Jennifer Close - The Hopefuls

But it bothered me. I knew Matt was upset, but he’d always been the kind of person to brush off disappointment, knowing somehow that something better would come along. The way he was acting now was different from anything I’d ever seen before and it unsettled me. I didn’t say any of this to Colleen, of course. Instead I just cooed over the baby, smiled, and said, “He so wishes he could be here.”

—

Later that week, Matt and I brought dinner to the Dillons. Matt wasn’t in a good mood, exactly, but for the most part he’d stopped pouting. He was quiet, but when I told him we were taking dinner over there, he just nodded in agreement. He did say, “That’s so midwestern of you,” but it didn’t sound particularly mean, so I just said, “I know.”

I was expecting the Dillons’ place to look like a disaster area — bottles and diapers everywhere, but when we arrived it was neat and tidy and Viv was sleeping. They even had a fire going. “Everything looks amazing,” I said as I hugged Ash. “You two are superheroes.”

“Oh, Celeste came today,” Ash said. “She’s going to come a few times a week until we get a hold on things.”

Celeste was the cleaning lady we both used. We shared so many things with them — vacations, secrets, dinners — that it only seemed right that we shared her too. It was the Dillons who’d found her first and raved about how great she was.

I’d wanted a cleaning lady for a long time, but Matt had resisted, saying it was just the two of us and we could handle our own mess. Babs was always suggesting that Rosie come to our house, saying they were out of town often enough that she didn’t have enough to do there.

I tried to decline this offer, but Babs waved me off. “She used to the do the same for the other boys,” she said. “But now they all have their own cleaning ladies, naturally.” I was uncomfortable with this arrangement for a lot of reasons — was I the only one to see how strange it was to have Rosie “lent” to us, like she belonged to Babs? (The answer to that was yes, because when I brought it up, Matt looked at me like I was crazy. “No one,” he said slowly, “thinks anyone owns anyone else.”)

It didn’t make sense to me that Matt was against hiring a cleaning lady, but completely okay having Rosie do our cleaning. We argued about this, and I felt like I was never going to win. But after the Dillons hired Celeste and kept insisting we should do the same, Matt agreed. “Sounds perfect,” he said. “We’ve been looking for someone for a while.”

I almost choked on my soup, but didn’t say anything. If Matt’s Single-White-Female attitude toward Jimmy was going to get us a cleaning lady, I was happy to keep my mouth shut.

—

Right after we got to the Dillons’ that night, I put the lasagna in the oven and the salad on the table. Ash had insisted that we could bring dinner only if we stayed as well, and when I tried to say that seemed to defeat the purpose of being helpful, she said, “We want to spend time with you two. That’s the purpose. You have to stay.”

Viv woke up shortly after I put the lasagna in, and Ash took her over to the couch to feed her. I sat next to her, but Matt and Jimmy stood having a drink in the other room. (Mostly I think, because Matt looked uncomfortable as soon as Ash started unbuttoning her shirt.)

I’d heard Matt tell Jimmy about the senate seat, and heard Jimmy say, “Oh man, that sucks,” and then move on to another topic. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t want to dwell on it for Matt’s sake or if he just didn’t know how upset Matt really was. Ash and I chatted on the couch about breast-feeding and how sore her nipples were, a conversation that I’m sure Matt was happy to miss. By the time the lasagna was ready, Viv was fed, burped, changed, and already sleeping again. We all stood looking at her for a moment before sitting down. “I mean, all she does is sleep and eat,” Jimmy said. “She has it pretty good.”

I cut the lasagna and scooped it onto the plates, concentrating so hard on keeping the cheese from dripping onto the table that I missed part of the conversation and only tuned in when I heard Matt say, “Really? Congratulations!”

“Congratulations for what?” I asked.

“Jimmy got a job at Facebook,” Ash said.

“I didn’t want to curse it,” Jimmy said. “So I didn’t tell anyone I was interviewing. I just got the offer today.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s great.” I held up my glass and we all clinked. I couldn’t bear to look over at Matt as we did this, but I snuck a peek at him as Jimmy started talking. Matt looked somber while Jimmy described his position as policy communications manager. “They have an office in Houston, too,” he said. “So eventually we can make that move.”

We didn’t make any plans before consulting the Dillons and vice versa — there was no party we RSVP’d for, no new restaurant we tried, no vacation we booked without discussing it with them first. We were a team, the four of us. Or so I’d thought. But that night, as Jimmy spoke, I felt something like distrust. It was so similar to what had happened the last time he got a new job that I had a sense of déjà vu as he spoke.

I couldn’t tell you what we talked about for the rest of the dinner — we weren’t there all that long. Viv woke up again and I insisted on cleaning up, loading the dishes into the dishwasher as quickly as I could. The timing of this couldn’t have been worse, Jimmy getting a great new job while Matt was still dealing with his disappointment. And I couldn’t stop thinking how strange it was that Matt told Jimmy everything but that it didn’t work the other way around.

—

When we got home, Matt went to the kitchen for a beer. I wanted to ask him if he felt the same way I did, like the Dillons were keeping things from us, but even in my head it sounded paranoid. Maybe it was just that I’d thought our friendship was more than it was. Ash once got drunk and told me that she and Jimmy liked to role-play in the bedroom, that she owned a dirty schoolgirl costume for this very reason. And Jimmy always joked about the first hand job Ash had given him, how awful it was, how he thought she’d permanently harmed him but continued to date her anyway. I’d just assumed that friends who would tell you that much about their lives would tell you everything. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d been wrong about them all along.

But I didn’t want to upset Matt any more by talking about it, so I just opened my own beer and the two of us sat on the couch with the TV on, staring straight ahead, but not really watching.

“I wonder if they’ll move soon,” Matt said finally, and I didn’t mean to sound as irritable as I did when I replied, “Who knows what they’ll do?”

—

The next week, Celeste came to our house to clean, and at one point she said, “It’s so exciting about Mr. Jimmy’s new job.”

“It is,” I said.

“It will be exciting for him at the Facebook.”

I smiled at Celeste, wondering when she’d found out about the job. I imagined Ash telling her about the interview weeks earlier, unable to keep it in. And when Celeste said, “It’s going to be very big,” as she ran her dustcloth over our shelves, I just nodded and said, “Very big.”

—

When the Dillons told us that April that they were moving, I cried. Ash did too, and we hugged like we were never going to see each other again. But to be honest, there was a part of me that felt relieved, that thought maybe it would be better for us if we didn’t spend so much time with them. They were just so lucky, so charmed. Everything was working out for them, life was unfolding exactly as it should — and most of the time, it seemed like it was all happening without any effort on their part. And when they sat and marveled at Viv and Jimmy talked about his new job, Matt and I would watch them, more aware than ever of what we didn’t have. Sometimes when we were around them, I’d feel a sharp sense of betrayal, like they’d left us behind.