The Friends We Keep

by Holly Chamberlin

Genres: Women's Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Three college friends reunite in Boston after two decades—and find their old bond tested by a betrayal—in this novel by the author of All Our Summers.
 
In her college freshman year, Sophie Holmes met Eva and John, forging the kind of deep friendship that seems destined to last forever. But time proved otherwise, and Sophie married and moved to Los Angeles. Now, two decades later, newly divorced and adrift, Sophie has returned to Boston, and instinctively reaches out to the people who once defined her world.
 
Though they’ve stayed in the same city, Eva and John too have grown apart. Eva is an ambitious advertising executive who favors flings over relationships. John is a dedicated lawyer wondering if he's left it too late for love and marriage. Through Sophie’s reappearance, their connection crackles to life once more. Just as they did long ago, the three confide their longings and secrets—until old insecurities and new betrayal threatens to shatter their bond for good.
 
Holly Chamberlin’s thoughtful novel is a story of rediscovery and letting go, and of the ties that remind us where we've been—and where we still hope to go.</

Release date: May 1, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

EVA

My name is Eva Fitzpatrick. I was born Eve but changed my name to Eva around the time I turned thirty. It seemed to suit me better.

I grew up in a largely nonpracticing Catholic family of Irish and German ancestry and was raised in a very Americanized or culturally neutral way. I know nothing of my family’s European roots. My parents didn’t speak a word of German. In spite of our last name we never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. We did not go to church unless it was to a relative’s wedding or funeral.

Neither of my parents was particularly demonstrative. As the older of two children—my sister, Maura, was born when I was ten—I was expected to be mature almost from the start. I have been working since I was fourteen (I babysat until I could get working papers) and was always a good student. This was partly because I loved learning and partly because it was expected of me. I did not want to disappoint my parents.

My parents died of cancer—first my father, followed a few months later by my mother—when I was just out of college and looking forward to graduate school. My plan was to earn a PhD in English literature and then to teach and write. Because my parents had nothing to leave their children but the house and a small insurance policy, I gave up my graduate career, sold the house for the cash, and went to work to support my younger sister. In spite of my urging—or maybe, because of it—Maura dropped out of college in her junior year.

Two years after that Maura married a man twenty-five years her senior. A few years later, when his cocaine habit had bankrupted them, she divorced him. Now Maura lives in a small town in Michigan with her second, high school–educated husband and their four kids, all girls: Brooke, Britney, Angelina, and Jessica. On occasion Maura hints at needing money. Her husband, Trevor, works at a gas station as a mechanic and she is a night cashier in a local grocery chain. I send a check to a post office box, as Trevor doesn’t accept “charity.” I don’t know how Maura explains the extra cash.

In spite of the years of financial support, my sister and I aren’t close. On occasion, Maura, who is a nice enough person, invites me to visit, but I never do. The thought of staying in my sister’s cramped and kid-friendly home (I’ve seen pictures; there are plastic toys everywhere.) isn’t at all appealing and there are no decent hotels nearby. So except for solitary trips to the islands once a year I stay on the East Coast. I hardly ever think of my nieces. Sometimes, I realize that I’ve temporarily forgotten their names.

I am the senior vice president of the most important advertising agency in the Northeast. I say that without a shred of modesty. I worked my way up from secretary; I learned the business the hard way, which is often the best way. I’m successful and I’m proud of my success. I see no sense in hiding my light under a bushel.

I dress the part of an executive in suits and separates. I am fond of heels and not in the least bit uncomfortable being taller than a man, which does happen, given my height of five feet eight inches.

I carry my clothes well, especially the sleek, tailored pieces I favor. I choose neutrals: black, gray, brown, taupe, and white. I haven’t owned a pair of jeans since college, when I dressed in whatever was clean and available. These days, I don’t do casual; I am always what my mother called “put together.” People remember a woman with a signature look; she makes an impression.

My hair is professionally colored ultrablonde. I wear it closely cropped in a face-flattering style. My eyes are brown. The contrast between my bright hair and dark eyes is arresting.

I prefer an oversized leather bag to a more traditional briefcase. Into that bag I stuff any combination of the following: my PDA/cell phone of the moment, an extra pair of stockings (in case of runs), a makeup bag, a potboiler novel of the sort I wouldn’t dream of admitting to reading, an iPod, my laptop, the latest issues of W and Vogue, the latest issues of my industry’s trade publications, the New York Times (I read the Wall Street Journal and the Boston papers online.), and a bottle of fortified water (You can never be too hydrated.).

I go to the gym five days a week. For years I worked with a trainer but, having learned a thing or two, now I work out on my own. Currently, at the age of forty-two, I’m in the best shape of my life.

I am not married, nor am I involved in a long-term, committed relationship. I don’t date. I have a lover, someone with whom I have regular sex. We’re not friends; lover is even too intimate a term to describe who Sam is to me or who I am to him. On occasion I have sex with other men. None of them are ever invited to my apartment.

At this point in my life, I have no one to answer to but myself. Everything, I am pleased to report, is in place.

JOHN

My name is John Alfredo Felitti. My parents came to this country from a small town just north of Naples, Italy, when they were still in their teens and unknown to each other. Each joined family already in Windhill, a suburb of Boston. Within a year of their separate arrivals they were married. Five years later I was born. During the interim between the wedding and my birth my father established a decent business as a tailor.

Two years later my sister Theresa was born. We call her Teri. Today she works as manager of a successful clothing store in the Prudential Mall and is married to a guy named Frank. Frank is midlevel management with the electric company. They have three kids: a four-year-old girl named Jean Marie and twin boys, Andrew and Scott, age twelve. Every summer they go to Cape Cod for a week. In the past few years they’ve offered to take along our parents but Mom and Dad aren’t interested in the beach.

A year after Teri came along, my youngest sibling was born, Christina. Chrissy is married to a guy named Mike, who is in construction. Chrissy works part-time as a salesclerk. The rest of her days and nights are spent being a parent to ten-year-old Lucy (after our mother, Lucia) and eight-year-old Paul (after our father, Paolo). Both Teri and Chrissy are active in our parish church, St. Boniface. Much to my parents’ dismay, I haven’t graced the door of a church since high school graduation, except, of course, when performing a family duty.

Teri and her family, Chrissy and hers, and my parents all still live in Windhill in houses only minutes from one another. Our family is a close one, with few if any smoldering resentments and rare displays of outright anger. Unless, of course, someone “acts up.” Then my mother lets fly with dramatic gestures and pleas to God to take her to his side, etc., etc., until the offender apologizes profusely, at which point Mom blesses herself with the sign of the cross and shuts up. Hey, it works for her. We all find our strengths and play to them.

I have been told that I have a commanding presence. I’m six feet two inches. My shoulders are broad. My body is in shape, thanks to almost daily workouts. My face, which still retains something of youth, is made to seem more serious and mature by my glasses—I have several pairs, with stylish designer frames. (I wear contacts only while exercising.) My hair has thinned only slightly. I’m an anomaly in my family. My parents and my sisters are short and have much darker complexions than I do. My father used to joke that I was the milkman’s son (My mother would giggle and smack his arm.), but in truth I take after my father’s older brother, long dead (I know him only from pictures.), who towered over the rest of the family. (Maybe he was the milkman’s son.)

From childhood, I’ve had a sense of my own importance. I was the firstborn, the only son of very old-fashioned people. It was a struggle at first but over time it became a habit—not to indulge that sense of importance, but to choose to believe that I’m in this world for a purpose, and that purpose is to do good for others. Since as far back as I can remember I’ve been the go-to guy for just about everybody I’ve ever known. If I’m going to command attention, then I’m going to use that power for the good. No one likes a self-important asshole. The last thing I want to be considered is stuck-up, full of myself, arrogant. I work hard to be humble. It hasn’t always been easy, when other people see you as something special.

Poor me. I’m teetering on the brink of sounding like a self-pitying wretch, and no one likes one of those, either.

SOPHIE

I was born Sophia Jimenez. I am an only child. My mother doesn’t like to talk about “such things” but over the years I gathered that though she and my father tried hard (how hard I don’t know) to have another baby, it just didn’t happen.

Growing up I didn’t mind not having a brother or sister. I guess I still don’t. You know, they say you don’t miss what you’ve never had.

My paternal grandparents were Cuban. They came to the United States when my father was four years old. They were very Catholic. When my father eventually married, he chose a woman who had been raised in the Episcopal Church. My grandparents were uneasy about this until my mother agreed to raise the children Catholic. They couldn’t do anything about my mother’s not being Cuban, though. But my mother won them over. She’s a very big-hearted person; people take to her right away. Besides, her own family was never a close one. My mother was happy to have in-laws who showed so much interest in her—far more than her parents ever did.

I had a smooth childhood. I did well in school and had plenty of playmates. When I was in college my grandfather died. That was the first really bad thing that happened to me. My grandmother lived another ten years, and though the last three of those years were spent in a nursing home, she never complained.

In my freshman year of college I met Eve Fitzpatrick and John Felitti. Eve became my first real best friend; in high school I was part of a loosely knit group of girls but not one of them had become a real confidante.

John was the first male friend I ever had. In our sophomore year we sort of went out for a few weeks but it was a mistake and due to too much beer at a party. We were both relieved when the “relationship” ran out of steam (not that it had had much steam to begin with) and we could go back to being just friends. We never told Eve about it; she hadn’t been to the party—it was a campus thing John and I sort of wandered into. I don’t know why but we felt the “relationship” should remain our little secret.

When I was a senior, I met Brad Holmes. He impressed me because he knew exactly what he wanted to do after school: make money. He was a whiz in economics and math, in all the subjects that left me cold even when I could figure out what was going on. He treated me nicely, holding doors and buying me dinner, all that old-fashioned stuff my parents had taught me was important. When at Christmas he asked me to marry him after graduation, I immediately said yes. My parents were pleased. Brad’s parents were less so. They wanted him to finish graduate school before settling down with a wife. But I won them over, just like my mother won over her prospective in-laws.

Brad and I were married the summer after graduation. Eve and John weren’t at the wedding. It was held on an island in the Caribbean—Brad’s parents’ choice—and neither of my friends could afford the price of airfare and accommodations. I was disappointed they couldn’t be there for my “big day,” but at the same time I was so giddy with excitement—the dress, the ring, the reception, the exotic location!—I almost didn’t notice their absence once the festivities began.

It wasn’t long before I was pregnant. Jacob Michael Holmes was almost nine pounds at birth and delivered by a C-section. Jake was a healthy and a happy baby. I doted on him and so did Brad, to the best of his ability. Brad knew how to do all the right things but he wasn’t, still isn’t, an affectionate man.

When Jake turned three we relocated to Los Angeles. Brad got an offer he couldn’t refuse—for the sake, of course, of his wife and son—from one of the big studios. Brad’s career flourished and the three of us lived very comfortably. For the first few years I was lonely for my hometown of Boston, but eventually, I adjusted. Twice a year I traveled back East with Jake, and sometimes Brad came along. His parents, who were fairly well-off, came to see us whenever their busy social life allowed, but they never stayed in our home, preferring instead a luxury hotel. My parents, solidly lower-middle class (at the time there was such a thing), did stay with us when they visited, which was usually in February or March, months that are often dreary and depressing in New England.

Over time our parents traveled less frequently. Age took its inevitable toll on their mobility and their desire to be far from home. When Jake was twelve, his paternal grandfather died. After that, his paternal grandmother went to live with Brad’s older brother, Gary, in a suburb of Chicago; her last trip to LA, with Gary, was for Jake’s college graduation not more than a year ago. She looked terribly frail and, not to be morbid, but I suspect that the next time I see her will be at her funeral. Gary confided that Mrs. Holmes has cancer and that she’d decided not to undergo a long and painful treatment.

And my parents? Now they divide their time between their modest house in Freeham, Massachusetts, and their modest condo in an over-55 development in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. They seem content and their health is good but for the usual, annoying ailments that come with advancing age.

Anyway, back to my life in LA. When Jake reached high school, I found myself with time on my hands so on a whim I took a real estate course and got my real estate license. Honestly, the job was always more of a hobby than a career. We didn’t really need my income, but I enjoyed the social aspects of the job, meeting new people and having someplace to be every day. Everyone wants to feel needed.

And with no close friends, a son who was growing more independent every day, and a husband who spent most of his time with his colleagues, I did need to feel needed. Until, I don’t know, I just sort of lost interest—and quit.

So where was Eve all this time? Back East—and out of touch. Over the past twenty years or so my friendship with Eve, once so strong, gradually slipped away. There were no bad feelings, simply two lives diverging. I’ve often asked myself why.

Maybe the answer is that after college our lives took such different paths. My life played out pretty much as I’d wanted it to, but Eve’s did not. For one thing, Eve never married. She’d intended to, and had planned on having two or three children.

I can’t help but think that Eve’s not marrying and her not having a child alienated her from me, and me from her. Maybe if she’d shown an interest in Jake our friendship might have survived. Eve could have been a sort of aunt to Jake; I would have liked that. But Eve rejected every attempt I made to involve her with my new family. I know she was upset about her parents’ deaths and about having to postpone graduate school indefinitely. Not that she ever admitted to feeling sad or angry or depressed. But she must have been and maybe that was part of the reason she rejected a relationship with Jake . . . and part of the reason she chose to abandon a friendship with me.

Maybe it doesn’t make much sense but it’s all I can come up with. I’m not sure I’d ever have the nerve to ask Eve why she didn’t want to spend time with Jake and me. I’m not at all confrontational. Maybe, someday, she’ll tell me on her own. Maybe she’ll open up about those years just after her parents died and her life was thrown so wildly off course.

I hope so.

EVA

Where the hell was my assistant? On the fifth ring I picked up the phone.

“Eva Fitzpatrick.”

“Oh. Is this Eve Fitzpatrick?”

“This is Eva Fitzpatrick. Who is this?”

“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “I was looking for an old friend from college, someone named Eve Fitzpatrick.”

“I didn’t catch your name?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s Sophie Holmes. It used to be Jimenez.”

I had a strong urge to disconnect the call. I shook off the urge and said, “Sophie, this is Eve. Except that I changed my name to Eva.”

The voice, the woman, Sophie laughed with relief. “Oh, my gosh, it is you! Hello!”

I sat heavily in my desk chair. “Well. Hello. It’s been a long time.”

“I know, too long.”

“So, why—I mean, where are you living these days?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’m back in Boston. Brad and I, well, we’re divorced.”

I had never much liked Brad. Very full of himself. “Oh,” I said.

“Yes. Anyway, my son’s in school here now so I thought, why not come back East? Plus, I’d be close to my parents and it would give me an opportunity to look up some old friends.”

“Yes, well.” Oh, I thought, here we go. I was going to kill my assistant for this. It was easy not to return a call. It wasn’t as easy to reject a person face-to-face, as it were.

“So,” Sophie went on, “I was wondering, would you, you know, want to get together some time?”

Why, I thought, can’t people leave the past alone? It was past for a reason—it was over.

“Eve? I mean, Eva?”

“Yes,” I said resignedly, “okay. I could meet for a drink.”

I suggested one of my favorite restaurant bars. If I was going to allow myself to be hauled down memory lane, at least I could be eating oysters while at it.

JOHN

My keeper of the gate, my right-hand woman, and, though this might be unusual, my friend, is a woman named Ellen Mara. She’s been with me, with the firm, for almost five years now and I hope she’s with me—wherever I am—for the next fifteen at least. Why Ellen didn’t go to law school I’ll never understand; she’s one of the keenest minds I know. She claims she was too lazy to get her law degree but I’m not buying it.

Ellen is fifty. I know this because she told me. I hope I’m not breaching professional ethics by saying that she has a great body—what I’ve seen of it, of course. She often wears fitted skirt suits, but tweaks the sophisticated look with one-of-a-kind jewelry she buys at craft shows.

Ellen’s husband, a guy named Austin who I’ve met on a few occasions, is in finance at one of the major firms in town. They have a small vacation home on a lake somewhere in Maine; they keep the exact location a secret to avoid pop-ins and never invite friends or family to stay with them. Ellen has told me they feel it’s important for a couple to have a place entirely their own. I suppose she’s right but I can’t imagine ever trying to keep my family from barging in on my vacation house when I settle down enough to buy one. They’d track me down like bloodhounds. Besides, the guilt would kill me. In my family, what belongs to one person belongs (potentially) to every person. This is one reason why I chose to live in town rather than in Windhill, where Teri, Chrissy, and my parents all live. Some buffer zone is required if I’m to live any sort of independent life.

I was on my second cup of coffee, which means it was about ten-thirty, when Ellen buzzed me. (I know “buzzed” is no longer an accurate way to describe this function, but I like it.)

“John,” Ellen said. “There’s a Sophie Holmes on the phone.”

The name didn’t register at first. I hear what seems like thousands of names a week, some I recognize, some I don’t. And then the image of a young, laughing woman with long dark hair and half-dorky glasses popped into my head. Could it be?

“Thanks, Ellen,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

SOPHIE

John seemed genuinely pleased to hear from me. Eve—Eva—on the other hand, didn’t. But maybe I’d caught her at a bad time.

Oh, well, I thought, what’s done is done. I was to meet Eve—Eva (that would take some getting used to)—for drinks. John was all booked up until the following week but promised to call then.

Eva had asked me, well, in fact she’d told me, to meet her at Churchill on Tremont Street across from the Common. This, I read in the paper, was a popular new place with a “power clientele.” With these intimidating words in mind I ventured to my closet. It didn’t take long to realize that I had nothing appropriate to wear.

Over the years I’d cared less and less about my appearance. I’d let the gray in my hair show through and as for clothes, well, though I wasn’t much heavier than I was in college, I’d taken to wearing clothes meant to deemphasize my figure. Loose tops and flowing skirts were comfortable and easy to care for, but now, about to meet someone I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years they seemed . . . dull.

I closed the closet door and decided to treat myself to an afternoon of shopping at the Prudential Mall. I wasn’t at all sure what I was looking for but for the first time in years the notion of new clothes seemed exciting. New clothes, a new life, and renewed friendships. What could be bad?

EVA

I was surprised to hear from Sophie Holmes. The last time I saw her was when her son, Jake, was a toddler, just before Sophie moved to the West Coast so that Brad could take an important job he’d been offered by one of the big studios. Her parents threw “the kids” a going-away party, and though it meant I had to take a night off my job as a waitress—one of several jobs I was working at to support my sister and me—I went.

I didn’t have much to say to Sophie by then; our lives had taken such incredibly different directions. I vaguely remember us hugging awkwardly when I left to catch a train back into the city. I don’t remember Jake at all; maybe he was asleep somewhere. I do remember John sailing in with his latest girlfriend in tow; I’m not sure we said more than a word that evening. John had finished law school, Sophie was married and a mother. I was the only one not doing what I thought I would be doing at the age of twenty-four.

For a while after Sophie moved to the West Coast we sent each other birthday and Christmas cards. Sometimes they included dashed-off notes about what was going on in our lives; Sophie often included wallet-sized department-store portraits or school photos of Jake. I have no idea where those photos are now. I suspect I tossed them at some point, probably after the cards stopped coming—or I stopped sending them. Who forgot a birthday first? Who was too exhausted from holiday shopping to send a Christmas card? I couldn’t remember.

I also couldn’t remember much about our friendship during the four years of college. This wasn’t terribly surprising. I learned early on, right after my parents’ untimely deaths, that dwelling on the past is simply unproductive. And every moment of life should be productive. If the past has to be let go in order to ensure the future, then so be it. Repression or willed forgetfulness can be powerful tools on the road to success. Recovered memory? Not for me. What I’ve forgotten I believe I’ve forgotten for a very good reason: it was inconsequential.

And yet, I found myself willing to meet Soph. . .