Fiona and Jane(59)

At the grocery store later, after the oil change, Jane overheard a man on the phone asking if there was enough butter, or if he should pick up another package. Do we get the salted or the unsalted? he said. Jane thought it was a lovely question. She reached for the red carton of salted butter and placed it in her basket even though it wasn’t on her list.

She was happy for her best friend. She hadn’t known that Fiona wanted a baby. After her mother passed, Fiona suddenly became serious about meeting a man and marrying again. For a while, after divorcing Aaron, she’d shut off that part of herself, it seemed. All their lives, Fiona had attracted attention without trying. It wasn’t only that she was beautiful, smart, stylish. Jane understood now that there was something guarded about Fiona, as if she were always looking behind her, watching her back. Even while her eyes were fixed on you, Fiona was casing the room for the exits. Some alert quality about her that was unsettling, and sexy.

Jane had never felt jealous of Fiona. She didn’t compete with her; she’d only ever wanted her to stay. When they were younger, she never wanted Fiona to go home at the end of the night. She could sit in Shamu, talking on, forever. The two of them shared everything, and a compliment to one was accepted equally by the other, though most often, Jane knew, it was Fiona to whom the unsolicited kind words were directed, and Jane who stood in the refracted light.

Groceries stowed in the trunk, she drove back to her apartment listlessly.

Everything seemed back on track again in Fiona’s life. Last year, she’d transferred her credits to UCLA and completed the law degree she’d abandoned in New York. She passed the California bar on the first try. She met Bobby on Tinder. Now, a baby.

Jane was happy for her. Yes, she really was. But what was this other feeling, buried within it? Fiona was leaving again. She was always leaving. And this time, Jane feared there would be no coming back. A baby changed everything, more than a man ever could. She’d thought they had more time. There were still so many silences, passed over. Fiona was going away now—some other planet, where mothers lived—while Jane remained here in place. She moved through the apartment, from room to room, turning on the lamps, as though searching for something. Nothing was missing. She felt as lonely as she’d ever been.





Fiona and Jane


Fiona and Bobby were throwing a New Year’s Eve party—a big deal for them since Gracie was born. Won was in Ibiza or somewhere with the gaysian mafia. I tried to tell Fi I had another commitment, but she saw right through me; she knew my only plans were with a bottle of red and watching the ball drop on TV. I don’t want to be the seventeenth wheel, I said, at a party with a bunch of your straight married friends. It’s not going to be like that, she snapped. It’s going to be all kinds of people there. Don’t you want to spend New Year’s Eve with your best friend?

It wasn’t all kinds of people at her party. A few of Fiona’s social justice–type coworkers, whose earnest faces rang vaguely familiar from her wedding; some crunchy-looking white people who were probably Fi and Bobby’s neighbors (this was Silver Lake, after all); the paunchy middle-aged Asian guys who formed Bobby’s college friend group and their milfy wives, who all looked significantly more fit than their husbands, and younger by years. I’d mentioned this phenomenon once to Fiona, and she asked if I thought of her and Bobby like that. I told her the truth. She put him on a low-carb diet and now they worked out with a personal trainer twice a week.

I started drinking. Midnight was still a couple hours off. I thought about waking up Gracie for an auntie hang, but Fi said Bobby’s parents were babysitting for the night. Then, in the middle of a kitchen conversation, in walked someone new. He looked no older than thirty, save for a head of graying hair that he wore brushed back on top, the sides and back cut short and neat. He was a beautiful man, dark gold skin and hawk’s eyes, black and darting. He had a melancholy mouth, with full sensuous lips.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Who’s that?” Fiona’s coworker asked. I couldn’t remember her name. Sherrie, or Sheryl, I thought. She had on a cream-colored shift dress with rosebuds embroidered on the chest, the fit-and-flare skirt tight over her hips. A white mini-fascinator rested on one side of her head, a crazy thing with tulle netting and feather quills.

“He’s cute,” said Sheryl. “But too short for me.” Just a minute ago she was complaining about how the last two guys she dated, a Viet and a Korean before that, both broke up with her because they said they couldn’t get serious with a white girl.

“That’s Julian. Bobby’s boy from back in the day,” said Elena. Her ex-husband was also a part of Bobby’s old crew. Elena got full custody, the condo, and Bobby and Fi in the divorce. She was dressed like a normal person, in dark jeans and a navy blue sweater with bits of silver thread around the neck. “He just quit the Marines.” Elena lowered her voice. “I heard he’s screwed up in the head.”

I said I’ve never heard Fiona mention him at all.

“He was in Afghanistan,” Elena continued in a whisper. “What I heard was he got captured one time, some kind of raid—”

“I bet he’s got a hottie body,” Sheryl said. “Is he Mexican? Elena, you can tell.”

Elena raised an eyebrow. “Not everyone brown’s Mexican,” she said. “Julian’s Filipino,” she added.