Friendships were cremated in the flame wars that erupted around that one.
I replay Aubrey’s life now if we had lived here and wonder how my daughter with her early, inexplicable passion for all things pink and princess would have done in this hothouse of political correctness. Even in Parkhaven, Dori had chided me about raising a little Barbie doll.
Dori, my fellow exile. For the first time, now that it is an actual possibility, I imagine myself living in this neighborhood, a neighborhood filled with Dori clones. A neighborhood where—judging from recent postings that I’d not taken seriously until this moment—if you weren’t tattooed up like the Illustrated Man and blogging about the many ways your husband/lover/whoever was begging you for anal sex, you would probably be far weirder than a little armpit-hair ranching had made me in Parkhaven.
Though I am damned if I will reveal it to Martin, I suddenly feel more like an exile than ever. A homesick exile from some Middle Eastern country who has just recalled that her lost paradise was run by the Taliban. I don’t know what Martin reads in my face, but he says, “You’re a true rebel, Camille.”
Camille. Again, he summons up the self I had to leave behind.
“It’s what I loved about you. You always knew exactly who you were and what you wanted.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Martin, genuinely caught off guard, blinks. “Cam, don’t you remember how Amy and Gianna and that whole Sycamore Heights group used to call you Cammando?”
“They made up nicknames for everyone.”
“Yeah. Nicknames that stuck because they were so perfect.”
“Me? Cammando?”
“Absolutely. How could you forget that? You made up your mind what you wanted and you went after it.”
“I did?”
“Sure. A baby. Good schools. Getting certified. You were the woman with a plan.”
“We made those decisions together.”
“Back then? Make a decision? That was my Downfall.”
Downfall. A tiny pinprick to the brain. Next worms its way in by giving free sessions with their Breathalyzer contraption in which they identify the mark’s “Downfall,” the thing that’s wrong with the person’s life, then promise to cure it.
“Not you, though,” he continues. “Knowing who you were was always such a given to you. You were my anchor and I held on as long as I could.”
“Held on? Martin, what was you setting us up in Parkhaven except you letting go? You planting me someplace where you could leave me behind?”
“Real estate would never have changed what happened to us. What I had to do.”
“ ‘Had to do’?” I don’t bother restraining the acid in my tone. I put hydrochloric quotation marks around his words.
“Okay, should the name of this production be Let’s Help Our Daughter or should it be All the Ways Martin Fucked Cam Over?”
“I’m voting for Martin Could Be the Biggest Asshole in the Universe.” Going beyond sarcasm straight to out-and-out insult is delicious, like wriggling out of a pair of Spanx. Martin seems to take no notice. He’s more Zen than Zen Mama. I can see now why Aubrey hated my mask of implacable calm.
“I know that you, that we, want her to go to college, but why? What is our root desire for her?”
“Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Maybe that she won’t end up scrubbing out toilets at Applebee’s. Is that a good ‘root desire’?”
“Lot of baristas with college degrees. Probably even a few toilet scrubbers. No, what is your dream for her?”
I almost say “adventures,” but remember how Aubrey chastised me for that and turn the question on him: “What’s yours?”
Without hesitating, Martin says, “I hope she will have what we ha … had.”
The drag before he says “had” was Martin catching himself almost saying “have.” That is Martin almost letting it slip that I am as changeable a fabric for him as he is for me. That within my double-faceted weave the iridescent person I was when we first met will always wait, will always sparkle. That is when I realize that I have the same gift he does: We can give each other back our youth. This is the crack cocaine that Dori was talking about, and I am stunned to realize that Martin might be smoking it too.
My phone rings. I check it, tell Martin, “It’s her.”
Martin tips his head back and slaps his hand on his chest with relief, then steps away from the table, out of earshot.
“Aubrey?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m sorry I couldn’t call. But I’m fine so—”