I. Kari and Steve
That day after school we laughed so hard that Kari snorted Pepsi out her nose and I fell to the kitchen floor. Steve giggled his high-pitched laugh that went up and up and up that made me laugh even harder. It had to do with the creamy goodness of Velveeta. Steve’s mom Gayle catered for the hoi polloi of Lewiston, and Velveeta was the secret behind many of her delicious dishes.
Steve, Kari and I wore vintage clothes—not cool in Lewiston, Idaho. We loved musicals, we loved staying up late and eating French fries and drinking black coffee at the diner. It was 1984 in Lewiston, Idaho, and I was an oddball bookworm. Before I met Kari and Steve, high school was lonely. I fit in nowhere—not athletic, not a stoner, not brilliant, not dumb. I don’t remember how we met, only that it rescued my days there, gave me laughter, friendship and something more. In the narrow, striated, Farrah Fawcett parameters of Lewiston High School, I could see a world beyond.
Then a Texas boy named Roger moved to our town, with his black hair and black eyes, with his checkered Vans and band t-shirts, I fell in love hard and stopped hanging out with Kari and Steve.
Kari, Steve, and I went to the same university, but I never saw them. After, Steve went off to NYC to pursue a career in acting, Kari to finish her education at a different university.
Steve came home to Idaho in 1992 to navigate AIDS and to be supported by his incredible family. I lost touch with him, so I didn’t even know when he eventually died in 1995 of AIDS-related cancer. I felt ashamed to have lost touch, too ashamed to stop by and tell his parents how sorry I was for the loss of their son, who had been my friend. Kari, I believe, was at his side. He did so much in his short life, bringing AIDS activism to the Valley and cementing his bond with his family. He became a spokesman and educator for the Washington State HIV Prevention project, traveling throughout Washington and Idaho.
I missed all of it.
II. Mary Rose O’Sullivan
Mary Rose O’Sullivan didn’t like it when I wore a rosary as a fashion accessory. Her skin was translucent. She had a gap between her front teeth. She smelled like soap.
We both worked at Berlitz in Helsinki. I was thin as lettuce—5’8” and 120 pounds—and she took pity on me, bringing me to the flat she shared with her Finnish boyfriend. She fed me vegetable soup—bowl after bowl—with crusty Finnish bread, then we talked for hours about the problems in her relationship.
At an Amnesty International exhibit, I met Stephan who looked like a Harlequin Romance man. Every time I saw him, I fed him, even though I had barely enough money to stay alive, and then he fed me. Pasta for kisses, cake for sex. When I needed him most, he was not to be found.
I have found it impossible to find the right Mary Rose O’Sullivan in Ireland. Some things can’t be repaired, some disappearances are forever, some losses permanent. Mary Rose helped me when I most needed a friend. I wish I’d had the opportunity to be as good a friend to her as she had been to me. I drag the regret of that with me.
III. Heidi
Heidi had just said “black dress” when she fell in my lap; before then I didn’t know she had epilepsy. Heidi and I had given each other ancient names, biblical names. We both felt the anemic whiteness of our Scandinavian heritage—there was no disguising it with our hooded pale eyes, pale skin, straight caps of fine hair. We moved through the society of the Writers’ Workshop on the outskirts, never or rarely attending parties or hanging out at The Foxhead with the other writers. Even among the fringe where writers live, we existed further out. Not because we were better but because we were afraid that we didn’t deserve to be in the program.
We found our communion with each other, and with Mike, who probably wanted to sleep with us, but settled for friendship.
Together we wished our bodies (epilepsy, diabetes) could be relied on to get us through the day. We wished to escape the men who saw us as prey. We wished to write poetry and gallivant around Iowa City.
But then I met Cameron at the food co-op where I was handing out samples of cheese. He was a gateway to the cool kids at the Workshop, and now, with Cam, I went to the Foxhead to parties, and on road trips. That night, when Heidi fell into my lap from an epileptic seizure, Cam drove us back to my apartment and helped me carry Heidi inside. We put Heidi on my bed, and I held her hand until she awoke.
Many from the Workshop attended our wedding, but Heidi did not. No one else from that most important event of my young life knew my secret name, my secret self that found a sisterhood with Heidi, at war with our bodies and with the men who insisted on loving us.
I grieve those friends.
What would it be like to have read Heidi’s poetry all these years? To hear about Mary Rose’s grandchildren? To let go of the fantasy of That Girl, the dreams of a Brady Bunch family where I could be a wife and mom forever. I can’t know.
But I think now that leaving my friends behind meant I could leave before I was left. To pretend that nothing ever does come to an end. To end the episode and stay tuned until next week. To imagine that Steve doesn’t die, Suzy and I don’t grow old.
And you? What keeps you up at night? What do you feel that you’d rather not?
Illustrations by Emiko Sunayama