I just finished reading a book called The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True-Life Tales of Friendships That Blew Up, Burned Out, or Faded Away, edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell. Women writers created essays of how friendships begin and evolve, only to be ended through a variety of reasons: time, geography, discord, or death. Friendships are formed without the bonds of blood or romantic love, yet these relationships can have the same power in our lives. The end of love is written about in countless ways, yet the loss of friendship is one subject that seems rarely discussed in our tell-all society. Someone asks you "Whatever happened to your friend," and more often than not the answer you give back is carefully worded to reveal nothing. "We had a falling out. It's complicated." We hold nothing back from friends: they know all of our weaknesses, and they remember our history. Often they know a self that is hidden from the rest of the world, yet they accept us as we truly are, and we value this.
I wondered if I could write of a break in friendship through a haze of distance and memory and write with some subjectivity, since it was such an emotionally charged experience. How much could I trust my own accounting of it? There are some breaks I rejected in telling, for the sole reason that they were way too personal and raw, but there wasone break that still strikes me as odd. Logically, it should never have happened, yet my friend seemed on a course she had set and could not free herself from, and it scooped me up into the drama and ultimately caused the break. So, we'll begin at the beginning, as they say.
Patricia and I had known each other since we were very small children. Our mothers were good friends, and we attended the same church. That is how I saw her for the most part, every Sunday in church, or at church activities, but also family gatherings. For the longest time, our families, with another family, did Thanksgiving dinner together. The three woman (who were all friends) had arrived at this plan, and this way they would have two Thanksgivings where they never had to cook. They all did, anyway, of course. "Let me bring the pies," or the green bean casserole, or some offering. The children all got along. My brother had three other boys to run around with on that day, and I had Patricia and Mary. One infamous Thanksgiving, we climbed out of Mary's bedroom window and toilet papered a neighbor's house. The police were cruising the neighborhood, caught us, and hauled us back to our parents. To this day, it is a favorite telling to remember how mortified our mothers were, and how our fathers were trying so hard to keep straight faces and not burst into laughter. I think I was five years old when I met Mary and she was three, and I am still friends with her to this day. That is another odd thing about the break with Patricia. I consider myself the type of person who sustains friendships, who works at being a good friend, keeping in touch, being concerned. I've since had to learn that even with that in place, some things just can't be saved.
Patricia was a pampered girl. I make no judgments on that, she just was. Whatever fancy took her interest, her parents let her explore it: music lessons, ice skating lessons, swimming lessons, horseback riding lessons which we did that together at Rock Creek Park stables. (Somehow the subject came up recently with a friend who didn't know they allowed horses in this city. Yes. They do.) Every Christmas when I would see her, she would be flooded with presents, yet I never got the sense she was arrogant about it or obnoxious. I am still in touch with her mother to this day, and I know Patricia had a very sweet, very loving mother. I suppose I report these things because my parents were much stricter with me with the consciously voiced concern of "not spoiling me." She was the first to have a television in her room, the first to wear a bikini, the first to be given a car. When we were teenagers, we would hop in her car and go joy riding. It was through one of her boyfriends that I met a boy I would date for a while, a blonde god who was Captain of his football team at another school. It was also because of her that I can say that I've gone on a date with an Amish boy. We went to an ice cream parlor. Sweet, yes?
We had fun together. In all of the time we were growing up, I can't honestly think of one incident where we had words or there was any tension. Yet she had this terrible need. When I look back now, I can see where she had this strong desire to be married. I think, without exaggeration, that she was engaged to be married at least four times before we were nineteen. She would call them her "fiancé." No one blinked or balked at the suggestion that they were anything but what she said. They would disappear. Nice boys. Attractive boys. What most would call a "catch," yet they would be gone, and another would be on the horizon, and in a remarkably short time they would become the "fiancé." Even then, I marvelled at it. I didn't know anyone with those persuasive powers over a young man of 17, 18, 19 years, other than Patricia.
Our friendship rolled along over the years. We went to summer camp together. We egged cars together, with our brothers. We'd go to parties together. We made out with boys in cars in dark places together. We lay on the beach together. We'd see each other every Sunday. We spent shared holidays. Probably in my junior year of college, that spring immediately after finals, Patricia approached me about driving to Alabama because she needed "a rest." Some down time. That was always how it was presented to me: a rest. I didn't believe her for a minute. Patricia's mother was originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and she still carried the accent of her birthplace. Back when we were in high school, Patricia's parents had taken a young man from Tuscaloosa into their home to live for a while. His name was Dan. He was slightly older than us, and he was the son of a longstanding friend, I think. He had finished college and done a stint as a Marine. He was attractive, but not in a way that appealed to me, and I never had a sense Patricia was interested in him during that time, what with four fiancé's being juggled around. Ultimately he moved back home to Alabama, and when she first approached me with this trip, the light bulb went off, and I thought "she wants to go down there after Dan." I just "knew."
I was quite worn out from my finals. It seems I was recovering from some minor illness. I only remember being overwhelmingly exhausted and in need of rest myself, not feigned rest. I told my boyfriend at the time how much I absolutely did not want to drive to Alabama with Patricia. I told my mother. I told Patricia's mother. The deal was: Patricia couldn't drive down there alone. She had to have someone with her, and I was the logical someone. I made the rounds again, citing my own fatigue in not being up for it. I knew I couldn't help with driving that far, but that was waved off as not important. She would be doing all of the driving. I made the rounds again: boyfriend, mother, Patricia's mother. My boyfriend backed me. "Don't go." My mother initially backed me, especially when I told her what I thought Patricia might be up to, but she had no easy way of presenting that explanation to Patricia's mother. I forget how many times we went through my rejection of this trip. Three? Four? More than should be required, but it wouldn't stop. Finally, my mother begged me, out of her friendship to the mother, to please just go. It would only be a few days. It might be fun. I would see a part of the South I had never been in. In retrospect it's amazing someone didn't cave on this plan and write it off, but they did not, and the persistence paid off. After talking with my mother that one last time and hearing her awkward position and perspective, I folded and I went.
No comments:
Post a Comment