Friday Mornings at Nine (16 page)

But money couldn’t buy everything. Not skill proficiency. Not client respect. Not marital support. She wouldn’t deny that money was extremely helpful…simply not an all-inclusive solution.

She continued to ponder this during the remainder of the day. Quite honestly, the allure of having an identity beyond her role as wife and mother was as strong as the opportunity to, at last, flex her career muscles. Jon would be home that night and maybe, just maybe, he would prove both supportive and insightful. It was not a matter of intelligence with him. He would
understand
the issues in an instant. It was merely a matter of inclination.

And, indeed, it turned out that Jon
did
surprise her, though not at all in the manner she’d expected.

“Got any plans for next weekend?” he asked all of four minutes after he’d burst through the front door. His face was unusually flushed, an expression more smile than smirk gracing his lips.

“For Columbus Day?” She thought about it, coming to the almost immediate conclusion that, no, she hadn’t put anything pressing on the calendar. She told Jon this.

“Good,” he replied. “How about we go visit our son in Austin?”

And in that instant, all thoughts and feelings of new careers and marital frustrations fled. She actually rushed into Jon’s arms, squeezing him, unable to keep the tears from flowing down her face and splashing onto the shoulder of his white dress shirt.

“Oh, Jon. Thank you.”

To her surprise, he squeezed her back just as tightly. And when she looked into his eyes, they were damp, too.

Saturday, October 9

T
amara and Jon flew out of O’Hare Airport the following Saturday, just before noon, while Bridget and Jennifer dealt with their families—and their respective problems—at their individual homes.

Tamara was relieved to go to Texas for several reasons. First and foremost, she’d get to see Benji again. But, also, she hated to be alone in their house without him. Her friends might complain about the noise and general chaos of life with their crew of little ones and teens underfoot, but the other ladies didn’t know what the alternative was like.

“Want a glass of wine?” Jon asked her moments after takeoff. She’d noticed he’d been trying harder lately to be solicitous. To anticipate her needs a little more. To be kinder. At least since Aunt Eliza’s death.

“Sure. White,” she said. “Thanks.”

He ordered for them both, wines and luncheon sandwiches, and then got comfortable in his leather seat with his
Chicago Tribune
. They were flying business class—free because of all of his frequent-flier miles—and it occurred to her they could do this anytime. They were limited not by expense or even by distance, but by whether their son would welcome the intrusion.

Not that their visit was in any way unexpected. They’d cleared it with Benji before purchasing tickets. It was just that she couldn’t shake the feeling they were somehow disrupting his life.

“What do you think of this Lance kid?” she asked Jon, after the flight attendant had poured their drinks and moved halfway down the aisle. “You’ve talked to him more than I have.”

Her husband glanced up from the Real Estate section. “The roommate?” He shrugged. “He’s okay. Kind of squirrely, but I’ve seen worse. At least he’s from a bigger city in Georgia or South Carolina or somewhere like that, so he’s not too much of a hick.” He shrugged again. “Still Southern, though.”

Jon wasn’t fond of Southerners. Or most Northerners, for that matter. She noticed he immediately returned to reading his paper.

“I meant more in terms of him being a friend to Benji. Do you think they’re a good match? Neither of them knew anybody before starting at UT. Do you think they’re becoming real friends or just hanging out together so much because they don’t have anyone else?” Both boys were drawn to UT because of its stellar engineering program, but maybe that was all they had in common.

Jon sighed and folded his paper shut. “We’ll see what it’s like this weekend, but I don’t know if I’d expect any long-lasting friendship. They’ve got the facade of youth right now, but it won’t last. Especially this early in Benji’s college experience. Everyone he gets to know this year is in the same place. It’s like the army.”

“What? No, it’s not.” She shot him an annoyed look and gulped half of her wine. “They’re choosing their own classes, learning to manage their time, differentiating themselves as much as possible from—”

“College is a leveler, Tamara,” he said, with more than a hint of irritation. “They may all be from different backgrounds coming into it, but when they get there they’re struggling with the same mean calculus prof, the hard-to-understand career counselor, the hot new girls on the floor above them, the cramped dorm rooms. They’re bonded—both by being young and by being new to the big campus. And, for a while, that bond masks a person’s deeper, truer qualities. It all changes once they’ve chosen their majors. And it changes even more once they start their careers. Their real priorities emerge and, a couple of years after graduation, they’re not in touch at all anymore.”

She remembered that this had been Jon’s experience exactly. That his two best friends from his undergraduate years stopped calling not long after she and Jon got married. That Jon always acted as if this were irrelevant, but how could it not hurt? How could he not care?

Jon unfolded his paper again. “We’ve just got to hope Benji doesn’t do something stupid and end up committing to some girl before he knows who he is and what he wants out of life.”

The undercurrent of criticism and regret was unmistakable. She and Jon hadn’t met as college freshmen, true, but they did as Northwestern grad students. He could have easily been talking about them and how—as a law school hotshot—he’d curtailed his career options and done “something stupid” by tying himself to a business student with few connections, limited cultural experience and a high student loan balance.

“I’m sure Benji won’t be
stupid,
” she murmured, snatching the in-flight magazine from the seat pocket and pretending to read an article entitled “North America’s Top 10 Horticultural Marvels” until Jon returned to his newspaper. She didn’t ask any further questions.

As it turned out, roommate Lance was absent upon their arrival to Benji’s dorm.

“Hey, Mom and Dad,” their lanky and still boyishly good-looking son said, side-hugging them in the lobby. His straight light brown hair flopped into his eyes and he brushed it away in a move reminiscent of the goofy little kid he’d once been.

Tamara’s heart overflowed with a month-and-a-half’s pent-up adoration. She didn’t know how to turn it off. Like too much water in a bathtub, anything Benji said or did only added to the increasing level of feeling, until her love for him displaced every other possible emotion and sploshed and spilled everywhere.

“Don’t cry, Mom,” Benji whispered, glancing furtively around the packed lobby, and she saw Jon’s jaw tighten. Neither liked teary displays.

She swiped at her eyes and turned to face the wall, not wanting to embarrass her son further or incur the wrath of her husband. “Sorry, Benji.”

“S’okay,” her son said, moving quickly away from her. She pressed her lips together to try to rein in the hurt. But her boy was back a couple of seconds later. “Here,” he said, prodding her arm gently with a small box. “I was just looking for the tissues. They keep ’em at the front desk.” Then he hugged her again.

She grabbed one, dabbed her eyes with it and pocketed two more. She had no doubt she’d need them.

Meanwhile, Jon asserted himself into the middle of the lobby and said loudly, “Good to see you,
Ben,
” overemphasizing, Tamara thought, the shortened version of their son’s name. “Want to show us around campus?”

“Yeah. That’d be cool,” her kind, thoughtful, amazing son replied. “Let me just grab my keys and stuff.”

So, they trailed after him to his room. The place looked studiously clean, and Tamara surmised the guys had spent a whole half hour at least sprucing it up.

They’d met Lance and his dad in August when all the students were moving in. The roommate and his father seemed like a friendly pair, but they’d all been preoccupied with the unpacking and the transition, so they’d just shaken hands, chitchatted superficially for twenty minutes and then parted, mostly in relief. Tamara had spoken to Lance on the phone all of twice since then and wondered what he’d been up to in the intervening weeks.

“So, uh, where’s Lance?” she asked, hoping the answer wasn’t “scoring drugs in Zilker Park” or “out getting his gun license.”

“Crashin’ with this ho’ he picked up at a party last night,” Benji replied evenly.

She stared at him. Jon’s eyes widened, too.

Her son glanced seriously between her and his father several times before breaking into a grin. “Totally kidding, you guys. Lighten up!” His smiled broadened. The same sweet grin he’d had as her darling ten-year-old. “Lance is a hard worker. He got a job at one of the stores in SoCo, the South Congress district,” he explained. “Lots of coffee shops and some kinda wild stores, but it’s a pretty safe area. He’s working until six, which is what he usually does on Saturdays, and he’s a good guy, okay?”

Tamara could see he was being utterly sincere, and she relaxed enough to smile back. “Okay. Well, maybe he can join us for dinner or something tonight. We could take you both out to a restaurant you like, a late movie even. And if you want to stay—” She’d been about to suggest that Benji could have a couple nights of luxury at their four-star hotel, but the expression on his face stopped her.

“Oh, um, no. Not for Lance. But thanks. He’s already got plans for tonight. Tickets to a concert downtown.” He chuckled at some private memory. “This is a wicked cool music town. There are some really hot acts that come here, and we saw these local guys at the Austin City Limits Music Festival two weekends ago that are performing by the riverfront tonight. So, Lance’ll be at that.”

Tamara swallowed, suddenly understanding. “And you had a ticket, too,” she guessed. “You cancelled out because of us, right?”

“Hey, it’s no biggie,” Benji said, suddenly interested in the contents of his upper-left desk drawer. “Someone else’ll be able to use it. I get to go to stuff like that all the time, but I don’t get to see you two very often.” He exhaled fast and beamed another of his trademark grins at them.

He meant it, Tamara realized. He really did. But she hated to make him sacrifice a single thing on her behalf, not when it was within her power to prevent it.

“When are your friends leaving tonight?” she asked.

He scrunched his eyebrows together. “Oh, I dunno. Seven, maybe? But—”

“We can have you back by then, right, Jon?” She shot a Say Yes look at her husband and nodded for emphasis.

“Sure,” Jon said. Then, to Benji, “You’ve still got your ticket?”

“Yeah, but it’s really no big thing.” Benji shrugged, but the want and the hope in his eyes gave him away.

Tamara felt the tears begin to prickle again and dampen her lashes as she realized there’d be no late-night chats tonight, like they’d had sometimes when he’d been in high school. No midnight movie or room-service breakfast with him at their hotel. At least not this time.

“It
is,
though,” she told him, forcing her brightest smile at her bighearted and unbelievably loving son. “We don’t want you to miss anything good.”

She knew her smart, beautiful boy wasn’t doing stupid things, and he wasn’t making shallow friendships. He was
thriving
away from home, and she needed to facilitate that. Honor it.

They let him walk them around
his
campus, show off the sites. Several times he waved a greeting to some girl or group of guys. They took him to dinner at a burger joint he’d heard raves about and listened with rapt interest to his tales of Professor-this or TA-that. Those four and a half hours flew by too quickly.

“Hey, see ya both tomorrow,” he said, as they dropped him back off at his dorm. “I’ve gotta get a little studying done somewhere in there, but we can do whatever you want for most of the day, okay?”

They agreed, watched him disappear into the building and then sat in their rental car in silence.

“You want to just go to the hotel now?” Jon asked her. “Or would you like to have a cup of coffee somewhere?”

“Whatever you’d prefer,” she whispered, because, really, it didn’t matter to her. Without Benji along, all options were equally uninspiring.

Jon chose a Starbucks a mile from their hotel. He went up to the counter to order and she was in charge of selecting the seats. She collapsed into a chair by a window table and studied the passing traffic.

It’d been a day of primarily good things—no drama or big arguments with Jon, quality time with Benji—so, really, she’d had the opportunity to spend a Saturday in the most enjoyable manner possible, and there was still Sunday to look forward to. Maybe shopping in the open-air Arboretum mall or a scenic visit to Lady Bird Lake? The nature of the activity was unimportant—she’d be with her son. But with Jon, tiny dissatisfactions niggled at her and she tried to pinpoint why.

One thing was their hotel room, which they’d checked into before going to Benji’s dorm. How it had these overly fluffy, rose-colored pillows on the bed. Tasteful but easily discernable heart patterns everywhere—painted in the abstract wall pictures, carved in the ceiling’s crown molding, embedded in the hand soap. The subtle implication that there would be romance in the room that night.

But there wouldn’t be.

Her physical relationship with Jon had deteriorated to almost zero. They had sex less than once a month, and only when he initiated, and she wasn’t getting those let’s-get-it-on vibes that night. Most of the time, she wasn’t convinced even
he
wanted to do it, just that it would have been increasingly more difficult to get in the mood if they waited too long. She suspected they both kind of forced themselves into it and that he, like she, had someone else he fantasized about. Maybe all couples went on automatic pilot after a decade or more of marriage. Maybe every spouse had daydreams about the hot neighbor down the street at some time or other. Stuff like that just happened.

But here, at the Starbucks, Jon deposited a couple of nice lattes and a bag of almond biscotti on their table. He seemed in as much of a reflective mood as she was as he blew on his coffee and stared at the flickering lights.

“Our son seems happy,” she said, going for an easy opener.

He nodded. “It’s good to see.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t have an appetite for biscotti, but she played with one anyway just so she had something to do with her fingers.

Jon, too, seemed to need something to fidget with. He pulled out his BlackBerry, scanned it for messages and then just kind of squinted at it.

She hadn’t checked her cell phone for most of the day and wondered if Al had left her a message. The two of them had both been trying to keep the other out of the pit of depression and, strangely, her elderly aunt’s boyfriend was the one person she never had to pretend to be cheery around. She was so grateful to him for having loved Aunt Eliza. So grateful he understood her loss.

“It’s been a stressful fall,” Jon said suddenly. “Ben leaving home. Your aunt passing away. Our…frustrations with each other.” He met her eye and, in that quiet glance, she saw the soul of the man she’d once admired. The man with whom she’d married and had a child.

“It
has
been hard,” she admitted. “We—we aren’t always on the same page, are we?”

He shook his head. “Hard to know what makes a friendship last. What makes a couple grow together. Or apart.” He drank a little of his coffee, but then set it down. Pushed it away. “Sometimes I’m not sure, Tamara, if I’m really the man you wanted. Or thought you’d gotten.” He let out a long breath. “I’m not sure if
you
know, either.”