chapter three

JOSIE

“Perfect timing,” I say to Gabe as he joins me at the bar at Local Three, one of our regular hangouts. I point to the pan-roasted monkfish and chilled watermelon soup, which I bribed him with after he told me he was too tired to get off the sofa. A foodie verging on food evangelist, Gabe can always be motivated by his next meal, especially when I promise to pay—which I did tonight.

“What’d she do this time?” he asks. I haven’t yet given him any details about our conversation, only that I needed him to reverse the “Meredith effect”—my shorthand for the mix of bad feelings my sister so often gives me.

“I’ll get to her in a second,” I say. “But first things first.”

I hand him my phone and watch him read the email I received just as I was parking.

From: Andrea Carlisle

Sent: August 18

To: Josephine Garland

Subject: Room Mom

Dear Josephine (aka Miss Josie)—

Thank you for a great first day of the first grade. Edie came home so excited and I know you had much to do with that. Thanks, too, for sending E’s tooth home safely. I’m sure the Tooth Fairy will also be grateful for your care.

I’m returning the volunteer form via Edie’s book bag tomorrow, but wanted to give you the heads-up that I’m putting my name in the hat for room mom. I feel certain that I could do a good job as your liaison to the other parents.

Either way, I look forward to meeting you face-to-face on Open House night. I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you (and your family) from Will. Small world, isn’t it?!

Best,

Andrea

“Interesting,” Gabe deadpans, putting my phone down on the bar in front of me. “What do you think?”

I love this about Gabe. He consistently asks what I think before he tells me what he thinks—the opposite of Meredith’s approach, and really most people’s.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe it’s a keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer type thing?”

“Maybe,” he says. “But I’m not getting an ulterior-motive vibe here. Other than the obvious brownnose-the-teacher angle, I suppose.”

“What vibe are you getting?” I say, eager for his no-frills analysis.

“I’m kind of just getting a nice vibe, actually.”

I nod reluctantly. It was so much easier to hate Will’s wife than to deal with the possibility that she could actually be a likable person.

“Have you written her back?” he asks, sipping the draft beer that I also had waiting for him.

“Not yet.”

“But you will?”

“Yeah. I have to,” I say. “It’s policy to reply to all parent emails.”

“And you always follow policy,” he quips.

“I do, actually. At school, anyway…Think I should pick her for room mom?”

“What does room mom entail?”

“As Andrea so eloquently put it, she’d be the liaison to the other mothers,” I say, maximizing my sarcasm and exaggerating my French accent, though I’m not sure what point I’m making other than to charge her with using a pretentious noun.

“So throw her a bone,” Gabe says. “It would be a good-faith gesture.”

I make a face.

“Jeez, Jo. You really gotta relax about this Will thing. He’s ancient history.”

“I know,” I say, thinking that I’ve had at least a half dozen breakups since Will.

“In fact, I don’t think you ever really loved him,” Gabe says.

I’ve heard this theory of his before, and want to believe it, but never quite can, especially now that I know Will’s little girl. I think of the gap in her gum and feel a wistful pang that borders on actual pain.

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “Of course I loved him.”

Gabe shrugs. “Your actions would indicate otherwise. You sabotaged that relationship.”

“Did not,” I say, thinking that he, of all people, knew that it was a lot more complicated than that.

“Did, too,” he says. “And now look at you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re stuck eating pork sliders with me,” he says, the king of self-deprecation.

“What’s wrong with pork sliders?” I say with a smile, already in a better mood.

GABE HAS BEEN my best guy friend for a long time now. It’s always the way I refer to him, although I don’t know why I include the gender qualifier when he’s really just my straight-up best friend. He grew up in Atlanta, too, but went to North Atlanta High after getting kicked out of Lovett for tapping into the computer systems and changing his friends’ grades (even though he did not need to change his own grades). So aside from some attenuated social overlap, we really didn’t know each other until my final year at the University of Georgia, just after Daniel died. Gabe came to the funeral, along with his whole family, but that alone didn’t stand out to me, as literally hundreds turned out for the service and the whole thing was a blur anyway. It was the handwritten note he sent me later that really registered. He didn’t say anything that profound, just how sorry he was, and that he had always looked up to my brother “in pretty much all respects.” A lot of people did—Daniel was that kind of all-around great guy—but the fact that Gabe actually took the time to spell out his admiration meant a lot. So when I saw him a few weeks later at East West Bistro in Athens, I went up to him and thanked him.

He nodded, and I braced myself for that awkward line of questioning about how I was doing. But he didn’t go there, just said again how sorry he was, then changed the subject, for which I was as grateful as for any note of sympathy. We talked the rest of that night, and after last call, he walked me back to my apartment and nonchalantly asked for my number. I told him I had a boyfriend—which was a stretch, I was just hooking up with some baseball player—but wanted to be clear that I didn’t like him like that. Gabe shrugged and said that was fine, he just wanted to hang out as friends. “I’ve always thought you were cool.”

Because I believed him, and because I was nothing if not cool, I gave him my number, and we became instantly tight. Mostly we’d sit in bars and drink—or sit in one of our apartments and drink. But we also walked his dog, an ancient black Lab named Woody, and studied for the anthropology class that neither of us realized the other was in because we both blew it off so often, and went to see bands, and smoked an occasional bag of weed.

Our friendship felt unusual because it was. Not so much because of the guy-girl thing, but because we really didn’t have all that much in common, even back when everyone in college had a lot in common. Gabe was outside the mainstream and a little bit of a hipster, nothing like my girlfriends or the guys I normally gravitated toward. I found him refreshing, though he had a tendency to playfully put me down. I quickly lost count of the number of times he looked at me, incredulous, and said, “How do you not know that?” or “You really need to read that/see that/listen to that.” But I could tell he appreciated my straightforward simplicity, just as I liked his layers, and somehow we just clicked.

Over the years, Meredith and my other friends questioned our platonic deal, accusing us of covertly hooking up. At the very least, they thought Gabe had a thing for me—or I had a thing for him. I was always adamant that we did not. Yes, there would probably always be very fleeting moments of attraction between close friends of different genders, especially when drinking was involved. But with Gabe and me, it was never enough to trigger a lapse of judgment, or worse, an ill-fated attempt at an actual relationship. And it became an unspoken given that neither of us wanted to risk our cherished friendship in the name of lust, loneliness, or idle curiosity. In other words, we were living proof that guys and girls could, in fact, be just friends.

It also helped, of course, that Gabe wasn’t my type, nor was I his. I was curvy and blond and girl-next-door cute, and Gabe liked petite, rail-thin brunettes, the more exotic the better. His last two girlfriends had been Asian, and from the neck down, they both looked like teenaged boys. Meanwhile, I preferred broad-shouldered, clean-cut, blue-eyed jocks, a far cry from Gabe’s lanky build, dark eyes, and omnipresent five o’clock shadow, which often veered toward an actual beard (which I downright disliked).

“Don’t get me wrong,” Gabe says now, signaling the bartender for another beer. I can tell by his expression that he’s still on the subject of Will. Sure enough, he finishes by saying, “I’m glad you guys broke up.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say. “You’re happy I’m thirty-seven and single and desperate?”

He grins and says, “Kinda.”

I smile because I know what he means and feel the same. I’m always a little happier when Gabe is single, and felt total relief when he broke up with his most recent girlfriend, an insufferably snobbish, name-dropping gallery girl. It isn’t that we don’t wish the best for each other, because we truly do. I want Gabe to fall in love and get married and have a family (even though he isn’t sure he’s cut out for that), and I know he wants the same for me. But it is hard to deny an element of classic misery loves company, not an uncommon dynamic among close, single friends. As an aside—and a backstop—we have always vowed that we will never date someone who isn’t cool with our grandfathered-in friendship. In fact, Gabe once called it a screening device, a way to weed out unstable, jealous girls, whom he also calls “the psycho set.”

Interestingly, the only person who ever really had a problem with Gabe was Will, who called him “the depressed poser.” It was an unfair charge, as Gabe never tries to impress anyone, and really cares little what others think of him, almost to a fault. He isn’t exactly depressed either, just a little moody and caustic—which can sometimes wear on people. But he can also be really funny, with a generosity and sense of loyalty that offset his edges. There is no doubt in my mind that Gabe would do anything for me.

“So what’s up with Meredith?” he says, changing the subject.

I sigh and tell him the latest—that she and my mother have some big plan they’re working up for this December. “You know, it’s been fifteen years….”

An intent listener, he looks at me, waiting.

“They want to visit Sophie. In New York,” I continue.

“Sophie?” Gabe asks.

“You know, the girl he was dating.”

“Oh, right…” Gabe shakes his head and whistles.

“Exactly,” I say. “So unhealthy, isn’t it?”

“It’s a little strange…I’ll give you that.” I can tell he is treading carefully, the way he always does around any mention of Daniel.

“It’s very strange. Bizarre. They all need to move on with their lives, already.”

He raises his eyebrows and looks at me, and I can tell that he is thinking about Will again. I can almost read the bubble over his head: Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?

“What?” I say, feeling defensive.

“Nothing,” he says with such purposeful wide-eyed innocence that I’m forced to take drastic measures. I pick up my phone and bang out an email, both my thumbs flying.

From: Josie

Sent: August 18

To: Andrea Carlisle

Subject: Re: Room Mom

Dear Andrea,

Thank you so much for your kind note. Edie is a pleasure, and I can’t wait to get to know her better this year. I hope the Tooth Fairy is good to her tonight! Thank you for volunteering to be our room mother—I would love to accept your kind offer. Look forward to meeting you at Open House. And yes, it is a small world!

Best,

Josie

I scan it quickly for errors, then send it, listening to the sickening swooshing sound of an irreversible decision.

“There,” I say, showing him the sent message.

He quickly skims it, then hands me back my phone and smirks. “Whoa. Look at you, Little Miss Well Adjusted.”

“I am well adjusted,” I say, and for one second, I actually believe it.

THAT NIGHT, I wake up around two and can’t fall back asleep. I tell myself that it’s just first-week-of-school jitters, or adjusting to an earlier bedtime, but as morning approaches, I know it runs deeper than that. I know it has something to do with Daniel and Sophie, Mom and Meredith, Will and Andrea. And maybe, most of all, it has something to do with Edie, fast asleep at this very moment. I imagine her blond curls spilling over her pillow, the shiny coin underneath it, as she dreams her magical dreams. I think of my conversation with Gabe, the person who knows me best and the only one who knows my secret. My heart aches with regret over so many things, big and small, including mistakes that have relegated me to manufacturing boyfriends on faraway continents who are as imaginary as the Tooth Fairy herself.