Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

“You don’t know that-”

Rob buried his face in my neck. “She knows we have sex. If we didn’t, she wouldn’t be here.”

“Do you like to imagine your parents having sex?”

Grimacing, Rob rolled away from me. “Okay, that effectively killed the mood.”

I laughed. “Give her ten minutes to fall asleep and I’ll get the fire going again.”

He pillowed his head on his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “How many times a week do you think Charlotte and Sean do it?”

“I don’t know!”

Rob glanced at me. “Sure you do. Girls talk about that kind of thing.”

“Okay, first of all, no we don’t. And second of all, even if we did, I don’t sit around wondering how often my best friend has sex with her husband.”

“Yeah, right,” Rob said. “So you’ve never looked at Sean and wondered what it would be like to sleep with him?”

I came up on an elbow. “Have you?”

He grinned. “Sean’s not my type…”

“Very funny.” My gaze slid toward him. “Charlotte? Really?”

“Well…you know…it’s just a curiosity. Even Gordon Ramsay’s got to think about Big Macs once or twice in passing.”

“So I’m the high-maintenance gourmet meal and Charlotte’s fast food?”

“It was a bad metaphor,” Rob admitted.

Sean O’Keefe was tall, strong, physically fierce-orthogonal to Rob’s slight runner’s frame, his careful surgeon’s hands, his addiction to reading. One of the reasons I’d fallen for Rob was that he seemed to be more impressed with my mind than with my legs. If I’d ever considered what it would be like to roll around with someone like Sean, the impulse must have been quickly squashed: after all these years, and all these conversations with Charlotte, I knew him too well to find him attractive.

But Sean’s intensity also carried over into his parenting-he was crazy about his little girls; he was deeply private and protective of Charlotte. Rob was cerebral, not visceral. What would it feel like to have so much raw passion focused on you at once? I tried to picture Sean in bed. Did he wear pajama pants, like Rob? Or go commando?

“Huh,” Rob said. “I didn’t know you could blush way down to your-”

I yanked the sheets up to my chin. “To answer your question,” I said, “I’m not even sure it’s once a week. Between Willow and Sean’s work schedule, they’re probably not even in the same room at night most of the time.”

It was odd, I realized, that Charlotte and I had not discussed sex. Not because I was her friend but because I was her doctor-part of my medical questioning involved whether or not a patient was having any problems during intercourse. Had I asked her that? Or had I skipped over it because it seemed too personal to ask that of a friend instead of a stranger? Back then, sex was a means to an end: a baby. But what about now? Was Charlotte happy? Did she and Sean lie in bed, comparing themselves to me and Rob?

“Well, go figure. You and I are in the same room at night.” Rob leaned over me. “How about we maximize that potential?”

“Emma-”

“Is lost in her dreams by now.” Rob pulled my pajama top over my head and stared at me. “As a matter of fact, so am I…”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him slowly. “Still thinking about Charlotte?”

“Charlotte who?” Rob murmured, and he kissed me back.

Once a month, Charlotte and I went to a movie and then to a seedy bar called Maxie’s Pad-a place whose name absolutely cracked me up, given the gynecological connotation, although I’m quite sure that was lost on Maxie himself, a grizzled old Maine fisherman who, when we first ordered Chardonnay, had told us it wasn’t on tap. Even when the only films playing were really awful slasher flicks or teen comedies, I’d drag Charlotte out for the night. If I didn’t, there were stretches of time when she’d never have left the house.

The best thing about Maxie’s was his grandson, Moose, a linebacker who’d been kicked out of college in the middle of a cheating scandal. He’d started bartending for his grandpa three years ago, when he was back home evaluating his options, and he’d never left. He was six-six, blond, brawny, and had the mental acuity of a spatula.

“Here you go, ma’am,” Moose said, sliding a pale ale toward Charlotte, who barely even flicked a glance at him.

There was something wrong with Charlotte tonight. She’d tried to back out of our standing date, but I wouldn’t allow it, and for the past few hours she’d been distant and distracted. I attributed it to concern over you-with the pamidronate treatment and the femur breaks and the rodding surgery, she had plenty on her mind-and I was determined to divert her attention. “He winked at you,” I announced as soon as Moose turned away to help another customer.

“Oh, get out,” Charlotte said. “I’m too old to be flirted with.”

“Forty-four is the new twenty-two.”

“Yeah, well, talk to me when you’re my age.”

“Charlotte, I’m only two years younger than you!” I laughed and took a sip of my own beer. “God, we’re pathetic. He’s probably thinking, Those poor middle-aged women; the least I can do is make their day by pretending I find them even remotely sexy.”

Charlotte lifted her mug. “Here’s to not being married to a guy too young to rent a car from Hertz.”

I was the one who’d introduced your mother and your father. I think it’s human nature that those of us who are married cannot rest easy until we find mates for our single friends. Charlotte had never been married-Amelia’s father had been a drug addict who’d tried to clean up his act during Charlotte’s pregnancy, failed miserably, and moved to India with a seventeen-year-old pole dancer. So when I was pulled over for speeding by a really good-looking cop who wasn’t wearing a wedding band, I invited him to dinner so that he could meet Charlotte.

“I don’t do blind dates,” your mother told me.

“Then Google him.”

Ten minutes later she called me, frantic, because Sean O’Keefe was also the name of a recently paroled child molester. Ten months later, she married the other Sean O’Keefe.

I watched Moose stack glasses behind the bar, the light playing over his muscles. “So how goes it with Sean?” I asked. “Have you managed to convince him to do it yet?”

Charlotte startled, nearly knocking over her beer. “To do what?”

“The rodding surgery for Willow. Hello?”

“Right,” Charlotte said. “I forgot I’d told you about that.”

“Charlotte, we talk every day.” I looked at her more carefully. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I just need a good night’s sleep,” she replied, but she was looking down into her beer, running one finger along the rim of the glass until it sang to us. “You know, I was reading something at the hospital, some magazine. There was an article in there about a family who sued the hospital after their son was born with cystic fibrosis.”

I shook my head. “That pass-the-buck mentality drives me crazy. Pin the blame on someone else to make yourself feel better.”

“Maybe someone else really was at fault.”

“It’s the luck of the draw. You know what an obstetrician would say if a couple had a newborn with CF? ‘Oh, they got a bad baby.’ It’s not a judgment call, it’s just a statement of fact.”

“A bad baby,” Charlotte repeated. “Is that what you think happened to me?”

Sometimes, I let myself run on without thinking-like right now, when I remembered too late that Charlotte’s interest in this subject was more than theoretical. I felt heat flood my face. “I wasn’t talking about Willow. She’s-”

“Perfect?” Charlotte challenged.