Friendship Cake (2 page)

I
should have known that it was Beatrice Newgarden who came up with this whole stupid idea of a cookbook. And how did I ever get to be on this committee? Lord knows, neither Margaret nor I can cook. The most I can offer is wieners or burgers, maybe egg custard, the easy version, of course. Everyone knows the fact that we're heading up this committee is a sure sign of failure for this tidy project.

Beatrice is always in need of “binding” us together. It's like a calling for her. Any time she senses a weak link, a friendship in need of something, probably time and space, she assumes she's got to bring people together. She has no sense of boundaries, no sense of where one person, one relationship, ends and where she begins. She's a fairy godmother in a funeral director's suit.

The worst part about it is that she has no idea that she's the poster child for codependency. She's running around sticking her nose up in the air, sniffing for tension or death, and then, like a dog with a bone, she's not going to let the cause alone until she sees breath in that mirror of a face she tries to wear.

It's evident to all the ladies in the church that the Women's Guild has outlived its purpose. But as soon as Beatrice got a whiff of our resignation, she dug up this project as a means to “encourage younger women to join the group” and to “build up the fellowship.” I'm surprised she's not been caught trying to resuscitate some of the corpses she dresses. She can't stand to see anything die.

I, on the other hand, joined the Hemlock Society when I was in my forties. I send Dr. Kevorkian a few dollars every month, and I was Hospice Volunteer of the Year two years in a row. I think death is an appropriate answer to the equation of life. I have never seen it as frightful or even poignant. And I certainly do not see it as something to be avoided.

The first death that I remember was my granddaddy Amos, my mother's father. I was seven, and I didn't know him very well since he had been sick since I was three. We lived in his house with my grandmother, but he stayed in a distant room and I rarely saw him. I would make him a card and take him a flower from the garden, but beyond the exchange of those gifts, and the standard prayer for him at bedtime, he was nothing to me.

On the day of his death, my mother, not one to hide things from me, took me into the room before the undertaker came and made me feel of his hand and kiss him on the cheek. I know of people who claim they have never been able to touch a dead person since they were made to do so as a child, but it never haunted me. In fact, I was fascinated by the warmth running out of his fingers and the stiffness settling into his wrinkles. It did not seem harsh or terrible to me. It was like going to sleep. And I was never afraid.

Since then, I've buried my grandmother, my mother, and two siblings. You might say that I have developed the reputation for being the deathwatch angel around these parts. I've sat in many a hospital room with dying people because their family couldn't deal with the final hours. I don't mind having this repu
tation; I consider it a gift. Just like there are some people who can cook and others who weave cloth or build birdhouses, I can sit in a room, watch as death approaches, gently take the hand of the dying person, and lift them in its arms. It's the one thing in my life that I'm sure of.

The rest is a huge question mark. Ambiguous and watery, just like Beatrice's boundaries. And I'm not stupid. I know people are curious about my sexuality. Hell, I'm curious about my sexuality. But I'm sixty-three, and I still do not know what or how it is that I love.

I never married, left home when I was eighteen. I followed my sisters and went to work in a cotton mill just to get away from the farm. There in town I met women whose lives were more cruel than I would ever imagine and men whose hearts were full of greed and malice. I made my home in a boardinghouse with six other young women mill-workers, and it was the most of family I have ever really known.

Roxie Ann Barnette and I were roommates. And as well as I can guess, I believe that I fell in love with her. In those days, however, Oprah wasn't around to help you name your relationship. There wasn't any support group to encourage the child within. There were no women running with wolves. Hell, there wasn't even an advice column for girls who had any feelings other than those of desire to raise a family and win a blue ribbon at the state fair. I was confused and lacking in any guidance. So, without complaining, I took the most that I could get, friendship as rich and deep as intimacy can go without touching and a paycheck once a month.

Roxie would set us up on double dates. God bless her for trying. I was even engaged for a brief period. Some man who had his eye on Roxie but settled for her best friend. I can't remember the fellow's name. Anyway, they were lovely, agonizing years of hating myself while trying to fit into somebody else's clothes. Years of not knowing what was wrong with me but feeling certain that I would never be happy. At least once a month I would swear that I was going to move out. It was killing me to be faced with such strange and inappropriate feelings.

To this day, I'm not sure Roxie knows how much I care for her. Never in the four years that we lived together did she seem to know. I could always tell when someone would question her about me; they'd look at me hard while I clung to Roxie's every word. But she never hesitated, never held back. She brushed the accusations and the suspicions aside. She never turned me away. I get the feeling that George, her husband of forty years, knows. There's a bristle to him that apparently only shows up when I'm around. Roxie acts like she doesn't see it. I think I kind of like that, though, that he knows that I could take Roxie to a place just beyond his reach. And she, without hurting either one of us, finds room in her life for us both.

They live in Maryland. I go up to see her every couple of months, and she has frequently come down to see me. We meet at silly motels along the interstate. George prefers that she stay near the highway when she travels. I guess it makes him feel like he can get to her more easily.

She's as beautiful as she was forty-five years ago. Tall and
raw-boned, she's a long drink of clear, still water. Dark hair, solid smile. She has eyes like a child. Open, honest. Like her conversations. She's as innocent as rain. The answer to a lonely man's prayers. She believes what you tell her, and she takes everyone at their word.

I'm exactly her antithesis. Short and dumpy and as muddy as the Mississippi River. And I'm hardly innocent. The only man's prayer I can answer has to do with being able to tote bags of cement twice my body weight and knowing which wrench is used to take off square-headed bolts. And don't expect me to believe anything you say until you prove yourself worthy of my trust. I'm as cynical as I am stubborn, so I rarely get taken advantage of, except by this woman who holds up my heart.

We're about as different as two women can be. But we can finish one another's sentences and wake up with the same dreams. I light the fire and she keeps it going. She tests the ice and I skate behind her. There is nothing I wouldn't do for Roxie. No place I wouldn't travel to find her. No silence I wouldn't hold. I was even her maid of honor, something I swore would never happen on this side of heaven.

When she got married, however, I honored her vows. I respected her relationship with George. But God help me, on their wedding day, hearing the promises, knowing the love that was there and not there, I thought my heart would split. The healing was a long time in coming, and I doubt I'll ever be whole. But I've managed to keep my head about me and not be lost to the emptiness. I've resorted to severe Bible reading, like punishment I suppose, and bonsai gardening. And somehow I find that the two taken in daily doses ease the pain and sharpen my focus.
So that the years have passed and I have managed a life, a living, and a livelihood.

I'm the godmother of her two children, been like another grandmother to Ruby's littlest one. So that in some odd sort of old-maid sister kind of role, I've become a part of the family. And much to old George's chagrin, I've found my place in everybody's heart but his.

Recently, I have noticed a change in the way Roxie remembers a story or tries to make a decision. There's a look in her eye that reminds me of the distant daydreaming I used to lose myself in while spinning spools of yarn along big silver bobbins. A step just beyond reality. A pulling of the mind. It's just that it seems she has a harder time getting back.

I was surprised when George called me a month ago to ask if she had written. It seems she was convinced that we were supposed to meet in Virginia the weekend of July Fourth. I knew nothing of these plans but worried that I might spoil some necessary charade she had arranged for herself. So I made up some lie that some of my mail had been missing for a few weeks and could I please speak to her?

“She's not here,” he said. There was a long pause, and I knew there was more to be spoken.

“Lou, Roxie isn't well. There was an incident.” I remember waiting for more.

“An incident? What the hell does that mean, George?”

He cleared his throat, and I remember thinking it was one of his arrogant but typical gestures. “I've been seeing someone else. For about a year. Rox found out.”

I believe my reply was something like “Yeah, that's an incident all right, you son of a bitch. Why is she still with you?”

And he said, “I told you. She isn't well.”

I asked him what he meant, and he said that the doctors think she is in the early stages of Alzheimer's. About two years ago they said this.

That's all I remember of that conversation. That and the question of how she could keep such a thing from me. That and the attempt to grasp how I was stupid enough not to see it. All of it, including knowing about the two-timing bastard that she married. I drove up the next day. Roxie seemed surprised and actually quite focused. I asked her if she wanted to come back with me, and she politely refused. We did not speak of the incident.

For three weeks I have called her every day. She will never stay on the phone long enough for me to get a true sense of how she's doing. At least four times she has claimed it's a bad time to talk. And in between phone calls, I find myself vacillating between driving up to Maryland, packing her stuff, and moving her back home with me and staying the hell out of it and letting her handle her own life. I feel like I'm running from Margaret's house to Beatrice's. Ms. Cement-Wall Boundaries to Ms. Floating Borders. I do not know how to be.

I realize that this lifelong struggle, however, is wearing this old heart thin. I know that I cannot tell anyone about this. I understand that it's a secret I do not even know how to tell. I've kept quiet for so long I'm not even sure how to give it words. All I know is that the burden is getting heavier. But it's highly
unlikely anybody has any counsel for me now. Too much water beneath the bridge. Too many pages in this chapter.

I suppose I should just keep to the path I've made for myself, fill my time with gardening and the reading of the prophets, the quarterly treat of my bonsai books that come from California, and now this stupid cookbook. Distraction has steadied me this long. Perhaps it will level my thinking a little bit longer.