Джули Салливан - Friends and Strangers

“You’ve always wanted to stay there,” he said. “You deserve it.”

On Saturday night, after Andrew and Gil were asleep, Elisabeth went down to the lobby, to Bemelmans, and ordered a gin and tonic. She sat at the bar, watched as the dark room filled with people, impeccably dressed. In the town where she now lived, there was nowhere a person could go dressed like that. A jazz trio roared. The young man at the piano was gorgeous, not a line on his face. Nobody said a word to her. Elisabeth felt like a ghost.

At Andrew’s insistence, he and Gil went out in the morning while she slept in. Then the three of them ate room service and walked through Central Park, and then they were heading home, to wait.

The following week was spring break. No Sam to talk to. She was in London, with Clive. Andrew took the week off so Elisabeth could spend it on the couch, watching movies, free of any stress or responsibility. She had too much time to think. She wondered if the embryos had left her body yet, unprimed as it was to receive them. Or if they were still floating around inside her, searching in vain for a place to attach themselves.

She went to her Friday session with Violet, nervous that somehow Violet would intuit that she was holding back. But Elisabeth spent the hour talking nonsense—about her neighbors and her book deadline and a dream she’d had about an old boyfriend from high school—and Violet couldn’t tell the difference.

She was supposed to take progesterone suppositories to increase her chances for success. Each morning, she removed one from the bottle and flushed it down the toilet.

Nomi texted her most days, as usual, about something trivial—an old classmate of theirs had lost eighty-five pounds; Nomi’s kids were getting scooters and she and Brian were fighting over the necessity of helmets for toddlers. Elisabeth wanted to tell her, but she would have to start from the beginning. She wasn’t sure she could say it out loud. Then one more person would know her secret. She wished she hadn’t told Sam, that she could die without anyone finding out what she was capable of.

Elisabeth had always prided herself on knowing that she would never cheat on Andrew, as if that was the only way to deceive someone you loved.

She was disgusting. She was her father’s daughter after all.

—

The following Monday was Sam’s first day back.

She hadn’t yet taken off her sneakers when Elisabeth confessed everything.

“I was going to tell him,” she said. “But then he came home from Denver and he was upset about what happened there, and I couldn’t get the words out. The rest—I can’t even explain. It turned into this runaway train.”

“So Andrew still thinks there’s a chance you’re pregnant?” Sam said.

“Yes. I’ll do one last blood test, the pregnancy test, on Friday, and that will be that. A few more days of this deception. Or the rest of my life, depending on how you look at it. I’m a liar, Sam. I’m terrible. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Sam didn’t respond.

“I wish I’d never dragged you into it. You must think I’m the most awful person.”

No reply. Elisabeth realized then that she wanted Sam to absolve her.

Elisabeth looked at her. Sam was crying.

“I think I know how you feel,” she said, finally. “I did something recently that I really regret. I thought I was doing the right thing, but—I’ll tell you, if you want. Then we’ll be even.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Elisabeth said.

“But I understand what you’re going through. This thing I did. Now it’s too late to fix it. I can’t stop replaying it in my head. I think maybe I’m a bad person. I never thought I was, but I am.”

Elisabeth reached over and touched her arm.

“Stop beating yourself up. There’s no such thing as a good person. Or a bad one. There are just situations we get ourselves into that we never would have imagined, and we have to find our way out.”

She wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Sam or herself of this.

They stared at each other.

Sam raised her left hand to wipe tears from her cheek.

That’s when Elisabeth noticed the tiny diamond.

“Is that what I think it is? I thought you told Clive you didn’t want a ring.”

“I did! He said he couldn’t resist.” Sam shrugged. “He’s a romantic.”

That was one word for it.

The whole thing was controlling, a sign that he refused to take her as she was.

“And you’re happy about this?” Elisabeth said.

“I don’t think anything has changed, really.”

“Sam, he proposed.”

“Yes, but he already thought of us as engaged.”

“But what do you think?”

“I love him. We’re together. I guess I don’t think defining it matters as much as all that.”

Elisabeth wondered if she meant it. They were from different generations, maybe they viewed marriage differently. But no. She knew Sam. Sam was traditional; Sam painted her grandmother on a porch while her peers were pinning pubic hair to a corkboard and calling it art.

“So you’ll definitely be going to London then,” Elisabeth said.

“Yes. I’ve made my decision, and we’ll see how it plays out.”

“You’ll see how getting married plays out.”

“I’ve decided to take things less seriously,” Sam said. “Clive pointed out to me this weekend that I tend to think one bad choice—one grade, one job interview, one decision—could derail my whole life. It’s not true.”

“Sometimes it is,” Elisabeth said.

Burned in her brain forever: the year she was twenty-one, right out of college, and Nomi told her the story of a coworker at the foundation where she worked, a girl their age who got blackout drunk at a fundraiser and somehow ended up pooping on a white couch. That girl was never heard from again.

Sam probably wouldn’t appreciate it if she compared marrying Clive to defecating in public, but Elisabeth had to say something.

“Has Clive ever been married before?” she asked.

She tried to sound neutral, detached, as if she had asked if Clive liked tomatoes.

“No,” Sam said. “Why?”

“His age, I guess. And he’s so good with Gil. He seems like the settling-down type.”

“I don’t think he’s the type at all,” Sam said. “It’s just that he wants to settle down with me. He told me once that he didn’t get married sooner because he hadn’t found the right person.”

“Isn’t that sweet,” Elisabeth said.

She knew now for certain that Creepy Clive had lied.

—

Later on, Elisabeth was at the drugstore, pushing Gil in the cart.

He greeted each person they passed with a wave and a shout, as if he was the mayor of the place.

She was debating which shampoo to buy when she heard someone call, “Hi, Gilbert!”

Elisabeth looked up. There was Isabella, wearing tiny shorts, though it was only sixty degrees out. Warmer than it had been in months, but even so.

“You’re so tan. I’m jealous,” Elisabeth said. “How was your spring break?”

“Great. I went to Tulum with my girlfriends from boarding school. One of my friends’ dads has a villa there, right on the water.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

They talked for the next ten minutes about trips to Mexico each of them had taken, about the Mexican restaurant a few doors down from here that was pretty good, but had closed last month, only to be replaced by a Starbucks. The town had raised hell over that, but eventually Starbucks won, and now there was a line out the door at all times.

Elisabeth was ready to move on, but Isabella kept talking.

Gil’s eyelids grew heavy, dipping closed, then snapping open like a paper window shade, until, at last, he fell asleep.