I’m an introvert. I hate small talk. I cultivate only two kinds of relationships: meaningful ones that feel equally invested between friends and coworker ones that develop due to proximity. As much as I dreamed of growing up to have a group of friends like those on thirtysomething when I was thirtysomething, it didn’t happen much that way. Sometimes it’s lonely, yes, but most of the time it’s what I prefer.
Even as a child, I didn’t have a group of friends, only one best friend, maybe one or two other peripheral friends at lunch or recess. This was my pattern in high school and college too. The boyfriend would then replace the best friend, not on purpose though. My best friend in high school moved four states away; my best friend in college, well, that’s a complicated story.
She was the one I ran into in a downtown shop.
I hadn’t seen her for about nine years. And before that, I hadn’t spoken to her since I moved out of our apartment to live with my boyfriend, who would become my husband.
She was the kind of best friend who stopped you from having a boyfriend. Ever since we became inseparable, there was this ultimatum following us around like Pig Pen’s dirt cloud: once I found a boyfriend, we would cease to be friends. No one said this out loud, it was understood. In the beginning, I didn’t mind. I was obsessing over some moronic mimbo anyway and was never like Sylvia Plath, a serial dater with several options at any given time, always out on a date. Quite the contrary—I only dated those I thought were soulmates, true love, like something out of a Shakespearean tragedy. For a year and a half, choosing my best friend over a guy didn’t bother me. I had more fun with her anyway. It was only when it became overtly problematic, like when she cried when some random guy asked me to dance. Or she gave me the silent treatment when I ditched her after moronic mimbo finally paid attention to me. If I ever wanted to have a relationship with a guy, I could no longer choose her.
I started dating a friend—a guy who came over to our apartment all the time. Within a few weeks, we were dating exclusively; within a couple of months, I moved out of the apartment to live with him. My best friend and I spoke only once after that, when I stopped by to give her some stuff that had been mixed in with mine. I was engaged by then and intended to ask her to be a bridesmaid. I foolishly thought we could patch what was left of our friendship, that it was something worth saving. She was cold to me and then her sister called. She remained on the phone so I left. I never told her I was getting married although I’m sure she saw my engagement ring.
Years passed. Life happens.
I wrote a memoir about our college experiences, which centered on what we called “The Incident”—the night a guy broke into our home and tried to rape me. I figured out who he was six months later. I had gone out with him on one date the year before, begrudgingly, at my best friend’s urging because she was in love with his friend. (This was when we had been friends for less than six months—plus she wanted me to as she had found someone she liked.) The memoir traced the time of our friendship, since that dysfunctional friendship played a huge role in my decision not to tell the police I knew who he was. Although I was proud of what I had written—holding a book, a real book, in your hands that you wrote is an indescribable moment—but it’s shit now that I look back on it. I should have maintained a different focus and reorganized information and cut out many details. No wonder Prince cringed at “Little Red Corvette” and Madonna couldn’t remember the lyrics to “Like a Virgin.” Not that any of it mattered anyway because I sold a dozen copies over the course of a year, mostly at small book fairs. I removed the Amazon listing for it years ago and will only put it back after I have overhauled the draft.
Shortly after I self-published my book, my own life was in turmoil. My marriage was falling apart due to my husband’s gambling addiction, my mother had died three years before, and my anxiety had reached insurmountable levels. I spent days feeling like I was going to jump out of my skin. When my husband left for rehab in a cushy Florida facility with weekend trips to the beach, massages, and aromatherapy, I lost my shit. I was left at home with a fourth grader, a cat, a house, and zero money, since he had gambled it all away.
On a whim, I tracked down my old college best friend (I suppose there were worst things I could have done under the circumstances). I was going to give her my book, a book that didn’t paint her in a pleasing light but described all her warts in excruciating detail. By that stage of my existence, I had lost most of my sanity anyway.
I have never had a Facebook page. But it’s amazing what you can find on people’s pages, even if they don’t make everything public. I easily tracked her down to her current job, called, and they left a message for her. She returned my call that evening.
We set up a time to meet back in my hometown, a four-hour drive away.
I don’t know what I was expecting. A reconciliation? To time travel, perhaps to erase my mistakes (or even my marriage)? I didn’t even know what I wanted. Maybe just a distraction. I was selfish and childish, I suppose, at the time. I should have had a backup plan, but I didn’t. Instead, I walked into the café with my book tucked into the side pocket of my purse. Upon ten minutes of our meeting, I knew it was a bad idea—not just giving her my book, but also reconnecting after all those years.
She hadn’t changed at all. She freely gave me gossip of our old friends and acquaintances. She trashed-talked some of her friends, whining about their good fortunes. She even said that she married below her as she discussed her husband. I should have just walked away for she was toxic. I was fighting my own toxicity and needed no more from anyone. Our friendship had not been good for either of us and to reconnect would not bring back good times. She had moved on even, telling me she had a box of college junk somewhere in the basement or the garage. I knew exactly where all my stuff was: in scrapbooks, keepsake boxes, displayed in my curio cabinet. I was the one trying to recapture the past, but our friendship was not one that should have been recaptured anyway, even if I clung to the good more than the bad.
But I handed her the book anyway.
As I expected, the email she sent me early the next morning was a goodbye forever one. While I sent a meek reply apologizing for my depiction of her character, that didn’t ameliorate any of the scathing details she read about herself. I was more upset that I had thrown the past back in her face, a past she had moved on from and one I had not.
We never spoke again.
And then at that downtown shop, she walked right past me.
I had seen a family of three barge into the store right at ten o’clock when it opened. I thought nothing of them: a tall, overweight dad, a middle-aged frumpy mom, and a middle school boy. While I perused the shelves of cat butt magnets and journals, they headed toward the back of the store, so I thought. I assumed I had the front of the store to myself until she walked right past me, even though she could have walked the other way to avoid me altogether. I scooched toward the shelving to give her room. As she approached, she smiled, a polite smile passed between strangers. I thought wait a second, she looks familiar.
By the time I had registered who she was, she had already turned the corner.
My heart stopped briefly, for one doesn’t remember the past when the past makes an unannounced appearance. And then it settled upon me, although I have no idea what it was. It certainly wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t serendipitous nor ominous. It was more like a ghost—not a demon, but not Casper the Friendly Ghost either. Maybe more like SpongeBob’s The Flying Dutchman.
I could leave, but I had a gift certificate to use and it was a pain to go downtown. It was a school vacation and that was why I had gone on that particular day in the first place. Even though I liked the fun junk in the store, my intent was to use my gift certificate on a book, which I hadn’t even started digging through yet.
I could follow her and say hi. But why didn’t she say hi to me? She obviously saw me long before I saw her. She chose to walk right past me when she could have taken any other number of ways around me. I never walked near people in a store if there was a route that would keep me socially distant. The pandemic protocols might have ended years before, but even before the pandemic, I avoided strangers as a rule. Why didn’t she say hi? That would have been the mature thing to do. Instead she was waiting for me to say hi first, yet she wanted me to know that she was there.
I shook my head as I walked to the books, which hid me nicely in the last aisle toward the front of the store. I felt foolish for not saying hi, but I would have to track her down now to do so. Aren’t we too old to play such games? Either walk past me and say hi or don’t walk past me at all. As I heard the door open and close and people come and go, I thought they had left. I ventured to the back where antique stuff was displayed. I don’t know why I bothered; that same crap has been sitting there for years. No one ever bought it and there was never any new stuff either. But I walked back there only to find that she was still there—and she was the wife to the large man and the mom to the cute little boy.
Her husband towered over her. I thought saying hi now would be embarrassing. Did she really want to introduce me to the man she said was below her? Or maybe she had forgotten all of that. My family loved accusing me of always remembering stuff that never registered in their short-term memories. They even said I was vengeful about never forgetting such details. I used to feel bad about it, but now I realize it was the writer in me that filed such details and events away.
I found myself smirking slightly at an Anne Lamott quote I had stumbled upon just last summer: “Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
I didn’t feel bad about the past at that moment—neither moving out and moving on with my life all those years ago nor for writing about our friendship and giving her my memoir.
I was within arm’s reach of her husband as I stood there, contemplating a simple hello. But what would that do for me?
Nothing, I decided.
They left and I bought Murderabilia: A History of Crimes in 100 Objects.
It was best to leave the past where it belonged.