Best Friends by Martha Moody

reading something in her memory—“two pints of milk, a couple pounds of cheese, half a chicken, and a wee bit of butter. They’re thrilled with it.”
    â€œHave you been to visit her?”
    â€œI’d love to visit her,” Mrs. Rose said. “But the problem is getting away.” Her eyes cast around the room in a sort of helplessness, settling briefly on Ben. “How could I get away?” she asked.
    It was poignant to me that she thought of herself as essential, when everyone else barely noticed she was there.
    For dinner the evening after our hot dogs, we ate Caesar salad, bouillabaisse, and pecan pie with two nut layers. “Your mother’s an unbelievable cook,” I told Sally as her mother went to the kitchen to supervise the coffee.
    Sally looked pleased. “She’s good, isn’t she? She does have a lot of help.”
    â€œYour wife cooks like a gourmet chef,” I told Mr. Rose over brandy.
    â€œShe should,” he said. “She has enough help.”
    â€œYou’re a good cook,” I told Mrs. Rose in the kitchen.
    â€œThank you, dear,” she said, twisting off a bit of green herb and sniffing it. “The kitchen’s sort of my place, do you know what I mean?”
    â€œLet’s go out tomorrow night,” Mr. Rose said, bursting through the kitchen on his way to get a can of soda. “Enough of this home-cooking crap. Aren’t I a man of simple tastes? I want a steak.”
    Later, he asked me, “What do you think of the sofa, you like the sofa?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œAnd the granite in the gate, you notice that? That’s Italian granite.”
    â€œI’ll have to notice it.”
    â€œIt’s not just any granite. It’s not just veneer granite. It’s an inch thick. You believe that? An inch!”
    â€œImpressive.”
    â€œYou like the art? Esther picks the art. I don’t know from art. But Esther’s daddy was an art professor, he was one of those German Jews, know what I mean?”
    I stared back blankly.
    â€œSnobs. Intellectuals. German Jew girl marries a Pole like me, the parents go apeshit. But Esther wanted me. Anyways, she picks the art. It’s good art. Museums want it.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œI don’t scrimp on quality. That’s what my mother used to say, don’t scrimp on quality. In the end you get what you pay for, right?”
    â€œSo I hear.”
    â€œYeah, it’s a decent house,” Mr. Rose admitted. He leaned back in his chair and intertwined his hands behind his head. Something sexy in that gesture, dangerous. He crossed his legs, his ankle on his knee. Could guys at Oberlin ever look like that? Or my brothers? Mr. Rose narrowed his eyes. “It’s not a perfect house, though.”
    â€œWhat would make it perfect?” I asked, and took a sip of Scotch.
    â€œView of the sea. I mean a real view, not some blueness in the distance. I grew up in Brooklyn, my family lived in an apartment building with a shower down the hall, but you could climb on the roof of our building and see the Atlantic.” Mr. Rose reached under his shirt and scratched his shoulder. “Next house.”
    I tried to imagine what had kept him from getting a view of the sea this time. Surely not money—a house by the sea couldn’t cost more than this. In fact, the seaside places Sally and I’d seen were surprisingly small.
    â€œBut this is a nice neighborhood,” he said. “Good place for a family. Some of those beach places are a little . . .” He held out his hand, palm down, and rocked it back and forth.
    I thought of Venice, where Sally and I had walked the boardwalk, dodging street performers. Racy, I thought. Druggy. Loose. I nodded.
    â€œEarthquakes,” he said. “Fires. Landslides. You’re safer farther inland.”
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    FOR ALL THE HOURS Sally’s father was reputed to work, he was