Read With Friends Like These: A Novel for Free Online Page B

need—no, want—from my husband isn’t judgment. It’s sympathy. And I wouldn’t mind if he produced a bigger income.
    “That Maine is cheap isn’t even the point,” I complained to Tom, who soon enough returned and was unloading locally grown vegetables from canvas bags we carry to the food co-op in our bikes’ baskets. “I’ve got it worked out. We’ll stay at your family’s camp. In September the ocean’s practically a swimming pool. We’ll hang around the lake, hike and bike, and go to lobster pounds every night.”
    “Preaching to the choir, babe,” Tom said as he began to rinse a head of buttery green lettuce while he entertained Henry with silly faces. “I’ve gone to that dump every year of my life.”
    “It’s authentic.” Last year, when Chloe and Xander moved into their brownstone, her decorator talked her into buying moose antlers to hang over her fireplace. I’m fairly certain that beast’s ancestor hangs in Tom’s family’s living room, shot by Grandfather Wells. “Chloe just spent a thousand bucks on two new Hudson Bay blankets.”
    “Dammit, no one can accuse my family’s blankets of being new.” Tom pounded his fist in mock indignation, which made Henry wave his pudgy hands. A crayon bonked Pontoon, our dog of indeterminate parentage and large appetite, who was snoozing under the kitchen table. The animal shook his hairy snout, and Henry started giggling so hard I couldn’t get him to look in my direction, even when I called “Henry Thomas” three times.
    “Where does Mrs. Keaton want to go?” He never fails to be amused by the fact that Chloe’s husband, Alexander Keaton, has evolved from being someone who used to intern for Al Gore into a guy who quotes
Wall Street Journal
editorials. Does Tom expect that because Xander was raised inTennessee he should sing songs with lyrics like
the squirrel ate the cat and the cat ate the dog and they all danced a jig on the leg of a hog
? Since college he and Xander have both grown, in opposite directions.
    “Chloe wants Vegas.”
    “Does she like the slots or the craps table?”
    “She likes to flip a coin between Fendi and Gucci.”
    “Remind me why you’re friendly with her.”
    “Because she’s the best present you ever gave me.” Tom and Xander, who were in the same fraternity, had been pleased when their girlfriends formed a mutual admiration society, one that in recent years has been more enthusiastic than their own. It’s also not a small thing that Chloe regards me as the ultimate source of motherly wisdom, although Henry’s only four months older than Dash.
    “If you’d admit you can’t afford these trips, they’d work around it,” Tom said. “These women are your friends. Trust them. They deserve some credit.”
    There he went, being reasonable. How did I wind up married to an emotional mutant, a man envious less often than I vote? Tom takes far too much devilish delight in the fact that his family’s quaintly rotting vacation home was shabby before the term got affixed to chic. He would walk two miles out of his way to resole his boat shoes rather than buy a new pair on sale.
    “I hate to plead poverty.” What I wouldn’t say was that the disparity in our personal economics came from our husbands. Chloe and I earn an identical salary, down to the decimal point. Xander runs a hedge fund, for which he is rewarded in capital-
C
compensation. Tom teaches high school English and gets rewarded hardly at all, but as I remind myself often, Mr. Wells is everyone’s favorite teacher, and thanks to his schedule, on the days when I’m in the office Henry only has to stay with our sitter—Agnes from downstairs—until three-thirty, which is when Tom usually arrives home. This gives father and son plenty of guy time and me peace of mind. Another fact I refrain from pointing out, at least to Chloe, is that Xander goes for days without seeing Dashiel awake.
    “How about if I cook tonight?” Tom scooped up Henry and