Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Read online

  “Kate… What did you just do?”

  She leaned away from the fence long enough to unzip the jumpsuit all the way to her crotch. Her shirt rode up to show the wink of a navel. “I jumped from an airplane—with a little help—from eight thousand feet.”

  He shook his head reflexively. She noticed the barber-short cut of his hair. He’d recently had it trimmed. When they were young, he never used to cut it until the shag brushed his collar.

  His hand slipped on the hood of the car. He lost his footing and fell back, his hip thumping on the hood. “Why,” he said, his voice hoarse between breaths, “why the hell did you do that?”

  “Because of Rachel.”

  “Rachel,” he parroted. A line of concentration deepened between his brows. “Rachel’s dead.”

  “It was her last request. She asked me to go skydiving.” She lifted her face to the sun. “So I went skydiving.”

  “I can’t get you to back up your freakin’ hard drive, but one word from Rachel…” His voice sounded strange, strangled. He pushed away from the car, clasped his hands on his head, and swiveled on one foot. He paced a dozen steps, then crouched over like a baseball catcher, searching for answers in the dirt. She could almost hear him thinking, thinking, working his way back down the levels, searching for the algorithmic root of the problem.

  Suddenly he shouted, “Have you lost your DAMN MIND?”

  Her euphoria dipped, like a sudden plunge through an air pocket. Of course, he was shocked. Of course, he was confused. She’d made very sure these past days not to give him a clue about what she was doing. But in her fantasies, she’d dreamed of a different reaction. She’d imagined something like the conclusion of Paul’s last multilevel adventure game—where the warrior woman throws herself into the arms of the most worthy of her heroic sidekicks amid an exploding shower of stars.

  This wasn’t working. She needed to get closer to him before his anger ruined a golden opportunity. She pushed away from the fence, searching down its length for the gate. “Paul, don’t be angry.”

  “Don’t be angry?” He lifted his head long enough to glance at the sky, where another Cessna circled the drop zone. “It’s not like you used my computer screwdriver to open the molasses! I just saw my wife and the mother of my three children jump out of an airplane.”

  “I took four hours of training today.” She squinted down the long length of fence. Was that a gate all the way down there? “I had a professional diver on either side of me, both guiding me down. I had two chutes. The main one and a reserve. If one hadn’t worked, the other would have—”

  “Is this supposed to reassure me?”

  “I know how to hover. I know how to check my altitude. I know when to pull the cord. I know how to eject the first chute and pull the reserve if something goes wrong. I spent an hour learning how to jump out of the plane. You know, it doesn’t matter; I could have been killed on the drive to this airport. I could collapse from a brain aneurysm tomorrow. We can die anytime, just like Rachel—”

  “You did this before,” Paul interrupted, shooting up to his full, lanky height. “You did this on Tuesday. Before you came to my office.”

  She scraped her fingers across the fence, the memory of their sex-on-the-desk putting a smile on her face.

  Paul swore. Fiercely.

  I need to get close to him. She swiveled on her heel and strode for the gate. Out of the shadow of the oak, the heat of the sun hit her shoulders. She peered up at the blue sky. She’d been up there. Only moments ago. Free-falling, the wind beating on her face. She felt it still, but the feeling was melting into memory. How she’d balanced so well on the updraft of air. What would it have been like if she’d changed positions, or straightened up? Maybe she could control the fall if she wanted to. She could have flown across the sky. With a few more hours of training, she could do it herself, count down to the deployment, and maneuver the handles to drop right into the center of the zone.

  What would it be like to live like that always? To be present in the moment. To be fully and unsparingly alive.

  Paul fell into pace with her, striding fiercely on the other side of the fence. “You didn’t tell the kids?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s good to know you haven’t totally lost your mind.”

  Paul had worn body spray; the scent wafted between them, warmed by his body. She began to tingle in all the right places: She wanted to make love with him right now, in the backseat of that tiny car, even if he was angry. She wanted to shake him out of his senses, shake some sense back into him. Today he looked so good in his starched white shirt and officious blue tie—dressed up like Mr. Corporation—and, oh, how she wanted to strip him out of it. Beneath the uniform beat the heart of a laid-back surfer boy with an aptitude for math, a careless sense of time, and a wicked sense of fun. He’d been following the straight and narrow path, charmingly so, since the day Tess was born. But in college they’d had a habit of meeting in the laundry room at three in the morning: she without underwear, and he armed with olive oil and a handful of quarters.

  Oh, how she wanted that man back.

  Paul, striding furiously to keep pace with her, yanked at his tie. “Listen, if this is some kind of midlife-crisis thing, I’m all for dumping the Bug and buying a sporty red convertible—”

  “It’s not a midlife crisis! I just decided to do something fun, something different, like we used to.”

  “Go roller-skating, then. Go to the opera. Take up kickboxing. But for this, you should have asked me.”

  “So you could set up a flowchart and talk me out of it?”

  “Marriage. Team. United front.”

  “I already knew what you’d say.” She rattled the reasons on her fingers. “I can’t do this. I have three kids. You’ll kill me. I can’t fit it into my damn schedule. It’s too dangerous—”

  “Kate, it’s one thing buying an ugly pink paisley couch without consulting me—”

  “A couch you came to love, I might add—”

  “—because a couch isn’t going to splatter your intestines all over the tarmac.”

  “When was I supposed to bring this up, anyway? While you’re racing to catch the train and I’m wrestling the kids into their coats for school? It wasn’t exactly on the list of ‘information to be exchanged’ while you’re helping Mike with his log project and I’m fighting with Tess over algebra homework.”

  “Lame, Kate. Lame.”

  He was right, of course. She had intentionally hidden this from him, fearing he’d react this way. But she’d been struggling to find a way to explain how she was feeling so that it would make sense to someone who hadn’t hurled himself out of an airplane.

  She strode with more force, digging tracks in the rubble, and tried arguing from a different direction. “Do you remember when you went away with your buddies last month? For your annual golf weekend?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You had to buy airline tickets, make reservations at the hotel, set up tee times, and pack your bags—”

  “Is there a point to this?”

  She bit down on an angry retort as she sidekicked a chunk of rubble out of her path. “When I spent a single night in the city, after Rachel’s funeral, I had to do the same. I made arrangements to stay with Jo, called for dinner reservations, packed my bags. But I had a few more things to do as well.” The blur of it all, in the midst of shock. “I had to arrange two sleepovers. I called six moms so I could find three of them willing to shuttle each of our kids to soccer, piano, Tae Kwon Do, and then back home again, so that no one would be inconvenienced that first afternoon. Then I arranged for that high-school girl to come in to serve the kids’ dinner. A dinner I pre-cooked, with elaborate reheating instructions, so you all wouldn’t starve. I stocked the fridge with food and did three loads of laundry so nobody would be wearing dirty underwear—”

  “I’m waiting,” he interrupted, “for the part about skydiving.”

  “The point,” sh
e said, wishing the gate closer, “is that, with skydiving, I didn’t have to make a hundred thousand arrangements. I just went out and did it. Think about it, Paul. When you want to do something, you just do it. When I want to do something—even something simple—it’s an effort that inconveniences a dozen people and involves a spiderweb of fragile scheduling arrangements. Sometimes I just feel so trapped.”

  Kate stopped in her tracks and gave him a long, steady look. Paul tended to lose himself in deep thought, and rise up abruptly, and with great puzzlement, into the world. As she scanned his oh-so-familiar face, with its craggy cheekbones and sharp jaw, she knew he wasn’t entirely with her, here, in the present—she knew he wasn’t getting it.

  But he always did have the most amazing blue eyes. As a smitten young woman, she’d spent hours reeling in their open skies.

  “Tell me,” Paul said, with absolute incredulity, “that you’re just kidding.”

  She stumbled, as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus. The ground tilted beneath her feet. She seized a handful of links, seeking balance, as the horizon shifted. The last of her euphoria dissipated like smoke.

  Paul flexed his strong fingers, ticking off his points, one by one. “We’ve got the perfect life. We’ve got a four-bedroom house. We’ve got three great kids. We have a healthy bank account. None of us are dying of cancer—”

  “I know, I know,” she interrupted, pushing off the fence and striding once more toward the gate, “I know we’re comfortable. I know we’ve got insurance policies, a retirement plan, and sex like clockwork on Tuesdays and Saturdays—”

  “You get to stay home with our kids,” he continued, swiveling on one foot, walking backward so he could glare at her. “We have two vacations a year—”

  “Yes, yes.” She sighed. “And do I love them, I really do, though we spend them in the same town, the same hotel, in the same room, where I make lunch every single day, and we go to the same take-out restaurants every night.”

  “The kids love it!”

  “Chicken-of-the-Sea on Monday. The Clam Shell on Tuesday. The Hammerhead on Wednesday—though Tess will occasionally change from her usual dish of fried cod to butterfly shrimp—”

  “You need to talk to Sarah,” he said angrily, reeling away, “and get some perspective on life.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of Sarah and her stories of parasites and female circumcision. “Paul, I’m not complaining—I know we have a good life. A pretty-near-perfect life.” She raked a hand through her tangled hair, frustration rising, because she knew it didn’t make sense to feel as she did, amid such plenty. But wasn’t it true that material things didn’t always bring happiness? Wasn’t it true that she and Paul had felt much closer, much more in love with each other, when they were living on ramen noodles and sleeping in youth hostels?

  “Listen,” she said, “I went skydiving today, and not just for Rachel. Tuesday was for Rachel. Today was for us.”

  For the way they used to be, before marriage, motherhood, and mortgages fixed them in their roles. Before responsibilities filled up their days and drove out all spontaneity. For the way she used to feel when Paul glanced at her from across a crowded room; or, at a dinner party, when, under a table, he took her hand in his.

  “For the love of God.” He jerked the first button of his shirt free. “Can’t you just leave the massage oil on the bedside table?”

  “Paul, it’s not that simple.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No!”

  “Listen, Kate. Listen.” He dropped back to walk at her pace, his chest rising on a deep breath. He ran his fingers along the links, brushing her fingertips where they met in the gaps. “I know Rachel’s death rocked you.”

  “Of course it did—”

  “Last week I found the peanut butter in the refrigerator. And yesterday you put Michael’s underwear in my drawer.”

  Did you notice me chewing my nails to nubs? Or tossing in bed until two a.m.?

  “But, from this moment on, let’s behave like rational adults,” he continued. “No more jumping out of airplanes. Promise me that.”

  “But I love it.” She braced herself. He wasn’t going to like this. “And the free-fall course is two phases. I just started phase I.”

  “Phase I?”

  “If I want to get my USPA A License, I’ve got to go through two phases, of twenty levels each.”

  “Your license?”

  He sounded so incredulous, so dismissive, that prickles of anger worked up her spine. “You know, fifteen years ago, you would have applauded me for jumping out of an airplane.”

  “Fifteen years ago, we didn’t have three kids and a mortgage.”

  “Fifteen years ago,” she repeated, as she finally reached the gate, a six-foot cutout in the high fence, “you would have jumped with me.”

  “Fifteen years ago, we thought we had nothing to lose. We were children. We thought we were immortal—”

  She shook the gate, glaring at the chain twisted around the posts, and the heavy lock binding it closed.

  “—but we’re not kids anymore, Kate, and here you are planning to risk your life on a regular basis—and risk the happiness of your three kids as well. And for what?” Paul slapped his fingers over hers, through the links, squeezing them to stop her from shaking the fence. “For what, Kate? For a really good lay?”

  She ripped her fingers out from under his. “How about for a really good marriage?”

  Paul went utterly still.

  Damn.

  She shoved herself away from the fence, away from him, away from the echo of her words. This wasn’t going as planned. She’d wanted to make post-skydiving love with him—a wild, swift joining—and then hit him with the next tiny bit of important information while he was still bleary and post-coital. Then, at least, he’d have been moderately receptive. No, no, no! She didn’t want to wade into the thickness of these issues, not now, maybe not ever. Even in the best of circumstances, it would have been a struggle to explain to him what had happened to her since her first jump, on Tuesday.

  Rachel had said in her letter that skydiving would clear Kate’s mind, focus her energies, and bring her in touch with what was really important in life. Well, in truth, Kate barely understood what she was feeling. She just knew she was in the grip of emotions so fierce that they flooded common sense and they had to be obeyed. She had to follow her instincts, wherever they took her—to go back was impossible. How could she explain to Paul something so gnarled with complications, so viscerally emotional, so intensely important? The only thing she knew for sure was that, in the crazy, overscheduled madness of her life, she was losing someone.

  And it wasn’t Rachel.

  It was Paul.

  She paced in a tight, uneven circle. “Paul, when was the last time you took me on a date?”

  His voice, resonant and angry: “You’re changing the subject.”

  “It is the subject. It’s about our marriage. Think about it.”

  “I don’t have to. Just two weeks ago, we went to that Portuguese place in the city—”

  “—with your clients.”

  He glared at her, a furrow deepening between his eyebrows. “We went for sushi. On our wedding anniversary.”

  “Seven months ago. And I made those plans. Called for reservations two months ahead of time. Hired the babysitter. Took a bus into the city—”

  “Is there a point to this?”

  “Yes.” She rubbed her forehead, where a dull ache threatened. “I know our life is comfortable. Wonderfully so.” That’s why it had taken a leap out of an airplane to get her to notice that something wasn’t quite right. “Our routine is so comfortable, Paul, that I can see its bullet-straight path right to the end. It’s the two of us in our old age, eating dinner on Saturday nights at the local Applebee’s in absolute silence—”

  Paul interrupted. “Who the hell is that?”

  Kate swiveled on her heel. Bubba jogged their way. He’d slipped
out of his jumpsuit. He looked lean in a tight T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “Hey, Kate,” he yelled, “the video’s done, and we’re all waiting for you back at the hangar.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Bring your friend, too. We’ve got some kicking footage.”

  “Just give me a minute.”

  Bubba eyed them both, backed up, then turned to jog back to the hangar.

  “Is it Sven, then?”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Universe there—he’s the one rattling your cage.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Paul.”

  “Then it’s about Lola Lipstick, isn’t it? You give me the hairy eyeball every time you see one of the prototypes—”

  “Forget it.”

  She turned away and headed after Bubba. This had been a bad, bad, bad idea. Paul wasn’t going to get it now, and he wasn’t going to get it later, when she told him her plans.

  Fifteen years. Wears away a marriage like water over rock.

  “Kate. Kate!”

  “I have to go.” She stopped anyway, pulled by the intensity of his voice. “Bubba is expecting me.”

  “Kate, listen.” Paul clutched the links, shaking them. “All right. All right, you win.” He shifted uneasily. “Can’t do it this weekend, but next Saturday, we’ll go out. A date. Just you and me. I’ll get reservations. The Highwood Manor—”

  “I’ll be busy next Saturday.” She gave up all hope of easing him into the truth. “It’s all arranged. I got my shots today.”

  “Shots? Shots?”

  “I’ve already called your mother. She’s flying in to watch the kids. I’ve arranged everything around your schedule. I’ll have the pantry full and the clothes washed and the long-term projects finished and the Halloween costumes done, too, just in case I stay over a little—”

  “Stay over?”

  “Paul, when I went to Rachel’s funeral I realized something. It was the first time in years that I went away, alone, with my friends. How pitiful is that? I only see my friends when one of them is dead.”

  “You’re leaving us.”

  “Don’t complicate this, Paul. I’m not your father. I’m not leaving you, I’m just going on vacation. Sarah needs me, so I’m going to make up for lost time. You don’t even have to worry about money. It’s in the budget—I’ve arranged to work Christmas hours at the mall, wrapping presents, to help pay for it—”