A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell
Part One
My mother used to say: Everyone has secrets. That’s why you can never really know anyone else. Or trust anyone. It’s why you can never know yourself. Sometimes we even keep secrets from ourselves.
Growing up, I thought that was good advice, although I didn’t completely understand it. Or maybe I did, a little. Kids have secrets. The imaginary friends, the things they’d get in trouble for if a grown-up ever found out.
Later I discovered that Mom was speaking from personal experience. And I wonder if she was not just preparing me but programming me for secrecy and mistrust. Did she sense that I would grow up to have darker and more shameful secrets than anyone else’s? Secrets I mostly manage to keep—even from myself?
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Stephanie's Blog
Urgent!
Hi, moms!
This is going to be different from any post so far. Not more important, since all the things that happen with our kids, their frowns and smiles, their first steps and first words, are the most important things in the world.
Let’s just say this post is . . . more urgent. Way more urgent.
My best friend has disappeared. She’s been gone for two days. Her name is Emily Nelson. As you know, I don’t ever name friends on my blog. But now, for reasons you’ll soon understand, I’m (temporarily) suspending my strict anonymity policy.
My son, Miles, and Emily’s son, Nicky, are best friends. They’re five. They were born in April, so they both started school a few months later and are a little older than the other kids in their class. I’d say more mature. Miles and Nicky are everything you’d want your child to be. Decent, honest, kind little people, qualities that—sorry, guys, if any guys are reading this—are not as common in boys.
The boys found each other in public school. Emily and I met picking them up after school. It’s rare that kids become friends with their moms’ friends’ kids, or that moms become friends with their kids’ friends’ moms. But this time it clicked. Emily and I were lucky. For one thing, we’re not the youngest moms. We had kids in our midthirties, when our mom clocks were ticking away!
Sometimes Miles and Nicky make up plays and act in them. I let the boys film them on my phone, though I’m usually careful about how much time I let the kids spend on the electronic devices that make modern parenting such a challenge. One amazing skit they did was a detective story, “The Adventures of Dick Unique.” Nicky was the detective; Miles, the criminal.
Nicky said, “I’m Dick Unique, the world’s smartest detective.”
Miles said, “I’m Miles Mandible, the world’s most evil criminal.” Miles played it like a villain in a Victorian melodrama, with lots of deep ho ho hos. They chased each other around our yard, pretending to shoot each other (no guns!) with their fingers. It was awesome.
I only wished that Miles’s dad—my late husband, Davis—could have been here to see it!
Sometimes I wonder where Miles gets his theatrical streak. From his dad, I guess. Once I watched Davis give a presentation to potential clients, and I was surprised by how animated and dramatic he was. He could have been one of those goofy-charming, attractive young actors with floppy, shiny hair. With me he was different. More himself, I guess. Quiet, kind, humorous, thoughtful—though he did have some very strong opinions, mostly about furniture. But that seemed natural—after all, he was a successful designer-architect.
Davis was a perfect angel. Except for once. Or twice.
Nicky said his mom helped them come up with the idea for Dick Unique. Emily loves detective stories and thrillers. She reads them on the Metro-North commuter train to Manhattan when she doesn’t have to prepare for a meeting or a presentation.
Before Miles was born, I read books. Every so often now I’ll pick up something by Virginia Woolf and read a few pages to remind myself of who I used to be—of who, I hope, I still am. Somewhere under the playdates and school lunches and early bedtimes is the young woman who lived in New York City and worked at a magazine. A person who had friends, who went out for brunch on weekends. None of those friends had kids; none moved to the suburbs. We’ve lost touch.
Emily’s favorite writer is Patricia Highsmith. I can see why Emily likes her books; they’re page-turners. But they’re too upsetting. The main character is a usually a murderer or stalker or an innocent person trying not to be killed. The one I read was about two guys who meet on a train. They each agree to murder someone as a favor for the other.
I wanted to like the book, but I didn’t finish it. Though when Emily asked, I told her I adored it.
The next time I came over to her house, we watched the DVD of the movie Hitchcock made from the novel. At first I worried, what if Emily wanted to talk about how the movie differed from the book? But the movie drew me in. One scene, on an out-of-control carousel, was almost too scary to watch.
Emily and I were sitting at opposite ends of the massive couch in her living room, our legs stretched out, a bottle of good white wine on the coffee table. When she saw me watching the merry-go-round scene through my splayed fingers, she smiled and gave me a thumbs-up sign. She liked it that I was frightened.
I couldn’t help thinking: What if Miles was on that merry-go-round?
After the movie ended, I asked Emily, “Do you think real people would ever do things like that?”
Emily laughed. “Sweet Stephanie. You’d be amazed by what people will do. Things they’d never admit to anyone—not even to themselves.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t as sweet as she thought. I’d done some bad things too. But I was too startled to speak. She’d sounded so much like my mother.
Moms know how hard it is to get a good night’s sleep without having scary stories rattling around in our heads. I always promise Emily I’ll read more Highsmith books. But now I wish I hadn’t read that one. One murderer’s victim was the other guy’s wife.
And when your best friend disappears, that story is not what you want to dwell on. Not that I think that Emily’s husband, Sean, would harm her. Obviously, they’ve had problems. What marriage hasn’t? And Sean’s not my favorite person. But (I think) he’s basically a decent guy.
Miles and Nicky are in the same kindergarten in the excellent public school I’ve blogged about many times. Not the school in our town, which has funding issues due to the (aging) local population voting down the school budget, but the better school in the next town over, not far from the New York–Connecticut border.
Because of zoning regulations, our kids can’t ride the school bus. Emily and I drive our boys in the morning. I pick up Miles every day. Emily works half day on Fridays so she can get Nicky at school, and often she and I and the boys do fun things—get burgers or play miniature golf—on Friday afternoons. Her house is only a ten-minute drive from mine. We’re practically neighbors.
I love hanging out at Emily’s, stretched out on her couch, talking and drinking wine, one of us getting up every so often to check on the boys. I love the way her hands move as she talks, the way the light winks off her beautiful diamond and sapphire ring. We talk a lot about motherhood. We never run out of things to say. It’s so thrilling to have a real friend that I sometimes forget how lonely I was before we met.
During the rest of the week, Emily’s part-time nanny, Alison, picks Nicky up after school. Emily’s husband, Sean, works late on Wall Street. Emily and Nicky are lucky if Sean ever gets home in time for dinner. On those rare days when Alison calls in sick, Emily texts me, and I fill in. The boys come back to my house until Emily can get home.
Maybe once a month Emily has to stay late at work. And twice, maybe three times, she’s had to be out of town overnight.