the janitor on the popularity spectrum in suburban American high schools—but we didn’t give a shit. Cheerleaders mocked us and football players spat on us, and we loved every single minute of it.
Asher was supersmart and received a partial scholarship to Brown. His parents, though stunningly cheap, were so terrified he was gay that they liquidated their 401(k) plans to pay for the rest of their wayward son’s Ivy League education, hoping that four years at what they assumed was a nice, conservative East Coast campus might be enough to straighten him out.
Although Asher wasn’t even remotely into guys, he truly enjoyed letting his parents think he was, so he was more than a little peeved when he could no longer avoid telling them he and Zoe were getting married (“It worked!” Mr. and Mrs. Blake had apparently shouted to each other when he gave them the news). I was a bit surprised myself when I learned that they were together, since none of us had ever hooked up in high school, except for the time Zoe and I got drunk at a Pearl Jam concert and made out just to see what it would be like. After Asher left for school, Zoe says she just sort of realized he was The One, and so she eventually followed him out to Rhode Island. I suppose two years of soul-crushing, booze-blurred bar-hopping with me and George was enough to give shy little Zoe the courage she needed to profess her undying love to an old friend.
Happily, the feeling was quite mutual. Now they live in Philadelphia, where Asher works as a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. and Zoe has a dog-grooming business. These days, they’re quite wealthy, too, courtesy of Zoe’s generous dad, who had recently come into more money than he could ever spend, due to a substantial patent payout on some computer-chip thingie he’d dreamed up years ago. That’s basically it. We still keep in touch, though not as often as we should.
When the two of them walked into the restaurant, they were as luminous as the last time I’d seen them, at their wedding almost a year earlier. Asher and Zoe were one of those couples who were completely unaware of how wonderful they were together. You know the type, I’m sure—that they didn’t make you sick is almost enough to make you sick.
After the usual catching up, complete with mutual berating for not visiting more often, I could see that they were anxious to tell me something. Naturally, I figured they were pregnant.
“Are you kidding? Me? Pregnant? No way!” said Zoe.
Asher rolled his eyes.
“Why not?” I asked. “What’s so crazy about that?”
“She tells me we’re not even close to ready yet,” he sighed.
“But you’re the only married friends I have,” I pleaded. “You’re also the only normal people I know who are married. I need you to have kids. You’ve got to restore my faith in the whole process.” Thinking of my nieces and nephews, I figured it would be nice to know there was such a thing as a non-obnoxious child before having one myself.
“Have your own damn kids,” Zoe laughed, pushing her long blond bangs out of her eyes.
“Maybe later,” I said.
“I’ve told her I’m ready to plant my seed,” Asher said, grinning.
“My field needs to lie fallow for a while. But you can plant your seed in the shower, if you like.”
“Mock me, hun, I don’t mind,” he said as he turned to face her. “But the simple truth is, I want to decorate the earth with as many beautiful babies as you’ll let me give you. It’s the only thing I know to do to keep from sliding into the abyss, to make it all mean something. Otherwise, it’ll be like we were never here at all.”
Zoe stared at him quietly for a moment. If a guy ever said anything like that to me, I’d be on my back with my legs in the air praying for fertilization before the waitress even noticed we were gone.
“Sorry.” She sniffed a little and tried to smile.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “He can wait until you’re ready.”
“It’s not that…” Asher said as he squeezed her hand. “It’s her dad. He’s not well.”
“What?” My heart tightened. Douglas Watts was a true sweetheart—a hardworking single dad who’d raised Zoe and her sisters into three strong, self-assured women.
He leaned in and said quietly, “They found a spot on his liver. He’s having a biopsy tomorrow, but it doesn’t look good. That’s why we came home for a bit.”
Zoe looked at the wall behind me and blinked back tears.
And I’d thought they were pregnant. I knew there wasn’t much I could say to reassure her.
“I’m here if you need me.”
That was more than three months ago—when all this started, I suppose.
In a typical addition to the Bad-Things-That-Happen-To-Good-People file, Mr. Watts’s spot did turn out to be cancer. He had surgery, followed by a round of chemo, and he’s doing okay for the time being, but there’s really no way of knowing for sure. On the plus side, Zoe and Asher visited as often as they could throughout the summer, so at least I was able to see them a bit more than usual. And there’s nothing like the heady combination of hanging out with a great couple and a reminder that death can knock on your door at any moment to make you sit up and reassess your own life.
The more I saw of my two old friends—truly in love, free from money trouble, oozing career satisfaction, leaning on each other in a time of crisis—the more I wanted what they have for myself. If that makes me a pathetic throwback to the 1950s, unable to feel complete without a man on my arm, then so be it. I can live with that.
But I also began to see how Zoe’s substantial cash flow likely has a lot to do with their overall happiness, their success, both as a couple and professionally. It’s what has allowed each of them to be living exactly the lives they want to be living, which in turn frees them from ninety percent of the stresses the rest of us have to deal with every single day—the little things, like mortgage payments and business trips and mean bosses, which, in turn, all too often lead to the bigger things, like bankruptcy and divorce and broken dreams. Zoe and Asher are blessed with the freedom to put into their relationship the tremendous effort it requires to sustain a happy one, no matter how perfect or loving, while the rest of us are left bickering over bills, too exhausted by the end of the day to do anything but watch TV and not have sex.
Yes, the money really does seem to be a crucial part of the equation. And if actively looking for a partner who has some makes me materialistic, shallow, whatever…then I can live with that, too, provided he’s there by my side to lovingly fib to me and tell me it isn’t at all true, that I’m not like that, while we toast each other’s successes in the hot tub.
“Virginia Woolf said that a woman can’t write without a room of her own.”
“But Holly, you already have a room of your own,” George points out. We are well into our second drinks, huddled in a dark booth at the back of the bar. So far, she isn’t overly impressed with The Plan. Bringing her onside isn’t going to be easy.
“And I spend fifty hours a week at work so that I can have that room! How can I be expected to write if I work fifty hours a week?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “But you rarely work fifty hours a week, Holly, and if I’m correctly remembering the bedtime stories
