Collateral Damage

Time heals... what it can

Editor’s Note: A short story by Meg Richman about what might be salvaged from the ruins of a friendship —David Michael Slater

Photo credit: Meg Richman

A celebrity came to my Overeaters Anonymous meeting this morning. Well, not a real star, but she sure looked like one—that quirky blond actress, not Catherine O’Hara, the other one, from the second season of White Lotus. Spoiler alert: The one who drowned. I mention it because that actress has always reminded me of my former best friend, Gigi, who was likewise tall and blond (though not naturally) and an odd but very magnetic duck. If it had actually been the actress, or Gigi for that matter, on my Zoom screen, I wouldn’t tell you, because anonymity is one of the tools of OA. I’m not sure what they mean when they call it a tool; it’s an important precept, certainly, but not exactly something one can use. In any case, OA is like a secret society, except anyone can join. Most Americans need to, given the obesity epidemic. It works if you work it as they say.

But Gigi. I haven’t seen her in so many years. We had drifted far apart anyway, thanks to me being a mom, and that being annoying to the unencumbered, and her having a cringy boyfriend who demanded more attention than my baby, and also we lived on opposite coasts. Recently, after a mutual attempt to speak on the phone more often, things fell apart as she became increasingly radicalized to the pro-Palestine cause. I’m just an everyday liberal Jew who goes to synagogue on the High Holidays but who has the usual anxiety about being eradicated by those who hate us. I also worked on a Kibbutz in my 20s, so I have a nostalgic fondness for Israel. The last time I talked to Gigi, I tried to broach the subject of my increasing existential fears, but she said she just didn’t understand how justice could be threatening in any way.

We had a mythic friendship in our late 20s, going to clubs, laughing, talking about anything and everything. I honestly can’t remember that much of what we said or did. Strangely, because I didn’t take drugs that often, three of my strongest memories of us involve psychedelics. Once on Ecstasy, we sat on Magnolia Bluff in Seattle (where I still live, not on the cliff, but in the city), overlooking Puget Sound. Sun speckled the waves and white ferries glided magically back and forth to the islands. We were in heaven. I remember we came to the conclusion that day that there had to be a God, because how else could such bliss exist? How could such beauty affect us so transcendently if there weren’t something to transcend to? I think this is vaguely similar to St. Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God, which I learned about in a Philosophy of Religion class, but I’d have to Google it to be sure. If you’re interested, feel free to do it yourself.

The second memory is of when we took mushrooms with my cousin, Amelia. At this point she and Gigi were having an affair, which was kind of rough on me because they were my two closest friends, I introduced them, and suddenly I was a third wheel. But whatever. I try to be generous. At that time, I was waitressing at a trendy restaurant that served the new Northwest cuisine and bought the shrooms from the line cook. They were not the usual kind my ex and I would find in a cow pasture after rain— mildly hallucinogenic and good clean fun. Whatever they were, they sent the three of us down a wretched rabbit hole where we found ourselves spiraling with deeper and darker questions as the night wore on.

We were mad as hatters. Amelia, who had a depressive nature anyway, and who was heavily into post-modern linguistic theory at the time, having recently graduated from Barnard, suggested that love itself was merely a construct. She claimed that all true drives were selfish and that “love” was merely a shared delusion in service of the ego. Debbie Downer. That night she dragged us all down with her until we were utterly inconsolable, so much so that we, three grown women—Amelia 23, Gigi 26, and I 29—staggered to my childhood home to implore my mother for consolation.

She was at home in her customary easy chair. My father’s matching chair sat empty because it was past his 10 o’clock bedtime (nowadays, also mine) when we showed up. We didn’t tell my mother about the drugs we had taken, only about how we’d lost faith in love. Gigi and I literally squeezed onto her lap while Ameilia sat at her feet. Patiently, she reminded us about the innocence of small children, their sweet smiling faces, their tabla raza souls, their hunger to love and be loved. Of course, one could argue that their cuteness overload serves a practical evolutionary function, they need milk, but she kept saying, “Look at a baby!” until we believed her. To this day, when Amelia or I are feeling blue, one or the other of us will up and shout, “Look at a baby!” And at least it makes us laugh.

The third memory was of a trip with Gigi on a Christmas Eve. There was some amphetamine mixed in with the MDMA, and she and I couldn’t stop walking the streets. I don’t remember if it was cold out—it must have been frigid on December 24, but we were oblivious. We were flying high on the currents of love and hilarity the drug induces. We wandered all over Capitol Hill, the youth hub, from one end to the other. Nothing was open. Seattle was still a provincial town in the 80s and closed early even when it wasn’t a holiday. I guess maybe we were cold, though, because I remember looking for somewhere warm. Or maybe just to sit down because our feet hurt. Gigi always wore sexy shoes. Mine were sensible. Whatever the case, we found a small hole in the wall with its lights on, so we went in and ordered something I’m sure we had no intention of eating.

The man behind the counter was a young Indian or Pakistani whose strong accent and limited English suggested he hadn’t been in the States long. We were instantly obsessed by him. His golden-brown skin, his access to a completely other world. The existence of so many other worlds, on our own planet, that we would never know. We asked him if he could describe the Hindu concept of Nirvana to us—because we thought we were there, if only temporarily. But he turned out to be a Muslim. We were probably one huge drug-addled micro-aggression, but that term hadn’t been coined yet. Isn’t it interesting that we need to name concepts in order to address them? What I also remember from that Christmas Eve restaurant is the queasiness in my stomach from the fragrant masala spices in whatever we ordered to be polite and merit space at a table, not that anyone else was there. But what sticks with me most of all is the sense of immutable oneness with my BFF for life.

Not on drugs, Gigi and I once went on a trip to Europe together. She had spent a lot of time in France at some earlier point in her life and spoke the language beautifully. This made me feel inferior and, worse, dependent on her. It caused a lot of tension between us because I was walking around butt-hurt about my high school French lexicon, and she was getting fed up about having to take care of everything. She was bored by Paris as she knew it so well, and it was raining chats et chiens one afternoon, so we decided to go to the movies. We were thrilled to see that The Piano was playing—it hadn’t opened yet back home. We sat through it three times. We were Campion stans, though that word hadn’t yet been coined, either. Still, a thing can exist even if not yet named. We could have described ourselves as ardent fans, and that would do the trick fine. If there are no synonyms extant, can we know a thing without words to describe it? A mystery even the wisest doctors cannot fathom. Maybe they should try LSD.

Despite seeing the movie five times that summer, all I can remember from it is the haunting soundtrack, an image of the piano being hauled across the beach, and the scene where the heroine’s skirt billows out beneath her in the shape of a bell as she collapses when her jealous husband chops off her fingers. Such is old age, where I have arrived.

Anyway. In Barcelona, which is a divine city, by the way, so walkable and decorative, we met two Arab immigrant guys around our age who attached themselves to us. Gigi and her beau were soon canoodling, which put pressure on me and mine to follow suit, but I wasn’t interested and maybe he wasn’t either, or maybe he was just too polite to press the issue. So a glorious day full of amorous adventures for her was full of nothing but consternation for me. Even so, I was a stalwart friend. It had been a long time since Gigi had a boyfriend or even a one-night stand, so I was happy for her. It improved her outlook on life. It’s nice that events can change us.

Amelia has maintained friendly ties with Gigi, but she’s married now to a woman named Georgia. Georgia’s grown daughter from another relationship went to protest against Israel on October 11, the day after the Hamas massacre—the day before Israel attacked Gaza. Already the blame was on the “Settler Colonialists,” who brought their murders upon themselves because freedom must be achieved by any means necessary. Amelia is loyal to Georgia and the child she considers their daughter while being Jewish enough herself to recognize the movement’s antisemitic tendencies, but regardless, she’s sensitive not to grandstand around me. I, myself, hold such a nuanced opinion (yes for two states, yes for both Palestinian and Jewish self-determination, down with Netanyahu, down with Hamas and other Islamists who would destroy Israel, not to mention gays and women) that I feel I should have my position somehow boiled down to fit on a business card I could hand out.

I suppose I’ve lost Gigi forever, lukewarm Zionist that I am, though I did text her I love you on her last birthday. She sent back a photo of a man in a keffiyeh holding a child with a sign that read “From the River to the Sea.”

Amelia has been fighting cancer these last few years. It started with excruciating pain in her jaw, neck, and head, which finally led to the diagnosis, and then to unrelenting nausea during a course of fancy radiation that required relocation to San Diego, where they have the requisite equipment. Georgia has made it her mission to keep her alive through it all. After I paid a visit, Amelia confided to me that Georgia found me and my concern an added burden because I’d asked Georgia how she, Georgia, was holding up, which I guess was an inquiry she couldn’t endure. I understand that it was only when the treatments were over that Georgia sobbed a torrent. Such is strength.

Unfortunately, Amelia continues to experience excruciating pain. The doctors think they killed all the cancer, but the tumor, now benign, presses against nerves in a delicate area of the spine in her neck from which it cannot be excised. They’re experimenting with morphine and nerve blockers. It will be a great day when she’s freed from the agony. Neither she nor Georgia will consider the possibility that such liberty may not come.

Amelia and I have family history and Twelve Steps in common. When we were young we wrote each other flowery letters (she grew up outside of Boston) that we were sure would be important one day. We described ourselves as cousins in a Jane Austen novel. Sadly, our letters have proved insignificant to our imagined audiences.

I go to OA meetings that always begin with twenty minutes of meditation. Though I try to commune with my Higher Power during this time, memories do parade in without so much as a how-do-you-do. Old age is a collage of random, fitful memories. And of course the here and now. Always that, too. It’s brutal but true that the letters we wrote are not important, that the accomplishments of our busy years are not important, that our opinions are not important. The world chugs onward through its history, and truly the best we can do is spread a little sweetness that might ripple out to join the relentless waves that wash over one and all.

Before our friendship faded, Gigi and I would send each other surprise boxes filled with gorgeous curios. Sometimes the presents had a theme. The last one she sent came in a vintage picnic basket and had two Melmac plates featuring Renaissance faces, silver knives and forks, woven napkins, a bottle of fine wine, and a pair of Waterford goblets. I am thinking of making her a box for old time’s sake. In it, I might put a stuffed turtle dove for peace, her favorite ginger candies, an envelope with some of my mother’s ashes, a photo of her, Amelia, and me, the three of us dressed to the nines in our delicious youth, and a small painting I bought from a crazy guy on the street of an angelic baby’s face, grinning from ear to ear.

Meg Richman lives with a son and dog in Seattle, surrounded by the sounds of the city: sirens and birdsong. Before motherhood, she was a screenwriter. Under Heaven, a film she wrote and directed, was a juried Sundance selection and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Motherhood brought her home to the Pacific Northwest where she taught Literature and Composition at an inner city high school and began to write fiction. She has short stories published in Louisiana Literature and Isele Magazine and is currently querying a novel, Freya the Deer, about a neurodivergent romantic on a quest to define the soul.

What five tiny delights lift your spirits and make you happy?

• Greeting neighbors of all sorts and dogs of all breeds on my daily walk

• The mulchy smell, the light through the branches of the old-growth forest near my house

• Listening to music, reading books, looking at art, writing

• Feeling the transcendent presence of the universe. All those atoms swirling...

• Excellent, synergistic conversation that builds ideas into a tower

What five tiny JEWISH delights lift your spirits and make you happy?

• My son saying the blessing as he lights the Hanukkah candles

• Singing with my congregation with joy, as the accordion, drums, and clarinet play along

• Learning Jewish history and contemplating my ancestors, the shtetl, the migration across Europe, the years in the Holy Land, and the desert

• Sharing our humor. My brother is particularly funny. And dark.

• Reading the Passover commentary that points to social justice, and feeling the pride in my chest that we believe that.