BFF (Wanted)

I had some friends but they're gone / someone came and took them away / and from the dusk til the dawn / here is where I’ll stay / Standing at the end of the road, boys / Waiting for my new friends to come / I don't care if I'm hungry or cold—freezing / I've got to get me some / Cause you've got to have friends...

~ Bette Midler, "Friends”

smile and say, "hon!"

In high school, I had half a dozen close friends—girls who knew all my secrets, girls I liked. We had my sweet sixteen party at an Italian restaurant downtown, and the next day, I was the Odd Girl Out. I don't know why. My very best friend, Angela Jaworski, didn’t know why either, but she—and all my other friends—listed to Allison Silverman, a neighbor and friend who told them not to like me anymore.

There could be no other reason, my mother told me. Allison was jealous.

I got by. I created a fort in my closet, put up some black light posters, and read Patti Smith's Babel. I used the thesaurus to write poems about death. A lot of them had the word scythe in them—"scythe in hand to snap the thread of existence." I had cool pen pals (Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick and Ivan Kral from the Patti Smith Group among them) and went by the names Rainbow Leigh and Crystal Leigh. I acted like losing all my friends didn’t bother me; maybe it didn't. Angela once kicked the back of my chair in math class. I spent our whole childhoods protecting her from Sarah Lowell, a Robert Plant lookalike who always wanted to kick her ass, so the first time she kicked my chair was the last. I only had to tell her once.

Some time later—could have been months, could have been years—Allison wanted to apologize. I met her in the hallway of a neutral apartment building, and I listened. When Allison finished and asked if I would accept her apology, I said no, and I left. I had traded in that set of friends for another, one member of which lived across the street. I went to his house and smoked pot.

When I started college, I found a kindred spirit right away. Jane and I were both English majors, and we hung out together all the time. My husband, who was my boyfriend all my life, didn't like her very much, but he pretended he did, for me.

One day, after eleven years of close, call-each-other-every-day, buy-each-other-presents, see-each-other-every-weekend-if-not-several-days-a-week-too friendship, she came over for chili. She always came over for dinner but rarely invited us over. I started thinking about it that very night—the fact that she never seemed to call me anymore. And so I decided to see what would happen if I didn't call her.

We didn't speak for five years.

One day, I’d heard she was in the hospital. Some kids at the park, where she walked her dog, had thrown rocks at her head. I knew she had no friends. She never had more than one friend at a time. So, worried she'd be all alone, I showed up at the hospital. Our friendship was renewed, and it was as if we’d never been apart.

Years and boyfriends (hers, I still had the same one) went by. Apartments and homes and houses changed. But we were still together. And then, just after our 39th birthdays, just before Christmas, on Hanukkah to be exact, she didn’t call. Now that's usually nothing. But Jane was a mannerly person. Her mother instilled in her the art of the thank-you note, the hostess gift. She never missed a Jewish holiday. But she didn't call. I sent an e-mail to see if she had been out of town. Surely she must have been! But I didn't hear from her. Ever again.

Truth is, it's good riddance. My best friend, while I was miserable and pregnant, with sixty extra pounds, reminded me constantly of her sister, who was further along than I and didn’t even show. Her sister came to my house, and Jane said, "Doesn't Marsha look great?" My best friend, after my daughter was born, told me to, "Get her to stop staring at me; she’s giving me the creeps!" My best friend had gotten engaged to a man that she had never introduced me to and told me it was because she was afraid I wouldn't approve; the real reason was that she was embarrassed by his lack of education. (Another friend of mine, one who has also drifted apart, wondered why it took me so long to see how mean she was.)

I had plenty of friends, though and had even made a new one on a trip. My husband and I double dated a lot with our new friends, and our kids got along great. Mark was the son of my mother's best friend, who had recently died of cancer. Lisa was a doctor and became his mother's hospice nurse, and this is how we all met.

When they announced their plans to marry, I was thrilled for them. I had decided to make them a gorgeous mirror out of souvenir plates ("Frozen Mudslide"). I tried to get a little information out of them—stuff you would know if you knew people longer. So I asked—what’s your song? where did you meet? where have you lived? I was worried, of course, that they would guess what I was doing, because everyone knows I do mosaics. But they didn’t guess. In fact, Lisa called and left a long message on my machine that she didn’t feel comfortable answering all these questions. She was a really private person and didn’t want her information out there like that. When I asked her mother, she gave me the same answer.

This was my friend? (This was also a person who had the names of her children, the address of her wedding and her home, and all of her other personal information on a wedding web site, a place where anyone could find her with a Google search or simply by accident, which is how my sister found it.)

I decided I wasn’t going to the wedding. (For a while, I wasn't even going to make the gift, but I thought I could sell it or something.) Both Lisa and Mark knew I must be mad, but I gave them a good excuse about why I couldn’t come. They called me every day for a week, begging us to reconsider. Finally, I gave in. I still didn't want to go and thought about not showing up. But the night before, I sent my gift to the rehearsal dinner with my parents. Later that evening came the phone call—a long answering machine message: Oh, I am horrible. What was I thinking? Look at what a great friend you are, and this is how I treated you. The gift is so beautiful that we both cried. Oh, please forgive me.

I went to the wedding, where I was seated with my husband, my sister, and my brother-in-law, practically in the next room, with six seventy-year olds. The rest of the people our age were in the middle of the room.

Although I did hear from her via e-mail about her wonderful honeymoon in a castle where Bono stays when he is in Dublin and in an Italian villa featured on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (she’s a doctor; he’s in finance), I never spoke to either of them again.

glam

When my daughter started preschool, I met lots of new people. Some of them became friends, though I often question it. I am invited to parties, sometimes to dinner, but few ever invite me for coffee (though I invite them a lot). I suppose I’m too demanding. After all, most of them work more hours than I and have larger families. Most of them already had friends when I met them, so I’m not at the top of the list when some time is labeled spare. Once again, I feel like I’m the only one making the effort. In times of plummeting self-esteem, I often wonder if I'd be invited anywhere if my husband weren't the teacher at the local school.

If you count the friends I've made through an Internet forum—even if you were to count only the ones I’ve met in real life or the ones with whom I chat or e-mail daily, I’m pretty lucky. But if you don't count them (my husband doesn’t think of these people as my real friends), then I am lonely.

The truth is, as truth usually is in matters like these, somewhere in the middle. I am both lucky and lonely. I know that Joy and Kathy and Cerise and Lucia and Max and Scout and Jane like and respect me as much as I do them. But a woman needs a girlfriend across the alley or down the road, one she not only makes time for each week—but one who actually makes time for her! And she needs that girlfriend more every day she's alive.

I am getting old, and here I am—“standing at the end of the road, boys, waiting for my new friends to come.”

I have a lot to offer a friend. I am loyal to the core, but I will never lie to you. I will tell you, privately, when I think you've done something wrong. I have time for you, always. I don't act flummoxed or overwhelmed when you call, and if I am, I ask if I can call you right back. And I always call you right back. I have hard advice and a soft shoulder, and I know when to offer which, even if it always sounds like you are asking for advice. I will pick up two of something wonderful so I can offer you one. I am funny. I am kind. I will be catty with you. I will hate your husband when you do and like him again when you're ready. I will never love him. I will watch your kids. I will clean your house and cook your meals if you are sick or injured. I will tell you what so-and-so said about you. I will never let your self-esteem fall.

I will help you move and carry the heavy things.


*High school friends' names have been changed.