My Brilliant Friendwould cost a small fortune to mail across town, but it would be worth it if Jess got the message. This mission was a worthwhile distraction from her pregnancy, which continued apace, but it felt good to have something else to hope for.
When Clara opened the door two weeks later and saw the package had been returned, still wrapped in its plain brown paper, her heart didn’t even fall. By now she had become skilled in the art of resignation. And what kind of olive branch was a book in the mail anyway? And not even a book she’d been able to enjoy.
But maybe…She picked it up—no small feat at thirty-two weeks pregnant, bending around her belly, trying not to put too much pressure on her knees—and turned it over, and there it was, Jess’s familiar handwriting, Clara’s name neatly penned. Not “Return to sender” but something different, which was why Clara had printed her return address so carefully. She wanted Jess to know how to reach her.
Jess had mailed back the book with a piece of paper tucked inside it. The paper was worn so thin it was soft, andthere were remnants of tape stuck around its tattered edges, the whole thing so delicate that Clara had to unfold it with care, and it took her too long to realize that what she was holding had been created by her hand. The map was from a time she could barely remember, but she remembered drawing it, remembered the impulse to hold the world in its entirety. Clara had once been so confident that all of it was hers to have and that nothing beyond its margins really mattered. Here they were, the two of them, Jess and Clara, the centre of the universe.
Inside the book, Jess had added to Clara’s message:I thought I was the only one. I tried and I tried but I just couldn’t love it. I just don’t think anything has to be this bleak. Surely there’s a possibility for a different kind of ending?She’d written her phone number, her email, both the same as ever. She’d been waiting all this time.
Clara sat down with her laptop to write a message to Jess. Jess, who was now a seasoned mother of two kids, seven and five, who’d already travelled the road Clara was on now. Jess, who’d known Clara longer and better than anyone. Even though Jess had known her last when she was a different kind of person, someone who hadn’t lost so hard and bet all of it anyway, Clara wasn’t sure she’d be able to do this without her.
She wrote, “So here’s a shocker: I am having a baby. It’s a girl and she’s the size of a napa cabbage, whatever that means. Apparently normal in every single way, and with little else in common with vegetables. This is happening even though I’d started to think that any offspring of mine would be more like that tiny bit of woolly mammoth DNA scientists found preserved in amber—do you remember that? The smallest fraction of possibility, science fiction instead of probable. But it’s actually true, the opposition of extinction. PS: Did you ever hear about Heqet?”
Jess responded within the hour: “Oh my frog-headed goddess.”
Then Clara:I’m just so sorry.
Jess:Me too.
—
They made plans to meet, and then those plans came true. Clara had been waiting, she answered the door before Jess even knocked. There was a split second of awkwardness when the door flew open and neither of them knew how to be.
Jess broke the spell. “You just won me a hundred bucks.”
“What?”
“It was a feeling I had. Not since always, but in the last little while, that you were going to come back. I was ready. I couldn’t chase you, I had to wait. And Adam said maybe it was just because waiting felt easier than accepting, and I guess it was. But here you are.”
“What about the money?”
“We made a bet. Adam lost. I don’t think Adam’s ever lost a bet before, but you’re sort of a wild card. And I was betting on that.”
“Adam!” said Clara.
“Don’t take it personally,” said Jess. Clara led her inside. “He didn’t know you as well as I do.” Jess was still talking as she followed Clara down the hall. “I don’t even know where to start, how to say how sorry I am.”
Clara stopped abruptly. “How about we just don’t,” she said. “Start, I mean. We’ve wasted so much time already.”
“You disappeared,” said Jess. “And I justlet you.” They arrived in the kitchen, and Clara poured two glasses of iced tea. “I had no idea at the time what you must have been going through. Everything was just so intense, so exhausting. Maybe by now you understand.” She gestured towards Clara’sbody. “You’re blooming,” she said, which Clara figured was code forWhere in god’s name have your cheekbones gone?
“I look fat,” said Clara. No use skirting the issue.
“You look pregnant,” said Jess.
“I,” said Clara, “have never ever felt so good.” Not for her the list of complaints from women in their third trimester. Sure, she’d lost her second-trimester bounce, but for the most part, especially while in repose, she felt buoyed by a sea of wellness, not even minding the weight she’d gained, her thickening legs and arms and the hugeness of her belly and her breasts. Or her chins. She didn’t care about her chins, because she’d fallen in love with herself. She could celebrate. And eat brioches when the urge struck her, because her body was telling her something and she would listen to her body, and for the first time in a long time it was a body she trusted, and everything was unfolding as it should.
“But I’m sorry too,” Clara said as she led the way outside, carrying her glass and a plate of cookies. “I’ve been desperately sorry ever since. It was shameful.” She interrupted Jess’s protest. “It was. I know it. I always knew. I was lost in my own head, and maybe we can get on with it now?”
They took their seats in the shade. The patio doors were open wide so that the living room, stuffed with books, rugs, blankets and throw pillows blended seamlessly into the outdoors. “Oh, I know this aesthetic,” Jess said, looking around. “You’ve still got your steamer trunk.” With the Cunard Line stickers, and Nick’s turntable and a stack of vinyl records were piled on top of it.
Jess looked good, Clara realized, once she’d examined her more closely. A bit thin, and wan. Tired, of course, but only as tired as anyone with small children who had almostmade it to the end of the day. Her hair was coloured nearly blond now. She was wearing one of those beige sack dresses, surely made from organic cotton, that only looked good on two percent of women. Jess and Adam must have a lot of money. “This is delicious,” she was saying, holding up her drink.
“The key is sugar,” said Clara, who’d already downed hers. A look of distaste crossed Jess’s face. “What?” Clara said. “Sugar’s good for you. It comes from the earth.” She picked up a cookie as if to prove it.
Jess nibbled one reluctantly. “Nick’s not here?”
“He’s at work.” Clara explained that he was working overtime, which they were grateful for. She had a few more weeks left at the museum, and then they’d have to learn to live without her income. She’d qualify for unemployment, though it wouldn’t be much.
