then she grabbed two coasters because she knew that MaryAnne wouldn’t want rings left behind, and then, finally, she sat across from her old friend to drink some lemonade.
“I owe you an apology,” Cleo said. “A real one. I was a true asshole, and I justified that to myself for a long time, but it really doesn’t make me any less of an asshole.”
MaryAnne bristled, and Cleo didn’t know what she had said that was untrue. She was determined to be honest, and she felt that she was.
“I don’t . . . I don’t really like that language in the house,” MaryAnne said.
“Oh, well then, I apologize for that too.”
MaryAnne wrinkled her nose like she thought Cleo was being snide, which she wasn’t.
“MaryAnne, I am here without agenda. I think . . . You know, for a long time it was only me. Then it was Lucas and me. And that’s just how it’s always been.” Cleo thought of those two girls who had approached her at the Central Park fun run, best friends who never wanted to be apart, and how she told them that at some point they might have to choose themselves. And then she thought of Mariann, the kind nurse who admitted Lucas into the ER, who told her that no woman was an island. “For a long time, I just thought that I had to . . . pick me. I thought that was strength. And all I wanted to be was seen as formidable. But what I didn’t know is that out there on my own, I was actually making myself less formidable. No one can do anything in this life alone. Asking for help when you need it—that’s the real strength. So is apologizing when you’ve really stepped in shit.” Cleo stopped and worried that she’d screwed it up again. “Sorry, crap, not shit.”
MaryAnne took a deep breath, then a long sip of lemonade.
“I don’t know why I’m OK with shit but not asshole,” she said finally. “Do people even consider shit a swear word these days? Esme says it on the phone to her friends, like, every other sentence, even when I make her put her allowance in the swear jar.” She paused. “Maybe I need to lighten up a little.”
“I guess we kind of are who we are, even all these years later.” Cleo grinned, and then they both fell silent.
“I’m sorry I took out that ad,” MaryAnne said.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m not sorry for writing the op-ed, but the ad was a little too far. Well, actually, I’m sorry for the op-ed too—bringing Lucas into it was wrong. I hate that I did it,” she said. “This wasn’t just about you. My husband leaving me for a woman in his office, Esme needing me less and less.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to redefine yourself after so many years of knowing who you were. Maybe we aren’t always who we are. Or can’t be. Or shouldn’t be.”
“Well, God knows I understand that,” Cleo said. “I think we used to think we’d have it all figured out as adults. Didn’t we used to think that? We were in such a rush to be grown-ups.”
MaryAnne nodded, then shook her head.
“We didn’t know shit,” she said, and Cleo couldn’t help but laugh. Then she quieted.
“Do you really think I’m a bad person?” Cleo asked. She realized that maybe that was also why she’d come. She thought it was to apologize, but it was also for penance.
“For a long time I did,” MaryAnne answered. And it was honest, so Cleo didn’t protest. “But I suppose that life is long, and sometimes it is a really stinking slog.” She shook the ice in her lemonade. “And maybe it would be nice to believe that people can change. Because if I don’t or we can’t, then what’s the point of any of this anyway?”
Then the two former best friends sat in MaryAnne Newman’s kitchen, and they drank their lemonades in silence, but together.
It was better, they each thought privately, than drinking them apart.
It wasn’t that everything was smooth for the rest of that late afternoon with MaryAnne. You don’t make up for two decades of pain and betrayal over a glass of lemonade and with a simple apology. They made inconsequential small talk and gossiped about Oliver and Gaby, of course. Soon MaryAnne noticed the time, and Cleo stood to go.
At the door, Cleo didn’t know if she should hug MaryAnne, so instead she said: