The Best of Friends Page 8

  Lying in the tent, I pondered what that dream meant. Was I terrified to have a child, afraid I was too selfish and irresponsible to be a mother? Or was my deeper fear that I’d never have a child at all? These women had no doubts, only anguish at an unexpected and lengthy separation. And when they showed me pictures of daughters and sons, children dark-haired and fair, faces fringed in bangs or curls, I found myself picturing the scenes back home: a skinned knee bandaged by Dad, a grimy, tear-streaked face wiped by Grandma, a temper tantrum at bathtime or bedtime or for no reason at all, save the reason that someone small was missing Mom, wondering when she’d be back, and perhaps wondering if she’d return at all.

  BACK AT CHANNEL 3, those “Soldiers’ Stories” seemed to write themselves and I dared to wonder if I might finally have enough material to send to the network. The only person I knew from Charlotte who’d moved on was the sports anchor at the competition, Hannah Storm, who’d been picked up by CNN. She looked glamorous and competent and I felt sure she hadn’t needed nearly as much help as I did.

  I needed a new résumé reel, and when CD took time from his travels to craft one for me, my heart lifted. He must still care. Meantime, my friend Linda had offered to put me in touch with her agent.

  “But I already sent him a tape, LP.”

  “That was back in Richmond. Now you have more experience, plus you met him at my wedding, remember?”

  It was impossible to forget Stuart Witt. He worked for the N.S. Bienstock agency in New York and was smart and caustic—a marathon-running, fur-hating vegetarian and former marine. Which was why I shouldn’t have been surprised by his blunt assessment of my work.

  “Sara! Did you rob King Midas’s tomb or what?? What is with those earrings?”

  “You think they’re a little big, Stu?”

  “Big?! They’re the size of hubcaps!” Finally he calmed down. “But I like the story where you’re in the middle of the hurricane and the series about the soldiers. That won an Emmy, right? And the magazine profile on you is good, ’cause it mentions that Nicaragua stuff.”

  “Well, thanks—”

  “I’m not done. Just get me some new anchoring. And don’t wear any jewelry. None. I don’t trust you. And I’ll see what I can do.”

  I got off the phone worrying about uniforms. Soldiers wore khaki and camo. Local anchors wore cardinal red. What was the style for network reporters? I’d never been good at fashion, and Ginger was nearly seven thousand miles away. I’d just have to figure it out.

  A few weeks later I was just back from a run when CD waved me in with a big smile. “Sara,” he whispered, handing over the phone, “it’s Don Browne.”

  Don Browne! Gin had sent me a Vanity Fair profile about him. Was it possible the executive vice president of NBC was calling me at home?

  “Yes?”

  “So I had to talk to someone who was crazy enough about this business to pay their own way to a war zone. Did you really cover Nicaragua as a reporter from Richmond?”

  I’d read that Browne had been NBC’s Miami bureau chief during the conflict, the person responsible for deploying network correspondents and crews not only in southern Florida but in Central and South America, too.

  I laughed, suddenly at ease, because I liked this man immediately. “I guess it does sound nuts.”

  “Well, I like that kind of crazy. How’d you like to come to New York for an interview?”

  When I hung up, breathless, CD was beaming at me, and I felt better than I’d felt in months.

  “Congratulations, Sara,” he said with a kiss. Oh my God, there was hope for us, I just knew it. If we could just get out of this town.

  BUT THEN GULF WAR I started, and everything else was on hold. I sent Browne a note. “Bags packed. Stop. Arabic dictionary in hand. Stop. Are you sure you don’t need another reporter in Kuwait?”

  He called, chuckling. “Sit tight, Sara. We’re spending a lot of money on this war. But if I can’t get you in the front door, there may be a window.”

  But there wasn’t time to contemplate cryptic network hints. In between anchoring newscasts I constantly scanned the wires, checking every report slugged “Harrier Down.” Mouth chalky, I’d ring my sister Elizabeth, who would cut the chitchat short with a terse “It’s okay. It wasn’t John.”

  “How’d you know why I was calling?” I asked the first time.

  “The wives. We know first.”

  I comforted myself that at least while John was away Elizabeth had moved in with our youngest sister, Susan. Elizabeth was working on her doctorate in voice while Susan pursued her master’s in music. Both studied at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, just a few hours from Charlotte, and the three of us got together as often as we could.

  And then there was Linda. LP had promised her photographer husband, David Murray, and her parents that she’d stay safe. Which explains how she wound up being the only female television reporter with the frontline troops, storming into Kuwait with the Second Marine Division. Then again, what could you expect from the daughter of a marine? But at last the war was over, and LP was giving an exclusive interview to Barbara Walters, and John was on the boat steaming home.

  It was months later when I got another call from Stu.

  “Sara, I got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  “I’m an optimist.”

  “Good! Are you sitting down? You are going to the network.”

  I collapsed into a chair. “Stu! That’s incredible!” I could scarcely believe I was going to live my dream of getting to be a network reporter. Catching my expression, my husband grinned, too.

  Then I sat up straight. “But wait—what’s the bad news?”

  “Well, the job’s in the middle of the night. And—it’s in Charlotte.”

  “What?” I wailed. I’d counted on moving to a different city, one with more opportunities for my husband. “But there isn’t even a bureau here!”

  “True, but there’s News Channel.” NBC News Channel had only recently begun operations. An affiliate feed service, it collected relevant videotape and editorial information from each NBC station which could then be dispersed to one and all. Stu continued, “You’ll interview with News Channel president Bob Horner, and if he likes you, you’ll be an anchor. A network anchor, Sara. Of course, you’ll be up all night, have to live like a fuckin’ bat. And it’s a start-up, so you’ll work your ass off. But play your cards right and you’ll get to New York.”

  A network anchor. In Charlotte. My star was rising. But at the realization that this latest career move wouldn’t mean moving to a new city, the smile on my husband’s face faded to black.

  “THANKS, MARTIN. THAT’S Martin Fletcher, reporting live from Jerusalem. And that wraps it up for us for this half hour. Thanks for watching NBC Nightside.” I did the obligatory anchor paper shuffle as we cut to a commercial break.

  “Jerusalem. I’d love to go there,” I said to my coanchor, Antonio Mora. “Do you think one day we’ll get to report from overseas?”

  Antonio considered. “Perhaps. Personally I’d prefer to host my own show, interview key newsmakers,” he replied. “I’ve already spent a lot of time overseas.”

  I nodded, remembering that Antonio’s family had fled Cuba when Castro came to power, and he’d lived for a time in Venezuela before moving permanently to the United States. “Fair enough. Meantime, there’s some breaking news. The Krispy Kreme donuts just arrived—and they’re hot. Which kind do you want?”

  Sharing a grueling shift meant I’d not only learned about Antonio’s family history, but that he possessed a wicked sweet tooth.

  “Great! I’ll take chocolate frosted.”

  It wasn’t easy to stay up all night. But it was harder to go home. Between leaving for the office at 9 P.M.. and hitting the sack at eleven in the morning, not to mention CD’s travel, we saw less of each other than ever. When we did, he seemed increasingly remote. One especially bad day, I drove to the Harris Teeter grocery s
tore and called Linda from a pay phone in the parking lot.

  “You two need a vacation,” she decreed.

  “Actually, we’re leaving for Namibia soon,” I replied, telling her about an upcoming trip to see Ginger, as well as Julie, Jim, and baby Tarl, who’d be visiting Julie’s parents. But Linda had switched to her drill sergeant voice. “But, Sara, use the time away to really talk to each other. You have got to face—whatever this is.”

  I struggled to compose myself, suddenly keenly aware that a woman was waving at me, heading my way. She wanted an autograph. I remembered that once, I’d longed for such a moment. Today I dreaded such an encounter, afraid my face would give my pain away. I signaled for her to wait a minute.

  “Ginger made it through a bad breakup, too,” Linda continued, “and look how happy she is now. I bet she’ll have some advice.”

  I hung up the phone and took a deep breath to compose myself as the woman with her pen and pad swooped in.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Sara Jane.” I smiled as I scrawled my name. In the South, my last name sometimes became part of my first. Then she gave me a sharper look. “But I do have to say, you sure look different from that billboard.”

  I jangled my keys, headed for my Mazda. I couldn’t get to Africa and Ginger quickly enough.

  7

  GINGER (1991–1992)

  HOW FAR CAN negative energy travel? Can it be packed alongside suitcases, board a plane in Charlotte, and be flown halfway around the world? Given time and a stiff drink, it should dissipate over the Atlantic. The very idea of a holiday should transform it. But what if it doesn’t? What if jet lag only makes it worse? Does negativity then have the capacity to land in one of the most remote places in Africa and wreak havoc? Shake canyon walls, drive snakes from their burrows, knock food onto the sand? Will it consume life in the desert, or will the wind, the heat, the sheer scale of the desert give it perspective and swallow it whole?

  Just two years before, in 1990, South-West Africa had gained its independence from South Africa and was now recognized as Namibia. That had been the same year I’d moved to the Kuiseb River Canyon with Nad and a motley troop of baboons. Nad and I had come to expect the baboons to fight to the death, to literally bite each other in the back in order to maintain their strict ranking structure, keeping one another firmly in their place. But our survival depended on taking a different approach. Since there were just two of us, living more than one hundred miles away from the nearest city, we needed to keep the peace. The baboons’ world might disintegrate into anarchy, but we couldn’t allow that to happen in ours. We tried not to let heavy unspoken feelings invade the riverbed. But lift the lid on sadness, on pain, and it blows through the desert like the east wind, turning dreams into dust. This is what happened when Sara and her husband arrived.

  I didn’t wear a watch, didn’t have a calendar, but for months I’d been counting down the days until their visit, waiting anxiously for June. I knew their trip would be quick. They had to divide their time in Namibia between visiting Julie and her family four hundred miles to the north in the Skeleton Coast Park and us, but I would have traded many things for just one day. For the first time in over a year I would see a real human friend, one who knew how far I’d come from a high school stage to a vast desert arena. She knew the curves, the potholes, and the roadblocks that had marked my journey from a young girl with big dreams to a woman whose dreams were now incomprehensible to most. Though my family and friends were oddly, tactfully silent, I knew they worried about my decision to live such an isolated, uncertain life, one without immediate comforts and where the future seemed to be rooted in vague hopes. I needed Sara to feel the soft sand, to see the glow of sunset on the dunes, and to hear the story behind the baboons’ gentle murmurs so that she would understand the allure and my choice. Then at least one person would realize I wasn’t completely mad.

  The night before they arrived, Nad and I had watched the baboons climb up their sleeping cliff, before driving twenty miles back to the research station in the dark. Back at the station, we shared a few beers with other researchers in from the field, refueled the Land Rover, and then we waited, and waited. Sunrise, midmorning, noon had passed, midday followed, and still nothing.

  It was late afternoon, the time when light plays on the dunes, creating long, graceful shadows, and the air is cool enough to breathe again, when Sara and CD’s rented vehicle drove through the gates. Immediately we bundled them into the Land Rover and drove from the research station upriver to find the baboons. We drank warm beer and held on to each other as the Land Rover bounced down the dirt track. At first I was so excited to see them that I didn’t notice the friction in the air. I simply put it down to fatigue. It’s an arduous thirty-hour trip from the U.S. to Namibia, changing planes, changing time zones, and changing perspectives as cities melt away, replaced by wide-open spaces, the perfect backdrop for losing or finding yourself. Though I knew Sara craved a more natural life, she was working the night shift, surviving on fast food, and willing herself to ignore the fact that she hadn’t seen the sun or her husband by the light of day in a long time.

  “So this is it. We’re home,” I told them as we turned a bend in the dry riverbed and met the baboons as they were climbing down a sheer cliff face. For the past two years home had been anywhere this ragtag troop of baboons was, within their range of only twenty miles. No living room, no kitchen, no toilet. Open-air ceilings and walls of wind. Just space. To the uninitiated it varied little, just one long stretch of sand bordered by gray canyon walls to the north and endless deep red dunes to the south. But we knew this riverbed intimately, every bend, every seep of water, every tree that sustained the baboons when the river ran dry. We knew where each of our favorite little baboons had been born. We also knew where many of the others had died. Every night we threw our sleeping bags down on the sand below the troop’s preferred sleeping cliff. And tonight, for the first time, I’d have a chance to finally share this amazing place with someone else I loved. I could be forgiven for not seeing the cracks yet.

  “We’ll set up camp here tonight,” said Nad as he eased the Land Rover up and over an embankment of silt. He stopped in the sand opposite a seep of water cut into a sheer rock face seventy-five feet up from the ground. For the past week the baboons had been drinking here, one by one, from the highest-to the lowest-ranking member. Nad climbed out from behind the wheel, opened the back of the vehicle, and began our nightly routine.

  “Here, grab this table, and Sara, the box of wine goes on the bonnet. Sorry, the hood.”

  “He’s catching on to American, isn’t he, Gin?” Sara grinned.

  Table opened, gas cooker placed beside the tire, and wine in place, Nad grabbed a shovel, looked around, and said sheepishly, “I’m heading for the hills,” an expression understood in any language.

  Sara, CD, and I stretched out on the sand, sipping our drinks and enjoying the quiet. “This box wine isn’t—” Sara stopped midsentence and we all turned to see Nad tearing out from behind the trees.

  “Shit,” he laughed.

  “What, what is it?”

  “A fucking six-foot cobra. Right where, well, you know. Shit.”

  If it was possible, Sara turned even paler.

  “Nad, be quiet. Please. Sara hates snakes.”

  I turned to Sara. “He’s making this up.”

  “No, I almost sat on the damn thing. And, well, don’t look but I left my underwear back there.”

  Now it was Nad’s turn to change color.

  “Don’t worry, Sara. One look at that little white bottom and I’m sure the snake was scared away.”

  Later that evening after accidentally dumping our pasta dinner in the sand, Sara whispered, “Did you hear that?”

  The eerie laughter of hyenas bounced off the canyon walls, creating a bizarre harmony with the sound of our crackling fire. Their whooping and cackling grew louder as the hyenas edged closer, and I told Sara how I’d grown leery of them. “I met a guy w
ho was sleeping with his head outside a tent and a hyena bit his ear off. And once, when we were sleeping, they dragged a blanket off of us. We found it on the cliff the next morning.”

  “Gin, stop. Now you’re trying to scare me.”

  This time Nad spoke gently, in his seldom-used “I’m a doctor, you can trust me” voice. “No, no, Sara, don’t worry. Hyenas are just curious. Normally they just sniff around camp and move on. You have nothing to worry about.”

  That night while the rest of us were sprawled in the sand, Sara slept alone in the back of the Land Rover. The next morning she was strangely apologetic. As if, instead of making a sane decision, she’d shown some horrible weakness and earned another demerit in a marriage that was increasingly keeping score. I could suddenly see that it wasn’t jet lag or fatigue stifling Sara’s bright nature. Her confidence was shattered, a painful symptom caused by a relationship rupturing, one I remembered all too well from my breakup with Kevin.

  “Come on, Sara. The guys can pack up camp. Let’s go find the baboons.” We took our chipped enamel mugs, steaming with coffee, and walked quietly up the riverbed. The sun touched the lip of the canyon, warming the sand and turning the treetops an iridescent green. “Shh,” I whispered. We stood still and listened to the contented sounds of mm-mm coming from a grove of acacia trees.

  “Found them. Now let me introduce you.” As we adjusted our eyes, images, black blurs of movement, took shape, revealing individuals behind the branches and leaves.