The Best of Friends Page 5

  “So where are you from again, Sara?” NBC correspondent David Hazinsky asked. I sat up straight, dropped my voice an octave, and attempted to look as experienced as possible, given I was only twenty-five. “The network affiliate in Richmond. Virginia. We’re here to do a story on some locals who plan to drill wells, build houses, help the campesinos—the peasants.”

  He gave me a look that told me he knew what campesinos were—and a great deal more than that. “Do you guys have a fixer?” Years later I would learn that a fixer was indispensable—a seasoned local who could troubleshoot problems ranging from bureaucratic hassles to accommodations to terrain, but back then all I knew was we didn’t have one. “A translator?” I shook my head again. We were relying on those in the humanitarian group and my halting Spanish. “Have you been warned about the roads?”

  As MK shot a look at me, he appeared increasingly incredulous. “Both sides have laid mines, so be careful.” He paused to let that sink in and I avoided MK’s gaze. “Look, if we can help, we will. You can borrow our crew for an afternoon, shoot some promos. But remember, out there you’ll be in the middle of a war zone. On your own.” I swallowed and must have looked queasy, because his expression lightened. “Look, since you’re here, why don’t you two catch the concert tonight. Peter, Paul and Mary are in town and President Ortega and his wife will be there.”

  Which was how it happened that the night before heading to a war zone, MK and I spent the evening in a crowded, sweltering tent in downtown Managua listening to one of the most famous American folk groups from the 1960s. As they broke into “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” we looked at each other. What was so scary about this assignment?

  Just as we were about to leave and MK was snapping a final shot to show our friends back at Channel 12, a soldier spied us. With a shout, he hustled over, grabbed her stills camera, and ripped out the film before gesturing angrily that we leave that moment, or else. We had our answer.

  That night, lying on one of the lumpy twin beds, I couldn’t sleep. What had I roped us into? Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Killed.

  MK wasn’t sleeping either. “So what are you thinking?” she asked.

  I was thinking how stuffy the room was. I was thinking how much my stomach hurt. I was thinking of the way Mom’s face had crumpled when she’d realized she couldn’t change my mind about coming, how she’d bitten her lip and how even my ever-the-optimist dad looked grave. I was thinking about how I could still taste the first mango I’d ever eaten, off a street cart that afternoon, about how much fun we’d been having and how beautiful the people had seemed before a soldier stole a roll of film, and before I’d absorbed the words “land mines” and “war zone.” How those words reverberated in my brain, one muffled explosion after another, because I suddenly knew I was just a kid and not nearly as smart as I thought I was.

  What I said was, “I think we’ll be okay.”

  AS IT TURNED out, trouble found us a few hours into the trip. We’d hooked up with an American who worked with an international human rights group. He had serviceable Spanish, access to a vehicle, and some knowledge of the backwater we were entering, and agreed to give us a lift to the house-building Richmonders, who would bring us back to Managua.

  We drove slowly, scanning for land mines. The road was rutted, and every time we struck an especially deep dip I winced, squeezing my eyes shut, half waiting for a rush of air and an explosion. Then I realized that if we hit a mine, I’d never know until afterward, if I found out at all. The jungle was cloying, dark green disappearing to black, impenetrable, unknowable. Which was how it happened that we didn’t see the gunmen until they’d surrounded the car, shouting for us to halt in machine-gun-rapid Spanish.

  Were they Sandinistas or Contras? I couldn’t tell, and didn’t know which was worse. Whoever they were, they were young and scrawny, alternately angry and nervous. Clearly gringos didn’t blunder their way every day. My mouth tasted like copper. I realized I was biting my cheek. I was also sweating through the khaki shirt I’d bought for two bucks at the A&N store back in Richmond.

  “Mom is going to kill me,” I thought, but some words must have leaked out.

  “What did you say?” MK hissed back.

  “I’m sorry I got us into this mess.”

  “Let’s just get out.”

  As the gunmen fanned out, a couple of them searched the back of the vehicle, picked up a few of our canteens, then pointed at me. My ¿Dónde esta el baño? Spanish was hopelessly inadequate. “What are they saying?” I asked our American guide.

  “They think we’re U.S. military. Or CIA.”

  “What! Can’t they tell we’re journalists?” I huffed. “Just look at our camera gear and notepads!”

  “How about look at what you’re wearing! Where did you buy that khaki crap, and those army-issue canteens? Are you trying to get us killed?”

  My mouth went dry as my stomach lurched. I made a mental note in this do-it-yourself foreign correspondent training class. Never, ever shop at the Army & Navy store.

  The gunmen huddled in conference. I tried not to imagine the options. Kill us? Come up with some imaginative torture? Hold us for ransom? I closed my eyes, then opened them again to escape the image of being buried in the middle of nowhere, disappearing without a trace.

  I sought to recover my composure. “Look, show them these.” I shoved forward the permission documents we’d gotten from the Sandinistas. There was a risk, of course. What if these soldiers were Contras? But as they flipped through the papers, paying close attention to all those pretty embossed patterns, I suddenly realized with a start why the stamps were so important. Some of those soldiers couldn’t read. I made a mental note. Rule number two for foreign correspondents—stamps, stamps, and more stamps.

  After a few moments that seemed to last forever, they must have decided we really were journalists after all. Or maybe they just figured that live, dumb gringos were less trouble than dead ones. With a disgusted wave, they let us go, then melted into the jungle as quickly as they’d appeared.

  I had survived my first trip to a war zone. It wouldn’t be my last.

  “SO WHAT HAPPENED when you finally got into the countryside, Sara?”

  “I think the Richmonders found their building project incredibly difficult. It didn’t help that we were told to sleep with our boots by the tent flap in case the fighting got too close.”

  “It must seem like a million miles from here.”

  I looked around at the fancy decor and fancier people in the tony Manhattan watering hole and nodded.

  “Well, thank goodness you’re okay. Let’s drink to that.” Ginger clinked my glass. “And here’s to success in your hunt for a new position in a bigger city.”

  “I dunno. I wonder if I’ll ever get to the network.”

  “Don’t say that. If you want to, you will.”

  “Did I tell you I was crazy enough to send a tape to LP’s agent? Some underling there sent it back. Basically: Keep up the good work, but what’s with your hair? Like I had time for a blow-dry just after I shampooed in the stream.”

  “You’re only twenty-five, Sara. There’s plenty of time.”

  And I thought, For both of us. But I said nothing.

  Ginger looked as beautiful as ever, but there was a weariness I didn’t remember and she didn’t explain. In losing Kevin, Ginger had lost a way of life as well as the man she loved. Gone were the days of traveling first-class, of Tiffany baubles and Gucci loafers. She didn’t complain about the tiny apartment, her twin bed with its Barbie-sized dresser in a curtained-off corner of the living room. And I instantly adored her roommate, Kristy. But this wasn’t the life Ginger had expected. The life any of us had expected for her. “Do you ever hear from Kevin?”

  “A while ago I got a box with his return address—in a woman’s handwriting. Some things of mine he thought I’d miss.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It gets better. I called a friend of Kevin’s about it. Know what she told
me? ‘Ginger, in a breakup, you have to pick sides, and we’ve chosen Kevin’s.’”

  “How unfair!”

  Then suddenly Ginger giggled, a sound I remembered well. “But you know what, Sara? Some people like me better without him!” Her laughter was infectious.

  “Well, I do, too. And I’m just glad we’re back in touch.”

  “Me too. But forget work. I want to hear more about your new guy.”

  I paused. I had a strange fear that Mr. Carpe Diem might vanish if I talked about him. Besides, I felt rusty confiding in Ginger. Over the past few years we had lived our lives so differently. Funnily enough, I felt far more comfortable seeing her in New York than I had on that previous occasion, back home in Richmond. We both had careers, and while tennis and television might be worlds apart, the fact that each of us was single, poor, and self-sufficient gave us connections we hadn’t shared when her only job was to be Kevin’s gorgeous girlfriend. Still, the man I cared for was nothing like Kevin and I wasn’t sure what she’d think of my choice. But Ginger had always been easy to talk to, so I took the plunge.

  “Well, he carries everything with him—boots, tent, Leatherman—probably his heart. But somehow I’m sure he’s the one. And I actually think he feels that way, too.”

  “How long have you known each other?”

  I hesitated. “Actually, just a few months. Not even, really, because he’s always traveling.”

  Ginger was tactfully silent. Back in high school she would have told me exactly what she thought. But that night we were both finding our way. Although her knitted brows urged caution, all she said was, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “And I can’t wait to meet your new guy.”

  “Well, you won’t have to wait, because here he comes now.” The man who bent to kiss her was well groomed, well dressed, and well heeled. Gin had told me his dad owned several Upper East Side skyscrapers. But I took an instant dislike to Tall, Rich, and Handsome. Gin’s smile glittered but there was a brittle quality to her laughter that alarmed me. I knew she was on the rebound but I didn’t think this man was good for her. He seemed about as deep as a vodka martini. I tried to keep pace with the evening, with the rolling party, but felt clumsy and awkward, the small-town girl who would never be hip enough for New York.

  “So what did you think of him?” Gin asked the next morning.

  Now it was my turn to hedge. I hardly knew the guy. For that matter, I was just getting to know Ginger again. When in doubt, speak the truth. Or as much of it as you can. “He’s certainly handsome.”

  ON THE FLIGHT back to Richmond, I pondered our friendship. It had been a long, long time. While we were back in touch, we weren’t back to where we’d been back then. There were things we didn’t ask, didn’t tell, murky depths still off limits.

  I had a new man in my life. I had new friends like Lisa and Linda, with whom I had a career in common. Would I keep up with this old friend? Would she keep up with me? We shared a past, but would our friendship share a future? I hoped so. But we lived in different cities and seemed to be heading in different directions. It was just too early to tell.

  5

  GINGER (1987–1989)

  DAMN THIS AIR conditioner.” Outside it was 98 degrees and 100 percent humidity. Inside I hit the steering wheel, fought with the air conditioner, and cranked up the music. The sound of Steve Winwood singing “Higher Love,” the unofficial anthem of the summer of ’87, and the sight of sweaty, muscled construction workers lining the interstate almost made me forget that my legs were stuck to the rental car’s vinyl seats. My skin glowed, a euphemism distinct to the South, as in “Ladies never sweat, no sir, we glow.” Only problem was, I was glowing so brilliantly that I couldn’t see where I was going. I took off my Ray-Bans to wipe away the moisture, and when I put them back on I looked up and there was Sara, larger than life, smiling down on me from a billboard. “Welcome to Charlotte—Home of Channel 3 News.”

  The sports marketing firm I worked for in New York had scheduled amateur tennis tournaments in three different cities that weekend. I needed to work one, and the choice was mine. I could have been poolside in Miami Beach or gazing across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco while making the draw for the tournament, but I’d chosen the heat, the noise, and the charm of Charlotte, one of the country’s fastest-growing cities, where Sara’s presence was larger than life, both on billboards and as coanchor of the evening news. Those were her public roles. I needed Sara in her role as steadfast friend, a friend I could trust to keep my secrets.

  I was twenty-six years old, which meant that Sara and I had been friends for fourteen years. Back when we’d met at Tuckahoe Middle School, we’d shared a table in the cafeteria during lunch, compared class schedules and homeroom teachers, but we’d never spoken about life below the surface. Not until one night at a friend’s sleepover party. We were two of ten young girls sprawled on a thin carpet, lying between empty pizza boxes and M&M’s. A trace of Charlie perfume hung in the air, and most of the girls, wearing Lanz flannel nightgowns with pink roses all in a row, were lost in the world of deep sleep and dreams. What did we dream of at twelve years old? Boys or Barbies? Mud pies or makeup? Taking tentative steps into our teens, our world ricocheted from Truth or Dare to trigonometry, spin the bottle to sock hops. What did we know of life, real life with all its shadows and textures? And if you did know some of the pain and drama found in its darker places, whom could you tell? Whom could you trust to keep a secret?

  Sara and I were still awake, lying close together, whispering quietly. Tentatively I let my secret creep out. I told Sara about my sister Tish.

  Tish had only been four years old when she had her first seizure. Without warning, she’d fallen to the ground and begun to shake. She moaned, deeply, a sound completely at odds with her beautiful, delicate face. Her arms and legs became rigid and her small body shook convulsively. She wet her pants and then she was quiet. Twenty minutes later she woke up and wanted to play.

  For years Mom and Dad took her from doctor to doctor, searching for a specialist, a drug, a magician, anything that could make things right. Tests showed little hope. Tish had brain damage. Simple, irreversible brain damage. No one knew why. It was nothing she had asked for. It was nothing she had done. Faced with a diagnosis that turned the future into a void, Tish’s life would unfold in unimaginable ways. As she grew older, her behavior became more erratic, her seizures continued, and her list of medications grew. That was her pain.

  My secret was that I was afraid of being her. We were only eighteen months apart in age. With our fine blond hair and skinny legs, everyone thought we were twins, but I was older. Old enough to know that screaming at your mother in public isn’t polite behavior, old enough to know that touching a hot stove can burn you, but not old enough to accept that my sister wasn’t capable, mentally capable, of grasping these simple concepts. Whenever she was ill—which was often—or behaved badly—which was more often—I could only think: She could have been me; I could have been her.

  In 1972, when I shared my secret with Sara, no one I knew spoke of illnesses or any other troubles at home. In the years of limbo between Leave It to Beaver and Dallas, problems and pain, if they existed, crept out in whispers in the kitchen and never in front of children. Watching The Brady Bunch was as close as we ever got to being inside a broken home. Whatever happened to the Partridge Family’s father remained an unspoken mystery. Of course television, like real life, portrayed some people who were less than perfect, and like life, it did so coldly. Usually the poor soul was a chubby boy, his white shirt untucked, his pants too short, weaving through the hall at school carrying a stack of books. With his glasses slipping down his nose, he couldn’t see where he was going until the big, handsome football player intentionally bumped into him. “Where you going, retard?” A gaggle of popular students laughed, “Yeah, retard.” In a world of perfect people, he was obviously going nowhere. I heard all this in the halls of my own school. I never laughed, but
I also never came to the defense of that sad, confused boy. Often I wished that I was strong enough to scream out about the injustice, to challenge these people to be kind, or if that was too hard, to at least do no harm. Mainly I wished I were somewhere else, far, far away. So I kept quiet, kept my secret. No one knew that I was afraid that one day I’d wake up and God would have realized he’d made a horrible mistake. I should have been the one who was sick, not Tish. No one knew of my fear until that night.

  After I finished talking, I was still, staring at the ceiling, waiting for Sara to react. A new fear temporarily replaced the old: maybe she’d be repulsed, pull away, thinking I wasn’t who she thought I was after all. Not the bouncing cheerleader with the perfect life, but me with the imperfect family and the sad secret. But she reached out and touched my arm.

  “Oh, Gin. I am so sorry. I had no idea.”

  We talked a long time that night. Later, at school, when we met on an empty sidewalk or in the frenzy of the lunchroom when no one could hear themselves, much less us, she’d ask me about Tish and I’d always say, “Fine, everything’s fine.” But she knew. At twelve years old, we shared a secret, a bond. The beginnings of a friendship.

  How did I know I could trust Sara to keep my secret, not to see it as a weakness or somehow hold it against me? Was it as simple as being in the right place at the right time? On that night, had the pressure of carrying that secret simply boiled to the point where release was inevitable, and Sara just happened to be close by? I didn’t think so. When you’ve carried a secret for years and believe that revealing it will expose you in a naked, awful way, telling someone has to be more than a random draw of proximity or timing. That night, when nine other girls, girls just like me, would have listened, how had I known I could trust Sara? Was it instinct, intuition, dumb luck? Or did I sense a kinship in Sara that she too knew the gift and the pressures of being randomly blessed? I’m not sure, but whatever it was, it was reliable, and so was Sara. Years later, I still trusted her.