By Lori Parks
I remember when she told me. I was sitting at my desk on
a humid August afternoon, sifting through the avalanche of
paperwork that accompanies a real estate closing. I took her
call, grateful for the break, chirped “Hi” and waited for
the bright, familiar voice. She said, after a round of
polite how are yous, “My doctor thinks I may have cancer.”
Beth and I have been best friends for six years. I met
her at Wesleyan one autumn; she was the first person I
encountered at the admissions office, where I demurely
inquired about transferring. After spending two years at an
Ivy League school entrenched in pre-professionalism, I had
decided that the remaining undergraduate years would be
better spent learning about myself, not analyzing
supply-and-demand curves. As the receptionist in the
admissions office, Beth had a warm, broad smile. She spoke
swiftly, melodically, making me miserable and longing to
escape a university I felt was swallowing me – feel at ease
at once. We talked about Penn, men, English literature; she
invited me to stay with her that weekend; I transferred four
months later.
We spent the next two years of our lives together:
Saturday night dinners alone, poking fun at the college
social scene; coffee at Howard Johnson’s at 2 a.m.,
discussing how we deceive ourselves and others; smoking our
first cigarettes in her narrow dorm room (neither one of us
had been a rebellious adolescent); discovering feminism.
Through those years, we remained each other’s closest
confidante, the person who knew when we lost our virginity
and to whom; how we wanted to change the world with our
novels (mine) or clinical practice (hers); what frightened
and infuriated us. For Beth, who had dozens of friends, I
was the first person with whom she could really be herself.
For me, more insular, more cautious, she was the first
person I believed accepted me unequivocally, without
judgment. Even after we graduated, we stayed in constant
contact, making frequent phone calls to each other to
recount the details of our days.
I remember making the trek to Beth’s home the day she
told me that she, indeed, had lymphoma. Her parents’
sprawling, four-story house – musty and cluttered with
antiques collected from around the world – felt more
oppressive than usual when I entered. Upstairs, lying on her
parents’ bed, Beth was surrounded by bouquets of flowers –
slim yellow roses, lush white mums – situated haphazardly
around the dark room. We sat together for hours, I patiently
listening while she took phone call after phone call from
friends wishing her well. I had a sense then that she was
about to embark on a journey without me, to undertake
something I could not help her with, but neither one of us
said so that day. I don’t even know if she sensed the same
thing; she was more fearful, I think, of the grim future
that now was before her.
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