

  She felt a whole new chill in the room, as if the vent above her had blasted Arctic air. Marco didn’t move. She fixed her attention on the nape of his neck, the short hair that grew there. The doctor had warned her that the cones in her eyes would deteriorate too, stealing the ability to see color. Like the little dark mark like a fleck of fresh cinnamon on his swarthy skin, just where the slope of his shoulder muscle met the curve of his neck.

  “Let’s look at it as an opportunity,” he continued. “It’s a chance to think about our new situation.”

  The chill shivered through her. She’d heard those words before. Thrown at her with the same controlled anger after they’d found out that Gina had taken the car without permission. Becky had been at the end of her rope then, a rope that she felt was tied around her hands, preventing her from addressing the root of Gina’s problems. So he’d taken his daughter to his mother’s and stayed there for a week.

  Imagine. She’d once thought things would get better, after Gina moved away to a dorm at Rutgers.

  “There are going to be a lot of changes going forward, Beck.” He shifted toward her, and with great effort he met her eyes. “This trip will give both of us a chance to think about how we’re going to manage.”

  The word was like a blow to the solar plexus. She zipped the suitcase, pulled it off the bed, and turned away from him to shove it against the wall. She’d always managed just fine by herself. Now she supposed Marco couldn’t wait to get her out of the kitchen, away from the car, and far from the kids. He had to prepare Brian and Brianna for the sightless mom she would soon be. He had to prepare himself for a lifetime with a disabled wife.

  She couldn’t seem to breathe. The last time he abandoned her, he came back out of duty. Now he’d stay with her out of pity.

  Pity.

  Becky walked into the master bath, clicking the door closed behind her.

  The morning couldn’t come quickly enough.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monique’s experience with travel was defined by two trips: Louisiana, where she and Lenny had luxuriated in the balmy breezes of his mother’s riverside veranda; and Trinidad, where after Lenny’s death, she and Kiera had indulged in island time, swimming in warm salt waters. Because of this Monique was used to stepping off stuffy planes into the caress of humid breezes, usually coming from a blinding blue sky. Not, as the automatic doors at Heathrow airport swooshed open, to the cold slap of an English fog.

  She raised her face to the sky. Moisture prickled her cheeks. Lenny had always been a hothouse flower, staying inside in the depths of the New Jersey winter, eschewing air conditioning in the ripeness of summer. He would have taken one suspicious look at this gray English sky and pulled his overcoat against his shuddering body.

  “Cheeky London weather.” Judy paused just long enough to completely block pedestrian traffic. “Great for ducks and sherry and tweed and mystery novels. When I was last here, it rained for a full week.”

  Judy made this comment with a grin—a huge grin that set the skin crinkling at the corners of her clear, gray eyes. Her cheek still sported a groove where the piping of the airplane seat had dug into her face while she slept. The woman could barely contain herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she flexed her fingers over the handle of her luggage.

  Monique led her away from the automatic doors and scanned the area for a taxi stand. “I can put up with a little rain. We’re here for only twenty-four hours anyway. Look—there’s the line for the cabs.”

  “It’s a queue,” Judy corrected. “It’s a queue for the hackneys.”

  “Right.” Monique headed toward the line where travelers waited their turn for a black taxi. With her luggage clicking over the pavement behind her, she slung her daypack onto one shoulder and tugged out the sheaf of papers rolled up in a side pocket. “We need to be in London by noon, and Heathrow is an hour out, so I think we’ll make it. You exchanged that cash while I was tied up in customs,
right?”

  “Right-o. Pounds and pence.”

  “I can’t believe I forgot to get English pounds back home. Euros aren’t going to do us any good in pubs.”

  “Pubs! Fish and chips.” Judy made a strangled little sound. “Crisps. Pints of ale. This is so much better than crew-team trips to south Jersey.”

  “Hey,” Monique said, glancing behind Judy as she took a place in the cab line. “What happened to Becky?”

  “She stopped at the loo while I was changing money. Did you hear that bloke?” Judy swung around and gestured to a man in a suit striding past them while talking into his cell phone. “It’s like the place is crawling with a thousand Hugh Grants.”

  “You didn’t wait?”

  “For Becky to come out of the bog? No.”

  “Judy!”

  “Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

  Monique tamped down her irritation. It appeared that Judy was determined to use every one of the Unique British Expressions on the list she’d printed out before she left the States. “How do you know she isn’t lost?”

  “She told me she’d meet us by the hackney stand.”

  “If she can find it.”

  “Listen, last night she nearly went barmy when I offered to help her to the airplane restroom. So bugger it. She’ll find her way here.”

  Monique sighed. She couldn’t be angry with Judy—or Becky. Becky had been all but mute from the moment she’d climbed into the sleek black limo Monique had ordered for their trip to the airport. Becky had slid into the car and waved good-bye to Marco and the kids. She hadn’t touched the glass of champagne they’d thrust into her hands. The girl looked like she was going to an execution rather than on a two-week vacation with friends, but she just closed up when they tried to get her to talk about it. With a look of abject apology, Becky had wrapped herself in a blanket and turned a shoulder as soon as they’d found their seats on the plane.

  Just then Monique glimpsed Becky, head down, striding through the automatic doors. Becky paused, blinking and scanning the area, and Monique couldn’t help but notice how anxiously she stood, so thin and uncertain in the frame of the open doors. Monique waved her arm over her head in big sweeping movements, hoping to capture her attention.

  Then, with the power of lungs that had been screaming five urchins down to dinner for twenty-five years, Judy shouted, “BECKY!”

  Monique shook the ringing from her ears as Becky turned in their direction. With a quick wave, she strode to join them. Becky moved arrow-straight, her gaze fixed on her destination. So when a young woman in a suit, swinging a briefcase as she spoke on a wireless ear set, crossed Becky’s path, Becky reared back a fraction. Her action, unexpected by the other travelers, threw off the whole tenuous commuter equilibrium, and Becky’s progress for the last ten feet was an awkward series of shuffled steps and cringed shoulders, of muffled apologies and rolled eyes.

  “Freakin’ Londoners,” Becky said as she joined them.

  “Bunch of wankers,” Judy added.

  Becky grunted. “Worse than walking down Fifth Avenue in December.”

  At the sight of the dark blue challenge in Becky’s gaze, Monique let the incident go. Everyone was cranky and off-kilter. Right now the cloudy sky said it was mid-morning, but her body screamed that it was four thirty a.m. and why the hell wasn’t she lying under warm blankets, serenely asleep? Her eyeballs were itchy. She couldn’t even think of resting. The three of them had too much to accomplish before she could consider a nap.

  She moved up in the cab line and bent over the first page of the itinerary to protect the paper from the drizzle. So many details. She’d tried to take care of everything in the two weeks they’d had before their flights—the international driver’s license, the money exchange, the reservations for the Paris-to-Zurich flight as well as nailing down reservations at various international hotels—all while checking the bucket list to make sure everything she needed to do was actually open and available during the short window of time she’d be in each country. There was only so much she could do while working full-time, especially when two weeks ago an abandoned preemie landed in the NICU. Monique had taken an extra shift after she’d been handed the curled-up little boy, whose body nearly fit in her palm.

  And then there was Kiera at home, just as tightly curled-up. Her daughter had only grudgingly given her a dry peck good-bye last night. The girl had been closed-off and moody and uncommunicative, her dark chocolate eyes flashing accusations whenever Monique tried to broach the subject of this trip. The arrival of Grand-mère yesterday—with her bags from a Caribbean grocer—had sent Kiera into theatrical paroxysms of joy and affection. The very affection, Monique figured, that Kiera had so intentionally been holding back from her.

  Monique pulled out her phone. It was the wee hours of the morning on the East Coast so she chose to send a text.

  Arrived safely at Heathrow. Miss you already, baby girl.

  “Look sharp, Monie.” Judy stepped off the curb as they reached the front of the line, and the hackney driver came around to open the trunk. “Time to put your luggage in the boot.”

  Monique rolled her eyes as she slung her rolling luggage into the trunk. “King’s Cross,” she murmured to the cabbie. She slipped into the backseat after the other women then rattled off the address of the hotel.

  “So,” Judy asked, “when we get to the hotel, do you think our room will have a loo?”

  Monique frowned as the cab rumbled into traffic. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, at some of the finer places I stayed when I was last in London, the loo was down the hall, shared by at least twenty smelly backpackers.”

  “As long as it has a bed,” Becky muttered, sinking down in the wide leather seat. “A nice, soft, comfortable bed.”

  “The hostel I stayed at had a thin mattress and no sheets.” Judy sat in the middle of the wide seat, with her belly pack loose on her thighs. “I shared the room with a twenty-six-year-old busker and a group of flamenco dancers from Salamanca.” Judy’s smile was slow and wicked. “The hookah was smoking all night.”

  “There’s a story,” Monique murmured, “that you never told during the last overnight Girl Scout camp.”

  “Tell me later. I’m so tired right now,” Becky said, as she fished her special amber sunglasses out of the depths of her purse, “that I’d sleep right on the sidewalk.”

  “That’s pavement in London.”

  “No one is sleeping for hours.” Monique rattled the papers on her lap. “We’ve got to do the London Eye today. It’s the first thing on the list.”

  “Look! There’s a lorry.” Judy leaned over Monique, pointing to a truck on the road. “And it’s about to go on a roundabout.”

  Monique frowned at her. “Are you going to be doing this all day?”

  “It’s bleeding likely! We’re on holiday.”

  Becky groaned. And Monique thought, as the black cab headed toward London, that it was true what they said about travel: There was no better way to really get to know your friends.

  *

  The London Eye was a one-hundred-and-thirty-five-meter Ferris wheel sitting on the south bank of the Thames River between Hungerford and Westminster Bridge, opposite the Houses of Parliament. As Monique glimpsed it, as she emerged from the tube at Waterloo, she was amazed that it had originally been built as a temporary structure for the sole purpose of ringing in the twenty-first century. The enormous, spindly, once-doomed wheel now towered over the city buildings. It had become such a favored landmark that it had made the travel section of one of the newspapers she and Lenny had perused during those last weeks of his life.

  “I’d like to go to the top of that someday,” Lenny had said, tapping the paper with the corner of his glasses. “I bet from all the way up there you could see the whole wide world.”

  She craned her neck to take in the sight, his words ringing in her ears. She wished she could will Lenny back to life for just this one moment, to st
and beside her and experience the same rush of excitement and expectation.

  Instead it was Becky who stumbled against her, letting her head fall onto Monique’s shoulder as they walked. “Sleeeeeep.”

  Monique gave her a squeeze. Once they’d all dumped their luggage at their hotel near King’s Cross Station and ordered up strong coffee and a full bangers-and-mash English breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Becky’s mood had improved.

  “We’ll see castles from up there,” Monique promised. “I read that, from the top, you can see all the way to Windsor.”

  “Bloody unlikely.” Judy tipped her head toward Becky and gave Monique a wide-eyed look. “Windsor’s got to be twenty-five miles away.”

  Becky intercepted the look with a sigh and a roll of her eyes.

  “You do know that Buckingham Palace is only a Tube ride from here,” Judy added brightly. “We missed the changing of the guard, but we could go and torment a Beefeater before dinner.”

  “First things first.” Monique reached back and gave her daypack, with its rolled-up itinerary, a little pat. “We’ve got to stick with the plan.”

  The crowds were thin, due to the weather, so they didn’t have to wait long at the ticket counter to purchase three passes. Soon after they were waiting in the line for the Eye itself. Each of the closed-in, climate-controlled “pods” could carry twenty-eight people, and the wheel moved slowly enough that people embarked and disembarked as it was moving. As they neared the front of the line, Monique glimpsed one pod full of wedding revelers with waiters pouring champagne and another empty but for a single rider, sitting alone on the center bench.