Excerpt
Chapter One: Alice Wakes
Naked Charles pads from his shower to his semainier. He would not dream of turning on our light. Charles assumes I am asleep. After so many years, he senses his way in the dark.
He slides a drawer, raising both pulls so it whispers. He extracts jockey shorts I fold so no seams show, each pair a white tuffet, his small daily gift. When we were newlyweds, Charles stood on one foot, then the other, a flamingo. Now he pulls his shorts up leaning against the wall. Someday he will collapse on our slipper chair, use his cane to spread the leg holes, then inch them up his calves. It is a privilege to watch your partner over time.
If soul may look and body touch,
Which is the more blest?
Yeats knew.
Charles steers his right foot in. I glimpse the silhouette of his bobbling apparatus. How perverse to cage it in clothes. All that flagrant manhood neatly squared away. He stretches on his undershirt. Watery light sculpts the muscle range of his back. No matter how soft Charles gets around the middle, his bent back stays bandy.
All these years and there’s pleasure yet watching him.
In the kitchen, Charles has put up coffee. I take a cup back to bed. November sun stipples trees along the Hudson. Leaves wink like sequins. Today will be perfect. There are, in a good year, perhaps ten such days in New York. They have nothing to do with temperature. They can come any season. No one can predict them. On these days the air is supercharged. There is more of something vital in it. People breathe deeper, walk taller. They pause to fill their lungs and smile without premeditation. Dogs high-step, their tails thrum. On these days the bus driver keeps the doors open when he spots you running.
Along Riverside Drive joggers wear down-filled vests, no gloves, no watch caps. Wind billows hair but not enough to backhand. I won’t need a coat. The gray cashmere scarf, perhaps. In my date book I check off yesterday:
RUN
NOTES W. YUMI
SKIM, COF. FILTERS, COMET
LUBA CHECKS
CALL MR. FLEISCHMAN
A slash through each except Fleischman.
Today is wall-to-wall appointments.
10 MR. OLIPHANT: 230 CPS
I’ll have to go downtown, miss my run. Why would Roberta’s lawyer want to see me? Does Betsy need a guardian? Betsy is thirty-one. Jack is alive. Oh Roberta. My poor darling.
11:30 MRS. VANDERVOORT
Mrs. Vandervoort. Normally I don’t open the shop till noon but Mrs. Vandervoort is terrified someone will see her in Luba and her things are awfully good. Luba is about nothing if not discreet accommodation.
FALL BAGS
How did that happen? Bags of winter inventory up to the ceiling. Here it is, almost December. They should have been on the floor after Labor Day.
CALL CAMILLE
She’s due January ninth. Could the baby’s head be down? Oh no. What if they ask us to participate in the birth? Is that an invitation one can decline?
TURKEY SAND/MOTHER
6—CLAUDIO’S
MADAMA BUTTERFLY!
A jam-packed day. Should I cancel the lawyer? Reschedule for late afternoon? Better to get it over with. Surely Roberta didn’t leave me anything else. She gave me a bracelet. Our last lunch at Café on 5.
“Alice.” She undid the clasp. “I want you to smile every time you look at it. You’ve got to promise me. Stop shaking your head, Alice.”
“I don’t want it, Roberta.” I said. “Keep it. Please. You’re going to need it.”
“Right.” She grabbed my wrist with stunning strength. “And O.J. was innocent.”
What would I have left you if I died first, Roberta dear? You coveted my shagreen eyeglass case. You never failed to admire Grand-mère’s lava-cameo bracelet. How I wish I had given it to you.
Gray silk blouse, gray cardigan. I prefer clothes the colors of the inside of an oyster shell. Gray slacks. I will make the most of this inconvenient morning. I will walk over to Broadway, pick up bagels for Mother at H&H, drop them with her doorman, then cut through the park at Seventy-second, take the West Drive, and exit on Central Park South. I’ll bring the puzzle, in case Roberta’s lawyer keeps me waiting. Then catch a Limited bus up Madison and be at Luba in plenty of time for Mrs. Vandervoort.
Marvelous coffee. Italian roast from Zabar’s. One peaked tablespoon per cup. Charles knows how I like it. The beauty of a marriage is its ongoingness. The staying together, the sharing of history, the appreciation of wrinkles and sag in flesh once known in its taut prime. And the longest stretches of all, the plowing comfort of the quotidian, intimacy with all its lows and reprieves. Marriage is like liver. It regenerates.
Chapter Two: Nanny Gets Up
It takes a crazy man to make a woman feel alive.
I roll toward you, launch an exploratory toe.
The sheets are ice.
Every morning it’s news. Every morning is Day One. Not that I dream you’re alive then wake up only to discover. Every night my cerebellum crashes. If you’ve been married to someone for thirty-two years and he’s been dead three, how long does it take to get used to waking up alone? Is there a formula? 32+3–x<365>:58+y=z?
Thirty-two years and you croaked on me.
Something important is happening today. What time is it? What good is a clock without glasses? Why don’t glasses have locator buttons like the phone? You press a button, your glasses beep and . . . There they are—innocent by the toaster. A locator for the phone book too. The cell. One giant locator screwed to the wall so you can locate the locator. The Master Locator. That’s it. I’ll make a mint. Missing glasses, the basic—no, innate—no, intrinsic irony: how can you find them if you need them to see them?
I’m supposed to be somewhere. Something important is happening today. Maybe they’re in the duvet. Shake it and stuff flies out: books, socks, spoons. Our bed, my bed, it’s the office now. Office, dining room, library. If three rooms fell off this place I’d never know. The bed is control central. Everything that matters takes place on it. Except what used to matter.
Bobbie. The important thing has to do with Bobbie.
Think. Take it slow. Rule out places 100 percent the first time so you don’t have to go back. Not on the end table.
End table done.
Think, Nanny. You got into bed at ten-thirty. Finished the Times. Turned out the light. Ah. Still on my head.
6:28.
I clomp into the kitchen and by the time I reach the coffeemaker my ankles are broken in for the day. While it drips, I wake up my computer, hit the folder marked CALENDAR, and read November 20.
10—Mr. Oliphant—230 CPS. Right.
“Dear Mrs. Wunderlich,” the letter said. “I represent the estate of the late Roberta Heumann Bloom.”
I don’t get it. Why does Bobbie’s lawyer want to see me? She already gave me the bracelet. Who knew she had a lawyer? Who knew she had an estate? Two weeks ago she was alive.
12:30—Glogowers—1136 Park
The Glogowers. Got to find them a place. Meredith’s six months. Breaking my heart, these Glogowers.
3:30—the Kleckners—22 E. 87
Ken and Ricki. Royal pain.
Maybe she left me money. Wouldn’t that be something. I was her best friend. Bobbie worried about me and money.
“He’s tapping his TIAA-CREF?” she marveled. “Fred’s taking money out of his retirement fund?”
“He earned it, Bobbie.”
“That’s not the point, Nanny.”
What really made her nuts were our taxes.
“Let me get this straight. He points, you sign? You’re telling me you don’t look?”
And I’d say, “If I can’t trust Freddy, who can I trust?”
“Nanny”—she’d roll her eyes—“trust is not the issue.”
I print out today’s page and put it in my bag. In the bathroom, I wash my face—or, rather, cleanse it. In Makeup Court, soap gets you the chair. According to Flora, you must splash warm water, pat dry, dab on grapefruit cleanser, rinse, pat dry again, follow with kiwi toner to neutralize the pH factor, then study face in a 6X mirror. Not for the fainthearted.
“If no one can see I have one white hair on my chin, why do I have to tweeze it?” I asked my daughter. “Why do I have to see what’s wrong with me six times larger? Nobody looks at me with 6X magnification.”
Daily face inspection. Someone cares what I look like, even if it’s only me. Not that aging is bad. So you worry about a hair on your chin instead of a pimple. So your ankles are a little stiff in the morning instead of cramps five days a month. Aging is merely a substitution of things that alarmed you then for things that alarm you now. All of life has equal alarm weight. What should I be grateful for now that I don’t realize? What am I taking for granted one day I’ll miss? Knees! I never think about my knees! Women my age, women younger, have to ratchet out of a cab.
Bobbie’s lawyer. Jeez, I hope it’s money.
Media reviews
“To My Dearest Friends has an irresistible premise: Two weeks after Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Bloom dies, her lawyer calls her two best friends, Alice Vogel and Nanny Wunderlich, to his office. Why? Because Bobbi has given them keys to a safety deposit box. And now the lawyer has a letter for them from Bobbi. Alice and Nanny–who have nothing in common but their friendship with the deceased–go to the bank. In the box, they find another letter. A love letter. To Bobbi. Undated. With no further instructions. . . . Obviously, Alice and Nanny can’t agree what to do next. But in the course of not agreeing they have reasons to get together. And we get two treats along the way: wonderfully sharp dialogue and observations, and a quick but deep look into the lives of two New York women. . . . I hoovered this book in an evening. . . . How does it turn out? With a fantastic surprise. . . . To My Dearest Friends is an addictive urban adventure story. Nancy Drew for the post-menopausal. Chick-lit for grown-up chicks. And, just maybe, the first novel about New York women to ring a bell for readers in the ‘burbs since The Devil Wore Prada. You don’t have to be 50-plus to enjoy To My Dearest Friends. Or even a woman. You just have to like ‘smart.’”
–Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com
“Charming . . . A disarming story about marriage, friendship and choices that are kept secret until there’s a reason to give them away. . . . We see things from [Nanny and Alice’s] points of view, which is wonderful because, although they are very different, they share a city (New York graces every page), a wry intelligence and a wit perfected by years of experience.”
–Anne Stephenson, Arizona Republic
“A mischievous novel featuring two amateur sleuths seeking clues about their deceased friend’s secret lover.”
–People magazine
“Patricia Volk’s new novel–clever, funny, light . . . [with] a sly twist at the end–celebrates a precious urban resource: working women in their late 50’s and early 60’s, whose children have left home and who now have the space to reflect on their lives and to catalog the wonders and curiosities of the metropolitan landscape. . . . They are the city’s true grown-ups. In To My Dearest Friends, two such women, Nanny and Alice, are brought together by the last will and testament of a mutual friend, Roberta, who died three months earlier. Roberta has left them a letter locked away in a safe-deposit box, a steamy missive from an unknown lover. . . . [Nanny and Alice]–two very different women, each wary of the other–come to life on the page. . . . The result is agreeably intimate, a double portrait grounded in the detail of daily life. . . . [Ms. Volk] deals in individuals, not types. . . . To My Dearest Friends is a novel about privacy and secrecy, the difference between them and the various reasons why we need both. But Patricia Volk doesn’t hammer at her theme; she treats it like a topic worth tossing around, not the moral of the story. After all, she also has another, jollier topic to entertain us with: the abiding mystery of friendship.”
–Adam Begley, New York Observer
“Some writers have a magically light touch . . . . Patricia Volk’s sparkling new novel, To My Dearest Friends, will appeal to the same demographic as Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. It’s the kind of book you read aloud from until friends beg you to stop so they can get their own copy. When Roberta, a family therapist, dies of breast cancer in her early 60s, she leaves instructions for her two best friends to open a safe deposit box together. Thrown together by this odd request, the two women, who dislike each other at first sight, find a passionate letter from a lover they never knew Roberta had. What to do with this unwanted information? Prim, snooty Alice . . . thinks they should tear up the letter and forget about it, sparing Roberta’s widower and daughter any possible hurt. Nanny Wunderlich, “a lapsed therapist” turned realtor . . . feels there must be a reason Roberta wanted them to know about this lover. She decides to do some sleuthing, repeatedly enlisting reluctant Alice’s help. . . . Volk writes movingly about love and loss, but she sets a resilient tone with an epigraph from Tom Stoppard: ‘Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.’ . . . . Volk’s novel is very much a New York City book, and she gets the details right . . . More important–and what helps make Dearest Friends such an irresistible confection–Volk captures the profound importance of the deep connection between close women friends. Husbands and male buddies are all well and good, but female friends can relate on a different plane to mammogram terror or how even an improbable affair with no future can make you feel ‘connected to the human history of passion.’ Which brings us to another element that distinguishes Volk’s novel: elder-sex. Volk isn’t afraid to spell it out: even aging bodies have libidos. She’s writing about a generation that protested war and rallied for equal rights. It’s a generation that will not go gently into that good night.”
–Heller McAlpin, Newsday
“A book about the intensity and beauty of life after 50. . . . Yes, now the awful exodus begins. A few good friends are dying or have already died. Patricia Volk does not deny this sorrow. She romps right through it. This novel, about women brought together after the death of a mutual friend, is funny from the get-go, and a dear, timeless tale by its end.”
–More magazine
“A heat-seeking missive sets off the action of Volk’s deliciously mischievous new novel. Safely ensconced in her urn, the late Roberta (Bobbie) has entrusted a passionate and potentially explosive love letter to two friends who barely know–and don’t particularly like–each other. Nanny is a good-hearted ‘lapsed therapist’ turned real estate broker; Alice is a list-making, hyper-educated former Yeats scholar whose mantra is clearly ‘cast a cold eye.’ Ping-ponging between the two women’s points of view, we eavesdrop on their thoughts, watch them spar (‘I was her best friend,’ says Alice. ‘You were her oldest friend,’ Nanny corrects), drop in on their worlds. Who is the mystery lover, and what on earth was Bobbie thinking? Acutely observed, peppered with sharp insights, and steeped in native New Yorkiness, this deceptively light book has a lot to say about the complexity of friendship, the use and abuse of secrets, and the restorative power of love.”
–Amanda Lovel, O, the Oprah magazine
“Nanny Wunderlich and Alice Vogel are unlikely friends. Nanny, a psychotherapist turned realtor, is a bohemian widow . . . Alice, a third generation proprietress of an upscale thrift shop that caters to chauffer-driven ladies, is as uptight as Nanny is loose . . . The two are thrust together when their mutual friend Bobbie dies. After a lawyer contacts them, they meet for the first time to decide what to do about the contents of a safety deposit box–one letter from a lover neither knew Bobbie had. As they work to unravel the mystery of the unknown paramour, their relationship deepens. It’s Sex and the City for the middle-aged, a celebration of female friendship. At the same time, the novel wryly comments on aging, long-term love, parenting, and city life. Volk has written a small gem. Women–and perhaps men, too–will read it and immediately want to push it on every friend and acquaintance. Highly recommended”
–Library Journal, starred review
“Wonderful . . . compelling. There’s so much I love about To My Dearest Friends. It is at once sparkling and mature, hilarious and moving. I needed to know what happens next so badly that only darkness forced me to get up and turn on the lamp. What a great story of friendship, and of grown-ups’ capacity for growing up and enriching their lives! My hat’s off to Patricia Volk.”
–Susan Isaacs
“Fans of Volk’s critically acclaimed memoir, Stuffed: Memoirs of a Restaurant Family, will be pleased to find her effortlessly amusing and wise voice behind her accomplished second novel. Alice Vogel, a 62-year-old married Upper West Sider (and proprietress of an Upper East Side boutique), meets for the first time, Nanny Wunderlich, a 59-year-old widowed therapist-turned-real estate agent, when the two are made co-executrixes of their dead friend Roberta’s safe deposit box. In it, they discover a letter from an unnamed lover (Roberta was married) and team up to discover just with whom it was that their dear friend had been clandestinely sleeping. Alice and Nanny . . . are fully realized New Yorkers, and . . . they have real, stinging insights into later life in the big city. It’s Volk’s easy depth that makes this book a winner.”
–Publishers Weekly
“Patricia Volk writes with singular charm and wit. Her women are devoted and knowing: they know about loyalty, and what happens when love and morality collide.”
–Amy Hempel, author of Reasons to Live and The Collected Stories
“A wickedly well written novel that captures New York at our moment–when a woman is not just a woman, but a widow, a mother, a daughter, a best friend and a lover. And it is a reminder that despite how well we think we know our best friends, our spouses and ourselves, there is always something new to be discovered. Patricia Volk’s novel is a wry, deftly turned, heartfelt adventure celebrating the comedy that is life. I ate it–I mean I read it–in two bites.”
–A.M. Homes, author of This Book Will Save Your Life
“To My Dearest Friends is a sublime and intoxicating New York City novel. The fine writing makes this book suitable for savoring, but most readers will find it difficult not to quaff it in one delightful, delicious gulp.”
–Peter Cameron, author of The City of Your Final Destination
