It’s Called Friendship

No really, are you gonna eat your crostini?

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Last night my roommate and I met a friend at Gottino, a still newish wine bar that was recently lauded in New York magazine and therefore was packed—candelit faces were lined up along a brick wall with a ledge and gathered around bistro tables no larger than the stool seats at the bar.

Hooks and fake spigots were fastened every here and there for hanging handbags and coats. I love pretty, practical things like that, but I held my gold sequin snap clutch in my lap so I could gaze at its impractical prettiness. We all kept our coats on, even after we got drinks and seats, because it was bitterly, hatefully cold out and we were reminded of that every time someone came or went through the window-paned door right behind us.

Almost everyone was wearing a coat or cold weather accessory. Our corner of the bar was crowded with wicker and wire baskets of walnuts and bread and quince and pomegranates and the menu of glasses and small plates was written in chalk on the wall, so when I got my “craft beer”—a Hennepin, which I chose in keeping with my New Year’s Resolution to order something new every other time I’m out—I sort of felt like I was attending an elegant autumn bonfire spirit rally.

The waiters were passing plates of crostini and cheese and garlic sausage and butternut squash bruschetta through the harvest on the bar to the head chef (wearing a jacket and scarf over a hooded sweater), who was standing on our side to serve the food. She brushed against me a little whenever she reached for a new dish. She kept apologizing and each time as I forgave her, I apprised whatever morsel she was sliding beneath my nose.

At 1:00, the crowd had diminished. Caitlin, Amy and I had room to put our elbows up on the bar and brandish silver nutcrackers at the complimentary walnuts and chestnuts. Eaten plates began to return from the tiny tables. I found myself eyeing a torn-off bread crust beside a mason jar of pâté just yearning to be scraped clean; most of a dollop of whipped cream and two strawberries that had been pushed off the top of a pastry and left behind—leftovers. Leftovers are my favorite foods.

The thing is that I have a taste for texture. I crave the taut chewiness of pizza crust and the brittle crisp of burned cheese with the pulpy, viscous tomato sauce in between more than I crave the flavors.

I like hot food upon its return to room temperature. I like the edges of things, the crusts and crumbs that normal diners brush away. I like the way a bite of bruschetta dances across my tongue and the way whipped cream sings between my lips. And the last few “I couldn’t eat another” bites that other people forfeit at the end of a meal are just about the right portion size for me.

It was pathetic and a little sad and pretty icky, the way my mouth was watering over someone else’s leftovers. When Amy asked me, “are you hungry? Why don’t you order a plate?” I said, “because I’m not really hungry. I don’t want my own plate. I want what’s on that one.”

Caitlin’s used to my grazing. She just glared at me and pushed the plates out of my reach, away from my sly, grabby hands. “Finish your beer, Em. Crack me another walnut.”

Where we appreciate a few tears of laughter, too

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I’m used to associating the sound of heels on the back deck stairs with special occasions of the refrigerator corsage, photos in front of the fireplace, breath-a-lizer variety. Because when else did I wear heels? I feel older when I hear that sound. I’ve been feeling older, in an unsettling, exhausting way, all week, after hearing from Jill that her dad died, making plans to go home for the funeral, realizing that I’d have to sit by myself at the church.

I made the no-mascara call before I’d even gotten out of the shower, but I’d also passed up one of those pocket-sized packets of tissues—the ones I go halfway through and then save in a drawer somewhere forever. I couldn’t find the drawer full of half-used tissue packages, so I rushed out the back door without any sort of drop cloth for my face.

I heard my own shoes on the deck and I thought about going back because I felt the nerves in the roof of my mouth trembling. I paused on the last step, pinching one eye shut, biting down on a chunk of my cheek, trying to tell if my nose would start to run, wondering “what was I thinking, no tissues?”

I got in the car anyway, after a moment. I don’t know how to attend funerals. I guess that’s lucky.

The ‘older’ feeling settled and faded later, at the Rumpf’s house. I felt like I was taking a dare when I splashed rum into my Coke. We studied a picture of our Girl Scout troop at our last meeting, our senior year of high school. I swear it seemed like I was looking at a photograph of something that hadn’t happened yet, because all the five years since then haven’t changed anything.

(Nothing important, at least—I’m glad I’m not still straightening my hair to the quick.)

I’d forgotten how quickly time passes in that house. Hours go by and I just assume that all the clocks are wrong because it can’t possibly be 5 or 8 or 11 already. I could hardly remember what all had gone on, I just knew that I’d been distracted, delighted, thoroughly warm despite that chilly thermostat setting for . . . hours, apparently.

By the very, very end, when I hugged and held on to Jill and her mom and then her brother at the door, I felt like my own clock had been reset. I sort of patted myself down, assessing my emotional state. Still older and still a little sad, but absolutely settled. Jill and her family and her home have always restored me to me. It’s comforting.

As I felt my way down the driveway, toeing for the path in my dress shoes, I thought, “didn’t I come to do the comforting?”

Whatever you want, or whatever you would have wanted

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On the night I get the call, the one that I’ve been putting off in my mind as though I had any control over the matter, I’m already tipsy. I’ve just applied my mascara, separating my lashes as I thicken them. I only answer because Jill has called from her home, where the phone number is blocked from caller ID. “Unrestricted” on the screen of my pale pink Razr tempts me to unflip my phone because it feels like a dare.

I hear Jill’s voice. It’s full of truth. I am, it seems, instantaneously leaking from the eyes.

The thing is, these aren’t drunken tears drowned in white wine. They aren’t even the obligatory tears that I expected to shed when I answered this anticipated phone call. Jill says that she has called because she wanted to let me know, “Dad died tonight, just a few hours ago,” and I say “Oh babe,” though I’m thinking, “Why now, why now? Why tonight? I just put on my mascara.” I say that last part, the part about mascara, the part about a type of cosmetic that smells sour when it’s gone bad, out loud.

I hold the length of my left index finger against the lower lid of my left eye while Jill explains the logistics of her father’s peaceful passing. After she mentions the date of the funeral, I stop listening. I can think only of what I will clutch in my hands during the ceremony. My free hand falls away from my damp face and opens and closes in my lap. I admire the precision of the inky line of mascara streaked from the knuckle at the midpoint of my index finger, down the metacarpal, clear to my wrist. My hand looks quite thin. I realize this with distress, not vanity, and in the same moment I recognize the mixture of grief and gratitude in the pit of my stomach.

Jill is the next one to say “Oh babe.” I chuckle, though my voice is heavy with the tears clinging to the back of my throat, and say, “I know, I can’t believe I’m crying and you’re not.” She admits that it hasn’t hit her yet. The grief, the reality for which she has tried to prepare herself, hasn’t hit her yet. I tell her to call me the moment it does, as soon as she needs to, as soon as she needs me. She says that someone from the funeral service will be arriving at the house soon. She has to get off the phone because her mother needs to make a call.

I tell her to give her mom the largest, longest hug that she can. “And tell her it’s from me.” I’m crippled, even as I give these instructions, by the understanding that I cannot describe over the phone the sort of hug that I intend. There isn’t time to talk about this hug. There might not even be time to give this hug. There is one for Jill, too, though I don’t even bother to tell her about it, because I know it won’t be enough. And even if it were, I’m not there to give it to her.

We hang up and it takes a minute for me to realize that it’s up to me to call my own family and tell my mom what has happened. That it has happened.

I have never shared this sort of news. I can’t remember a time when I’ve had this type of responsibility, this much responsibility. I don’t feel old enough, tactful enough, brave enough, anything enough, to be making this phone call. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? While the phone rings, I try to figure out how my mom would tell me what I am about to tell her. She answers right as I remember all the calls that Jill is making tonight.

There is no right way around, so I just say the words. The weight on my heart doesn’t lessen when I pass the heavy knowledge on to my mom, nor when she relays the news to my dad, who I can picture sitting at the computer or in the recliner by the window, curious about the phone call at this hour.

We talk for a few minutes before I start to cry again, and then I cry for a few minutes before I flush out all the wine laden tears and gulp a couple of raw sobs. When mom says, “oh babe,” I practically interrupt her to confide that I’m glad it’s not me. My lungs start to shudder. She tells me it’s okay, I’m okay. “We’re fine,” she says, an answer to an unasked question. “We’re all fine here.”

For the moment, that’s enough, because it has to be. The statement offers little comfort, only confirmation. It doesn’t change anything.

I tell my mom that I’m still going to go out with my roommate. She says there’ll be plenty of time for tears in the coming week and next weekend. We exchange our usual Love You’s before hanging up.

My roommate has been waiting in the living room, watching the TV on mute. When I come back down the hall, she looks up and says, “I’m sorry, Em.” I expel a great sigh, squash the heels of my hands right into my eye sockets and rub, blotting cosmetic powder and gel and grease across my cheeks.

“I’m just going to wash my face and start over.” I flip open the compact mirror I keep in my purse. We’ve spent a few minutes in silence before I miss the company of the scripted dialogue. I wag my hand toward the television. “Unmute it. Come on, unmute it.” I welcome the renewed source of sound, but I don’t hear the words. I only hear the three trembling notes to the refrain in a song I was listening to earlier, while I tried to figure out what to wear. I have to make a conscious effort not to hum out loud while I apply a new coat of mascara.

Eveything I need to know about life I learned from my ex-best friends

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– That you can’t choose your own nickname
– That I don’t have to spend all of your time and energy on a quest to “find myself”
– The miraculous powers of the strapless bra
– How to say something without actually saying it
– That not everybody hears what you say without actually saying it
– That some people interpret everything literally
– How not to spill your drink in a crowd
– The people you love the most are the people who can hurt you the most
– That favorite colors and favorite animals are important
– How to brew real chai tea
– That the one time you really, really shouldn’t forward an e-mail from the boy you like to your best friend for critique and/or swooning is when the boy has belittled the best friend in the content of that e-mail
– How to fish for a compliment
– How to be a tease
– To fold laundry straight out of the dryer
– That really good sex only happens with the right person
– Not to end a sentence with a preposition
– How to love selflessly
– How to mix a strong drink
– That knowing someone and understanding someone and accepting someone and loving someone are all different things

Semantics

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In college, I had a series of therapy sessions with a doctor who “specialized” in child, adolescent and adult psychology. The text on his business card was very crowded and his office was littered with Legos and puzzles, teen magazines, and a modest collection of mutely-colored Mexican artifacts. Every appointment felt like a 50-minute identity crisis. The doctor had clearly prepared himself for a patient with multiple personalities, someone who signed their checks “Mr. Louis T. Cooperstein” but, some days, answered only to “Baby Louie.” I sought counseling for a largely unremarkable case of depression and anxiety. I’m not sure he knew what to do with me.

Every time I sat on his couch, I had the constant impression that his mind was wandering elsewhere, that he found me a complete and utter bore. As a chronic people-pleaser, I tried my best to engage him. Once I started dropping the names of syndromes and disorders that I had learned in AP Psych in high school, trying to bait him with the chance diagnose something extraordinary. “Maybe I have mild this…or severe that…or advanced something complicated by late on-set something else.” His rare responses were always very critical and eventually I gave up and we sat across from each other in unresolved silence. He gazed out the window, his posture and expression conveying such detachment that I felt like I was the doctor trying to draw in a lost patient.

In what would be our last meeting, I managed to capture his attention with what was fundamentally a dispute about grammar. Our unresolved silence had become so irritating that I began a rambling monologue just to drown out the clock’s audible ticking. I must have started one too many sentences with “My happiness,” because, without warning, the doctor looked at me, inched his chin forward, and poised the tip of his gold pen, which had been folded limply beneath his palm, above his legal pad.

“You say ‘happiness’ as if it’s a thing,” he said in a tone that he may or may not been meant to sound quite so accusatory. He shifted his left leg across his right knee and lowered his jaw onto the heel of his right hand. His movements reminded me of a street performer playing statue, pouring body parts like wet plaster into a pose and holding absolutely still, wordlessly daring passersby to poke him to see if he is made of stone or skin. 

“Well, ‘happiness’ is a noun.”  We bickered for a few moments about whether or not I could I reduce my emotions down to semantics before he poured himself back against the other arm of his chair and resumed indifferent surveillance of the street outside.  Meanwhile, I experienced a brief wave of envy for buskers who paint their bodies bronze and spend their days performing for an audience of fleeting strangers.  If only that would bring me happiness.

According to the OED, the definition of happiness is: The quality or condition of being happy; good fortune or luck in life or in a particular affair; success, prosperity.  This is not the first time I have looked that up.  My conversation with the dour doctor always comes to mind when I find myself defining indefinable things as a means of coping with them.  Linguistically, happiness may be a noun, but what a fleeting, fragile one it is.  It is unfairly elusive.  Like a limb or a muscle, you aren’t aware of its presence until it has been compromised. 

There is one other phrase that I will always associate with happiness—the word itself and all that it represents.  My friend Lily once wrote to me in a letter, “One of the most frustrating things my mom ever said to me was, ‘no one ever guaranteed your happiness.’  Unfortunately, it’s true.”  When I am depressed, truly, deeply unhappy, that seems like the most paralyzing, punishing philosophy, no matter how true it may be.  I can think of a few instances in my childhood when I wailed the patent slogan of outraged little girls, “I never asked to be born!”  There are particularly brutal times when the realization that happiness is not a birthright is enough to make me want to throw that tantrum again. 

But at other times, at most times, I am in that expansive space between desolation and delight.  Then, Lily’s mother’s wise words sound more like a good-natured challenge, even a dare.  Happiness isn’t a promise.  It is something to be achieved.  Perhaps happiness is something that must be exercised, like limbs and muscles.  To get there, to get through both the largely unremarkable doldrums and the singular hardships that everyone endures and achieve happiness, that would be something extraordinary.Â