my face. I wanted to run some more, or maybe swim. I just needed to digest for a few minutes first. Then the pleasant waiter was back, humming amiably as he cleared the table.
“Would you care for anything else?” he asked.
The sun felt so good on my cheeks.
“Yes,” I said, without opening my eyes. “Are there any rooms available in this hotel?”
BROOKE
I GUESS I DON’T say a lot of things that surprise people.
I’m a mom, and as a mom I guess I mostly say things that people are expecting to hear.
No, Megan, you may not sleep over at Parker’s on a school night.
Yes, Jared, you must finish the asparagus if you want to have a fudgesicle.
I’m also a wife, and I don’t suppose Scott is very often surprised with most of what he hears me say.
Sweetheart, we are having dinner with the Ronsons on Friday. Don’t forget she’s pregnant but you’re not supposed to know.
If we’re going to do it, lock the door, the kids are probably awake.
I also play tennis with a group of girls three times a week, and our conversations aren’t that shocking either, I would say.
I’m seconds away from getting my period.
I swear if she makes one more comment about my colorist I am going to serve the ball directly into the back of her head.
So, I almost never get to see a look of complete surprise on anyone’s face. And, really, there’s something a bit awful about that. I don’t suppose anyone wants to be known as “predictable.” I pride myself on being dependable, but I never want to be predictable, because that feels about a half step away from boring.
Thus, I can honestly say there was something thrilling about the look on Pamela’s face when I said to her: “Next week, I want you to photograph me naked.”
At first she didn’t speak. Then she blushed, and shook her head a bit as if to clear her ears.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What?”
“I want you to shoot me naked.”
She paused again. “Wait a minute, darling,” she said, “which of us do you mean would be naked?”
And then we were both giggling, in a way I don’t get to giggle very often anymore. We giggled the way Megan and her girlfriends do when I accuse them of having crushes on one of the Jonas Brothers, or on the supercute boy a grade ahead of them, with the curly hair. We giggled like lifelong girlfriends, which actually we are not: I have only known Pamela for four years, since the night I had to keep Scott from punching a woman in the face.
Pamela is a generation older than I, and one of the core friends every woman needs to have. You know what I mean. First, every woman needs a sister, and if she does not have one then she needs a friend who is like a sister: one who cares for your children as though they are her own, and will tell you in the car if you have too much blush on. Then there is the friend who knows everything that is going on, who keeps you up on all the gossip, whether it’s by telling you Brad and Angelina are really split up this time and she’s engaged to her astrologist, or Susan came home and found Richard in the hot tub with Anna Demetrio; apparently, they had bathing suits on but, please, that is beyond inappropriate. Every woman needs that friend, too. And then, most important, every woman also needs a friend who is like a mother, but one she’ll actually listen to. When my mother tries to tell me I am making a mistake, half the time I go ahead because she has questioned me. But every woman needs a friend who will tell you when you are about to go wrong: Don’t feed your children tilapia, it has too much of the bad Omega-6s and not enough of the good Omega-3s. Don’t stay in that hotel: there is nothing for the kids to do and it’s a twenty-minute walk to the nearest decent restaurant. Don’t try the Metamucil wafers, they don’t make you regular, they make you stuffed and bloated. That’s a core friend every woman needs.
Pamela is that friend to me. She is older and worldly and provides the perfect sounding-board; I can’t recall ever needing advice and failing to get it from her. She’s also the best photographer in Greenwich, which doesn’t hurt, either. That’s how we came to meet