The Best of Friends Read online

  THE BEST OF FRIENDS

  TWO WOMEN, TWO CONTINENTS, AND ONE ENDURING FRIENDSHIP

  Sara James and Ginger Mauney

  For Kimber, Sophie, and Jacqueline

  With love

  Contents

  PREFACE

  1

  GINGER (1983–1985)

  2

  SARA (1985)

  3

  GINGER (1985–1986)

  4

  SARA (1986–1987)

  5

  GINGER (1987–1989)

  6

  SARA (1990–1991)

  7

  GINGER (1991–1992)

  8

  SARA (1992)

  9

  GINGER (1992)

  10

  SARA (1992–1993)

  11

  GINGER (1992–1993)

  12

  SARA (1993)

  13

  GINGER (1993)

  14

  SARA (1993–1994)

  15

  GINGER (1993–1995)

  16

  SARA (1994–1995)

  17

  GINGER (1995)

  18

  SARA (1995–1996)

  19

  GINGER (1996)

  Photographic Insert

  20

  SARA (1996)

  21

  GINGER (1996–1997)

  22

  SARA (1997)

  23

  GINGER (1997–1998)

  24

  SARA (1998–1999)

  25

  GINGER (2000)

  26

  SARA (2000–2001)

  27

  GINGER (2001)

  28

  SARA (2001)

  29

  GINGER (2003–2004)

  30

  SARA (2003–2004)

  31

  GINGER (2004)

  32

  SARA (2004)

  33

  GINGER (2005–2006)

  34

  SARA (2005–2006)

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PREFACE

  AS I PICK up the framed photograph from the bookshelf I can’t help but smile. One blond, the other brunette, Ginger and I share the giddy grins of friends lucky enough to be posing beside an African waterhole teeming with elephants. The kind of tourist snapshot where you almost imagine scrawled on the back: “Here we are—a long way from Richmond, Virginia!” A moment frozen. A story told. Except the story it tells isn’t quite right. We weren’t really tourists on safari. And the photo shows only a destination, rather than the journey. Maybe a picture doesn’t lie, but it never tells the whole truth.

  I examine the photograph more closely, searching for some hint in our sunny expressions to suggest the hidden dramas and heartaches, the dazzling vistas and terrifying free falls, the potentially catastrophic audacity that propelled us to that moment, then churned forward to deposit us here, living lives we could never have predicted. But I see nothing save pals enjoying a glorious, apparently carefree moment. And while our linked arms signal camaraderie, the familiar pose gives no hint of how entwined we were and remain. Lives entirely opposite. Lives uncannily similar. Separated by thousands of miles, yet woven together by time and temperament, by circumstance and serendipity.

  Our friendship should have frayed and broken long ago. Africa. America. P.O. Box Okaukuejo, Namibia. Zip code 10021. Wildlife filmmaker. Network reporter. Southern Cross. Northern lights. And yet the bonds held fast. We shared a hometown. A big city. Wanderlust. Ambition. Lipstick. A weakness for men with passports and accents. A longing for home and children. God help us, even a rhinestone tiara. After all, we’ve known each other since we were twelve years old, back when I went by my nickname Sally instead of Sara, back when Ginger was a knobby-kneed cheerleader.

  Back then, we both expected to have everything figured out by our twenties. Instead, our thirties proved pivotal, and we’re still figuring things out even now. Along the way, we’ve hit dead ends. Been flat broke. Found a measure of success. Succeeded in making colossal mistakes. Mourned lives lost, loves shattered. Found happiness in places we never expected to.

  Forged in childhood, our friendship has been tempered by experiences so extreme and extraordinary that sometimes it almost sounds like fiction, even to us. And yet, as I close my eyes, the images before me are sharper than any photograph, moments I can never forget interspersed with those I can only imagine, because they happened not to me, but to my friend. Up close, all I see are fragments of memory. The emerald of a Wimbledon lawn. The magenta of a young man’s blood. Chocolate flecks in a baboon’s eyes. A shower of gold caught in a submarine’s beam. A rustle of ivory as a bride threatens to flee. The ebony tracings of a tempest in a baby’s brain. And what is the color of a kiss?

  But as I open my eyes, years pass in an instant, and suddenly the shards and splinters, chips and fragments, form a pattern. From a distance, shapes appear, a story is told, and I discover that these scraps of memory are pieces of a mosaic, the mosaic of our lives. Only now is it possible to separate the accidental and the incidental. Cause and effect. Fact and fancy. The disposable and the essential. The shape of what is real, the cut of what is true. And while the mosaic may be unfinished, I have learned enough to know nothing much matters without family, without friends, without love. How we got here is an improbable tale, but it is also true. I know because I was there. And so was Ginger. This is our story, laced with the stories of many others we have loved and love. And it begins, as even true stories can begin, once upon a time, not so very long ago.

  Sara James

  August 2006

  New York, New York

  1

  GINGER (1983–1985)

  I TOOK A DEEP breath. Slowly breathing in, concentrating on calming my wired nerves, and trying hard to ignore the churning in my stomach, I let go, breathing out and glancing up. Against a deep blue sky, the sun had finally broken through the clouds, matching the heat and intensity on the court. The smell of fresh-cut grass, grunts, and explosive clapping filled the air. Freckle-faced ball boys and girls, their lean limbs nearly as white as the players’ tennis clothes, ran determinedly after each ball. Precise arm movements judged every fault, affirmed every winner. Passion and pageantry, and I simply couldn’t believe I was here, courtside Wimbledon, a long, long way from home in Richmond, Virginia.

  For years I’d dreamed of running away from home, leaving the azalea bushes, church bells, and slammed doors behind, but at twenty-one years old, I’d never thought I’d get so far so fast. When I was a child, the idea of escaping the ordinary seemed pure fantasy, and I believed more in the magic of miracles to transform my life than in my own tender nascent power. If there was an Oz, and like Dorothy I wished hard enough, I too could escape a predictable existence for a yellow brick road to adventure.

  With a deep attachment to the land in Virginia, my family provided love and security, but few role models in running away. For generations they’d lived in farmhouses rooted deeply in the history of the South, with the church being the center of their small community. Outside its white wood-framed structure with the bell hanging high in the steeple, my ancestors put flowers on headstones in family plots where the names varied little. Inside the same church, my great-grandmother, great-aunts, grandmother, mother, and cousins had all married, most pledging their love to one of the boys who plowed the fields next door. Growing up, I had tried to peer behind my older sister Marsha’s big brown eyes. I could see she was dreaming of another life, but as puberty struck, she kept her dreams to herself. So I moved forward alone, blindly putting my
faith and future in the power of wishful thinking.

  At twelve years old, by chance, I found an ally who shared my longing to break away: Sara James. Though we were from the same suburban side of the tracks, Sara and I knew each other only in passing. In the hall at school, Sara on her way to honors English, me on my way to gymnastics practice. Passing in cars, Sara waving on her way to the Governor’s School for the Gifted, me on my way to cheerleading camp. Sara was taken seriously and I was seen to be about as serious as the last pep rally. Although she hung out with other straight-A students, Sara didn’t share their air of arrogance. Every school clique wanted her as a member, and she moved easily from one to another, a part and apart. This openness made Sara approachable. When I spoke to her, I felt like she was really listening, not worried about a boyfriend waiting down the hall or a gaggle of friends from the Honor Society, sneering, wondering why she should be talking to me.

  But at that time in our lives, conversations between Sara and me were few. Despite the friendly waves, we remained acquaintances, separated by perceptions: Sara smart, me pretty, and never the two shall meet. But one night we did, pretty Sara with her auburn hair and intense green eyes and me smartly daring to expose more of myself than the blond-haired, blue-eyed façade. At a friend’s sleepover party, we shared secrets, whispered in the dark, confidences from the past that had shaped who we were. Other secrets were dreams that would inspire us and form the women we would become. Lying on the floor watching the stars fade, we found words for a desire to run away in search of a life full of adventure, intrigue, and wonder. We just needed a way out.

  And now, nine years later, I’d found mine. On the grass courts of Wimbledon, my boyfriend Kevin Curren was on the verge of the tournament’s biggest upset. Smelling blood, the fans filled the grandstands until they overflowed. Players lined the balcony overlooking court 2—the “graveyard court”—sensing a changing of the guard. The press area bulged with reporters and photographers waiting to document the rise or fall of a champion. Punching volleys, diving for impossible shots, tumbling on the grass, glaring across the net, whispers as sides were changed—all of it was part of an incredible physical and mental contest.

  After more than two hours on court, the scores were level in the fourth set. Six games all. Tie break. As Kevin prepared to serve, I ran my hands through my hair for the hundredth time, pushing a strand into the claws of my earring. I’d only had these earrings, a college graduation present from my parents, for a month. I remembered opening the pretty paper and finding a Canon camera box underneath. My smile faded. A camera? Why? I’d never wanted to be the one taking pictures. Then I’d spotted the tiny black velvet box nestled inside and opened it to find a pair of diamond earrings in a beautiful antique setting. They were perfect, plus there were plenty of professional photographers courtside at Wimbledon, with multiple cameras slung around their necks. Instinctively I rubbed the sparkling stones for good luck. Kevin tossed the ball, low, and struck it hard. I looked down, unable to watch, twisting the sapphire ring on my finger, and listened. I heard the ball hit the strings, again and again and again. I heard the players grunt, felt the intake of air from the spectators around me, and then I heard the crowd roar. I looked up in time to see Kevin punching the air with his fist. “Game, set, match, Mr. Curren.” He’d done it; he’d beaten Jimmy Connors, the defending champion.

  An hour later, after a shower, rubdown, and an intense press conference, Kevin walked into the players’ lounge. Slaps on the back and echoes of “Well done, mate,” “Great win” greeted him. He shook his head and smiled. When he reached my table, he bent down, brushing his lips across my cheek and whispering, “You must be good luck.”

  Overnight, after the win over Connors, things changed. Cameras flashed in our faces, a sleazy reporter shadowed me around the courts, and my friend Stacy Margolin, who played on the women’s circuit, warned me, “Careful, Ginger, they read lips.” Stacy would have known. She’d recently been offered 50,000 British pounds sterling by the tabloid newspaper the Sun to “tell all” about her relationship with John McEnroe. She turned them, and the others, down flat.

  In the quarterfinals, Kevin beat “Gentleman Tim” Mayotte in a match that was widely heralded as the best in the tournament. There were more reporters, more photographers. As we were leaving the club, a press photographer followed us to the car. The next day, when I opened the newspaper, there was a picture of Kevin and me splashed across the pages of the Times. Then Kevin lost in the semifinals to Chris Lewis, an unseeded player from New Zealand, and it was as if we’d disappeared. There was another winner with a different girlfriend to follow, teaching me a quick lesson in the fleeting nature of fame.

  But it was a lesson I found easy to forget, because while my trip to Wimbledon—a college graduation present from Kevin—had been my first trip out of the United States, I soon learned it wouldn’t be my last. Kevin’s success in the UK had thrust us into the limelight and led to a journey around the world. First stop, his native South Africa. An offer to play an exhibition match at the Sun City resort came complete with two first-class airline tickets. We took an overnight flight from London, and just as we cleared customs in Johannesburg, a public relations representative from Southern Sun Hotels which was sponsoring the tournament pulled me aside. “Have you seen today’s papers?”

  “No.”

  She hesitated, looked around, and, lowering her voice, told me, “There was an interview with Kevin’s father, and well…he said you’re the reason Kevin lost at Wimbledon. He doesn’t think Kevin needs a woman traipsing around the circuit with him.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear the words and the jet lag away. “You’re kidding. There must be some mistake.”

  “No. Now maybe the reporter got it wrong, but there are many more reporters waiting outside customs for you. I thought you should know.”

  I was too tired to think his comment through, too determined that it not ruin my first moments in Africa, that I simply tried to laugh it off. “Thanks, I guess.”

  The sliding doors opened and we stepped into the main lobby of the airport. In the hollow of this huge space, lights flashed brighter, motor drives whirred more loudly, and the shouted questions ran together in a strange combination of English and Afrikaans. Kevin wrapped his arm protectively around my shoulder and we kept walking. After a shower and a press conference by the pool, we quickly settled in, and the headlines over the next few days were different. We laughed at leads like “Anyone for Tennis with Ginger?” “Ginger: The Power Behind Kevin,” and then guffawed at the one that read “The Fragile Beauty of Kevin’s Ginger.”

  How could love be bad for anyone? Plus, since Kevin had never reached the finals of Wimbledon before, why shouldn’t his parents believe that I was actually good for their son? I could only hope that they too were laughing off the recent run of stories in the press. I’d soon find out, as we planned to meet his family during the exhibition tennis matches at the Sun City resort.

  In the middle of rural Africa where the nearest buildings were goat kraals made of sticks and cow dung, Sun City rose like a phoenix, a sprawling, impressive Third World pretender to Las Vegas, full of glitz, glamour, and gambling. For three days I tried to fit into the family and the place, but it didn’t work. I was desperate to escape the cutting looks, the monosyllabic answers to my questions, and the incessant sound of slot machines. Kevin pulled me aside. Draping his long arms over my shoulders, he whispered, “Try not to worry. We’ll be in the bush soon. I hope you love it as much as I do.”

  The next day, feeling like I’d only just survived round one in this foreign country, we boarded a small aircraft. As it lifted off, the pressures of the past few days drifted away. I peered below as buildings disappeared; the roads changed from tar to gravel and finally single dirt tracks. I hoped for a glimpse of an elephant or a lion, imagining that the creatures hidden in the bush couldn’t be more menacing than those I’d left behind at Sun City. The plane touched down, first one whee
l, then the other, kicking up dust and bouncing down the runway before skidding to a stop.

  When the doors opened, porters grabbed our bags and a lone white figure stepped forward. “Welcome to Londolozi, Ginger. Don’t worry, no one will bother you here.” Sporting a French foreign legion cap, a machete, and a mischievous grin, Kevin’s friend John Varty wore the role of rebel, filmmaker, and keen conservationist lightly. Ever since we’d landed on African soil, I’d heard about John. Kevin respected his conservation ethics and envied him his freedom, living life in the wild. John, a professed bush recluse, seemed slightly jealous of Kevin’s newfound success. Theirs was a man’s friendship, all unspoken, backslapping, crackling with energy and competition.

  But it was a genuine friendship, with a past, a present, and a future, something far removed from life on the tennis circuit. In the world of professional tennis, week after week, year after year, players face each other across the net. Points are scored any way you can get them, using any weakness—your opponent’s feeble backhand, his insipid second serve, or his foundering relationship—to win. Tennis is a physical game, sure, but at the top professional level with big prize money and even more lucrative endorsements on the line, it’s far more mental. So little is shared, and no one talks. No one gives up the game.

  Week after week, women like me who traveled the circuit—the wives, the girlfriends, the groupies—checked each other out from across hotel lobbies and players’ lounges. We also kept score. Who had the biggest diamond, the biggest hair, and whose partner landed the biggest paycheck at the end of the week. Those were the constants. In that world of fast serves and even faster lifestyles, women came and went. The players knew who had the hottest girlfriend or, in the case of some guys, who had the most women. One week it was Allison, next week Julia, after that who knew, who cared. Your real friends—like the real world—were very far away.