She Matters by Susanna Sonnenberg

Author:Susanna Sonnenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Awake.

We Turn into Mothers

I know people whose social lives continue twenty years on from their senior-year dorm suites, who keep up with intimates and every lesser acquaintance, attend any wedding, people who gather with family, campmates, high school exes. They look forward to reuniting, plan summers. They depend on the traded favors of past times. I never did any of these. Either it took work when I was already taxed, or I’d abandoned the version of myself old friends expected, or I’d cultivated new interior landscapes where these people could not fit. So I have just one friend from college, Rachel. We met when I was a freshman, eager with new starts, and she was a senior. Incredible to me, we’ve lasted and lasted. We became friends who had a past together. Old friends. Also incredible—we have foundered now, our roles much changed, our grip unsteady.

The day I met Rachel I’d arrived early for the first session of a writing class. Everyone was excited and talkative, as we’d all been chosen for this workshop. One woman was already seated, hunched over her neat white paper. Her hair curtained her expression. The rest of us stood around until the teacher came and made his chair known, and then we picked the spots that advertised our characters—shy, ambitious, arrogant, self-assured, afraid. I chose a seat across from the woman with the hair—Rachel—and watched her slide her fingers over one strand after another, a nervous repeat. I was attracted to idiosyncrasy, understood it had invisible origins.

After the teacher’s credo and the introductions, Rachel, never looking up, pierced other writers’ work with self-effacing wit. Her own work was beautiful and surprising. Over the weeks, she and I came to talking, a few words, a few paces together out of the building and down the steps before we parted. She wore suede gloves and a coat with a raft of shoulder pads, hem to her ankles. She aligned the buttons and fastened them before she stepped outside. I never saw her hurry.

One day, as someone read aloud, we made eye contact, then looked away, careful not to trigger indiscretion we couldn’t take back. Class over, I suggested lunch, and she said, “Well,” a reluctance in her voice that spread nervousness in front of us, like an open newspaper. I thought she was worried about other commitments, exams, et cetera. “Come on,” I said. “Half an hour.” We went to the dining hall that served falafel. When I lifted the pita, as we assessed the good writing and the mediocre, it fell apart, sauce soaking through. I rolled up strips of bread with sprouts and chickpea crumbs, and the sauce slid down my fingers. Rachel ate in discreet bites, no mess, considerable food left behind on her plate.

Within a few weeks, she was essential. Racing around together on the T, she showed me Cambridge, poetry bookstores, shops for vintage clothes. We made up stories about strangers, about ourselves. We ventured to Boston, ordered half carafes of wine late night in the North End, brought home cannolis from Mike’s Pastries.

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