The Fab Four, that’s what Jordan, Daveen, Iris, and Kay called themselves for their sorority’s talent show. They sang an Abba tune from their mothers’ or their grandmothers’ day, they didn’t know. They delighted in mocking talent shows, singing-while-not-drunk, karaoke moves, sororities, college, their junior year. Junior? We’re not minor versions of anything. We are Fab.
Fab Four, really?
They hung a sign on their apartment door:
FAB FOUR 4-EV A
Silly, yes. Declaring silliness took away its sting. Much about their lives seemed silly and irrelevant, therefore mockable, an antechamber to their real lives, which lay in the hazy future. Hanging out a sign that named their friendship was a joke too. They were unlikely friends, Jordan, Daveen, Iris, and Kay. They were so very different. There were times when they didn’t even like each other very much, but still, their friendship was essential to their making it through.
Jordan was the Homecoming Queen, pretty, petite, a tennis player, super smart, a bio-tech major. She had one quirk, which she made a huge fuss about — she hated birthday parties, especially her own — and never would say why. How could she tell anyone? It was so stupid. She’d had a premonition on her tenth birthday that she would die young. After that, the years went on and each milestone, her first period, first kiss, first sex, each graduation, and every achievement brought her closer to her end. Yet, eleven years after she had this premonition, she was alive, graduating from college, surrounded by friends, and engaged to be married. When everyone gabbled about how lucky she was to have her future mapped out so beautifully, she thought, but didn’t say, her luck could not hold.
Daveen was the Striver, from Toronto, a Management and Leadership major. Ran five miles every morning, got straight As, led the debate team to the nationals. When the others were taking psych, they loved to sit around the living room of their dumpy apartment and discuss why Daveen was so driven. Because her twin died in infancy? Because her dad might have committed suicide hitting an overpass pier? Because her mother was so bizarre-clingy-crazy? I’m a Canadian, Daveen would say to shut them up. She kept quiet about her dead baby twin sister who lived inside her, a homunculus, who watched everything, including them. Watched without judgment, but watched. When Daveen tried to figure out why she put up with the others, she decided because their friendship gave her the external ballast she needed to counteract the watchful one. She would drop them as soon as they graduated.
Iris was the Beauty, a fashion model, a French major from New Mexico. She modeled throughout college, was in a Ralph Lauren campaign, and got to keep the clothes, which she would have let the others borrow, if they fit, but they didn’t. Iris had a Modigliani face, no hips, limitless legs, and spoke five languages. Her father had left her mother when she was in high school. He took Iris on luxurious vacations, ski lessons in Utah and Italy, winter getaways in Thailand. As compensation, Iris said. As arm candy, the others thought, but didn’t say.
Kay was from a farm in Nebraska, a psych major. She never lost her keys, kept sharable class notes, returned borrowed clothes. She knew she was Midwest ordinary, and she resented sometimes that they took her for granted, but she loved them. It hurt her that they never bothered to give her a label. If they had, she suspected she would be the Designated Driver.
They each thought they would drift apart after college and make new, wonderful friends when they began their real lives.
***
The night before graduation, after they’d returned from their separate dinners with their families, after they’d turned on the party lights that rinsed the living room in carnival pinks and polished off a fifth of Grey Goose, they vowed to meet every five years, this same weekend, the first in June.
Don’t we have some piña colada coolers at the back of the fridge?
In five years we’ll be twenty-six.
Twenty-six? They clinked the cute little bottles, unable to imagine life beyond this radiant, buzzy moment. But in ten years, we will be established, successful in whatever we end up doing, and happily married. Or not. With kids. Or not. Except for Kay, the others thought, but didn’t say, who would fail spectacularly, bad marriage, dead-end job, maybe drugs — she was so Midwest ordinary — while Kay thought, but didn’t say, it would be Iris who will fail spectacularly, bad men, maybe a string of bad marriages. Too much had come too easily to Iris.
Reunion number three, we’ll be thirty-six. By our fourth, we’ll be forty-one. They thought about those dumb comedies with comic screwups and pathetic, middle-aged neuroses. We’ll age beautifully, they agreed.
Out came the Cherry Herring left in the pantry by a previous tenant, and they launched into elaborate speculation about their magnificent futures, which included handsome, funny, wealthy husbands, like Jordan’s fiancé, Matt. Super jokey this, since they’d been raised by feminist mothers and grandmothers. Jordan pictured herself walking down the aisle in a cloud of white and collapsing at the altar in front of Matt, dead. She closed her eyes and leaned into Iris who’d already fallen asleep. Kay switched off the party lights throwing the room into shadows and covered Jordan and Iris with a blanket. Daveen locked the front door, which one of them had left wide open. They had no idea of what was coming.
***
Kay and Jordan remained in Chicago. Kay began working for a dietary supplement testing company, and Jordan married Matt, then accepted her father’s offer to handle leases for his commercial real estate business. Daveen moved east, having turned her summer internships with an international trading conglomerate into a real job based in Boston. Iris’s agency had contracted her to be the face of a venerable fragrance line. She traveled constantly, home being a company apartment in New York City.
Text threads, FaceTime, Insta pix, DM, they kept up, but the first reunion didn’t happen. Iris was in Dubai and there was the messy breakup with the Saudi princeling, while Daveen was in the midst of moving her sick mother from Toronto to Boston to live with her. Stomach cancer, long-distant problems with caregivers, Daveen told them, knowing it was metastasized grief, and blaming the watchful one.
Next time, for sure, texted Kay. We’ll be thirty-one, responded Jordan, which left Daveen and Iris doubting the reunion would happen, and unsure if they cared.
But in Chicago, Kay and Jordan lunched every few weeks, and Daveen and Iris met when they both were in New York. Jordan was happy with Matt, but no babies yet. She, they, were in fertility treatments. All those years of trying not to get pregnant, and now this. Kay married a barista. Daveen and Iris exchanged texts, A barista???? Named Finn? OMG. A city hall wedding. Only Jordan could attend. Daveen and Iris sent gifts. A year later, Kay had a baby girl, Lulu. They sent gifts. Two years later, a baby boy. Another round of gifts. In the face of Jordan’s continuing infertility, Kay reined in talk of sleepless nights, two in diapers, the exhausting bliss of motherhood, the unexpected nobility, even though she knew she looked like shit when she and Jordan met for lunch. Acne, rumpled tops, tote overflowing with wipes, Jordan, polished and pretty, trying not to glance at her phone on the table. Kay would insist on picking up their tab, even though Jordan had more money. They both thought about pulling away, as did Daveen and Iris. Their foursome had become tiresome. Who are these women? We have nothing in common any more, each thought, but didn’t say. The messages slowed.
***
In the October of the year after the second five-year reunion that didn’t happen, they gathered for the funeral of Kay and Finn’s Lulu. She was three. A boating accident, on the Fox River. No one noticed when Lulu climbed overboard and slipped out of her life vest. Kay and Finn below, tending to screaming Hans, heard nothing. When they discovered the empty, floating life vest, Kay went deaf. She heard no one, not Finn, not Hans crying, not the rescue workers, police, hospital. No one. She must have spoken, but she was deaf to her own voice. She couldn’t hear Iris or Daveen, not even Jordan.
Each of them thought this was the end of their shared friendship, but they each stayed in touch with Kay, cards, emails, texts, sometimes phone. A few times they zoomed together to talk about her. More than a year after Lulu’s funeral, Kay sent a group text saying that she and Finn had bought another coffee shop, he was traveling all the time to growers in Central America, and Hans was in pre-school. Has the sad era ended? Jordan texted Daveen and Iris. It may never end, they agreed, Daveen thinking about her watchful one, Iris thinking she never wanted kids, Jordan thinking if she had a baby, she wouldn’t allow it to drown. Their contact slowed to occasional news, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, birthdays — Jordan wasn’t included in these exchanges because of her birthday aversion — and other asterisks on their calendars. Exploding GIFs replaced words.
In the midst of the winter they turned thirty-five and their exchanges had slowed to the most perfunctory, Jordan texted: I’M PREGNANT. TIME FOR AN EARLY REUNION?
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Daveen phoned Iris. How will this would work? You in London, me in Boston, we’re too far away. We’re not tuned into the whole damn baby shower universe. Aren’t Kay and Jordan besties? Kay is so good at making arrangements, but…. Lulu, a year ago, Iris said. Two and half years ago, Daveen corrected. At the gravesite, they had stood together, holding hands, the cuff of Iris’s sleeve irritating Daveen’s wrist. Daveen had focused on this, unable to look at Kay and Finn on the other side of the half-size hole. I’ll take over, Daveen said. As she and Iris talked about possible weekends, a message pinged. From Kay: I’m on this.
Four days later, she sent out an artfully designed invitation: a Magnificent Mile hotel, a suite with four bedrooms, an afternoon spa date, followed by a baby shower/dinner in a private room. Brunch the next day.
Daveen texted Iris. Isn’t a shower a pre-birthday party? Has Kay forgotten Jordan’s aversion to birthday parties? This damn over-the-top invitation makes this too late to fix.
***
In the hotel lobby, Jordan looks radiant, Daveen and Iris telegraphed each other. And Kay looks worn-out and so old, they blinked in agreement. Wanting to lighten the vibe, Daveen hip-knocked Kay. Kay pulled back, and Daveen wondered what had possessed her.
In the spa they disrobed and checked out each other bodies, Iris’s more toned than it had been at twenty-one, Kay’s belly crisscrossed with frightening stretchmarks, and Daveen looked like a weight-lifter. It’s the rowing, she said. She’d sent them photos of her team on the Charles River. You got freckles, Jordan said, touching Daveen’s cheekbones. Makes you look sweet. I’m definitely not sweet. While you, Iris, you look inhumanly divine. Best abs and eyebrows ever! After massages, facials, mani-pedis, and showers, smelling glorious and alike, they retreated to their individual rooms in the suite, glad to be alone, and emerged an hour later everyone, except Jordan, carrying gift bags. Jordan looked game, but leery. Oh, dear, Iris and Daveen thought together.
***
Kay flung open the doors to a small party-room, all twinkling lights and mirrors.
Genius, Kay. It’s the inside of a disco ball, Daveen said.
A mylar banner, Happy Early Third Reunion, hung above the lavish sideboard. Reunion, not baby shower. Daveen shot Iris a look. Kay hadn’t forgotten.
Genius, Jordan said, taking in the too-muchness. And non-alcoholic champagne.
Completely fab, Iris drawled, mocking her own drawl, and smiling at Daveen.
They all turned slowly, seeing themselves move in the mirrors, their fragmented selves multiplied and refracted among the twinkling lights, flowers, and ferns, their hands waving with dance moves from their college days.
Kay filled their glasses and they devoured the tiny bites from the sideboard, talking about things they’d already shared. Daveen had begun oboe lessons. Fitting, the others thought, the most mournful of instruments. Iris gossiped about the seamy side of the high life. Kay had no free time between Hans’s school, managing the business all alone with Finn completely disappearing into his new import side line. Jordan ruffled her new short hair cut. Baby-proof. She would take a six-month maternity leave, then see. Dinner came and was cleared. No one touched the desserts. When it was time for Kay to empresario the gifts, Iris poured fresh glasses of champagne, non-al for Jordan.
First from Iris: five lovely, pale green onesies, sized newborn to one year. Each garment passed among them, unfolded and re-folded to murmurs of admiration. So like Iris to choose something too nice to use, Kay and Daveen thought, glancing at each other.
From Daveen: A one-piece, fuzzy snowsuit along with a toy red sleigh, its tag read, Full size sleigh will be sent next winter.
Grinning, Jordan pressed the snowsuit to her chest and cruised the toy sleigh over the landscape of rumpled napkins. Iris was impressed Daveen had chosen such a nice gift.
Now mine, said Kay, pink with excitement, and handed Jordan a gift bag overflowing with tissue.
Jordan set aside the snowsuit and sleigh — thank you, Daveen, perfect, just perfect — and took Kay’s gift, her eyebrows lifted in anticipation. From the cascade of tissue paper, she pulled out a doll, a creepily realistic baby doll with fat cheeks, faint eyebrows, tiny nostrils, and dainty lips parted in a tiny smile as if recognizing the one person in the world it loved most. It waggled its arms at Jordan.
Jordan’s smile stiffened. Daveen, who’d hoped the evening was almost over, felt her watchful one pivot toward Kay, who squealed.
Yes. That’s right, the very one you gave to Lulu. Lulu loved it. It’s — her name is Boo — Boo is filled with Lulu’s love. You can feel it, right? Can’t you feel it? Boo just radiates love. Kay flung her arms wide to gather in the feelings she must have believed were flowing from the others, waves of love, not appalled embarrassment. I didn’t want to part with Boo, but I want your baby to have this from Lulu and me. I washed her, of course, and those are fresh undies — baby needs new, you’ll be dealing with your own real baby diapers soon — but Lulu’s love is packed inside Boo. Kay grinned and slammed her hand against her heart.
Whirring from vents they’d not noticed before filled the silence. Iris quit jiggling her foot. Daveen and her watchful one swiveled toward Jordan. Red blotches had sprung up on her cheeks, as if she’d been slapped. She bent over awkwardly, cradling the baby doll in her lap with one hand and with the other picking up one by one the tissue paper scattered around her feet, smoothing each sheet on the doll’s legs splayed out on her lap, then folded it into a neat square to place in the bag. When no tissue paper was left on the floor, she lifted the doll from her lap and lowered it inside. Iris looked at Daveen. Together they remembered Lulu’s tiny coffin disappearing into the ground.
The overhead whirring grew louder. How will we ever be able to escape? Daveen and Iris wondered. Jordan thought nothing. She reached for Kay’s hand. And Kay? She beamed at them all.
***
The next morning when they parted, each said this was the best ever, kissing and waving goodbye, each yearning to return to her own life.
Jordan gave birth to a baby boy. Their text exchanges became even more infrequent and were quickly deleted. Iris shifted from modeling into management. Daveen fell in love and didn’t mention it. Kay and Finn’s business expanded; he travelled too much. Jordan’s toddler, Justin, took swimming lessons.
***
In the winter they all turned forty-two, when none of them could remember when they’d last communicated, Kay sent an angry email: FINN THE FUCKER LEF ME 4 THE NEW GIRL!!! neeeeeed u.
Iris and Daveen flew to Chicago. Jordan picked them up.
In the dive bar she’d chosen where no one would recognize her or Kay, they sat at a table by the window, watched the evening traffic swell and die off, and got drunk. Kay vented, they commiserated and empty glasses accumulated on the smeary table Jordan had given up wiping clean with baby wipes.
When we were … the talent show, why did we pick that terrible Abba song? Kay asked, striking a match from the book she’d picked in the Women’s Room. They watched the flame creep toward her fingertips. She dropped it into the suds at the bottom of her glass. It sizzled. She lit another.
Which song?
The one about love.
Why did we pick Abba?
Because it was sappy? Because it was funky? Because it was so Old Lady? Didn’t think about it? Come on, we were purposefully pissing contrary.
Because, my dears, we were so fucking Fab, Iris bellowed, and signaled for another pitcher.
Outside, an ambulance screamed by. Its light pulsed through the window washing their faces red, then dark, then red, then dark. In the flashes, they saw each other as they had been back then, when they each knew they hadn’t given much thought to the why of most things, including their friendship. Now the why no longer mattered.
Image by Vonecia Carswell on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Thought, but Didn’t Say - February 3, 2026
Love this! Brilliant story.