When We Were Friends by Elizabeth Arnold

Author:Elizabeth Arnold [Arnold, Elizabeth Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-553-90821-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Back in the other bedroom Star was hunched under the covers, in the fetal position. I sat on the futon to rest my hand on her back.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said hoarsely.

“Don’t be. Everybody understands.”

“No they don’t. How can they possibly? Pamela spent the whole drive whispering Stop, stop, stop under her breath, I heard her. She thinks I’m a fruitcake.”

“Well you are a fruitcake.” I lay facing her, and took her hand. “I missed you.”

“That’s because you’re a fruitcake too. But in a week you’ll probably look back on this conversation and think, What was I thinking?” She brought a fist up to her mouth and said, “I don’t know if I can do this, Lainey.”

“You can,” I said. “You are.” I kissed the top of her head, suddenly remembering a night when I’d been eight or nine. It was the night before my stage debut, playing Mr. Smee in the third-grade production of Peter Pan, and I was ridiculously nervous, especially considering the minimalism of my lines, various combinations of “Ahoy!” and “Aye-aye!” and “Yonder Peter lies!” But the whole school would be there including all my teachers since kindergarten, and lying in bed, trying to run through my choreography, I’d been almost in tears. So Star had sat with me and talked about fear, how you could make it into something physical. A spring like a Slinky you could compress and then shove down from your chest into a foot. Hold it there so it couldn’t escape into the rest of you.

That day onstage, I’d looked out from behind our cardboard pirate ship and seen her in the audience, beaming in her best dress and newly highlighted hair, and pointing at her right foot. And I’d smiled back and pointed at my own foot, then made it through the play without tripping over lines or shoelaces. Because my mother had been powerful, and she’d known how to handle fear. How had we both gone from that to this?

I kicked off my shoes and slipped under the covers, curling tight against Star to keep from falling off the edge of the small bed. She wasn’t the same person of course, and I’d realized that even as a kid. She started to change and I’d gone from calling her Mommy to thinking of her as Star, the adult-child inhabiting my mother’s body. Even my love for her was different, tinged with betrayal, and something that wasn’t contempt, but also wasn’t quite uncontemptuous either.

Lying there, I wished it was Molly in my arms instead. My love for Molly was so simple, so much the opposite of my love for Star, and it had made me realize I was capable of unconditional adoration. Love should have an undercurrent of joy, not pain, and it was ridiculous that I’d been deprived of it so long. Ridiculous that underneath the wonder of loving Molly, I was still so afraid of what it would take from me.

And as I lay there, I realized that

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