I turn and do my best to smile, but it is uneven and impossible to maintain. I move through the crowd carefully, pouring wine and taking plates away. Every minute seems like a triumph of will. As I move, I hear snippets of conversation. People are talking about Kate, sharing memories. I don’t listen—it hurts too much and I am close to losing it now—but the stories are everywhere. As I hear her bid at the Rotary auction, I realize that the people in this room are talking about a Kate I didn’t know, and at that, sadness darts deep. And more. Jealousy.
A woman in an ill-fitting and outdated black dress comes up to me and says, “She talked about you a lot. ”
I smile at that, grateful. “We were best friends for more than thirty years. ”
“She was so brave during her chemo, wasn’t she?”
I can’t answer that. I wasn’t there for her, not then. In the three decades of our friendship, there was a two-year blip when a fight escalated. I had known how depressed Kate was and I’d tried to help, but as is usual for me, I went about it all wrong. In the end, I hurt Kate deeply and I didn’t apologize.
In my absence, my best friend battled cancer and had a double mastectomy. I was not there for her when her hair fell out or when her test results turned bad or when she decided to stop treatment. I will regret it for as long as I breathe.
“That second round was brutal,” says another woman, who looks like she has just come from yoga, in black leggings, ballet flats, and an oversized black cardigan.
“I was there when she shaved her head,” another woman says. “She was laughing, calling herself GI Kate. I never saw her cry. ”
I swallow hard.
“She brought lemon bars to Marah’s play, remember?” someone else says. “Only Katie would bring treats when she was…”
“Dying,” someone else says quietly, and finally the women stop talking.
I can’t take any more of this. Kate had asked me to keep people smiling. No one livens up a party like you, Tul. Be there for me.
Always, girlfriend.
I break free of the women and go over to the CD player. This old-man jazz music isn’t helping. “This is for you, Katie Scarlett,” I say, and pop a CD into the slot. When the music starts, I crank up the volume.
I see Johnny across the room. The love of her life, and, sadly, the only man in my own. The only man I’ve ever been able to count on. When I look at him, I see how battered he is, how broken. Maybe if you didn’t know him you wouldn’t see it—the downward shoulders, the place he’d missed in his morning shave, the lines beneath his eyes that had been etched there by the string of nights when he hadn’t slept. I know he has no comfort to offer me, that he has been scrubbed bare by grief.
I’ve known this man for most of my life, first as my boss and then as my best friend’s husband. For all the big events of both our lives, we’ve been together, and that’s a comfort to me. Just seeing him eases my loneliness a little. I need that, to feel less alone on this day when I’ve lost my best friend. Before I can go to him, he turns away.
The music, our music, pours like elixir into my veins, fills me. Without even thinking, I sway to the beat. I know I should smile, but my sadness is waking again, uncoiling. I see the way people are looking at me. Staring. As if I’m inappropriate somehow. But they are people who didn’t know her. I was her best friend.
The music, our music, brings her back to me in a way no spoken words ever could.
“Katie,” I murmur as if she were beside me.
I see people backing away from me.
I don’t care what they think. I turn and there she is.
Kate.
I come to a stop in front of an easel. On it is a picture of Kate and me. In it, we are young and smiling, with our arms looped around each other. I can’t remember when it was taken—the nineties, judging by my completely unflattering “Rachel” haircut and vest and cargo pants.
Grief pulls the legs out from underneath me and I fall to my knees. The tears I have been holding back all day burst out of me in great, wracking sobs. The music changes to Journey’s Don … n’t stop bee-lieving and I cry even harder.
How long am I there? Forever.
Finally, I feel a hand on my shoulder, and a gentle touch. I look up and see Margie through my tears. The tenderness in her gaze makes me cry again.
“Come on,” she says, helping me to my feet. I cling to her, let her help me into the kitchen, which is busy with women doing dishes, and then into the laundry room, where it is quiet. We hold on to each other but say nothing. What is there to say? The woman we love is gone.
Gone.
And suddenly I am beyond tired. I am exhausted. I feel myself drooping like a fading tulip. Mascara stings my eyes; my vision is still watery with tears. I touch Margie’s shoulder, noticing how thin and fragile she has become.
I follow her out of the shadowy laundry room and make my way back into the living room, but I know instantly that I can’t be here anymore. To my shame, I can’t do what Kate asked of me. I can’t pretend to celebrate her life. Me, who has spent a lifetime pretending to be fine-good-great, can’t do that now. It is too soon.