Lost Along the Way (15 page)

“How did you know that?”

“Because you're not as good a liar as you think you are.”

Damn.

“I'm sorry. Is Cara's mom really angry?”

“I don't think Cara will be at the dance, either. I have no doubt that this was all your idea. Now you can deal with the fact that you ruined the dance for the both of you.”

“I still feel bad that we got caught, but come on! Are you telling me that if we had to do it all over again you'd have made a different choice? That concert was awesome!” Jane looked over at Cara, who was trying to suppress a smile. “Yeah, I didn't think so.”

They pulled into the driveway and Cara clenched the steering wheel before turning off the car. Jane knew Cara didn't want to be here, but she also didn't want to be home. Knowing that there is no place in the world that you fit in is a feeling that's hard to explain. But Cara didn't have to—Jane had felt the same way for most of the last year. If there was anyone anywhere who understood how all-consuming that sense of solitude could be, it was her. And that was exactly why they needed each other.

“Come on,” Jane said. “Let's go inside.”

Meg's home was as bright as a tanning bed, courtesy of enormous windows that would be a peeping Tom's wet dream, the entire expanse of the first floor visible from the backyard. Candles covered every surface and the air was saturated with the smell of fresh bread. The sign over the small console table on the wall read
LIVE A GOOD LIFE
. Lincoln said that, if Jane's memory served her correctly. She liked the sentiment, but Lincoln really should have been more specific. What the hell defined a “good life”? Damned if she knew, and if she had to guess, she'd bet that Meg didn't know, either. But admittedly it read a lot better than “Fuck up your life,” which was exactly what it seemed like all of them had done. Hanging
that
sign on the wall probably wasn't the welcoming that Meg wanted to give her guests, though, so Lincoln's abstract statement would have to do.

Jane glanced past the white walls of the den into the red-walled library in the back of the house. She caught sight of a fireplace with more candles adorning the mantel, throw pillows covering the couch, and a bookcase jammed with books. Jane had no problem picturing Steve curled up on the couch in front of the fire reading while Meg cooked in the kitchen. At one time, this house must've made both of them so happy.

“Make yourself at home,” Meg said.

“It's really beautiful,” Jane said as she pulled four wine bottles from the shopping bag and popped three of them in the fridge. “You guys were really smart to buy this when you did. You'll probably make a fortune on it if you ever go to sell it.”

“I don't know that I'll ever sell it,” Meg said quietly. “It's the only home I have now.”

Jane began opening Meg's cabinets in search of wineglasses, as if it were perfectly normal for her to be rifling through the kitchen in a home she'd never been to. She didn't care. The only way the three of them were going to get back to a place where they could be in the same room without it being weird was to pretend that it wasn't weird for them to be in the same room. So she found no sensible reason whatsoever why she shouldn't make herself feel right at home, and in her home, she drank wine.

She found dusty wineglasses in a small cupboard above the sink, difficult for her to reach, and she was a few inches taller than Meg. Clearly Meg wasn't drinking her problems away. Jane opened the freezer to retrieve ice cubes to help chill down the wine and discovered countless loaves of bread, all of them meticulously wrapped and labeled, stacked on top of one another in the freezer like little tinfoil bricks. The sight of the carbohydrate carnival made Jane feel better about herself: Meg might not use wine as a crutch, but she, too, was seeking comfort in consumable items, and Jane liked discovering that they still had things in common.

It was a start.

T
hey'd enjoyed a simple dinner of grilled fish and salad and did their best to only discuss topics that no one really cared about: the weather, music, new movies that were about to hit the theaters. It somehow seemed like a better idea than discussing anything personal. When they'd finished cleaning the dishes, Meg showed them to their rooms; Cara turned left at the top of the stairs and placed her bag in a small but comfortable bedroom with a large bay window and soft yellow walls, while Jane took the guest room next to Meg's at the opposite end of the hall. Jane threw her bag on the floor and ran her hand over the soft cream-colored sheets on the bed. The gauzy linen curtains that hung on the lone window blew softly in the breeze. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been anywhere so tranquil, and couldn't wait until she could climb under the duvet and go to sleep.

But first they were all going to head back to the den for a nightcap.

Ten minutes later, Jane took a seat on the couch and sipped her drink. She didn't want to discuss neutral topics anymore, and she figured the best way to break the ice was to pretend that nothing about this evening was strange. “So, what's everyone been up to? Have you guys seen anyone from back home? I'm so out of the loop,” she said.

“‘Out of the loop'?” Cara asked, cracking a slight smile. “That's a nice way to put it!”

“I know, but in fairness, I really am out of the loop. Everybody knows what's been going on in my life, but I have no idea what's going on in anyone else's. When you think about it, it hardly seems fair,” Jane joked. Making fun of her situation was a tricky thing to do. She didn't want to seem like she wasn't horrified by what her husband had done, but at the same time, she had to be able to laugh at least a little bit.

“It must be hard,” Cara said. “Unfortunately I can't help you. I haven't exactly kept in touch with anyone, either. I'm not on Facebook and I missed the ten-year reunion.”

“Did anyone go to that?” Meg asked. “I didn't think anyone went to those things. At least, I never had any intention of going. I didn't want to play the ‘who has a better life' game with people I haven't seen since the nineties. I like to think I left some of that teenage-girl competitive nonsense in my past.”

“I don't think girls ever really outgrow it, do you?” Jane asked.

“Seriously?” Cara asked, surprised to hear Jane actually admit something so silly out loud. “You find yourself competing with other women? At our age?”

Jane sighed. “Sometimes. I feel ridiculous saying it, but it's true. It's basically impossible to keep up with the women I hung out with in the city. It used to drive me crazy.”

“What do you mean?” Meg asked.

“I don't know. Sometimes we'd go to lunch at this French place on the Upper East Side, and these women would sit around and order French food, and wear French designers, and talk about their trips to Paris or Saint-Tropez. The hysterical part was that none of them could actually speak a lick of French. They're all phonies. But the crazy thing is that I wanted them to accept me so badly that I set about building a life that was full of material
things, but completely empty, just so that they'd think I was one of them. In retrospect I can't believe I cared about what they thought, but at the time, yeah, I felt like I was constantly struggling to keep up with them. For the record, it's exhausting.”

“That's how you know you never really belonged in that world,” Cara said. “You just need to take some time and reflect on what's really important to you. Once you do that I think things will start to fall into place again.”

“The only things that have been important to me for the last few years are my age, my weight, and the number of calories in a glass of sauvignon blanc.”

“You probably should add your checking account balance to that list now, too,” Meg suggested.

“Good point. It's all pretty ironic, since I've never been good at math and yet numbers now seem to define me.”

“Your real friends would love you for who you are. The sad thing is, these new friends you made never even got to know the real you,” Cara said.

“Why do you say that?” Jane asked.

“The Jane I knew would never have spent her free time focused on all this silly stuff. The old you would've thought they were annoying. She was pretty great, you know. At least, from what I remember,” Cara said. “You used to care about real things. Sure, you always wanted to be a star, but you were never shallow. You were just . . . ambitious. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“Thanks, Cara,” Jane said, genuinely touched. “It means a lot to hear you say that.” Jane had been worried that there was an epic argument brewing under the polite conversation, but maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe everyone was ready to let the past stay in the past and start again.

“That said, pretending to be stupid has kind of been your modus operandi for as long as I can remember, and I guess it finally caught up with you.”

Or maybe not.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jane asked. “I'm not stupid. Why would you say that?”

“I didn't say you
were
stupid. I said you've been
pretending
to be stupid.”

“Cara, that's not a nice thing to say,” Meg protested, in a halfhearted attempt to defend Jane.

“Come on, Jane. You just said you knew those women were a bunch of fakes. How could you not have known that Doug was, too? You chose to ignore the signs. That's all. You're like one of those women who knows that something's wrong with her body but won't go to the doctor because she's afraid to hear the diagnosis. It was easier for you to just ignore the warning signs, so that's what you decided to do. That's all I'm saying. I'm sure a lot of people do the same thing.”

“Thank you for sharing your opinions, Cara. I would take them to heart a little if you weren't living in the biggest glass house I've ever seen.” Jane knew she was going to have to answer for her behavior, but she'd hoped to delay that for as long as possible. Apparently, as long as possible meant right now.

“I don't even know what that means. I never did anything to you. You're the one who just woke up one day and decided to abandon your oldest friends. Don't get mad at me for bringing it up.”

“You know what? I'm really tired of you telling me that I abandoned you. You two always had your own thing going. You made
me feel like the third wheel every time I was around you. Do you know that when I found out that you asked Meg to be your maid of honor and only made me a bridesmaid I cried for hours? Do you have any idea how that made me feel? It was always Cara and Meg with Jane on the side. And you know what? I got tired of it. And now you want to be mad at me for pulling away? You pushed me away, Cara. So why don't you take some ownership for your role in this?”

Cara's eyes bulged in their sockets, and Jane remembered why the kids at school used to call her Bug Face behind her back. It was really unfortunate she hadn't grown out of that. “Wow. I always knew that you lived in a world where you never did anything wrong and were always the victim. How could you possibly expect me to make you maid of honor when you hated, and I mean,
hated,
the guy I was marrying? You wouldn't even speak to him! That makes it kind of hard to ask you to stand next to me at the altar.”

“That's not true! I tried to be a good friend to you. I tried to be happy for you despite the fact that I hated Reed. And, clearly, I had every reason to! You seem to be forgetting the fact that my instincts were totally right!”

“You sent me a card right after I got engaged that said ‘I'm happy you're finally happy.' What the hell was that even supposed to mean?”

“It wasn't supposed to mean anything! I sent you a card! How is that a sign of my not being happy for you? What did you want me to do? Hire a twelve-piece band to play on your doorstep? See, this is the type of stupid stuff I wanted to avoid by eloping. There's so much pressure on women and their weddings,
it makes everyone crazy. I wasn't being passive-aggressive. The better question is, why were you trying to find problems with everything I did?”

“And at the shower, when people gave speeches, did you or did you not sit there and roll your eyes when everyone spoke? You made it clear you didn't agree with anything people were saying. I was sitting next to you. Did you honestly think I couldn't see you?”

“I thought the speeches were stupid. Why did we all need to sit around and talk about how wonderful you are just because you were getting married? It's redundant. The people at that shower were supposed to be your close friends and family. Of course we thought you were wonderful. We wouldn't have been there if we didn't. Forgive me if by the fifth speech I was a little tired of hearing about what a good person you are and what a great wife you were going to make. I was over it. I don't apologize for that, either. Besides, I gave you a
very
nice shower gift. And you never wrote me a thank-you note, by the way. If I'd done that to you, you probably would've taken it as a sign that I didn't like your gift or something and been offended by that! There's no winning with you sometimes.”

“And did you or did you not say that you thought I looked fat in my wedding dress? How can you possibly call yourself a friend and then say something like that?”

“How do you even know that I . . . ?” Jane asked as she flashed back to the events surrounding Cara's wedding. She could not believe that she was being forced to defend things that she may or may not have said more than a decade ago. Jane had commented on the dress after Cara had sent her a picture of it, but only to
one person, and only in confidence. She should've known that Meg would tell Cara.

“I never said that! All I said was that your hips were your problem area, and I was surprised you were going with a mermaid gown. I simply thought you'd have looked better if you had worn something that flared at the waist. And I would've told you that to your face if you had ever bothered to ask me to go dress shopping with you. But you never did. All I had to go by were the pictures you showed me.”

“I went with my mother! Don't make it sound like I was running around Manhattan with an entourage looking at dresses and left you out. And how is that a defense to what you said about me? Is that why you couldn't bother to stay for the entire wedding? Because I didn't ask you to go shopping?”

“Why did you tell her that, Meg?” Jane asked, angry at herself for being surprised to discover that Meg had broken her trust. “To hurt her feelings or to make her mad at me? I'd like to know exactly why you decided to betray me like that.”

“You're mad at
me
now?” Meg yelled. Her voice was high-pitched and whiny. Jane had forgotten how annoying it could be. “You were the one backstabbing her at every turn and you expected me to just keep my mouth shut? Honestly, Jane, I was so disgusted by the way you were acting that I thought Cara should know. If you said those things, then own up to them. Admit it and stop blaming other people for the things that you said and did.”

“Are you happy now? Was this what you wanted? For Cara to resent me? Well, congrats. But don't either of you sit there and tell me how upset you were when I decided to pull away from
you. This is exactly the reason why I did. I was so fucking sick of always feeling like you didn't want me around but I was grandfathered in so you didn't have a choice. And you know what, Cara? I wanted to be happy for you, I really did. I tried, even though I thought then, and I still think now, that your husband is a loser. So yeah, I left early because I couldn't stand pretending for one more second to be pumped that you attached yourself to an asshole. I was the only one willing to at least be honest. Besides, it's not like you ever made any effort after that. All I heard from you after you got back from your honeymoon was a Christmas card with a preprinted note on it. You didn't even sign it. Did you ever think about how that made me feel? That maybe I was hurting, too?”

“You can't say you're sorry, can you?” Cara asked. “All these years later and you're still making excuses for everything you did. And now that all the bad decisions you've made over the years have caught up with you, you're playing the poor-me song you've played your whole life, and the reality is, you're complicit in what happened to you. You are no one's victim.”

Jane's breath caught in her throat. She had been prepared for some painfully honest arguing, but she was not prepared for this. “You want to know what a good friend is, Cara? Someone who is willing to fight for you. When I pulled away, you didn't even bother to come after me. You never tried to fix the rift between us. You just let it go, like our friendship meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.”

“I e-mailed you. You never wrote me back. Your version of revisionist history won't work on me. I was there. Remember? I know exactly what happened.”

“And if I'd known that that was all it took for you to just give
up on me, I would've cut our ties long before I did. You guys always thought you were better than me. Always.”

“That's not true,” Meg said. Jane couldn't even look at her, knowing that she'd betrayed her confidence. She wasn't sure why she was surprised. One thing she'd learned since leaving for college was that most girls were bitches, and the idea of a real friendship existing among any of them anywhere was utterly ridiculous. Maybe it was better that she didn't have any friends anymore.

“Oh, really? You guys don't think I know that you looked down on me all those years I was trying to get acting jobs? That you thought I was being silly, and vain, and unrealistic? You never thought I was as smart as you. You never thought I would amount to anything. Once you guys got married you looked down on me because I was still single and you thought I was pathetic. I know you did.”