Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,134

to his forehead, even though she could never determine anything that way.

“I’ll get the thermometer,” she said.

A few hours later, when Clive’s fever still hadn’t gone down, she took him to Health Services. The campus doctor kept looking from him to her and back again, as if trying to solve a riddle.

* * *

—

Sam went to work on Thursday, as usual. Elisabeth had told her to take the day off, spend it with Clive, but Sam insisted.

Privately, she felt eager for a break, but she didn’t say so out loud.

She had never seen Clive sick before. He made a particularly pitiful patient. Sam tried to be nurturing, but as he coughed up phlegm and moaned throughout the night, she mostly wished he would go downstairs and sleep on one of the sofas in the living room. She felt an odd sense of surprise each time she opened the door to her room and found him lying there.

She had once viewed him as if from a distance, even when they lived together. Now it was like she had a magnifying glass suspended over his every flaw. Without his brightly colored zip-up tops, his designer sneakers, the product in his hair, he suddenly looked like a middle-aged man; a dad in a white undershirt.

Sam hoped the feeling would pass.

Walking into Elisabeth’s house was a relief.

Still, when Elisabeth asked how the rest of their week had been, Sam said, “Great, mostly.”

Elisabeth was effusive in her likes and dislikes. She had spoken several times about how fabulous Isabella was. But she hadn’t said anything about Clive. It was an itch Sam wanted to scratch—to ask, What do you think of him? But she was afraid to know the answer. Weeks ago, Elisabeth had said Sam should bring Clive over for dinner while he was here, but now he was here and no invitation had been extended.

She passed an easy day with Gil, watching him toddle around the living room, doing a load of his laundry while he napped. Sam held each item up before tossing it into the machine. His sweet little shirts and pants and socks. Sometimes, in Gil’s presence, she felt like she would explode if she had to wait much longer for a baby of her own. Other times, Sam felt like she was still a baby, so far from all this.

Her cell phone rang, her mother calling. Sam answered as she finished the laundry.

Her mother sounded tired, and a bit sad.

“I’m working as much overtime as I can,” she said. “Six nights last week.”

Sam thought of what her brother, Brendan, had told her about their father’s job.

“How’s Dad?” she said.

“He’s okay. It’s not the best time for him right now. The economy is good, which usually means his business is good. But for some reason, no one is putting additions on their houses. It’s just the season, probably. Things will pick up in the spring.”

Sam wanted to believe her, but she felt uneasy.

They talked a few minutes longer and then said their goodbyes.

Hanging on a clothing rack in the laundry room was a dress of Elisabeth’s with the tags still on.

It had been there all year. Sam had seen it plenty of times. But now she felt that prickle at the back of her neck. She wanted proof of something. She walked toward the dress, looked at the price. Five hundred and fifty dollars. Elisabeth had never even worn it.

Next, Sam went to the powder room on the first floor. She looked up the price of the peony-scented hand soap online.

Forty-six dollars.

Sam felt her mother’s eyes rolling in her own head.

Elisabeth had said she got it at a drugstore. But the Internet revealed that the soap was exclusively available at Neiman Marcus. (Needless Markup, as Sam’s mother called it.)

Gil was in his high chair (seven hundred dollars), eating a mashed avocado, when Elisabeth came home.

She was on the phone, her face screwed up in annoyance, a stack of mail in her hand.

She smiled at Gil, then said into the phone, “But I still have three vials left over from last time. Why do I have to order new ones? I told you—it doesn’t expire until June. Okay. Good. Thank you. The syringes will be included, right? And the extra needles? Good. No, no, it’s okay. Thanks for your help.”

She looked sheepish as she hung up.

“I have something to tell you,” she said. “I’m going to try to get pregnant again. You’re the only person I’m telling besides Andrew.