We Should Not Be Friends, page 16
What surprised me was how much I liked Maxey’s world: I’d barely had an awake moment to myself since I’d arrived, but I’d enjoyed being part of a boisterous group; my muscles were sore from the run and the yoga, but that felt good, too. Granted, I couldn’t ever see David and me living by the ocean, surrounded by kids and teachers, greeting the sun and swimming with sharks, but I could certainly picture us visiting often, and perhaps even bringing a bit of this world back into our own each time.
It was no accident that Singer had brought Maxey and me back together time and time again; he straddled both our worlds and was equally comfortable in each. Plus, he was like an Australian sheep dog, compelled to keep the herd together.
But with this new perspective came regret: Maxey had four kids I’d never met. I’d missed a whole chapter of his life. It was no one’s fault; it was just a fact. We were in our forties now. I wondered if we could make up for lost time or if, instead, we’d missed the chance to be closer friends.
TRIALS
In fall 2005, nine months after our visit to Eleuthera, Singer was in town for business, and we went out for dinner and drinks—except that Singer was hardly drinking. He was now a vegan and ridiculously trim.
“How’s Maxey?” I asked.
“Not well. You know how he said he didn’t think Pam would ever come back. Well, he really hoped she would. But he says it’s now pretty clear that she’s not coming back. I just talked to him. They’re getting divorced. They go before a judge in a few weeks.”
“Should I call him?”
“Yeah, I think you should,” Singer said.
But I didn’t.
I did consider it but decided I had best not. I thought: Maxey hadn’t confided in me, he’d confided again in Singer. If he wanted me to know, then he would have told me. Maybe he found the whole thing embarrassing. I knew how much he loved Pam and how much he was hoping things would work out. Would he really want me to know they didn’t? Better not to call. I thought back to the Maxey I’d seen during morning yoga: calm, quiet, in control. He would reach out to me if he wanted.
Weeks later, the phone rang.
It was Singer.
We chatted about this and that. Singer’s kids. I told him more work woes. This time he cut me off quickly.
“You didn’t call Maxey, did you?”
“No, I thought maybe he didn’t want me to know what was going on. I mean, he told you first, not me.”
“He’s hurting. A lot. Just fucking call him.”
So I did.
The call started awkwardly. We chatted about the school a bit. I got the lowdown on all his kids. Brocq was longing to get back to Eleuthera. In the two years he’d spent there with his dad, when he wasn’t attending classes at Deep Creek Middle School, he’d spent every spare second in or on the water, surfacing only from time to time to eat, sleep, and prepare to get back out to sea.
Maxey then said things had been really rough for a lot of reasons. I told him I had heard from Singer that he and Pam had given up on getting back together and were now getting divorced.
“We just did,” he said. “It was nuts. The whole thing. I started out by meeting with Pam’s lawyer. And this lawyer was going on and on about the school, and how beautiful it was, and how a neighbor on her street had sent her kid there and all, and how many boats we had. I was thinking, ‘Wow, I know this is Pam’s lawyer, but she seems really cool.’ Then, all of a sudden, it was like her head twisted around, like the girl in The Exorcist—”
“Blair, Linda Blair—played Regan,” I offered.
“Yeah, whatever.” Maxey continued. “And this lawyer gets right up in my face and asks me, ‘How much is the school worth?’ I told her that I didn’t know, because it’s a not-for-profit, all built through donations, a 501c3. Pam told her the same. This lawyer just could not get it—she had to call an accountant to find out what a 501c3 was—and then she realized that I have no money—that I have no savings—that Pam and I barely pay ourselves a salary—just enough to live on—that it all goes into the school. The whole conversation was awful for Pam—she kept trying to step in and kept saying to her lawyer, ‘He’s telling the truth, he’s not lying,’ and I was like, ‘Holy shit,’ but then it dawned on Pam’s lawyer that I truly have no fucking money. You could see the lawyer’s face fall. I mean, to be fair to her, she was just trying to do right by Pam. And she must have been thinking, ‘This poor woman has four kids and she’s divorcing a guy who got so obsessed with his work that he basically took her for granted—and he doesn’t have shit except a pathetic salary that could disappear any second and not even a military pension, which would have been great, but he would have needed to stay in for twenty years to get it, and he was only in for six.’ ”
“So what did your lawyer say?” I asked Maxey.
“Here’s the thing: I don’t have a lawyer.”
“Maxey, I love Pam, but are you serious? You didn’t have a lawyer represent you in the divorce?”
“I went to one of my lawyer buddies, and he said the same, said I shouldn’t go into this alone, and he referred me to a guy. I called him, but within minutes I had to say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to get off this call.’ I mean, this guy did what any divorce lawyer does. He said, ‘Tell me a little about your wife, is she dating someone, does she drink a lot, does she do drugs?’ And I said, ‘Dude, she’s going to be my ex-wife soon, but she’s the love of my life and the mother of my kids. What the fuck are you doing?’ ”
There was quiet. Maxey said nothing. I said nothing. I wondered if we’d lost the connection.
“Sorry,” Maxey continued. “I get emotional. So, I figured fuck it. I went into the divorce proceedings without a lawyer. In the courtroom, the judge said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to be represented?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Your Honor, I’m sure I don’t want to be represented.’ She asked me three times and had me answer three times. Just so it would be clear and on the record. Then I said to the judge, ‘Just give her whatever she wants; she deserves all of it and more.’ But since I don’t have anything, the best thing Pam’s lawyer could do was maximize my contribution based on my salary. We agreed on a sum and that’s for life. She can marry a gazillionaire and she still gets it, every month, for life.”
“And custody? The kids?” I asked.
“That was classic Pam. She never wanted anything but joint custody. That’s what she asked for. We’re going to do what’s best for the kids. We’re also going to continue working together for the school. She’s going to continue doing admissions and all the other stuff she does. So, yeah, there was a lawyer on her side and there wasn’t one on mine, but she didn’t beat me up. She didn’t ask for anything that wasn’t more than fair.”
“And how are you doing, Maxey?”
“Other than the fact that I just fucked up my whole life? Great.”
I thought Maxey was crazy for not hiring a lawyer, but I admired him for it. And I was glad that I had called him and that he felt he could share his wounds. I didn’t know what I could do or say, but I wanted to be a better friend—without Singer needing to prod me. Maxey and I agreed we would talk much more often. I was looking forward to doing that, and to visiting Maxey again in Eleuthera and as soon as time and money allowed. David was also eager to see the island and spend time there. After two years, we finally made plans. But they were almost immediately scuttled.
* * *
—
My mother was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in October 2007. For months before, we’d allowed ourselves to believe that she had hepatitis, that she just needed to rest, that all would be fine. But while I was out of the country for work, she had called to tell me her diagnosis. I read on the Internet that most people with pancreatic cancer that had spread to other organs survive only for three to six months.
Two months later, I quit my job in order to start a cooking website. I had been doing the same work for more than twenty years and worried that if I didn’t try something different, I would wake up at sixty-five or seventy and wish I had. I also wanted the flexibility to spend more time with my mother, for whatever time she had left. David had his salary and I would do freelance editing.
When Maxey heard from Singer that my mother had cancer, he called me and told me he was there for me. I remember I was really glad to hear from him and grateful for the call. I knew he would be. I told him that.
As much as I wanted to keep in touch with Maxey, Singer, and friends who lived in other places, I found myself unable. Mom’s illness narrowed my focus. It was hard to make plans, especially ones that needed to be set far in advance. It was also hard to brief friends on the phone because Mom’s treatment was a roller-coaster; relatively good days were followed by dreadful ones, so someone who wasn’t up to date would come away thinking things were much better or worse than they were. This meant I constantly needed to explain or correct, which I found exhausting. I started posting updates on my mother’s condition to a blog I’d created for that purpose, but I included almost nothing about myself—other than to mention some of the books we were reading together. I simply didn’t have the energy to reach out to people who weren’t immediately at hand.
During that time, as I would only later find out, Maxey’s life was also spinning out of control. He and Pam had both been dating people they really cared about. The woman he’d been seeing lived in Princeton, which allowed him to spend more time with his kids: Brittney was studying in Argentina, but the younger three were all still at school in New Jersey. Then his new girlfriend tossed him out. She told him that he was clearly still in love with Pam and that wasn’t fair to her.
As Maxey would eventually tell me, “That’s when I really got adrift. I mean, I just felt I didn’t have any ability to get back with Pam so I started dating another woman, a much less serious relationship than the one I’d had in Princeton. Then I drove my motorcycle off a road and crashed it. I wasn’t trying to hurt myself—I just crashed it the way I was crashing everything in my life. You start messing one thing up, and then you start messing everything else up, too.”
BACK ON THE ROOF, AGAIN
In the spring of 2009, we had a twenty-fifth college reunion. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go. Although it was miraculous that my mother was still alive, almost a year and a half after her diagnosis, now she was dying more quickly: it seemed likely that she wouldn’t live to see the end of the year. Leading my life day to day took all my energy: the last thing I wanted to do was to be forced to reflect on it. Also, my new business was in desperate shape.
Then I changed my mind and decided to attend, just for a day. I love seeing what happens to people over time: who looks old, who stays young, who tells you they’ve changed completely when obviously they haven’t changed at all. Mostly, though, it was because I ached for the me who had just graduated and was heading off into the world. True, that boy had yet to meet David, the man with whom he’d spend his life, but he also was yet to have a failing business and a dying mother and the feeling that whatever work he’d already done was the best he would ever do.
I made a plan to hitch a ride up and back with two friends: a classmate and his wife. We would go to a lecture in the morning to hear reflections from people in our year who had distinguished themselves enough that they could describe their accomplishments with ostentatious self-deprecation, then would attend the big class lunch. After, I would peel off to visit my secret society and see who was hanging out there. I would then meet up with the rest of my classmates for drinks and dinner and head back to New York City, with the two-hour drive to compare uncharitable notes.
By the time I got to the hall, I was hot, sweaty, and cranky. Too much bonhomie, too much forced nostalgia, too much sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening to classmates I had never met. Maxey was already there, perched uneasily on the sofa, beer in hand. When I entered, he stood up but winced. He didn’t bound toward me to give me the usual uncomfortable hug. I stuck out my hand for a handshake.
“Great to see you, Maxey,” I said.
“You too, Schwalbs.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Up on the roof, I think. Let’s head on up.”
This time, Pam wasn’t there to help me climb up to the roof. I didn’t even try to carry a beer with me; someone else would have to supply the beverages. I yanked myself up the steel ladder, a rung at a time. Happily, someone had brought up not only beers but a cooler as well. And the beers themselves were Heineken. We weren’t just getting older; the beers were getting better.
Maxey climbed up after me but didn’t sit, instead looming awkwardly over me. After a while, I stood up again so we could talk. He seemed very uncomfortable.
“How are you doing, Schwalbs?” he finally asked.
“Not too bad,” I said. “You?”
“Not too bad,” Maxey said. “How’s your mom?”
So I told him. How it looked like she didn’t have many months left; about the books she and I had read together; and about the way she always described herself as lucky. I then launched into a litany of complaints about my start-up, how drained I was, how it was failing.
Finally, when I’d talked myself out, I told Maxey, “I’ve got to sit.”
Again, I saw that pained expression on Maxey’s face. Had I been too frank and too verbose and too much of a downer?
I plopped myself down on the roof. Maxey lowered himself awkwardly next to me, resting his full body weight on his hands, like a gymnast on a pommel horse, so that he could stretch both legs straight out in front. Odd.
“New hips,” he said. “The old ones got completely ground down, so I got them replaced in March.”
Maxey wasn’t uncomfortable with what I’d shared with him. He was just plain uncomfortable.
“Wow. Painful?”
“Not at all. I just have to remember not to cross my legs or they’ll pop out of their sockets. I did that once. Now that was painful.”
“I guess that’s the price of being in shape, huh? You’re the one who’s falling apart.”
“Nice,” Maxey said. “But true. Maybe I should have taken a page from your book and not been such a lunatic with all the physical fitness.” He paused. “Actually, things are a bit hard these days. I don’t know.”
“You mean about Pam?” I said.
“Yeah. But when the kids go on vacation, we all go together. People always say, ‘This is super fucked up that you go on vacation with each other, aren’t you guys divorced?’ But it works for us.”
“And the school?”
“It’s amazing. The students are amazing. It’s growing like crazy. Pam and I still work together on that, but you know, she’s in Lawrenceville with all the kids.”
I saw Maxey wince again, but this time the pain wasn’t physical.
“Something terrible happened a few years back. I never told you about it, but I want you to know,” he said. “Brocq had this awesome best friend. They took one of the boats out fishing. They were twelve. The engine cut off when they were in the deep; the wind was blowing offshore and so the boat was being swept quickly out to sea. When they first tried the radio, it wasn’t working. They thought they would swim for shore. But it was much farther than they thought. Brocq’s friend was struggling. Brocq tried to help him. He couldn’t help him. Brocq made it back to the boat. His friend didn’t. As soon as he was back, the radio started to work. Brocq immediately called for help. But it was too late. They had life jackets on the boat but they’d felt they could swim better without them.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Brocq was crushed. I was crushed. His friend’s family are devastated. It’s all my fault. Everything is my fault. I can’t make this right. I can never make this right.”
My mother had just turned seventy-five and it was clear she wouldn’t see seventy-six. But she was going to die before her three children. I thought of the parents of Brocq’s friend, whose son drowned while he had decades of life before him. I thought of Maxey. I wanted to ask him if he felt responsible so I could try to reassure him, as I would do with any friend, and say that bad things happen and that this wasn’t his fault. But I knew he knew that really terrible things happen, and I also think he would have argued with me that it was his fault.
“You know, I also can’t help but think back to that terrible night on the airfield in Panama,” he said. I nodded, even though in fact I had no idea what had happened there. It still didn’t seem like the right time to ask.
Dusk fell. We climbed down the ladder and left the hall, with the huge wooden door slamming shut behind us. I remember noting Maxey’s slow, painful steps as he walked away from me and rounded the corner toward campus. I didn’t see him again before I left New Haven after the class dinner.
On the ride home with my friends we talked about our classmates—lingering on those whose annoying tics had grown more extreme. All the while, I was distracted; I kept thinking about the family of the child who drowned, and Brocq, and Maxey, and my sense that I’d failed him. I wondered if there was something I could have said that might have given some comfort.
I was supposed to be the words guy, and I’d always believed that I could find the right ones. More and more, I was discovering that, just as Maxey’s body was failing him, words were starting to fail me. I was beginning to think that, no matter how much I trusted the power of language, there were situations in which nothing I could say would make things any better—and that what I said might even make things worse.
