almost always stalked off to find someone with a more upbeat profession to talk to. Over the years, Grace had watched some variation on this script at dinner parties and camp visiting days and previous Rearden fund-raisers, always with a sinking heart, because they reminded her that this pleasant mom from Henryâs second-grade class, and the terrific couple whoâd rented a house on their lake one summer, and the radio talk show host who lived two floors above them (the closest their building had to a celebrity) were almost certainly not going to become their friends. Once, she had simply assumed their social life would necessarily be populated by oncologists, people living within the same constriction of intense emotions as Jonathan, and their partners, but in fact those relationships never really developed eitherâprobably, Grace decided, because Jonathanâs colleagues had the modest goal of leaving cancer behind in the hospital when they departed the building, and perhaps they were better at doing that than her husband was. Years ago, the two of them had socialized a bit with Stu Rosenfeld, the oncologist who still covered Jonathanâs practice if he had to be away for some reason, and Stuâs wife, and that had been agreeable. The Rosenfelds were passionate theatergoers who always seemed to know, months in advance, which tickets were going to be impossible to secure and ended up sitting in the fourth row next to Elaine Stritch on the first Saturday after the New York Times rave. She admired rather than liked Tracy Rosenfeld, who was Korean-American, an attorney, and a fanatical runner, but it felt good to be out with another couple, enjoying the city and its pleasures. The two women dragged their husbands away from the default topics (hospital personalities, hospital politics, children with cancer) and generally pretended to be better friends than they actually were while discussing Sondheim and Wasserstein and the general disgrace of John Simonâs hostilities in New York magazine. It was all fairly innocuous, and it might still be going on, except that Jonathan had come home one day about five years earlier and reported that Stu had said the most extraordinary thing to him, about a plan for dinner (nothing elaborate, just a Sunday night at a restaurant they all liked on the West Side) that had fallen apart a couple of times. Stu had said that he was sorry, but maybe for now they would just keep things professional. Tracy was up for partner andâ¦wellâ¦
âWell?â Grace had asked, heat streaming into her cheeks. âWell what?â
âDid you and Tracyâ¦quarrel about something?â Jonathan had asked her, and sheâd had that sudden guilty feeling that came over you when you were sure you had done nothing wrong, or at least nearly sure, because how could you ever be sure ? People hid their tender places. Sometimes you just couldnât know when you were hitting some nerve.
So theyâd stopped seeing the Rosenfelds, except at hospital-related events, but there were precious few of those, or occasionally by chance at the theater, where they always chatted in a friendly way and talked about getting together for dinner sometime, which neither of them ever followed up on, like countless other couples who were crazy-busy with work, whatever the underlying intention.
Jonathan never mentioned this again. He was used to loss, of course, and not just in the sense of lossâto deathâbecause of terrible, grueling, painful, and merciless disease. There had been other losses, not to be slighted because the parties in question might still be among the technically living and no farther distant than, say, Long Island. This, in Graceâs personal and indeed professional opinion, had everything to do with the family he had grown up in, the parents who had failed him in almost every way short of violence or physical harm, and the brother who had never understood that
âWell?â Grace had asked, heat streaming into her cheeks. âWell what?â
âDid you and Tracyâ¦quarrel about something?â Jonathan had asked her, and sheâd had that sudden guilty feeling that came over you when you were sure you had done nothing wrong, or at least nearly sure, because how could you ever be sure ? People hid their tender places. Sometimes you just couldnât know when you were hitting some nerve.
So theyâd stopped seeing the Rosenfelds, except at hospital-related events, but there were precious few of those, or occasionally by chance at the theater, where they always chatted in a friendly way and talked about getting together for dinner sometime, which neither of them ever followed up on, like countless other couples who were crazy-busy with work, whatever the underlying intention.
Jonathan never mentioned this again. He was used to loss, of course, and not just in the sense of lossâto deathâbecause of terrible, grueling, painful, and merciless disease. There had been other losses, not to be slighted because the parties in question might still be among the technically living and no farther distant than, say, Long Island. This, in Graceâs personal and indeed professional opinion, had everything to do with the family he had grown up in, the parents who had failed him in almost every way short of violence or physical harm, and the brother who had never understood that
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