I can use the shower as an illustration. The only daughter of one of our college friends is engaged to be married. Isabella is 33. Her mother Joan is a sweet woman. True she sometimes drives me nuts with all her do-gooding (she is forever volunteering somewhere, baking or collecting for the poor, doing the necessary for her church). Thinking about it now, Joan is about as far from Molly as possible, in terms of social behavior.

But we three were close when we were young. Joan was my randomly-assigned frosh roommate (Molly and I were not allowed to live together, owing to a summer camping adventure and our parents’ stubborn ideas that we were each a bad influence on the other). We hung out together that year and then managed to share a three-person co-op suite for the ensuing college years. We stayed pretty close after Joan moved back to LA, where she found a church member to marry and they produced Isabella.

Then a distance arose between Molly and Joan. I knew how hurt Joan was when Molly failed to send a baby gift. And I knew Molly meant no harm with her omission; that’s just the way she is. I guess I should have stepped in and made Molly do the right thing. But back then I still thought her asocial behavior was a decision instead of a disability. It’s funny to realize now how little I understood my bff when we were 21 and thought we knew it all.

Joan and I stayed tight. That’s partly because I have cousins in LA, and I visit there. In fact my cousin Barbara has become one of Joan’s closest friends. But it’s mostly because we hung onto one another. I can tell that Joan is often frustrated with my dippiness, but she accommodates me. Her smarminess mostly puts me off, so I can’t take it if she visits for more than a couple of days, but we go back so long I’d never think of letting us dissipate.

So Joan and I talk on the phone twice a week. We visit one another at least twice a year. She and Barbara and I usually take a summer trip together to a destination spa.

Now Isabella is engaged, and Barbara and I are hosting the shower.

Molly can’t relate. That’s not really so – she understands the concept of a bridal shower – but to her it’s for the practical purpose of setting up a household for a young couple. She says she’d get it if Isabella and Hugh weren’t in their 30s, living together, making good money, and already in possession of all the towels and dishes and appliances they want.

She also says she’d understand if we were throwing a co-ed party to celebrate the engagement or something. But we’re doing it our way. (Or maybe we’re doing it Barbara’s way; she’s there and knows how they arrange these things now in LA). We’re having women only, in a hotel, on a Saturday night. We’re not going to play any shower games, and it’s up to Isabella if she opens gifts at the event or takes them with her still wrapped.

What we’re focused on now are the colors (we need to use purple and green, to go with the bride’s wedding palette and the groom’s color blindness), and the guest gifts. We’re pretty excited about presenting each attendee with her own little potted succulent plant.

Now Molly keeps riding me about what she calls the “cactus plan.” She states that shower attendees don’t get party prizes. She claims even wedding guests don’t receive more than a net bag of Jordan almonds. She laughs that a plant known for surviving in arid areas is NOT a happy symbol of a young fertile union.

I’ll admit that Molly’s statements make sense. But they’re beside the point. And that’s what she doesn’t get.

We’re not inviting her. I realize now that I should have had her back, back when Isabella was born. I knew Joan; I just should have sent a baby gift in Molly’s name. I missed that opportunity, but I can protect her from accepting or declining an invitation to this party.

Who knows what she’d do if we let her help anyway? I’m chuckling right now as I remember us prepping for our big junior high dance. The theme was Tropical Paradise (we even had paper mache volcanoes that spewed dry-ice “steam.”) One of the refreshments we chose to serve was fresh pineapple, and Molly and had the task of cubing the fruit for the occasion. She was alone at it (I was apportioning the maraschino cherries among some of the other treats), when she slipped with the paring knife and cut her finger.

She didn’t know I saw the incident. I still can’t believe how she reacted. Her first act was to put the cut finger in her mouth to remove the initial blood. Next she paused for a minute, pressing the small wound together. Then she resumed work. The light was dim but I when I passed behind her I could see that she had tinged some of the pineapple cubes a pale pink.

It was bizarre. I didn’t say anything. I noticed that neither of us ate any pineapple at the dance. Years later and on several occasions, Molly has told me the pineapple story, like it’s part anecdote and part confession. I like to make a skeptical face while I say I believe her. That irks her, I know. But what the heck; we go way back.