How to Be by Judith Valente

Author:Judith Valente
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612834726
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

Carry on,

Br. Paul

FRIENDSHIP

______________________________

Dear Brother Paul,

There are many things about myself of which I am not proud. One thing in which I take pride, however, is being a good friend. I try to make my home a place of hospitality. But these past weeks have made me question whether I am a good and hospitable friend at all. And I am ashamed.

For the past three weeks, I have been entertaining a friend of mine from Paris and her husband. It is their first time visiting my home, and I wanted to make the visit a grand one. It ended up being a more complex and bittersweet experience than I could have imagined, however, full of nostalgia, sentiment, sadness, and regret.

I met A. when I was nineteen and studying at the Sorbonne during my junior year abroad. I arrived in Paris having lived a fairly sheltered life, ruled by strict, old-fashioned Italian-American parents. A. was two years older than I, already working, and, to my mind, far more sophisticated about fashion, the broader world, and the opposite sex. I was an aspiring writer even then and looked upon A. as a mentor. I think she also admired me for pursuing the kind of education she felt was closed to her under the rigid French university system.

Our friendship was intense, as friendships can be at that age. I imagined we were a feminine version of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited—two people from different worlds whose lives intersect as university students and whose fates intertwine. When we saw the film Julia, the story of an aspiring novelist who takes life-threatening risks to save her friend—we walked out of the film saying: “That's us.” It was not unusual back then for me to see the narrative of my life in all sorts of books and films. Such is the hubris of youth!

A.'s parents considered me a second daughter. Her father was a natural-born storyteller from Marseille—loud, gregarious, and often the center of attention, the antithesis of my own taciturn, unassuming father. Her mother was soft-hearted and gentle, in many ways the opposite of my own strong-willed, high-strung mother. I called them Papa and Maman and enjoyed many sumptuous meals around their table. Their apartment was in an elegant stone building near the Eiffel Tower, where guests were always welcomed with the warmest cordiality. In fact, I have always considered this family my gold standard for hospitality.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that A.'s life and mine would take different trajectories. She married in her twenties and had two children in quick succession. Even after her daughter and son were born, she continued to work at a bank. I went on to a career in journalism at the Washington Post and then the Wall Street Journal. I married much later in life and never had children. When I was still single, I got the impression that A. perceived my life as a free-flowing party, unfettered by commitments to a husband and children.

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