Franny could have described the house using a hundred adjectives, and quaint wouldn’t have been on the list. “It’s incredible,” she said, not wanting to contradict Gemma outright.
“Most Brits think Mallorca is for drunken teenagers,” she said. “It’s sort of like reverse psychology, buying a house here, up in the mountains. It really is the best place to get away. It’s like if you and Jim decided to buy a house on the Jersey Shore, everyone would think you’d gone mad, but then there you are at your lovely house, miles away from the puddles of sick and the beaches covered with pale skin and babies in dirty nappies. None of my British friends would ever come here.”
Franny stared out at the mountains. If the house had belonged to her, she would have invited everyone she knew, and they all would have oohed and aahed. She could have her whole terrible book club come and read George Sand and laugh about how wrong she’d been about the island, how depressive. Literally any person in the world would love the view, the food, the people. Franny thought she could write a new brochure for the tourist board if someone so much as slipped a pen into her hand.
“Well, we’ve all had a wonderful time. Eating our way through, really.”
“Oh, I never eat anything. Just the ice cream. I come for a week, eat only ice cream, then go home feeling like I’ve been on a cleanse.” Gemma closed her eyes. The sun was beating straight down on them, and Franny felt the warm part of her hair. “So,” Gemma asked, eyes still shut, “where’s my Charlie?”
He hadn’t told her. Of course he hadn’t told her! If Charles hadn’t said a word to Franny, then he wouldn’t have dared say anything to Gemma. Not since she was in the eleventh grade had Franny felt such delight in the knowing and dispensing of news about her friends’ lives.
“Oh, you don’t know?” Franny feigned surprise. “That’s so odd that he wouldn’t tell you—I know how close you two are.”
Gemma’s eyes flew open. She blinked several times in a row, giving the impression of a rodent emerging from months spent in a dark hole underground. The skin around her eyes had begun to crease, and maybe even sag. Franny didn’t often revel in other people’s flaws, but in this case, she would make an exception. Gemma was waiting for her to speak, with her own lips parted, as if that was where the information would enter her body. She looked like a beautiful, stupid dog. Franny wanted to kiss her on the mouth and then shove her into the pool.
“They went home to get their baby,” Franny said. “A boy. They’re adopting a baby boy.”
“They left? To buy a baby?”
“They’re not buying a baby, they’re adopting a baby.”
Gemma let out a bark. “On purpose? I thought babies only happened to people by accident. I’ve had three husbands and have narrowly avoided them half a dozen times! What on earth is he thinking? Really. Oh, Charlie. Now his paintings will all be dewy little portraits of a half-naked Lawrence with a baby asleep on his chest.” She paused. “Now I’m doubly sorry to have missed him. The last hurrah!”
Franny tried to smile, but couldn’t. “I suppose.”
“Are you and Jim in the master, upstairs?” Gemma asked. She slipped her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. “You wouldn’t mind moving to whichever room Charlie and Lawrence were staying in, would you? You know how it is to sleep in your own bed. All the other mattresses are too soft for my back, like sleeping on giant pillows. You’ll be fine for one night, I’m sure, won’t you? If it’s not too much trouble.” She stood up and dusted off her spotless blue jeans. “I’ll call Tiffany’s and send over a spoon.”
“How nice,” Franny said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll start packing upstairs so that you can have your bedroom back.”
The two women walked toward the door side by side, each one trying to reach the handle first, as if to stake claim to the entire property. Franny would have won if her legs had been a few inches longer, but Gemma grabbed it first, her long, thin fingers gripping it like it was a loose diamond floating in the swimming pool. She held the door open for Franny, who walked in with her head held high. She wouldn’t tell Charles what a bitch his friend was—that would turn her moral high ground to mush. Instead, she would just be secure in her knowledge that she was the better friend, and that his baby, whoever he was and whoever he would grow to be, would call her his aunty, whereas Gemma would never be more than a terrifying shrew on the other side of the globe.
Bobby wanted to swim until he could no longer feel his arms or legs. His personal record in a pool was a mile, mostly because that was six laps at Total Body Power, and doing less than six laps seemed pathetic, but he didn’t much like swimming. No one in Florida did. Swimming was for the tourists, splashing around in a way that would never equal the calories in a single Cuban sandwich. Right now, being in the pool was the only way to make sure that no one would speak to him, and so that’s where Bobby wanted to be, exhausting his limbs and his lungs and avoiding his entire family.
It was so easy for most people. His high school friends had all gone to college and found women to marry. His college friends, too. They met in the dining hall, or in Psych 100, or at a party after a football game, just like they were supposed to. There were a few holdouts, a guy here or there who’d dumped or been dumped or was too much of an introvert to get a real girlfriend. When those friends came through Miami, they’d always have a good time. Bobby would take them to clubs and they’d drink all night. Girls in Miami wore the tiniest dresses and the highest heels, and his friends were always shocked by how many of them there were, like ants on a picnic table. The married friends didn’t visit much, and when they did, it was for dinner and maybe a single drink, and they went to bed. Not even to fuck, but to sleep. Bobby would pretend to leave when they did, but then circle back to the bar by himself. Who went to bed at ten o’clock? He was close to thirty, but he wasn’t dead.
Bobby hadn’t had a real girlfriend until Carmen. Sure, there had been girls, but never anyone serious. When he lost his virginity his freshman year at Miami, he didn’t tell the girl it was his first time, though it was probably pretty obvious. In retrospect he wished he had, because he’d never forget her name—Sarah Jack, like a lumberjack, she’d said at the party where they met—and now it felt weird, like he was still keeping a secret, even though it was almost ten years ago. Bobby felt his outstretched fingers brush against the wall of the pool, and did a somersault underwater to go back in the opposite direction. The water wasn’t chlorinated, and he could open his eyes without them stinging. There were leaves at the bottom of the pool, and he thought about diving down to get them, but he didn’t.
There had been a dozen weddings since college, and he went to all of them—some in New York, some in Florida, but mostly scattered around in the brides’ various hometowns, with some destination exceptions. The most expensive wedding had been in Vail, Colorado, at the top of a mountain. He and Carmen went skiing together for the first time that weekend, and she met all of his friends from high school. A few of them pulled Bobby aside afterward, in the lodge and at the house they were sharing and at the reception, and they all wanted to know how old Carmen was. Some of them were impressed and some were clearly weirded out, but none of them expected to get an invite to Bobby and Carmen’s wedding, that was for sure. At each subsequent event, they were surprised to find the pair still together. A few even included Carmen’s name on their wedding invitations, instead of just a plus-one. But there was always someone sticking his elbow into Bobby’s ribs, always someone calling Carmen a cougar.