When Harry Met Minnie by Martha Teichner

Author:Martha Teichner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Celadon Books

eleven

A GIFT FOR FRIENDSHIP

Stephen and I looked at each other but didn’t speak when we left Carol’s apartment. We said nothing as we waited for the elevator, heard it ding, got in. Stephen can’t help himself. He talks. He fills silences, but here he was … silent. We crossed the lobby. At the side entrance, all he said was “You should stay here. I’ll get the car and come back.” I handed him my umbrella.

“It would break my heart. It would break my heart.” Carol’s words repeated in my mind as the automatic doors opened and closed, opened and closed, whenever someone came into the building or left or if I stepped too close to them trying to see whether Stephen had pulled up outside with his car, hoping it would be soon. Each time the doors opened, wind rushed in and rain splattered me as I waited with the various bags of Harry’s things. Every blast was an affront, an annoyance, a pang, and made me impatient. It had turned cold. We had parked four or five long blocks away. I knew the neighborhood was a crazy puzzle of one-way streets. To reach the side door of Carol’s building, Stephen’s car would have to be searched at one of the security checkpoints that had been erected at either end of the New York Stock Exchange after 9/11. I understood why he seemed to be taking forever, not why I was so bothered.

How many people would do for another person what Stephen did for Carol? He went to visit her practically every day. He drove her and Harry to my place and back. He worried. He obsessed. He brought her movies and sat with her half the night watching them when she was in pain or couldn’t sleep, brought her food she said she wanted but didn’t eat. And what about Lissa? I had seen the delight on Carol’s face when Lissa arrived with Annabelle. “My little friend,” Carol called the shy girl in her Rockettes costume.

I felt cheated that I had only known Carol for three months. I was jealous of all the people who had been her friends for decades. I remembered the night she’d brought Harry over, that I said, “I wish I’d known you for twenty years.” She replied, “Me too.” I felt cheated that there would be no more years. But we were friends, close friends there and then, and I was grateful.

As I think back, when I was in college and then in my twenties, making friends was like the days getting longer in the spring. No matter how busy I was, there was always more time to talk, time enough to cut through the social niceties, time enough to know someone. I consider the friends I made then some of my closest friends still. They’re the planets in my personal solar system. I know myself by their presence in my being. I feel their gravitational pull, even though I usually only hear their voices now, hollow and far away, on birthday calls.

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