Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763) Page 7

  “Wow.” Becky shifted in her seat, curving one leg under her in a way only a skinny woman can do. “And here I thought you and Bob had grown up together. You know, like in a big green pod or something.”

  “Bob and I didn’t meet until after I came home from Europe.” The thought of Bob gave her an unexpected twinge. “Woodstock was way before my time,” Judy said. “But I suppose Amsterdam was like my Burning Man.”

  Monique gave her an incredulous once-over. “You mean that nudity-filled, crazy-men-in-chicken-suits music festival in the desert?”

  “I was young.” Judy patted her sleek, chin-length cut, newly trimmed for the vacation. “I had hair down to my knees. My thin, flexible, twenty-one-year-old knees.”

  Monique shook her head. “I can’t picture it. I spent too much time watching you march your boys in military formation while cleaning up the backyard.”

  “Voice like a drill sergeant,” Becky added. “You could slice carrots with it.”

  “Well,” Judy murmured, “that woman you saw whipping her kids into shape spent six months backpacking solo through Europe.”

  Becky paused, a water bottle halfway to her lips. “I thought you got your packing skills from Cub Scout leader training. Or Girl Scout preparedness badges. Or herding five kids on camping trips to the Adirondacks.”

  “When you’re spending three bucks a night at a place like the Flying Pig youth hostel, in a warehouse of bunk beds crawling with backpackers, you learn to keep what few valuables you have right next to your skin.”

  Monique said, “Please tell me you have photos of those years.”

  Judy tapped her temple. “It’s all in here.”

  Back then she’d wanted to freeze time. They’d all discussed it—she and the young Austrians and Italians, French and Germans who’d became instant friends. How could they preserve this phase of life that held no plans, no responsibilities, and yet millions of possibilities? In Amsterdam life just happened. They met a Senegalese man who knew all the best coffee shops in the city and the back door into every techno club. He was like a supernatural wizard who opened the doors to the kingdom. They spent hours lolling in the sun on the grass of Vondelpark, enjoying one another’s company, learning more in one international conversation than in hours of classes in the university at Strasbourg. They listened to music at the Paradisio. They slept together on random roofs. They were a tame wolf pack, roaming territory. After a while they stopped trying to speak each other’s languages, and they all spoke their own. Here’s the strange thing—they all understood each other.

  “And yet all the places you saw,” Monique murmured, “all the cities you visited while you were backpacking, you chose, after twenty-seven years, to come back to Amsterdam.”

  Judy smiled and she felt the young girl within her smile, too, a wistful dreamy little smile that lingered.

  “In Amsterdam,” Judy murmured, “I was happy.”

  *

  “It’s Broodje haring.” Judy held out three sandwiches, bought at Stubbe’s Haring kiosk outside Amsterdam Centraal train station. “It’s a national delicacy. The Dutch version of a hot dog.”

  “I’m so hungry I’d eat a dead horse.” Becky reached for the sandwich, thumbed the bun open, and paused. “Um…what is it?”

  “It’s better than a dead horse.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Live a little, Beck. Take a bite.”

  Judy sank her teeth into the soft roll, closing her eyes as she felt the give of the flesh, the pickled taste, the burst of the onions. Stubbe’s Haring kiosk was geared toward tourists coming or going from the international train station, so buying these sandwiches here was like buying hot pretzels just outside Grand Central Terminal in New York City—they were a bit dry and wildly overpriced. But she and the girls had just arrived and checked into the hotel, and dusk was already falling. They’d have a proper dinner later. This nip of street food would tide them over as they wandered the city before daylight faded.

  The taste burst in her mouth, fresh clean fish and diced onion and pickles.

  Becky choked and held the sandwich away from her, the bite a bulge in her cheek. “Judy—what is this?”

  Monique’s chewing slowed as her brow rippled. She gave her sandwich a good, long sniff.

  “You can’t guess?” Judy asked. “It’s pickled herring.”

  Becky turned toward the railing by the canal. She dislodged the chewed-up wad of sandwich from her cheek and launched it into the water. Becky tossed the rest of the sandwich in the garbage nearby, missing the opening entirely. Then she unscrewed her water bottle and took a long, wincing gulp. “Well,” Becky said, “I’ve now publicly vomited in a river. We can check that off the list.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Monique said, swallowing a tentative second bite. “Vinegary. Kind of squishy. But in a weird-good-sushi kind of way.”

  “We’ll find you something else, Beck.” Judy popped the last of her sandwich in her mouth and hoped they ran into a vendor who sold cones of greasy frites or spicy bitterballen, breaded, deep-fried meatballs. “Come on, ladies, let’s walk.”

  She headed out of the main square. She knew exactly where she was going. She remembered the salt-smell of the air, the worn wobble of the cobblestones, and the clatter of boats bobbing up against the walls of the canal. She remembered the rows and rows of three-window-wide brick buildings. She made her way to a main canal street, Oudezijds Voorburgwal, glanced at the old familiar unpronounceable street signs—Bethlehemsteeg, Monnikenstraat. Passing one side street, she glanced longingly down its shadowed length, knowing that the Flying Pig youth hostel still lay down there. The sky was dimming quickly in this northern latitude, darkening the silver of the canals.

  “Um, Judy,” Becky said. “Where are you taking us?”

  “Old stomping grounds.”

  “Well I’d just like to note that we just passed a store with a sign that said ‘condomerie.’”

  “It won’t be the first.”

  “Also,” Becky added, glancing over her shoulder, “I believe we’re being followed by multiple clones of Gina’s ex-boyfriend.”

  Judy followed Becky’s gaze and noticed the two guys following them, men who’d just stumbled out of a nearby coffee shop. They were laughing and swaggering, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One had a tattoo up the side of his face. The other peered at Monique through swollen, red eyes, cataloging her attributes from her sensible flats to the jean jacket she pulled closed over her dress.

  “Just ignore them, they’re harmless stoners.” Judy pulled Monique closer, giving her a little squeeze. “And you two call yourselves New Yorkers.”

  “I’m no New Yorker,” Monique said. “I’m a suburbanite from New Jersey. I don’t walk red light districts in strange cities at night.”

  “Maybe we ought to plan a trip to Flatbush.”

  “Right,” Becky scoffed, “because Gina doesn’t bring enough ‘harmless stoners’ into my house.”

  “Think about it,” Judy said. “What kept us, back in Jersey, from taking a bus just to wander around some new part of New York City?”

  Monique made a scoffing noise. “Common sense?”

  “Expectations. When we’re home we have those we put on ourselves, and those imposed on us by others. So we avoid adventure altogether. Come on, let’s cut down here.”

  Monique resisted. “That’s a narrow street.”

  Judy grinned. “Winding and mysterious.”

  “I think,” Monie said, “that we should stay by the main canal.”

  Judy blew out a breath. “Honestly, is this how it’s going to be for the next two weeks?”

  “Do you want to get mugged in a foreign country?”

  “Look at that crowd.” Judy gestured to the milling throng. “We’ll be just fine.”

  Monique frowned. “I’m getting danger vibes.”

  “So you’re going to spend this whole vacation sticking to the main canal, the tourist stores, and the well
-worn routes?”

  Monique nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  Judy felt a rumbling irritation, the frustration of the newly reborn girl inside her. “Listen, we’re thousands of miles away from home. Don’t you feel it, Monie? The urge to try something different? To stumble heedless,” she said, waving down the crowded street, “into another culture, another whole world?”

  Becky breathed. “Who are you, and what did you do with our Judy?”

  “The old Judy’s back home, painting the walls of the spare bedroom and dealing with a midlife crisis. But the young Judy is right here, primed for fun. Believe me, you’d rather take this trip with her.”

  Judy plunged them into one of the busier areas. She breathed in the perfume of Amsterdam, the familiar scent of hash that lingered. The neon glowed brighter than she remembered it, the shouts of the crowd more boisterous.

  Becky stumbled on the cobblestones. Judy tried to curl her hand under Becky’s arm, but Becky made a point of swaying out of her range.

  “Cobblestones are a bitch,” Judy said. “You’d think they’d be worn smooth after so many centuries.”

  “Maybe I’m just getting stoned.” Becky took an exaggerated sniff. “All you have to do is breathe in this place.”

  “Oh, look, a sex supermarket.” Monique made a tight smile. “I think I’ll just drop in and pick up some incredibly huge dildos. That ought to be fun getting through customs. And how about—wait.” She slowed down, cocking her head. “Is that a gas mask?”

  Becky squinted at something on the opposite side of the street. “Judy, what does that sign say?”

  “It’s a theater,” Judy said.

  “A gas mask?” Monique repeated. “What the hell would you do with that?”

  “Is that some kind of tropical sex show?” Becky asked. “That neon sign is in the shape of a banana.”

  “Hey, this gas mask place is right next to a shop called Sadomasochisme. How convenient! I bet they sell a lot of those cat-o’-nine-tails.”

  “Wait,” Becky said, “wait—the banana thing. Is that what I think? Is that when a woman puts a banana—”

  “Bingo.” Judy tugged them both through the crowd. “I’m told the middle of the banana gets shot clear across the stage.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  “As our kids would say, epic skills.”

  A man suddenly stepped directly into their path, startling all of them. His unfocused gaze shifted everywhere at once. “Coca? Eh, you want coca?”

  Monique glared at him as she hiked her hands on her hips. “Should I explain to you what a preemie looks like, born to a mother addicted to cocaine?”

  Judy tugged Monie away. Judy’s heart pounded a little, in a good-bad way, excitement skittering with fear. A group of young people stumbled by like zombies, giggling uncontrollably. Judy grinned at the sight of them because, a few decades ago, she’d have been bouncing around right in the middle of them.

  Then Monique came to a jarring stop.

  Judy followed Monique’s gaze. They stared up at one of the famous red-lit windows that gave the area its name. A young woman gyrated behind the glass. She was dressed in a silver G-string and a strap of some sort that stretched across her back and covered just enough of her breasts to keep some mystery. The girl’s eyes were closed as she swiveled her hips to music only she could hear. In the corner of the window lay a little placard.

  Fifty euros.

  Judy felt the same cold jolt she’d felt the first time she’d seen one of these prostitutes, caged in glass. The sight caught her by the throat, filling her with revulsion, disbelief, and an inability to look away.

  She’d talked to Thierry. She’d said it was terrible what those girls did for money. Thierry had argued with her. He said that their work was legal, that these women weren’t coerced. They made enough money to support their families, that at least here they were protected by the law. His explanation unhinged her. It filled her with confusion. Her mind had been cracking open to so many new possibilities. This bit of caustic reality had flummoxed her. So she’d shrugged it away, unwilling to dwell.

  Now Judy stared at this girl gyrating in the window and wondered why she’d ever believed that deceptive crap.

  This girl was Audrey’s age.

  She resisted a violent urge to pull her belly pack from around her waist and hurl it at the glass, crack it to slivers, and set the poor girl free.

  Monique’s voice was flat. “I want to leave now, Judy.”

  Judy swiveled on a heel, the brightness of her mood snuffed and smoking. Mindlessly she led her friends down the street past smart shops and coffee shops, sex shows, loiterers, and buskers playing reggae. Slowly she noticed the creatures in the shadows of the doorways, poking up from the underground entrances, loitering on the stairs, all the lurking silhouettes. The homeless sprawled in nooks and under awnings. She looked at her old stomping grounds not with the eyes of the young girl she’d been, but with her fifty-year-old eyes, and it was like a veil had been torn from her vision. She saw all that she’d once blithely ignored—the danger and the fear, the crime and the addictions, the poverty and the stink of desperation.

  Monique took a deep, sucking breath as they tumbled out into the open air of a canal. “Please tell me there are better parts of Amsterdam than this.”

  “I know a restaurant,” Becky suggested. “I read about it in the guidebook while we were on the train.”

  Monique asked, “Is it far from here?”

  Becky nodded. “We’ll have to hail a cab.”

  Judy leaned over the railing by the bridge while Monique flagged down a taxi. Her knee twanged, her legs felt leaden, her mind raced. The herring sandwich turned acid in her stomach. And suddenly she felt the weight of every single one of her last twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years of a happy marriage, made meaningful with the all-absorbing work of raising five kids. Twenty-seven years of worthy life lessons. In the blind excitement of being back in her old stomping grounds, Judy had forgotten why she’d abandoned that former life altogether.

  Yes, she’d been happy, as that young girl.

  But that girl had been a fool.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Back at home, Becky could be walking up the neighborhood street on a pitch-black Halloween night and know—with one lift of her head—whether she was up by Judy’s house or down by the Holts’. The glow of the Holts’ single yellow bulb followed by the Reeses’ flanked lanterns was a familiar pattern, as was the solar-powered trail of low lights that edged the winding pathway to the McCarthys’. All up and down the street, the lights had a particular sequence, a visual Braille. She was hardly conscious of noticing this. She’d just assumed this was the way everyone made their way through the darkness.

  Her doctor said that the deterioration of her night vision must have occurred over years, in such slow increments as to be almost imperceptible. She’d long ceded night driving to Marco, and that hadn’t seemed unreasonable. Whenever she’d complained of the blinding glare of oncoming headlights and the terrors of badly lit roads, people bobbed their heads and commiserated. See? Everybody else had these problems too.

  Now Becky clambered out of the silver taxi into the Jordaan section of Amsterdam, into a dizzying world of smeared lights disengaged from any sense of structure. She could assume that the dim square glow ahead of her was the entrance to In Het Donker, the Dutch restaurant she’d read about in the guidebook, but until she approached she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a light cast on a wall from a store window across the street. Beyond the cab car headlights loomed, brightened, and then cut away in odd directions. She turned her back on their unpredictable configurations. She took one hesitant step away from the cab and then waited as casually as she could for Monique or Judy to come around and join her on the sidewalk.

  She started as a couple passed right by her, her hand freezing in her purse as she pretended she was searching for a lipstick. The couple had passed close enough for her to smell
a faint aroma of men’s cologne. They were young. She could tell by the laughter and the bouncy way they walked.

  “Dutch hipsters,” Monique said, coming around to her side. “Good call, Becky. I think we’ve taken a significant step in the right direction.”

  With a rustle of movement, Monique headed away. Becky stepped swiftly into her wake. Resisting the urge to touch her friend, Becky watched for any sudden changes in Monique’s walking cadence or height that might indicate stairs or a rising slope or a sudden step downward or any one of the hundreds of things that had been tripping Becky up since she’d stepped off the plane in London. Fire hydrants. Little fences around the plots of sidewalk trees. Uneven pavement. Curled welcome mats in hotel lobbies.

  Inside the restaurant a gentle light bathed them. Her eyes strained to adjust. She could just make out a few shapes in the small anteroom—tables, high café chairs, a milling of merged silhouettes. Monique wandered off to talk to the maître d’, and Judy made a beeline for something. Becky fell into Judy’s wake and soon found herself in an eclectic, language-bending crowd by the bar. Judy ordered three glasses of white wine. She thrust one in Becky’s hands just as Monique returned.

  “Good news,” Monique said, raising her voice to be heard above the crowd. “We made it in time for the next seating. They’ll be letting us all in in a few minutes.”

  “Excellent.” Becky took a sip of the wine and then clutched her stomach, growling since the disaster with the herring sandwiches. “I’m going to pass out if I don’t eat soon.”

  “Here’s the catch. We have to lock everything up.” Monique’s face was bathed in blue light as she checked her cell phone, not for the first time this evening. “I mean everything. Cell phones, watches, anything that might possibly give out light.”

  Becky didn’t actually see the glance that Judy and Monique exchanged. Some things didn’t need to be seen in order to be sensed. She’d been getting the nervous vibe from them all during the cab ride, from the moment just outside the red light district when she’d suggested they eat at this particular—and very peculiar—specialty-themed restaurant.