Secret

By Beth Kaplan

I’d been looking for her for twenty-six years, periodically Googling both her name and the various ways I thought her workplace might come up. But Penny Harris, my beloved childhood friend, remained invisible. And then last week, I was struck with one of those ideas that spark through the air: although neither of us had ever used her full name back then, I should try it now. Penelope.

In an instant, there she was: Penelope Jane Harris. It was her obituary. She died in August 2019. I was too late.

The memory of the last time I’d seen her haunted me.

•••

“Name’s Penny,” she said. “What’s yours?”

Penny wore thick-framed glasses, her straight black hair cut in a pudding bowl, pale skin erupting into angry patches of red. We met at a neighborhood birthday party where neither she nor I knew how we’d come to be invited. While the in-crowd girls in their frilly dresses gossiped and giggled and played Pin the Tail on the Donkey in the den, Penny and I sat on the turquoise brocade sofa in the living room swooning over our favourite book, Little Women. She preferred intrepid Jo, and I my namesake, saintly Beth. I told Penny that I wept for days after reading the tragic chapter where Beth says goodbye to Jo and then dies with the sun shining on her sweet face.

Penny’s head drooped. She touched her eye, then leaned over and smeared a wet finger down my cheek.

“Real tears,” she whispered.

“Wow. She’s weirder than I am,” I thought, touching the damp on my face, “and she doesn’t care.”

We were soulmates.

This was Halifax in 1962. She was thirteen. I was eleven.

•••

My new best friend lived in a child’s drawing kind of house, a white box with a pointy roof and black-shuttered windows. The windows were always closed, the downstairs rooms spotless and airless. Penny’s dad was tall and hurried, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland; when Penny introduced us, he bent quickly to shake my fingertips and vanished. Her mother was short and wiry with sharp eyes and a sharp voice. She was always tired, never offered Kool-Aid and cookies like mothers were supposed to. It was clear she wasn’t keen on me, Penny’s only good friend, coming over to play, but she never allowed her daughter to visit my house, I didn’t know why. She ordered us to keep quiet. Quiet!

We tiptoed to Penny’s room and closed the door. Playing outside, even in the backyard, was not an option; my friend was always wheezing with allergies and asthma. She also had eczema, scaly bumpy patches on her elbows and the backs of her knees that made her scratch until she bled, although she struggled not to. “My scratching,” she whispered once, “makes Mum very angry.”

We played with dolls, real ones and paper ones, while we talked about our schools and books and dreams. One day she wanted to tell me a secret.

“Guess what?” she murmured, pushing her glasses back up her nose, as she did constantly. “I was adopted.”

I’d never met anyone who was adopted and wasn’t sure how to respond. “Neat,” I said, holding the shapely new Barbie paper doll we’d been dressing. “Were … were you in an orphanage and everything?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “I heard my real mother had tons of kids already and didn’t have room for me.”

“I hope you were in an orphanage, Pen,” I said, thinking of Anne of Green Gables. “That’s so romantic.”

She turned away. “When I see a woman with lots of kids,” she said, her finger tracing the bright paper dress in her lap, “I wonder if she’s my mother. I wonder if she ever changed her mind.”

I’d often imagined I was adopted. Surely my actual birth parents were nicer than the ones I was stuck with. But deep down I knew that was a fantasy, whereas, it shocked me to realize, Penny really did not know who her birth parents were.

I was a demonstrative girl and wanted to hug her, but I sensed it best to keep my distance. We never touched.

Penny was excited to invite me one Saturday for lunch with her parents. We sat stiffly in the dining room around a large mahogany table, exchanging awkward remarks, while her mother served Campbell’s tomato soup and Kraft cheese sandwiches, not quite enough for the four of us.

My family has lots of problems, I thought, but coming up with food and conversation is not one of them. If I’d been invited back for a meal, I would have found an excuse not to go. But I was never asked again.

•••

Penny and I were mad for figurines. When either of us had saved enough allowance, we’d get the bus downtown to Woolworth’s on Barrington Street and buy a new figurine, small china horses mostly. We gave them names: Violin, Dancer, Fanfare. One day, playing stables in her room, we decided to create special homes for our horses out of whatever we could find. I sprawled on the floor on one side of her bed, and she on the other, in silence all afternoon, making up dramas.

For some time, our afternoons together were dedicated to creating a miniature exhibition that we called Project X. I would decide, say, on a hospital scene and make beds out of cardboard and Kleenex, an operating room of Plasticine and matchboxes, a row of bandaged horses lined up, recovering. Wheezing on the other side, Penny was creating a fairy horse’s treehouse of old cheesecloth dusters, bits of jewellery, wood scraps glued together.

And then we had the thrilling notion to create an entire new world; words and ideas tumbling out, we pieced the story together. I became Helen Foster and she Kristine Foster, orphan twins—fraternal, not identical—whose parents had died in a terrible fire. We’d been sent to stay with our curmudgeonly Aunt Gwendolyn on Foster Island, off the coast of England. In real life, I was sturdy with short brown hair, but my willowy Helen was completely different, with blonde locks cascading to her waist and a delicate face and voice. Everyone loved Helen for her selfless kindness. Penny’s Kristine was a fierce, reckless tomboy always charming her way out of scrapes. “She looks like me,” said Penny, “only prettier.”

Foster Island was mostly fields and woods, so we had our own horses. Mine, Champ, was a golden palomino. Kristine’s Firefly was a pinto. We rode bareback.

Penny and I kept two diaries, one for Foster Island and one for our real lives. At home, I was miserably caught between my parents, who’d separated once and still frightened me with their quarrels. Though I’d been pressed into reluctant service as my mother’s confidante, my little brother, with his blonde curls and dimples, was the adored favorite of them both. The injustice of my exclusion from my father’s heart burned in me. Dad, a noisy social activist, intimated that girls who liked dolls and dresses were boring conformists. He wanted a rebellious tomboy, like my Foster Island sister Kristine.

But I was gentle Helen, and despite the pain caused me by others, I tried to forgive everyone and everything. “Helen,” I wrote in my Beth diary, “is a kind of saint with an indescribable inner radiance.” When my mother yelled that I should clean my room, or Dad smacked the side of my head for some misdemeanour, as he often did, I’d choke back tears and do my best to turn into Helen. In my room, I’d look around at the jumble and murmur, “Oh, dear Kristine, look what a mess you’ve made! I’ll clean it up for you.” And humming softly, I sorted the clothes, tidied the papers, put away the stacks of books. How good it felt to be someone else, neat and serene and cherished.

With all my miseries, however, I sensed in the way Penny crept about her sealed home that her life was way worse than mine. Although she was an only child, I never saw her parents hug her or even talk much to her. Sometimes when she opened the front door, I tried not to notice her swollen eyes. On those days, as I stepped inside, the white house felt darker than ever. But I pushed away any thoughts about my friend’s difficulties; maybe the chilly remoteness I sensed in her home was normal and happened in other homes. In all our time together, Penny and I never discussed our family situations or our parents. I caught glimpses of her real-life diary, covered with her big black scrawl, but never saw what she wrote. We only discussed Foster Island—how we, brave sisters, could thwart foolish, crabby Aunt Gwendolyn to get what we wanted.

*Drawing of the cottage, courtesy Beth Kaplan*

One afternoon, a new treat: Kristine and Helen discovered a perfect little house deep in the forest. We loved being on Foster Island, but the secret cottage was our favorite place. In my Helen diary, I drew a picture of it, hidden in the trees, with a thatched roof and bright sunny windows. There were matching hooked rugs in the bedroom, beside Kristine’s bed and mine. Champ and Firefly grazed in the field of wildflowers outside the front door.

By the time Penny turned fourteen, she had a bra and her period and had discovered pop music. “You don’t listen to the hit parade?” she asked one day, and I boiled at the condescension in her voice. She began to spend her money not on figurines but on 45s, which she insisted on playing for me, snapping her fingers. I told her “Louie Louie” was the stupidest song I’d ever heard. “I guess twelve is too young to get it,” she shrugged.

The change in my friend upset me. But still, most weekends, she and I sailed to our island and played there all day.

When Penny told me her father had taken a job in Victoria on the other side of the country, we both cried real tears. But immediately, we turned our separation into a story. Kris, we decided, was being sent far away to a special boarding school, but her unfortunate twin couldn’t go. Helen’s faithful German Shepherd had chased a rabbit onto the road, and she’d thrown herself in front of a speeding car to save him. Legs crushed, she was now confined to a wheelchair. But she bore her disability with infinite patience.

Penny and I swore to write to each other forever, and for a while we did, one letter from friend to friend, and another, in the same envelope, from sister to sister. I wrote to Penny that school was a drag and I was making a Hayley Mills scrapbook, and Helen told Kristine she was gaining strength in her legs and “I might even walk with crutches one day!” There were also notes in Aunt Gwendolyn’s flowery script, hoping her far-away niece was doing her algebra homework and eating her lima beans.

Envelopes from my friend included scribbled missives to Aunt Gwendolyn from despairing teachers at Kristine’s school, while Penny wrote about the actual boarding school her parents had decided to send her to, which she liked a lot and where she’d made a friend. And then came the day Penny sent only one letter. “I can’t do Foster Island anymore,” she wrote. “I’m too old for little kid crap.”

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I was not ready to be exiled. Just a bit longer, please, I wanted to beg.

A few days later, I carefully hand-printed and mailed an official-looking document. “To Miss Kristine Foster,” it said. “We regret to inform you that Foster Island has been destroyed by a long dormant volcano. Everything on the island was buried except for a burned and twisted wheelchair. Please accept our sincerest apologies, and best wishes for your future.”

Penny did not reply.

•••

More than three decades later, I was invited to Vancouver to act in a play. A forty-five-year-old single mother, I was also a former actress attempting a comeback. One night, waiting for me at the stage door was a familiar form with dark pudding bowl hair, pale blotchy skin, and black-rimmed glasses. I knew her instantly. “Penny!” I exclaimed. “Real tears!”

We met for coffee, spilling over with fond reminiscences of Project X and Foster Island. I told her about the confused decade of my twenties, my marriage and divorce, my two children and recent work as a writer. Despite all those vivid fantasies, I said, I now write only nonfiction because I value true stories most. It has taken a long time and a lot of professional help, I said, but I feel pretty good about life.

At forty-seven, Penny had never had a partner and had always lived alone, but she enjoyed her work hunting down tax cheats for Canada Revenue. “I think I might be gay,” she said, looking sharply at me to see if I was shocked, “but I’m really not sure.” I told her many of my artsy friends were gay, and I’d even explored, briefly, if I was too. Another bond.

Waiting until the waitress had refilled our coffee cups and left, my friend leaned closer and told me softly that her mother had recently died.

“After the funeral,” she said, her face expressionless, “Dad finally apologized to me for what happened during my childhood.”

As she took a breath to go on, I knew. I knew what she was going to say.

“There was something really wrong with Mum,” Penny said, pushing her glasses back up her nose, her voice monotone. “I mean emotionally, mentally. She liked to torture me. My playtime with you was one of my only escapes.”

My stomach heaved as my friend talked about years of anguish at the hands of her mother. “She locked me in the basement—sometimes I didn’t even know why,” she said, as I shook my head in horror. “She beat me and mocked me when I cried. Or it was just that she wouldn’t give me anything to eat. No dinner for you for a week, she’d say.”

“Oh, my friend,” I said, appalled.

“Before I met you, my parents adopted a little boy, Sean,” she told me, chapped hands gripping her coffee cup. “He was the joy of my life. I’d run home from school to take care of him. Then one day, I got home and Sean was gone. Without a word of warning, my mother’d sent him back. She told me she couldn’t cope with him,” Penny said, “and if I wasn’t careful, the same thing would happen to me.”

I writhed in my seat, heartsick. “I should have done something, helped in some way,” I cried.

“Nobody knew what was going on, Beth,” she said, so quietly I could hardly hear. “No one.”

I made a move to hug my friend, to convey concern and care, but the prickly barrier surrounding her was as impenetrable as ever. Perhaps now as then, I thought, admitting vulnerability, allowing in compassion, would hurt too much.

We pledged to renew our correspondence—not by email, but by real mail, like always—and after my return home, the letters began to flow again. Being in touch with a treasured childhood friend, reading her familiar black scrawl, gave me immense pleasure; something vital and long missing had been found. I smiled to think how wise we’d been back then, two intense, unhappy girls who’d imagined themselves, with such vivid detail, into a kinder place. Though still anxious and hyper-sensitive, I was well on my way to feeling truly at home in the world. I hoped my friend was as well.

One day she wrote to say she had exciting news: she’d met a wonderful man and was madly in love. He was struggling financially, she said, with an unfair, demanding ex-wife and two children; last year, through no fault of his own, he’d lost his job. She had invited him to live at her place and would gladly support him until he got back on his feet. She was sure he’d soon find a job, and her life would be happier than it had ever been.

“Do you remember our secret cottage in the woods?” she wrote. “I feel like I live there now.”

“Yikes, no, Penny,” I said out loud. How could I not be concerned by what she’d described, her lonely susceptibility to what sounded like a manipulative man? Should I say something? I’d failed to help her a long time ago and must do so now. But how? Finally, thinking I might be the only person she trusted, wanting above all to protect her, I wrote a gentle letter, begging her to be careful with her heart.

I never heard from her again.

•••

After all those years of wondering about and trying to reach my friend, I wept to read the brevity of her obituary: Penelope Jane Harris, August 31 1948 – August 19 2019. There were no messages of condolence. I was desolate. If only just once I’d been able to offer an embrace, to express my love, my gratitude for her courage and her imagination and her friendship.

And then, by the miracle of the Internet, I discovered something else: a B.C. woman named Penelope Harris had donated two parcels of land to a local First Nation. I clicked further and found a series of photographs. This Penelope Harris had very short white hair and no glasses. But I knew the cheekbones, the eyebrows. Her lively face.

Penny had bought two small parcels of land near Prince George as an investment; decades later, the area still undeveloped, she’d given the land to the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation. In April 2019, she travelled from her home in Abbotsford to Prince George for a ceremony during which they’d celebrated her generosity.

“I feel there is nothing we can do to fix all the things we’ve done wrong as a society to Canada’s Aboriginal peoples,” she said in a speech to the local press. “The line we were all fed about what the Canadian identity was, how great the Canadian story was, that has now fallen to pieces for all to see. Good. We were all duped. We’ve been lied to for generations. But we know that now.

“What are we doing now to make things right?” she concluded.

In his response, the chief called her gift “reconciliation in action.”

“We will always think of Ms. Harris as one of us,” he said.

Penny died four months later.

The First Nation community gave my friend a beautiful black and red hand-embroidered jacket. In the photos, she’s wearing the ceremonial coat, and her face is radiant.

•••

BETH KAPLAN, a former actress, has taught memoir and personal essay writing at two Toronto universities for decades. She’s the author of four nonfiction books: two memoirs, a biography, and a guide to writing memoir that’s the textbook for her courses. Her next book, an essay compilation, is nearly finished. Her website and blog are at bethkaplan.ca.

Dine and Dash

By Yalun Tu

I entered the terminal in a rush, wondering if I’d be asked to turn my phone to flight mode before the what the hell? texts started coming. At that point, things were basically over. Trying to explain your actions via SMS is the same as cybersex. You might finish, but is anybody really satisfied?

The problem had started at dinner, somewhere between coffee and “The Tonight Show.” This was the end of a busted week in Los Angeles. I had told everybody I was coming to “take meetings” when the real purpose was to surprise my manager, who had been steadily ignoring my calls. Desperate to prove I still had value, I had pitched him a series of increasingly poor ideas: the girl with daddy issues stuck in an evil computer. The hitman who kills using an Asian ghost. The billionaire who pretends to be two competing billionaires to get the girl because all girls dream of being lied to by a rich guy.

“I kind of like the robot one,” Nathan said, chewing his burger while I pawed at his fat fries.

“Me, too,” Jen said. Jen was Nathan’s wife and the only girl I’d met in California who didn’t talk about juice cleanses. They were a young power couple in LA and I’d spent the week sleeping on their couch, wondering if they had any faults besides talking about their cat like he was a human being.

“Nobody has any patience for non-evil robots,” I lamented. “By the way, Jen, you look very attractive in that dress.” She was one of those people in complete harmony in every situation, meaning the opposite of me. I could never think of anything to say. I preferred to stay on the fringe of social situations, mocking the successful around me, following the old if-you-can’t-build-something-destroy-it philosophy. Faced with someone who simply enjoyed life sapped me of my observational jabs. So instead I complimented Jen often and ecstatically, a toy dog yapping for its master’s attention, steadily ignoring the WTF looks I’d been getting from Nathan.

“You look nice in that button-down,” she rejoined. I had worn the shirt three days straight. Nathan raised his eyebrow, anticipating my response. It was, “You’re so wonderful. I love you.” The tone was supposed to be jokey but the words left my mouth sounding open, earnest. It was truthful, too, since I had fallen in love with her the moment we had met, as well as their anthropomorphic cat, Sam.

“Oh, I-love-you-too” Jen said in a way that meant both the opposite and I-pledge-undying-fealty-to-my-husband-angrily-chewing-a-cheeseburger. I couldn’t be stopped at this point. It was weird.

“We should have an affair. Elope or something,” I said. What the fuck are you doing? one side of my brain asked. Don’t worry. If you go too far past the point of no return it will go meta and be seen as performance art, the other side said. “I’m much taller than your husband,” I added.

“Don’t you have a flight to catch?” Nathan asked.

As we crawled down the 110 in traffic I tried one more joke, the social equivalent of that last bet in Vegas when you’ve lost it all and are borrowing twenty dollars from the former best friend you’re trying to cuckold. I don’t remember exactly what I said but it was something to do with “Wife Swap,” a popular show on ABC once upon a time, except I didn’t have a wife so Nathan could borrow a life-sized wax head I won at a carnival. That went over predictably well and we drove the rest of the way in silence. I should have just taken a bus, I thought, but since this was Los Angeles, it’d probably be more efficient just to give my wallet and phone to any passing transient rather than go through that whole shiv hassle.

We arrived at the drop-off spot and I shook Nathan’s hand and looked him in the eye, a thing guys do when they want people to think they’re serious. I offered Jen a limp handshake and when she looked confused, I gave her a light hug, whispering “You’re both very lucky with each other,” into her ear. That was as close as I got to an apology. I grabbed my bags and headed to the terminal, looking back once to see if they watched me go. They were already gone; their hybrid slunk away silently. The automatic doors to the terminal parted and I automated myself inside.

“Just you?” asked the check-in girl and I nodded, yes, just me, always. “Did you enjoy your time in LA?” she cooed.

I nodded again, wondering what would happen if I told her the whole dinner situation. “Um, okay…” she would have said, uncomfortable at my honesty, confused why I’d messed things up. “These things just can’t be helped,” I’d explain and she’d be the one nodding, silently judging me as she passed me my boarding pass.

By the time I got on the plane I had not received any messages. Maybe they’d never come, I reasoned; maybe Nathan would sleep on it and understand that hot wives deserve to be hit on by your childhood friends. This was a sort of male bonding — Nathan had won the wife game and I was indicating my approval by dropping lines about affairs. Men can’t be straightforward with their feelings. It’s part of the rule book. Yes, that’s it, I decided. All is fine in the world. I asked the flight attendant for a glass of wine and wondered what they were selling in this month’s Sky Mall.

But as time passed, my mind replayed the week’s events in lurid detail. That’s the trouble with planes; they’re engineered to make you reflect on your life. Buses and trains offer the dual distractions of finding your stop and not being murdered by crazies, but in the sky there’s no scenery, no proper indication of time passing. There’s nothing but the noise of the engines, the buzz of your life at a crossroads. I tried to distract myself with more wine and in-flight entertainment. But all I could think of was what had got me here, and why I had messed with a friendship simply because I couldn’t be bothered not to.

At this point, the only thing to do was wait. I waited for my ego to take over, for my momentary bout of self-awareness to become hard, defensive. I channeled my inner Homer (the classic one not the yellow one) and readied my yarn for spinning. I must be the hero of my story, so heroic I would become. It was Nathan’s fault I was in this position to begin with. If he were feeling weird he should have said something. My brain analyzed each situation not for my indiscretions but for Nathan’s. It rewired each memory, rewriting my role as the falsely accused.

What the hell, Nathan? We were long and fast friends. I had got him his first condom at age seventeen in a Chinese sex shop while dismissing an old woman’s upselling attempts for nipple clamps and rust-colored anal beads. I had shopped with him for flowers to impress one of his many sub-par girlfriends. I was there to commiserate right after Lindsay dumped him on the phone, his angry yelps cut short because her roaming charges were too high. Did Nathan really think I was brazen enough to hit on his wife? Or stupid enough to hit on her in front of him? So I’m a cad and a moron. Real nice, Nathan. I jabbed at my in-flight meal angrily, fully convinced now that I was the scapegoat.

Next I played our upcoming exchanges. It would start with the thank-you note I’d write. My dearest Jen and Nathan, it would read, thank you very much for letting me stay at your great apartment in LA. What a view! I had a wonderful time and you guys are great. I hope you appreciated my unique sense of humor and hope to see at least one of you in Hong Kong. You know what I mean. Nathan would respond rudely. Fuck. Off. It was as if he had no sense of propriety, or humor for that matter.

In time, the story would spread to family emails, dinner party tales, and class-reunion letters. “It was a normal dinner …” I’d begin. Jen would still be perfect—at least that part of the story would be true—but I was the happy-go-lucky everyman who had come to LA to find my old friend transformed! Nathan was a workaholic, rage-fueled beast; his green-eyed irrationality scorched everything around him. “You should have seen it,” I’d tell my audience, “his eyes literally turned green.”

“Like the Incredible Hulk?” one might say, looking for validation.

“Exactly like the Incredible Hulk,” I’d affirm.

“That sucks. Some people are just dicks,” another would say.

I’d take a moment to process this truth. “We used to be close,” I’d offer. And I’d sigh a heavy sigh, full of the terrible weight of others not living up to their expectations. “I just—” here’s where I’d pause for dramatic effect—“wish that it weren’t the case. That everybody could be cool and not make a big deal out of nothing.”

I imagine the cute girl next to me putting her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’re cool.”

“We are cool,” I’d agree happily. Then I’d raise my glass to friendship and to the people who really understood me.

•••

YALUN TU is a writer based in Los Angeles.

Two Weddings and a Friendship Funeral

By Keysha Whitaker

My best friend Justine, in a sleeveless white dress that flared out in ruffles above the knees, descended the steps of a waterfront house in Maryland. The fifty hushed guests gasped on cue. They were here to celebrate the couple’s forever-love; I was paying my final respects to our friendship.

That morning I hadn’t helped blend makeup to match Justine’s honey complexion or calmed her down in a moment of panic, even though we’d been friends for twenty-one years. Instead, I wandered around a nearby mall where I once waited while she went on a first date with a man she met online. This was in the early 2000s when Internet courting was synonymous with Craig’s List Killer. Then, I was her wing woman, but today I wasn’t by her side.

But at least I’d be in attendance, unlike her first wedding seven years ago. Amidst the stress of planning a wedding both families disapproved of, she decided on a four-thousand-dollar per person destination affair, even though I, the maid of honor, was living paycheck to paycheck. We’d already been quarreling about details when she took a new stance.

“Honestly, I don’t care if anybody’s there. I don’t care if my family’s there. It doesn’t matter if you’re there or not,” she’d said in a huff. Hurt, devalued, and financially relieved, I’d bailed on the wedding and the planning of her stateside bridal parties. But seven months later, I’d felt guilty.

“It’s fine,” Justine had said when I’d broken our silence with an apology. “I’m over it.”

But I wasn’t. I’d vowed to prove myself reliable. So a few years later when she—newly divorced—prepared to relocate to New Jersey, I scouted apartments on her behalf and emailed self-made videos. With my help, she picked a Jersey City high-rise with a hypnotizing view of Southern Manhattan, not unlike the one behind her now.

As the bride stepped slowly into frame, I held up my iPhone and counted: one … two … Two was the number of times that I’d spoken to Justine on the phone in the last two years and I didn’t know why. My thumb hovered over the shutter button as I let her walk out the shot and to the trestle where her groom and maid of honor—her college roommate who had replaced me before—waited.

Inclusion on Justine’s wedding guest list but exclusion from her life was the culmination of bewildering behavior that began when she left New Jersey in April 2012. For two months, I left unrequited texts and voicemails. At first I was worried that something happened to her until I saw a Facebook post. She was living; she was just doing it without me.

My phone remained silent until September. “Hey. I’m in the City,” she texted. “I’m gonna be at Penn Station around seven tonight if you want to meet up. If not, that’s fine.”

“Sure,” I said, trying to match her nonchalant-ness. That evening I braved the rush-hour drive over the George Washington Bridge to meet her in Midtown.

We hugged. Then we laughed.

“What the heck happened to you?” I said.

“I guess I did your thirty days of silence and solitude,” she said referencing my sporadic practice to abstain from phone calls to find my true and drama-free self.

“Yours was like three hundred days. And at least I tell people,” I said. “You just disappeared.”

Justine shrugged. “I did think about you. I’m glad to see you’re doing okay.”

Until she boarded her train, we made familiar easy jokes and traded expressive glances that had become like a secret language since our first day in a Connecticut Catholic high school. Drawn to each other by the energy that makes atoms collide, we compensated for our inability to take unsupervised outings (edicts set by mothers we believed were overprotective) by creating our own social world that lived on the landline.

We talked every day for hours. Even after college, we chatted in the mornings until she pulled into the parking garage and her signal dropped. Fifteen minutes later, we reconvened at her desk, yapping about work before getting off to actually do it. One year she called me at seven in the morning. A New York City radio morning show was searching for a female co-host. “You should apply,” Justine yelled excitedly from somewhere on I-95. She knew my dreams of working in entertainment. I auditioned for the job and got it. If it weren’t for her, I never would have heard the ad.

I hoped our train station reunion was the rebirth of us, but my only communications from her the rest of the year were two pictures: one of her in a cat costume on Halloween and another of some balloons on New Year’s Eve. The next summer she texted that she was moving in with a new boyfriend. We joked about telling her mom, and I refrained from asking why she moved on from me.

I suspected fundamental differences in our personalities had finally convinced her we were incompatible. While I had been taking creative risks that led to years of low-paying jobs and episodic unemployment, she was making good on a self-imposed deadline to be a six-figure salary executive at a Fortune 500 company by age thirty. If we were TV shows, she was The Jeffersons, and I was Sanford & Son. I knew she wanted positive change for me, but maybe like a haggard spouse grown tired of waiting, she packed her bags and left.

At the end of the year, I found out that she’d gotten engaged. Another friend saw it on Facebook and phoned me before I received my BFF’s texted pic of the groom on one knee: “He proposed.”

I was truly happy for her. I just pretended to be surprised.

The next month, I actually was astonished when Justine texted a surprise dinner invite at the end of a business trip that had brought her back to town. I agreed.

I picked her up in my SUV, but we may as well have been in Doc’s DeLorean. As we waited for a table, I marveled over the chocolate diamond engagement ring and chuckled at stories of her fiancé. After the food arrived, I asked why she disappeared.

“I didn’t realize that happened … it wasn’t intentional,” she said. “It was a crazy time. It’s funny because he knows exactly who you are. I talk about you all the time.”

Even though unintentional wasn’t in her DNA, I nodded. Two months before the wedding, my phone rang.

“Would you write and read something for the wedding? You know me the best and the longest,” she said. “I was going to wait until you returned your invite, but I figured I’d ask you now.”

The invitation had been sitting on my kitchen table. It wasn’t just the loss of friendship that made me debate my attendance; the costly trek from western North Carolina to the coast of Maryland would obliterate the tiny bit of money I had to live on for the summer.

“I’m surprised you asked,” I said. “I didn’t think that I was in your inner circle anymore.”

“I guess we’re not on the same page,” Justine said. “To me, our friendship is the same even though we don’t talk. I thought about what you said at the restaurant. Maybe I pulled away because I didn’t want to keep asking you to hang out when you couldn’t afford it. I dunno. But if someone asked me, I’d still say you are my best friend.”

“Well, I’m honored that you asked,” I said, blinking quickly to ward off a familiar sting in the corners of my eyes. “Of course, I’ll do it.”

During the ceremony, as the couple made jokes with the officiant and guests, I waited for my cue. When she called my name, I rose from my seat and angled my body toward the couple, reading the poem I’d written.

“Love is patient, ever-present /Love is kind, joy divine/ Never envies, never boasts/ Humbles hearts, comforts souls / Pushes towards the finish line /in the midst of mud and grime.” I paused at the reference to the couple’s participation in a mud-filled obstacle competition and glanced at my old friend. Justine had tears in her eyes.

At the end of the reception, she walked over to me. “Thanks for doing the reading. It was perfect. I hope you weren’t put out of your way with all the traveling …”

I was exhausted but not from the physical distance—from the emotional one.

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it,” I said, glancing only for a minute in eyes that used to say so much before averting my gaze to the blue-black water behind her, almost indistinguishable from the night sky.

“What time does your flight leave? We are having people over for crabs tomorrow at eleven if you want to come.”

“I leave at one.” I gave her a loose hug. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” She gestured towards remaining wedding business. “I got to go.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

[“Justine” isn’t her real name. —ed.]

•••

KEYSHA WHITAKER has a MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her work has appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward, The Frisky, and the New York Press. She hosts Behind the Prose, a podcast for writers, from a closet in Pennsylvania.