Chapter Ten
Present
Call me immediately. News!
I’ve got news too, just need a minute.
I can’t wait a minute, hurry!
“Quinn, I hit on a child. Or more like, almost hit a child. Or both.” I exhale my confession into the phone, having run from my driveway into the house, dropped my purse on the floor, and then my underpants, to pee in the powder room.
All in under fifty-eight seconds in the irrepressible heat of the Central Valley in mid-July. Dr. Kwan was wrong. Sometimes I do run.
“Are you peeing?”
“You said I had to hurry!”
“Uh, gross.”
“Oh, please. Like you’ve never peed talking to me.”
“Okay, fair, but I put myself on mute,” Quinn scolds. I should have thought of that. “I’m hoping there’s more to your story than illegality and continued poor taste in men.”
There is. The guy I almost hit had the same last name as Porter.
It’s not that Beaumont is a rare surname; I’ve known a handful, particularly on the East Coast. But Porter, and now Chap, are the only Black Beaumonts I’ve come across, and nearly running over Chap stirred wistful memories and deep pains of my youth I thought were long packed away.
I debate whether to bring up the duplicate surname coincidence to Quinn when I hear glassware clinking, people cheering, and a level of merriment in Quinn’s apartment that I haven’t heard in my own house in years.
I think Quinn’s news has something to do with our present, and I have been spending far too much time the last several months mired in my past, so I let this afternoon’s encounter go.
“Hold on, hold on, I have to step out of the living room so I can hear you better,” she says.
Determining that my story is, in fact, more humiliating than interesting, I return to Quinn’s urgent news. “What’s up with you? What’s going on?”
“I didn’t actually think you’d call me back so fast,” Quinn says.
“Ah, so you’ve already talked to Stephanie?
” Stephanie is Quinn’s best friend from childhood, and we have a stubborn competition for Quinn’s affections.
Stephanie put herself through college and graduate school by working as a Ford model alongside Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington.
With her doctorate in East Asian studies and no school debt, she has spent her life working for the United Nations as a lead negotiator on behalf of developing countries that are part of the G-77.
Stephanie speaks four languages, her husband is a revered French film director, and one of her children is on the US swim team, a favored backstroker in the next Summer Olympics.
Over the course of thirty-four years of friendship, whenever I get a bit snippy and jealous of Stephanie, Quinn reminds me I’m funnier than she is, and for some reason that appeases me.
No one likes a bore, no matter how beautiful and successful they are.
“Grow up; I didn’t call Stephanie first. She happens to be at my apartment right now because she’s been in New York for the week for some green climate conference.” That’s right. In addition to championing the rights of developing countries, she’s going to fix the climate crisis in her spare time.
“What am I missing on the East Coast that you can’t wait to rub in my face, other than everything?
” I whine to Quinn, holding the phone between my shoulder and chin so I can wash my hands.
I rub my index and middle fingers over my eyebrows to smooth them out.
I need to pluck a few stubbles, but for the love of Tweezerman, when I lean in to the mirror, I can’t see a single one of them without my reading glasses.
“Your goddaughter’s engaged!” And then there’s that. Quinn chose me over Stephanie to be her only child’s godmother. So yes, when it most counted, I won the best-friend title.
“My Alice is engaged! I mean your Alice!” I quickly correct myself, though I know Quinn and I are not from the generation that quibbles over pronouns.
“Yes, our Alice! Can you believe it?” While I love John and Andrew ferociously, Alice holds a special place in my heart because shopping for boys rarely includes anything other than utilitarian accessories.
Since the day Alice was born, anytime I’d find something girly, unnecessary, and not blue, black, or cement gray, I’d bypass Quinn’s permission, hand over my credit card, and send it straight to Alice with the understanding that her mother didn’t need to know everything.
That’s godmother logic straight from the handbook.
“Tell me every last detail of how he asked her, where he did it, what the ring looks like.” I receive an alert that Lisa is texting me while I’m talking to Quinn, and I quickly tap out On a call, come over.
At an age when so much of the news we receive is bad, there is nothing Lisa and I love more than popping open something fizzy and celebrating each other’s good stuff.
“I promise I will tell you all about it, but Alice has her friends over to celebrate, Jack’s parents are on their way with more champagne, and Stephanie needs to leave for the airport in an hour.
” I can’t believe Stephanie got to hug Alice before I did, but it’s okay; I assuage my jealousy.
As godmother, I’m further up the toasting pecking order for the wedding weekend.
“More to come, but mark your calendar. Alice and Jack have already decided they want to get married on New Year’s Eve in the city.”
I count out the timing on my fingers. That’s only six months away.
“Do you have any interest in trying a Pilates class with me?” I ask Lisa while handing her an ice-cold beer slushy, hoping catering to her boozy proclivities will persuade her to say yes. “There is a two-week intro offer at CorePlus over by Target. My treat.”
“That sounds hard,” Lisa concludes, snuggling deeper into my oversize outdoor sofa cushions.
“Maybe, but you get to work out lying down, so how hard can it be?” She does not look one bit convinced. “I mean, it’s not that much different from what you’re doing now.”
“What I’m doing right now is free. And tastes good,” Lisa asserts, toasting herself before taking another long draw of her beer.
Both legitimate arguments, but my need to get moving has now grown tenfold.
Not only am I marching toward an early death, according to Dr. Kwan, but I’m now also expected at a wedding where my attendance, alongside other friends from college who actually have their lives in order, is mandatory.
My vast time frame to pull myself together has shrunk significantly.
“’K, then let’s go on a walk.” We both know Lisa’s long naturally toned legs are her best asset, so maybe she’ll be up for showing them off around the neighborhood.
“To where?” Lisa asks, picking up the copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations lying on my coffee table. I should have known this conversation was not going to go my way when Lisa strutted through the front door in a T-shirt that says Don’t F*ck with Perfection.
“Nowhere in particular, just . . . I don’t know, around.” All I need is someone to get me out the door and moving, today. I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
“You reading this?” Lisa flutters her fingers across the multiple passages I’ve marked with Post-its to fan herself.
“Rereading it. Marcus Aurelius is my favorite Stoic philosopher.” After getting off the phone with Quinn, I pulled the book from my shelf, still stickered with Princeton University Store on the spine.
A cornerstone of Stoic philosophy is to be strict with yourself but forgiving of others, and I’m praying I can read my way back into being a disciplined person before December 31.
“Looks dull.” Lisa yawns, reaches her arm over her head, and drops the book on the side table behind her.
“Ancient Rome isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,” I say defensively, and if I’m being honest, with a hint of intellectual judgment.
“My college boyfriend and I would sit across from one another in the library and pass quotes from our favorite philosophers back and forth on scraps of paper torn out of our notebooks.”
“Aha. Let me guess.” Lisa flips over, intrigued.
“He was closeted, and you were his beard through the confusing years. You were in love, he was in hiding, and now he and his husband sell antiques in Michigan to fellow gays escaping Chicago on the weekends and you hear from one another once a year through holiday letters. Please, that’s a college tale as old as time. ”
“I think you are mixing up antiques with antiquities, and no, he wasn’t gay.
He was perfect, but I do give you credit for on-the-spot world-building.
” I still remember everything about the evening in Firestone Library when Porter slid his hand over to my side of the table without looking up from the paper he was drafting, a quote hidden under his large palm.
His hair was still dappled with water from showering after football practice, and we had already been hushed a half dozen times as we excitedly debated whom we preferred, Aristotle or Socrates, before settling down to work on the essay that was due the next day for Ancient Roman Philosophy.
Porter lifted his hand and, without looking up, nodded for me to pluck the rough-edged paper from the table.
On one side it said, “This Aristotle quote reminds me of us.” On the other side it said, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Porter kept on writing, but I couldn’t focus for the rest of the night.
That paper ended up being the only C I earned in college.
“So whatever happened to Princeton’s philosopher king?” I look at Lisa, shocked by her Plato reference. “What, you elitist! You don’t think I’ve heard of the concept before?”
“Well, uh . . .” Lisa has been working fifty-hour weeks in the tech world longer than I’ve lived in Sacramento, so I assumed she didn’t read much.
Lisa is fun and easy to be around, but I mostly keep our conversations light, simple, and focused on neighborhood gossip, a topic we’re both not above getting dirty in.
“Relax. My favorite movie is The Matrix. It’s loosely based on that old dude’s writing.” Well, there you go: Lisa taught me something about Plato I never knew. “So, then, what happened to the guy?”
“He disappeared.” I shrug.
“Who, Thomas? Duh, I’ve been here for the whole thing, remember?”
“Not Thomas, the college boyfriend. I have no idea where he is.”
“Well, you definitely have a type. Vanishing.”
“Clearly, I do.” I chuckle. Over the last week or two, there have been moments I’ve been able to laugh at the absurdity of Thomas’s middlescence departure rather than cringe and crumple every time his name is mentioned.
That small bit of progress has to be better for my cortisol levels. If only I could stop stress eating.
“What’s not vanishing is my appetite. Come on, I’ll drive us to get Mexican at Tres Hermanas.” Lisa switches the topic from self-improvement to something she’s more interested in: self-indulgence. “If we hustle, we can make it in time for happy hour. I’m craving a margarita and nachos.”
I look at my watch. It’s true, we only have fifteen minutes to drive, park, run in, and order. Can I count the sprint from the parking lot to the bar as exercise? “Okay, but we need to get the sour cream on the side.”
“Really, why? That sounds like a terrible idea,” Lisa decides.
It’s not easy to make changes.