The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [9]
“Our friendship was very pleasant.”
“I didn’t feel like just your friend. I felt like your child or your sister, or something. Should I be embarrassed? Those nights seemed so self-contained.”
“Frannie mooning over Helen, me mooning over Frannie.” He speaks with a teasing edge. “I don’t think we were very kind to you, Florence.”
“Weren’t you? I thought you were.” Florence swallows bitterly.
“We needed someone else to talk to, about unimportant things.”
Florence turns away quickly and peers energetically out the window.
“We needed you, Florence; it was nice to have you fall in love with us, and admire us. It was a relief to talk about something else besides the central issue. Do you understand what I mean?”
“No one was happy but me?” She looks at him again and he shakes his head.
The smile that lingers on his boyish face is betrayed by that small gesture, disappears. Florence lets his serious gaze hold her until he releases her with another smile.
Bryan pulls up next door and gets out of the car. Florence does not move. “Is that the secret of marriage?” she asks.
“One of them.”
Bryan takes off his sunglasses and throws them on the seat, then steps around the car.
“What’s another one?”
“Maybe that all the secrets are never disclosed.”
“And another?”
“That it’s worth finding out for yourself.”
Bryan raises his finger to her doorbell. She shouts, “Here I am! Bryan, I’m over here!”
Lily
C areening toward Lily Stith in a green Ford Torino were Kevin and Nancy Humboldt. Once more they gave up trying to talk reasonably; once more they sighed simultaneous but unsympathetic sighs; once more each resolved to stare only at the unrolling highway.
At the same moment, Lily was squeezing her mop into her bucket. Then she straightened up and looked out the window, eager for their arrival. She hadn’t seen them in two years, not since having won a prestigious prize for her poems.
She was remarkably well made, with golden skin, lit by the late-afternoon sun, delicately defined muscles swelling over slender bones, a cloud of dark hair, a hollow at the base of her neck for some jewel. She was so beautiful that you could not help attributing to her all of your favorite virtues. To Lily her beauty seemed a senseless thing, since it gained her nothing in the way of passion, release, kinship, or intimacy. Now she was looking forward, with resolve, to making the Humboldts confess really and truly what was wrong with her—why, in fact, no one was in love with her.
A few minutes later they pulled up to the curb. Nancy climbed the apartment steps bearing presents—a jar of dill pickles she had made herself, pictures of common friends, a cap knitted of rainbow colors for the winter. Lily put it on in spite of the heat. The rich colors lit up Lily’s tanned face and flashing teeth. Almost involuntarily Nancy exclaimed, “You look better than ever!” Lily laughed and said, “But look at you! Your hair is below your hips now!” Nancy pirouetted and went inside before Kevin came up. He, too, looked remarkable, Lily thought, with his forty-eight-inch chest on his five-foot-nine-inch frame. Kevin kissed her cheek, but she could see he was trying to imagine where Nancy had gone; his eyes slid instantly past Lily and only manners brought them back. He patted her twice on the shoulder when she cried, “I’ve been looking for you since noon!” He said, “I always forget how far it is across Ohio,” and stepped into the house.
That it had been two years—two years!—grew to fill the room like a thousand balloons, pinning them in the first seats they chose and forbidding conversation. Lily offered some food, some drink. They groaned, thinking of all they had eaten on the road (not convivially but bitterly, snatching, biting, swallowing