Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,1

who complained most about their useless husbands.

The secrets they divulged to one another amazed her. The group was marked Private, but that only meant that you had to ask to join. There were 4,237 members, and in theory at least, most of them lived within twenty blocks of one another. Yet it felt like a safe space. At once intimate and anonymous.

The same fifteen women commented on everything, each with her own predictable slant on the issue of the day.

When someone asked about whether to have a third kid, the self-righteous environmentalist said that she had not done so because of fears about global warming and her family’s carbon footprint; someone posted an easy chicken recipe, and the Environmentalist wrote a manifesto in the comments section about why she was raising her kids vegan.

Mimi Winchester managed to complain about her brownstone (she’d kill for open concept), her cleaning lady (she wouldn’t do windows), and even, somehow, her Hamptons house (traffic!).

The nanny tattlers loved to report on sitters they saw feeding a child junk food or talking on the phone to a degree they deemed excessive. There were also those who stood up for any nanny’s behavior, no matter how terrible.

Elisabeth’s best friend, Nomi, said her greatest source of irritation was the friends who didn’t come to them with problems but instead posted them to the BK Mamas page. Last spring, their college friend Tanya, who also lived in the neighborhood, spent an entire dinner making small talk, only to post to BK Mamas two days later that she was on the hunt for a divorce attorney.

“I’m not acknowledging it unless she tells me directly,” Nomi said.

“I think she assumes you’ll see it on Facebook and then ask her about it,” Elisabeth said.

“Well, I won’t.”

Elisabeth, like most people, was a lurker, rarely commenting, never posting, despite the time she spent reading the page each day.

Within five minutes, twelve women said that what the smiling blonde was up to with her college boyfriend was nothing but a harmless flirtation. Ten others said to cut it off immediately.

This sort of question appeared once a month or so, standing out among so many queries about potty training and playgroups. Someone would confess a husband’s alcoholism or infidelity, or a disturbing desire to run away, and everyone else would reply in a rush, energized by being in possession of a secret.

They were the posts Elisabeth told Andrew about the next morning, even though she knew he didn’t care. Half the pleasure of the group was talking about it with someone in real life. She missed Wednesdays in Brooklyn, when Nomi worked from home and would meet her at the crepe place on Court Street for lunch.

She kept revisiting their last lunch in her mind. How they sat and talked, both unwilling to end the conversation, until the kid behind the counter said it was closing time. Then they lingered on the sidewalk in the sticky August heat, as they had done in the parking lot on the day they left college.

Nomi once swore she’d never live in Brooklyn. The first time she came out from Manhattan for brunch, just before she climbed into a taxi, she swept her hand across Elisabeth’s forehead like Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were and said, “Your borough is lovely, Hubbell.” But it was another two years before she and Brian moved. They bought a three-bedroom in a new high-rise with an elevator and a swimming pool. Elisabeth had only ever lived in dusty walk-ups, with crown moldings and creaky wooden floors. Places that were listed as having character and charm, if not central air or laundry in the building.

She attributed the longevity of their friendship at least in part to the fact that she and Nomi had opposite tastes in men and real estate. It was impossible for either of them to be jealous of the other.

“Am I making a huge mistake?” Elisabeth said as they parted, locked in a hug, the baby asleep in the stroller at her side.

“Yes,” Nomi said. “You are.”

“That is not a supportive answer.”

“I’m still mad at you for leaving.”

“I always said I was going to.”

“But you’d been saying it for so long, I stopped believing you at some point.”

Elisabeth had been so lucky to have the friend who knew her best right nearby, all that time.

She supposed this was another reason why she clung to a neighborhood Facebook group—it made her forget that she lived 250 miles away now, in