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acquiring independently while (gasp!) apart.

      These extra-special talks, during which we each felt as though we were talking to a whole new other person, given our protracted separation, required foodstuffs that went beyond the usual Nutrasweet/Funny Bones double-whammy. It required something beyond smoking while eating. It required something extra-special to recement us as the friends we’d always been and always would be, reconfirming the fact that it would always be okay for us to grow while apart just so long as we never grew apart. And, leave it to Best Girlfriend to come up with the perfect reconnection ritual climax: miniature peppermint patties consumed while sitting on a bronze plaque commemorating some man we never knew anything about.

      “It’s gotta be his face,” Best Girlfriend had said, taking a teensy bite from the patty in order to make it last longer.

      “Ya think?” I’d asked, taking my own first nip. “How can you possibly know such a thing? How come not the feet? In graveyards, aren’t headstones at the head and plaques at the feet?”

      “But this isn’t a graveyard. I mean, what’re you talking about?” It was amazing how, for two girls who’d grown up entirely within the state of Connecticut, in most of our discussions during our college years, we both sounded remarkably like Joe Pesci. “If there were a real person underneath us here, buried on the lawn outside of the Student Union, right around the area where we usually sit for movies sometimes, that would just be way too gross for words. It’s just a commemorative plaque.”

      “So, wait a second, then. The reason you said we’re sitting on Irwin Lerner’s face is because…?”

      “It’s because I said so.”

      “Ah.”

      And Best Girlfriend was just enough months older than me that she always had the edge in any heated debate.

      But then she moved away after college, and there was no more sitting on Irwin Lerner’s face together for us.

      Our friendship was like being married to someone who gets sentenced to a really-really long prison term. On the one hand, you’ve sworn to wait for him and maybe you even intend to, and maybe you’ll even be able to. But in the case of a best friend that moves far away, even though she remains your official best friend, you still need to hook up with someone close by, someone you can go shopping with so that you can reject whatever the current fashion trend is together, someone with whom to attend chick flicks, someone to talk to on a daily basis, sharing each other’s soap opera.

      Hold on. So maybe it’s not like being married to someone who gets sentenced to a really-really long term in prison so much as it is like being the husband who is in fact sentenced: you might start having sex with some beefy bruiser named Bart, but he’s not really who you want and everyone knows it.

      Pam was my Bart while Best Girlfriend was the real deal.

      This might not sound like such a great deal from Pam’s perspective, but Pam had known what she was getting herself into—being the Default Best Friend of someone who already had a real Best Girlfriend (and, yes, I do realize how immature I sound right around now)—and had in fact campaigned for the position, beating out Delta and T.B. (more on them later). As for me, I’d needed someone to go with me to see the latest Jennifer Aniston movie (you can go alone to dramas, but never comedies, because the laughing part just never works the same, which I suppose says something profound about the fact that people can suffer alone, but to celebrate the joys of living—laughter, success, popcorn, new shoes, finding out that Jamie Lee Curtis doesn’t have a better body than you after all, the comical/ironical/blissful sides of love—you mostly need someone to celebrate with. It’s like getting a Ben & Jerry jones on: when you share a pint with a friend, it’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a friend,” while if you eat that same pint alone, it’s like, “Wow, I’m pathetic,” (and not just because you will have eaten twice as much).

      As I said, I needed a pal to go to the movies, and Delta had to work late and T.B. had a first date, so—tag!—Pam was it. She called me that one extra time, I said “uncle” and the rest was Default Best Girlfriend history. It was that simple. The two other friends in our foursome were busy and thus Pam became my Default Best Friend.

      But, just like sex with beefy Bart, it just wasn’t the same. Pam could laugh with me in a crowded theater, and agree that hip-huggers sucked and that most of the people who wear them shouldn’t without it sounding like sour grapes, but she could never be someone who saw me for everything I was and hoped to be, and everything I wasn’t while loving me just the same, with the clarity of a god, nor, I suppose, could I see her in that way.

      Best Girlfriend was the only woman who’d ever been able to actually see me; Best Girlfriend was the only woman I could honestly say I knew.

      Did it suck for Pam? Probably. I don’t know; she never said. And besides, we did have fun most times. But it also sucked for me and it sucked for Best Girlfriend, too.

      But Best Girlfriend needed to actualize herself in ways that never tempted me, career-wise, adventure-wise, relationship-wise. And, if I was going to love her like I loved no other woman on the face of this planet, then I was just going to have to let her lead her life in whatever way she needed to.

      So, in a nutshell, it’s not so much that I mind her being there; I just want her here.

      10

      “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

      Apparently, Best Girlfriend was not best pleased with some of the life decisions I was making.

      “Are you fucking nuts, Scarlett?”

      Having reached nearly the end of my quarantine period, I’d decided to call her up, looking for a little support, a little support that seemed to be sadly lacking.

      “Oh, come on,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what you really think?”

      “Fair enough. Maybe that was a little harsh. But do you realize that what you’re telling me sounds, uh—no, there’s no nicer way to put this—slightly crazy?”

      “Which part are you referring to?”

      “Well, most women, when they get to be our age, put their efforts into making themselves look better, not worse. I’d say that pretty much covers the ‘slightly crazy’ part.”

      “I didn’t say I was definitely going to do it.”

      “What then?”

      “I said I was thinking about doing it.”

      “Oh. Well, that’s radically different.”

      “Come on, be honest. Haven’t you ever wondered?”

      Best Girlfriend was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known who wasn’t in movies. I know it may sound elitist to say this, but there’s a real continuum of attractiveness. Someone has to occupy the high end; Best Girlfriend was at the very top, and I was close up there.

      “Haven’t you ever wondered,” I asked, “what your life would be like, what your relationships with men would be like, if you didn’t look the way you do?”

      “No. I haven’t.” She said it so simply that I realized it must be true.

      “Oh,” I said.

      “You never did say, Scarlett. Just what—or who—put this idea into your head?”

      “Pam?” I winced.

      “Oh.”

      Pam and Best Girlfriend had met once or twice, when Best Girlfriend flew into town for her occasional visits. While I’d had high hopes for those meetings—who, after all, wouldn’t flat-out adore Best Girlfriend?—the meetings hadn’t gone as planned. Pam had insisted on spending the entire time talking about mutual acquaintances that Best Girlfriend, living clear across the country, had nothing mutual with. And Best Girlfriend, usually so self-confident and secure, had been uncharacteristically miffed. The resultant conversations

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