“Right,” Valerie says for him.
“Okay then,” Nick says as he removes his gloves and shoots them, basketball style, into a wastebasket in the corner. He makes the shot, looking satisfied. “I’ll be back.”
She feels a sharp pain, wishing he weren’t going yet. “When?” she asks, instantly regretting the question.
“Soon,” Nick says. Then he reaches for her hand, squeezing it once, as if to tell her again that everything is going exactly as he hoped, exactly as it should.
13
Tessa
I hate to say ‘I told you so,’” April calls to tell me on Monday morning while I maneuver my way down the crowded cereal aisle at Whole Foods.
“Nice try,” I say, laughing. “You love to say ‘I told you so.’”
“I do not,” April says.
“Oh, yeah? How ‘bout the time you told me that if I let Frank play in a public sandbox, he’d get pinworms?”
April laughs. “Okay. I loved that one—but not because he got pinworms! But because you and Nick mocked me for being paranoid.”
“You are paranoid,” I say. I often tease April about her incessant hand sanitizing and remind her that she does, in fact, have a few white blood cells. “But you were right... So what else were you right about?”
April pauses for a few seconds and then says, “Valerie Anderson. I was right about Valerie Anderson. What a bitch”
“What happened?” I say, bracing myself for the story to come, wondering if April somehow knew that Charlie was having surgery this morning.
“You won’t believe it,” April says, gearing up for her tale. Always colorful with anecdotes, even those involving minutiae of her life, April carefully sets the scene, describing the third-try care package that she and Romy so lovingly put together, how they had carefully selected the most exquisite bottle of wine from Romy’s wine cellar and the perfect bouquet from Winston Flowers.
Careful not to sound vitriolic, I say, “I thought you were going to lay off with that stuff? Give her some time and space?”
“We did. We waited a week or so, just like you suggested . . .And then Romy thought she’d give it one last college try.”
I toss a box of raisin bran into my cart, thinking that the expression college try really should be reserved for hitting on girls in bars, or negotiating a good deal on a used car, or running a six-minute mile. Not contacting the mother of a hospitalized child when she clearly doesn’t want to be contacted. I am also thinking that giving advice to April is like giving advice to Ruby—in one ear, out the other. The only difference is, April pretends to listen first.
“You know, extend the olive branch,” April says.
“Hmm,” I say, thinking this, too, is a very telling expression—and something of a contradiction to Romy’s spin that her efforts to reach out to Valerie are about sympathy and support for a fellow mother, rather than a blatant and unabashed quest to absolve herself.
“So Valerie didn’t take kindly to the gesture?” I ask.
“That’s the understatement of the decade,” April says, going on to give me a verbatim account of their exchange. How Valerie had refused the basket, telling Romy to use it for her next party. “She was so snide,” April says. “A complete bitch.”
“That’s unfortunate,” I say, choosing my words carefully and realizing that this might be the hallmark of a genuine friendship: how freely you speak.
“Yeah. And the more I think about it, the more I think it’s really pretty sad. I feel sorry for her.”
“You mean what happened to her little boy?” I ask purposefully, thinking that this is the understatement of the decade.
“Well, yes, there’s that. And the fact that she clearly has no friends.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“Well, for one, how could she have friends with such a bad attitude? And for another, why else would she be sitting in the waiting room alone? I mean—can you imagine if it were one of our children in this situation? We’d be surrounded by loved ones.”
I start to remind April of my initial premise—that perhaps Valerie wants to be alone—but she cuts me off and says, “She just strikes me as one of those bitter single women who hates the world. I mean, wouldn’t you think she’d be grateful? At least for Charlie’s sake? Our children are in the same class!”
“I guess so,” I say.
“So that’s that,” April says. “We officially give up. She’s on her own.”
“She might still come around,” I say.
“Well, she’ll have to ‘come around’ on her own. We’re done.”
“Understandable,” I say.
“Yeah . . . Oh—and we ran into your sweet husband on our way out.”