We Should Not Be Friends, page 15
Finally, Maxey stopped talking and just stared at the ocean. There we were, three friends on the wrong side of forty, with our eyes fixed on the horizon, which was growing harder and harder to see as the sun was melting behind us.
“Let me show you one more thing,” Maxey said. He took us down to the boats to point out one that was named Dave and Di. When that letter came from Maxey those years before, Singer and his wife, Diana, had sent a check—and now had a boat named after them. I was even more sorry than before that I had waited so long to send a check or give my friend support of any kind when he was building the school of his dreams.
* * *
—
“Now we can toast your arrival,” said Maxey as soon as we were home.
First up were the Kaliks, the beer of the Bahamas. At some point, Maxey produced a bottle of rum. He also came up with some spiny lobsters and some grouper that he’d either caught or had been given to him. We grilled those. A bottle of wine was opened and drunk. After dinner, we found ourselves sitting outside, the three of us, dangling our legs over the edge of the dock. Maxey pointed a flashlight beam at the water so we could see the bull sharks and nurse sharks swimming right below our feet. We talked almost nonstop, but when we were quiet, I listened to the sounds of the water slapping up against the pylons, regular as a heartbeat, and the occasional grinding of a boat against the planks. It was a hot night and I felt as though I could happily slide into the water—but for the sharks.
“They won’t hurt you,” Maxey said, able to read my thoughts.
“I’m good,” I assured him.
It was then that Maxey decided to share with me a wound that wasn’t healing: he told me why Pam wasn’t there. Singer already knew the whole story, but he hadn’t informed me because it wasn’t his story to tell. Over the years, Singer and Maxey had become much closer than Maxey and I had. I wondered if perhaps it was because Singer, like Maxey, was straight and had kids, whereas Maxey might have thought that I wouldn’t understand all he was going through. But Singer and I had grown much closer over the years, too, so maybe it had nothing to do with kids. Perhaps Singer was better at this kind of long-distance friendship than Maxey or me. He was certainly less self-absorbed than either of us.
“Pam is a really beautiful person inside and out, and we’re both totally comfortable with each other. Right from the start, we loved having fun. And we both love the ocean. I mean, when we met, she even tried to teach me how to surf and that was pretty funny; I couldn’t even sit on the board, and every time a wave came it would sweep me off and wash the board back to the beach. After a few hours of that, she told me, ‘Maybe you should just bodysurf.’
“We loved the ocean. We loved each other. We both wanted kids. Pam really wanted to be a mom, and I knew she would be a great one. Right from the start, we were a team; it was the two of us against the world. When we got married in Subic Bay, when I was on that first Pacific tour in the navy, it was this super small wedding: the ship’s captain married us, my assistant platoon officer was my best man, and the base commodore’s wife was Pam’s maid of honor. Then we came back and had a small family wedding in San Diego, just a party in the backyard of the Admiral’s house with our families and a few buddies, and started our life.”
“Yeah, thanks so much for inviting us,” said Singer.
“We only invited a few local friends, butthead,” Maxey said.
“Then we went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey to learn Spanish together—that was one of the reasons we were eager to get married. Pam found an apartment for us in Pacific Grove and we moved up there. It was an awesome way to start a marriage, and we were still a team, but it became really challenging because we were literally in school together. We were even in the same class together. We were basically together 24/7. We had this wonderful teacher from Spain who became kind of a surrogate mother to us. She knew the tension that exists in a new couple. Pam and I also have such different personalities. Pam is super smart and doesn’t have to be onstage, and I’m always struggling to feel smart and always have to be onstage.
“So, I think at the end of the day, even though I did all the homework and was more engaged, Pam did as well or better in the class than I did. And I wasn’t good about that. There were also times at the end of a class when Pam would say to me, ‘You were an asshole in there. You’ve got to shut up.’ After a while we got really out of sync. I mean, literally. Our diurnal phase is very different, and sometimes that’s great and sometimes it’s really challenging. Pam can stay up all night long. I get up early in the morning. It’s not necessarily that I’m a morning person, but I override whatever fatigue I have with just crazy singing and jumping around; the more tired I am the more I act like an idiot. I want to turn music on—and she is like: ‘Do not talk to me. Do not say anything. Do not turn on music. Shut up.’
“After that, we were stationed in Panama and had Britters. So, once again, it was us against the world. There was that crazy time when Pam and Brittney had to evacuate back to the U.S. in the middle of the night with only a few hours’ notice—but even that brought us closer together.”
I realized I still didn’t understand what had happened in Panama during Maxey’s deployment and why Pam had to evacuate, but now was not the time to ask.
“Then we moved to Texas, where I had the office job with Ross Perot, and then Brocq was born and then Tyler five years later in Lawrenceville and then Tegan while I was in graduate school and then we started the school. During all those years, we never had much conflict. But we never really talked either. We weren’t really a team anymore. Just two people in constant motion.
“After Tegan started to walk, it was the end of our bringing life into the world. That hit us pretty hard, but it hit Pam really hard. There was some postpartum depression and I mostly ignored it. I was focused on the school, only on the school, and working like a maniac. That was true before Hurricane Floyd, but a million times more so after. My mind was always elsewhere—with the students, the faculty, raising money, dreaming up new buildings, research, conservation, and everything that goes with being the leader of a school. It’s a massive ego trip and I loved it. And the more depressed Pam was, the more time I spent at the school.
“So here she was, really depressed and kind of just shutting down, and she also had to deal with the loss of her husband—because I was married to the school at that point and not to her—and the loss of her ability to bring more kids into the world. I mean, she could have continued to have kids, but I made the move to get snipped and we both came to recognize the reality that our last child was Tegan, which had been our plan. But none of this was anything we ever really discussed, and I poured fuel on the flames because I wasn’t willing to talk. I just was like, ‘You should go get help.’ ”
I noted that Maxey had said “you” and not “we.”
“The way I said it to Pam it was like an accusation: You. You’re the problem. I wasn’t that direct, but that was the message she was getting. Then it got really bad. Really bad. Eventually she just needed to go for a while. So, the first thing she did was pack her bags and return to New Jersey to get some space. And I stayed here with all four kids.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. And then added, “I wish I’d known.” But I regretted saying that. It sounded like I was criticizing Maxey for not telling me. Maxey said nothing for a while and then continued.
“Brittney was in eighth grade at Deep Creek Middle School and the other three kids were in the local primary school. We found a great Bahamian lady who came in and helped. It was so hard for Pam. I mean she needed space for herself away from me, but to get that meant literally giving up, for a little while, what was most important to her, our kids. While she was back in New Jersey, she was running admissions for the Island School and she lived in a little apartment that was also the office for the school. Pam was handling the school’s finances, too. Pam talked to our kids every day. After three months, she came back to Eleuthera for the first time, and after that, she would go back and forth. When she was here, she would live in the house with the kids and I moved to a neighbor’s house. She was very clear. She told me, ‘I need space away from you and I want to be with our kids, so when I’m here you need to get out.’
“After a while she came to me and said she didn’t want the kids growing up down here without her. She told me that I never gave them enough time before and she didn’t see how I would be able to give them enough time now.
“The two older kids had been away at camp when she told me this—my parents had spent some money to have them go to this rawhide camp out West—and they’d had a great time. Brittney was thirteen and Brocq was eleven. When I went to pick them up, I said, ‘Your mom and I are getting separated for real, and Mom’s going to move you guys up to the States along with Tyler and Tegan, and I want you to tell me how you feel about this.’ Brittney was very matter-of-fact and was like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready, I’ve done the Island School thing; I should go up there and work toward getting into Lawrenceville,’ and Brocq was the opposite. He said, ‘Dad, I can’t leave the island. I’ll die up there.’ I convinced Pam that it was okay for Brocq to stay, and that’s what happened. Brocq stayed here with me for two years while Brittney and the little girls went back to the U.S. So we became a ripped-apart family, and I just have to handle the fact that it’s my fault.
“Still, we made sure the kids talked all the time and got together a lot during those two years, and Pam and I have stayed connected on many levels. Pam still does the admissions for the school. Brocq’s now back in the States for good with Pam and his sisters. He’s in eighth grade and will go to high school there, too. I’m not going to get Pam back, but we’re doing our best for the family. A friend has loaned me a garage apartment in New Jersey, so I can spend lots of time with our children. We know we are so damn lucky because we have the greatest kids.”
I counted the years—David and I had been together for seventeen years. We didn’t have children. We hadn’t started a school or company together. We had our share of arguments, some major and some trivial. I didn’t feel I had any good advice to give Maxey. I just said again that I was sorry, that it must be difficult, especially with the kids.
Singer had much more to say, and I noted how nuanced his thinking had become since our school days. This wasn’t the pugnacious, argumentative guy who had entered our lives all those years ago—this was a different David Singer. He started by saying that, yes, it sounded like Maxey did screw up, in a big way—but that we all screw up in different ways, that life is just screwing up again and again, but maybe we can learn each time something about ourselves and the world. He didn’t hold back, either, with his admiration for Pam. Not in an accusatory “She’s right and you’re wrong” way, nor in a wistful “You had something great but you blew it” way, but rather to acknowledge that Maxey’s sadness was justified: that Singer recognized that Maxey had every reason to be sad. He would be happy again, of course. But the loss was real.
I think that’s when the bottle of rum reappeared. The last time I looked at my watch it was one a.m. We had been drinking steadily for nearly eight hours.
* * *
—
I woke to machine-gun fire. Or maybe it was fireworks in my ear. Or maybe it was someone hitting my head with a mallet.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up—time to exercise!”
It was Maxey. Pounding on the door.
My heart was racing. My head was throbbing. I was pouring with sweat. My sheets were bunched up around my legs. I didn’t quite know where I was.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up—coffee’s on—we leave in ten minutes.”
Maxey kept banging.
“Oh, Maxey,” I groaned. “I can’t, I just don’t think I can do this. I need to sleep.”
There was a pause. The banging on the door stopped. Then silence.
I lay in bed for a minute and replayed in my mind the conversation from the day before about how morning exercise wasn’t just exercise, it was part of what made the school a community. I thought about how Maxey had said how much it would mean to him if Singer and I took part. I thought about how I knew Singer would do it, and then I would feel like a real schmuck: the friend who didn’t. I thought about all Maxey had shared with us just a few hours ago. And I thought, again, How bad could it be? A little jog, a little stretching, and then I could blissfully go back to bed for a few hours.
I shouted that I was coming and to wait for me, threw on some shorts, a T-shirt, some sneakers, had some aspirin, chugged coffee Maxey had left for me, and met him outside the house, where he and Singer were stretching in the dark. I stretched, too.
A few minutes later, we were off. We jogged at a modest pace and I had a little trouble keeping up but felt good. My head cleared. It was going to be a beautiful morning. Before I knew it, there was the school sign, signaling the end of the run. Waiting for us were a group of students and the faculty, though I could barely tell the one group from the other, partly because the sun hadn’t yet risen, but also because they all looked about twelve to me.
Then, disturbingly, the group started jogging away from the school, down the road, in the direction of the airport.
“Where are we heading?” I asked Maxey.
“We are going off on our run,” he answered.
“I thought we just did the run!”
“Oh, no, that was just how we got to the school. Now we are doing the run.”
I didn’t ask how long the run would be. I knew I wouldn’t like the answer. I started sweating profusely. I thought I was going to vomit. After about twenty minutes, I started to fall way behind. Maxey fell behind with me, saying his knee was bothering him. I don’t think his knee was bothering him. After an hour we were still running. My legs were cramping. I didn’t think I was going to make it. We did, however, seem to be running in something of a loop. I figured we would eventually be back at the school. The sun was rising and it was already getting hot.
“Almost there,” said Maxey, not at all out of breath.
“How far are we running?” I asked, gasping for air.
“Just five miles,” Maxey answered.
And then, finally, at last, we were done. The rest of the group was by the side of the road, shifting from foot to foot. Curiously, they seemed to be perched on the edge of a cliff. Not quite back at the school, but close to it. I walked up to them, clutching my side.
When I looked over the cliff, I saw some of the runners swimming.
Suddenly I realized that, one by one, the runners were jumping off the cliff. They were going to swim back to school. “Oh, hell, no,” I said.
I looked at Maxey, who laughed.
Maxey, Singer, and I walked back. Singer didn’t seem too winded; I was still struggling to fill my lungs and my legs were starting to stiffen. But soon we were approaching the circular courtyard in front of the school. The sun had risen quickly, and there was no shade to be found where we were standing. In the distance was the dining hall; I saw eggs and a lot more coffee in my future. Maybe some tropical fruit?
“Whoa, where you going?” Maxey asked me.
“Breakfast!” I replied joyfully.
“Well, if you must. But we’ve already missed most of morning circle; that’s the ritual we do every morning. We circle around the flagpole at six thirty before the sun comes up over the water. Every day a different student leader calls us all together; then the students count off so we make sure everyone is accounted for; and then there are announcements. Then we all sing together the Bahamian national anthem, which is actually a beautiful song—not about war, like ours, but about lifting your head to the rising sun, pledging to excel with love and unity, marching sunward even though the weather may hide treacherous shoals, and finally reaching your God. Love that it says ‘your God’ and not just ‘God.’ Then we do some stretching, basic yoga poses; we’re just in time for that.”
“Maxey, I don’t have a clue how to do yoga.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll walk you through it. I do yoga every day now. And meditation, too. The key is breathing. Just follow me. And just do your best. It’s not a competition. But remember to breathe.”
We joined the dusty, sweaty circle. The student leader was guiding us all through the stretching. Child’s pose. Downward dog. Warrior. Sun salutation. I looked over at her but was constantly back to front, or stumbling forward or backward. Maxey kept looking over at me, and when he did, he would let out a big breath, reminding me to breathe. I kept forgetting to do that. My muscles were screaming. Sweat was pouring down my face. I found I couldn’t hold any of the poses—it was like everyone around the circle was made of wire and I was made of dough. Then I would catch Maxey’s eye. He would breathe, and I would breathe along with him.
Now that the sun was higher in the sky, catching gleaming, dust-covered faces, I looked again at Maxey and almost didn’t recognize him. Something about him was different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was him, but it wasn’t him. Maxey and not-Maxey.
Then I realized what it was. That kid I had met who bounced around the hall, who leaped from sofa to chair, who couldn’t sit at a table for ten whole minutes, who interrupted silence with loud snatches of song: that kid had learned to be still.
Could a Maxey who wasn’t in motion really be Maxey? There was another Maxey I was going to need to get to know.
This was the first time I’d ever really visited Maxey in his world. At college, our secret society’s hall was so exotic and preposterous that it belonged to all of us together but to none of us in particular; maybe that’s part of the reason we could all be ourselves there.
After graduation, aside from reunions, we’d met entirely in my New York City neighborhood’s bars and restaurants. I’d known Maxey for more than twenty years but until that weekend had never been in his home.
