Sputterpub's Blog

Lately Jill hates her bff.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her, and it isn’t the first time, and maybe hate is too strong a word, but Jill is a writer, usually restrained, who occasionally indulges in gotcha words to express herself.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say Lucy irritates Jill so thoroughly now, that Jill is experiencing an exquisite toe-curling level of contempt for her friend of five decades.

She tells herself it’s because they’re getting old, but she knows that’s not really it. Or not exactly it. For it’s true that Lucy is becoming more LA now, finding the bay area weather too cold and choosing clothes the way she would if she were rich and back living there, apparently without an idea of her own.

Mostly it’s the surreal disconnect she sees between what Lucy claims she wants, and how she behaves.

For example: Lucy says she aims to live forever, or for as long as possible. Jill doesn’t share that goal; she says she has accomplished most of what she set out to do and can’t see staying around for more than another two decades. The friends are 66.

Jill is trying to do what she can to make the remaining time worth it. She exercises daily, chooses real food she has to digest, and actively manages stress. In fact, she lives carless so that she has to walk, and all the walking gives her the meditation time she needs to make stress stimulating instead of wearing.

Lucy, however, is currently in an exercise hiatus. She interrupted her twice a week custom of going to the gym when it closed for remodeling and then reopened without its pools. According to Lucy, the hot tub after exercise is such a vital workout component that she just won’t go without. But it’s been almost two years since the pool closed, and Lucy hasn’t joined a new gym. She hasn’t gotten around to trying the exercise tapes Jill gave her. She says she’ll increase walking, but she won’t do so in the rain, or if it’s cold or dark, which means she only walks when she gets together with Jill. Then she tells Jill about podcasts she’s been listening to, on the subject of exercise. “Do you know what calisthenic provides the biggest bang for your buck?” she asked over Chinese food the other night. “Squats!” was the answer she gave to Jill’s inquisitive look.

“Oh I don’t know,”Jill responded. “It kind of depends on what you’re after. A lot of folks would nominate crunches for the top spot. For that matter, any sort of core work…”

“Un-uh. With squats you’re working against gravity too. That’s why they’re best.”

Jill marveled. She chewed on her tongue instead of asking the obvious: so are you doing squats? Because she knew Lucy wasn’t. Lucy is listening to podcasts instead of getting to work.

But Jill was already disgusted. She didn’t want to be where she was. She needed a break.

They’d gotten together for an early dinner. Lucy wanted to shop first. Normally that would be a tolerable activity for Jill; she didn’t buy often so she usually found stores interesting when she tried them. Lucy was an avid shopper and most of the time the boutiques they visited had a few items worth Jill’s attention. But not the other afternoon. Since Lucy’s last trip to LA she’d fallen under the spell of her SoCal friends, upscaled her purchasing, and now she’d found love with a new shop in the neighborhood of their favorite restaurant. It was one of those small stores, with artistic racks and plenty of negative space. It only took Jill a few minutes to scope out the entire stock; she’d exhausted the inventory by the time Lucy ventured out of the dressing room the first time. Wearing fine knit trousers, too wide and too short, that would stretch out in a few minutes. Bias-cut, high-low hemmed, dry-clean only tops with three and four figure price tags. Lucy looked like an aging lumpy fool. She pranced around the multi-mirrored area outside the curtained cubbies, inviting compliments that Jill couldn’t bring herself to pronounce. Lucy has a certain style – a flamboyant outgoing personality and a tendency to flirt with anyone from babies to restaurant hostesses to strangers at adjacent tables – but her attractiveness is in spite of the clothes she wears, not because.

Jill is the more stylish of the two, regarding clothes. She never buys outfits or dresses; she finds them too limiting. She’s attracted to well-made wardrobe components. She likes to put her own outfits together from those components. She is the one who garners flattering comments from strangers. Even Lucy has commented about how often Jill is told that she’s rocking a look, or advised never to change her style.

And yet… Lucy acts like Jill has a shopping disability, and only needs her guidance to stop making fashion mistakes. Lucy often commented that something Jill had on was showing its wear, ready for the People’s Park box, needing replacement and improvement. As far as Jill was concerned, their pre-dinner activity, with Lucy’s ostentatious prancing and tiresome advice, was like a circle of hell.

She tried to rise above it. She loved and respected Lucy. She didn’t want to harbor ill-will. Yeah they were different. They’d always been different. One of the miracles of their half-century friendship was their keeping it together in the face of different life paths and attitudes. Lucy was single and challenged with chronic health conditions. She was brave about likely side effects and consequences and all the hours she had to spend in medical waiting rooms. Jill felt affection rising for her old friend even as the steam rose off their dragons-in-the-garden soup. Then Lucy started in on one of her policies and dashed Jill’s tender respect to the floor.

“That’s not the way I learn” Lucy pronounced, at the end of her report about the IT guy she hired to teach her about her computer. The man had come to her home, sat with her in the small office, and worked to customize her desktop and get her comfortable with word processing, spreadsheet applications, and email. She’d sat next to him while he leaned into the screen, hand busy on the controls and words blurted or fading as he attended to the problems in front of him. A few times she asked what he was doing as he opened small screens and navigated faster than her eyes could follow. “I’ll explain it when I’m done,” he’d then said to her.

According to Lucy, that was unacceptable. That’s not the way she learns. But Jill knows every techie behaves that way. It’s impossible to voice complicated syntax while manipulating a computer. Like trying to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. Jill wants Lucy to get over it, wait a bit and maybe discover ways to learn that she hasn’t yet claimed as exclusively hers. But she can’t figure out a way to suggest that without appearing to patronize. And the moment was gone already, replaced by an instance of Lucy’s purse disruption.

It’s another style thing. Lucy is into form over function. When the women were young, they argued about shoes. Lucy went for looks. Jill chose comfort. It wasn’t just an aesthetic conversation: Lucy was proud of her dainty extremities, and couldn’t resist new pairs of adorable shoes, especially since a bit of extra weight made clothing selections a challenge, while Jill was embarrassed about her big feet and even then using them for transportation, so her priorities in footwear were comfort, construction, and inconspicuous appearance.

Time had won the argument for Jill. Foot issues arose with age and now they both paid attention to fitness. But the bag argument was still an issue. Lucy loved a bag sack-like purse, formed from fine leather, into which she tossed stuff and out of which she seldom winnowed anything. Jill wanted a bag as small as possible, with different compartments so her gear stayed organized, made of material that is light when empty and undamaged by wet.

In Jill’s opinion, Lucy no longer has the luxury to choose a shapeless bag. She has to tote medical equipment everywhere she goes, and her inability to locate necessary items is worse than an inconvenience; it happens so often that it’s dangerous and stupid.

Right then, Lucy needed her test strips and meter. She rifled through stuff in her bag. She didn’t find them and her search became frantic, desperate, exasperated. She sat back in her chair, sighed, looked across the table at Jill, and then dumped the bag at the empty place setting adjacent to her seat. Items thunked and rolled. Jill reached across the table to contain cosmetics, pill bottles, old receipts, even loose crumpled cash. Then Lucy located what she sought. Set it aside and swept all other items back into her bag with the side of her hand. Even the litter.

At least she found her meter, Jill thought. Sometimes she wasn’t successful and they had to adjust their food choices accordingly, only to find out later that the missing item was in Lucy’s bag all along, eluding her search.

Lucy always apologized for the inconvenience. But she never listened to Jill’s suggestion to try a different sort of purse. “That’s not the way I roll,” she’d say, as she pulled out her credit card to acquire yet another Italian-leather, organically-dyed sack.

Jill told herself that she wasn’t being critical. She just wanted the best for Lucy, and she’s sure self-delusion isn’t the right path. What she hated most were the ways Lucy defined (limited) herself.

Take love, for example. Lucy hadn’t married. She didn’t have kids. Back when they first met, anyone would have predicted marriage and motherhood for her, and most wouldn’t have envisioned those states for Jill. But life is weirder than fiction: Lucy had never been invited to wed and always asserted she’d like kids but wasn’t cut out to be a single mother, while Jill had married twice and ended up raising two kids on her own.

Lately (for the last four years), Lucy had been seeing a married man, a guy she’d known for thirty years and had a little affair with when they were young. She said she was in love with Tom for life. She also said she probably wouldn’t have made a good mother anyway (this was patently, thoroughly untrue – Lucy is soft and bounteous and womanly, a lover of every baby she meets, yet vetted by camp counseling and employment counseling and troubled-youth counseling into a competent guide and disciplinarian). Just the other night, over the same dinner but during the entree course, Lucy asserted that maybe her life was appropriate. She said “You know, I really do make an excellent girlfriend: I’m much better at that than I would have been at wife.”

Jill protested. “What are you talking about? Where’s your teddy collection? Your garter and boots? Sexual adventure? You want to take Tom to the doctor, cook dinner for him, curl up at his feet every night and ask about his day. You’re into all these details about each other’s family, and not as amusing anecdotes. You’re far more wifely than I ever was.”

Lucy responded with a sweet smile. She pushed her empty glass to the part of the table on which she’d earlier dumped her bag, and signaled to the waiter for more wine.

The smile interrupted Jill’s rant. It sent her mind sideways and suddenly it was like her spirit hovered above their table, witnessing. She saw Lucy and herself as characters in a narrative, and didn’t admire the Jill-figure. “What the fuck?” her editor self asked her sitting self. “What’s it to you? Why can’t Lucy enjoy her own purse? Maybe you ought to turn your scope on yourself instead.”

She shut up. She didn’t like the appearance of her own character. The waiter arrived and she too accepted a refill.

At home the next day, Jill started writing the scene out. She had to admit that her persona was not admirable. As a reader she wanted to get closer to Lucy than to Jill. She knew her own good intentions, she was satisfied with her own coherence, but she just couldn’t get behind the way she appeared in the vignette she was trying to narrate.

That’s when she was hit by a bolt of old memory. Forty-nine years earlier, during some little argument she and Lucy were having (in their shared small living room, around dusk, wintertime), Lucy hurled at her the most hurtful phrase she’d ever had.

“Lighten up!”

Two little words. Nothing obscene or vulgar. But they stuck in Jill like poison darts: head and heart. They found their mark because she knew Lucy was correct.

Jill has no idea what the argument was about, but “lighten up” has replayed in her head a number of times since then. She has made decades of attempts to modulate herself, tone down the indignation, remember that bad feelings only last, somatically, for a minute and a half: wait ‘em out.

But she continues to come on more intensely and seriously than she means. Time and again she decides what’s wrong with Lucy. Lucy doesn’t do that to Jill. Lucy figured out Jill’s number long ago.

“So do you gamble?” she asked, contemplating their pass through the casino to the buffet dinner that awaited them when they left their room.

“Not really. You?”

“I guess I don’t gamble for money. Never have.”

He proceeded to hold forth about odds and gaming strategies. Normally she liked his instruction. He spoke calmly and behaved gently when he taught, and he was always informative. Completely unlike his normal manic angry non-instructing self. But Nancy wasn’t interested in casino gambling.

She knew the big room would be loud with light and noise. Bells ringing and whistles blowing, bulbs igniting in cascades and bursts. Nancy remembered her brother’s words about how the Macy’s cosmetics area resembled a casino – eyecatching and out to grab your money – words she found witty and true except here over the state line, where casinos are way beyond any retail display.

Ted rubbed his short dark hair against its nap and smiled at her. His grin was open and reached all the way to his chocolate brown eyes. His heritage was Greek, and he had the golden-toned skin and deep brown hair and eye color one expected of a Hellene. Nancy knows from pictures that he was an adorable child. Now in his late 50s, his hair was thinning and his butt was beginning the old-man migration to his belly. His teeth were no longer white. Ted had grown into an average-looking old guy.

As usual, Nancy wasn’t sure why she was with him. They’d met a year ago and flamed with instant mutual attraction, but it hadn’t gone anywhere. Ted was rarely relaxed, at times barbaric, impulsive in a way that seemed almost affected to her. But he was decisive and passionate. He was interesting, and his repeated attempts to sing her praises were flattering and not yet tiresome. Nancy was an equally strong character, articulate and coherent and a specialist in indignation, all of which Ted found refreshing and attractive and often too serious. He made sudden moves toward her now and then, but he backed off just as forcefully. Nancy knew he was recovering from a rocky marriage, keeping company with a nice safe colleague named Anne, and she thought for most of their acquaintance that she might be the prize awaiting him after he finished rebounding. She was twice divorced herself, single four years; she was experienced at post-marital grief and ready to jump in again. But she was starting to have doubts about him.

“I’m not comfortable gambling for money,” she continued their conversation, “but I have a history of emotional gambling.” Ted didn’t respond. He sat in one of the room’s two orange vinyl chairs, clad in shirt, shorts, and winter boots. It was a cold January night in the mountains, so the boots made sense. But his sturdy furred legs looked incongruously tan. He tugged at his crotch and talked some more about odds.

Nancy licked the cigarette paper and sealed it around a galactic joint. Lump in the middle and tapered ends. Her thumbs had never learned the trick of compressing the pot evenly, maybe because she didn’t want them to learn. Her brother teased her about the shape of her joints, but she argued that the ends weren’t where the business was anyway; one got lit and the other got soggy. She lit and hit and passed to him.

“That’s enough for me; one does it” he croaked, maintaining his inhalation while talking. He rose and started pacing off whatever that one hit did to him. Nancy’s first husband had supplied all the pot and joined her in it. Her second husband tried to enjoy it with her but soon gave it up, and after awhile complained about her use. Now she met men who remembered how to smoke it, even kept some around, but couldn’t roll a joint, used very little, and acted more paranoid than the volume dealers of the past.

Ted put on some long pants and they walked to dinner. The streets were icy, the lights were bright, the air was crispy cold.

And the casino was what Nancy expected: glitzy, loud, mirrored and not fine. She wasn’t tempted to play. But Ted got four quarters for each of them, saying they’d test their systems. This was too absurd for response, so Nancy just dropped hers into the nearest slot machine. Not Ted.

“How many coins shall I play first?” he asked.

“Up to you. It’s your system.”

He led her through the maze of machines, looking for one that would take up to four coins. A bank of them were designed for one to five nickels, but the quarter slots wouldn’t take more than three. He settled on a machine and played two. Four quarters clunked out.

“Ah,” he said, holding six quarters in the broad palm of his left hand. “What’s my next play?”

Nancy looked at the quarters, looked at him. “Still your system.”

He played three and lost. Played his other three and lost again. “Now what have we learned?”

“That it’s time to find the buffet.”

Back in the motel after dinner, they talked. Neither had anything yet to say about their contemplated business venture, but they thought about partnership while they finished the joint. Each looked into the other’s face. Ted’s smile seemed contrived but his eyes were warm and loving. Nancy’s were flecked with a skepticism that modified her mobile mouth.

“I think we have to talk about sex,” she said. “I mean, even though we can’t really hold each other to anything we say, I don’t think we can contemplate going into business together without considering what happens if. Say we start a sexual relationship and then stop; how will that affect our business?”

“I’m comfortable with the way things are. Anyway, I can’t manage a sexual relationship with more than one woman at a time.”

Nancy recoiled inwardly. Dismay, grief, irritation. She hadn’t known till then that he and Anne were a couple. Ted had told her about his sad/mad divorce shortly after they met. His wife had been slim, blonde, and beautiful. He was a doctor and she was gorgeous, which worked for him in every way. Their relationship was passionate and tumultuous, and when she left him for a cabinet-maker he was devastated. He begged, he forgave, he raged, he compromised. In the end he hired an expensive lawyer and changed his nickname from Theo to Ted. Throughout the unraveling he received sympathy and cakes from a nurse in his hospital named Anne. She was unlike his wife in every way but coloring: patient, demure, loyal and compliant. She was restful. Time with her was not stimulating but it was comfortable. It appeared that her patience had paid off.

Nancy had known about friend Anne, but the way Ted talked, she thought it was trivial. Ted and Nancy hadn’t done it, but they weren’t platonic either. He reacted almost violently when she mentioned other men. He asserted that he wanted Nancy with him till and when he died. He characterized their interaction as gasoline and a match. He described Anne as “like a retriever… you know – real sweet but not very bright.”

“Look,” Ted said then, leaning forward and taking her right hand between both of his. “I promise that if we become lovers and then stop, we’ll still be friends.” He compressed her palm and looked in her face. “If you don’t hurt me.”

He took off his clothes and climbed into her bed. This wasn’t as suggestive as it sounds; they weren’t done talking and the TV was in her room. She planned to sleep clothed anyway. They did a crossword puzzle together and cuddled all night.

Those cuddles didn’t lead to kisses cause they weren’t having sex. The morning wasn’t leisurely for the same reason. They were traveling together for the first time, cooperative and cheerful, but they weren’t easy-going because they weren’t just friends, yet they couldn’t use caresses to smooth the rough spots.

They were in the mountains so he could ski and she could bask in the cold white weather. After a quick breakfast, he did the slopes while she filled her senses with winter. The hill looked like snow over ice to her, and the padded people waddled and sidled like colored penguins at its base. They acquired grace when they slid down the big slope, but many plopped over and rested on the way down.

Ted was ready to move ahead with a business partnership and Nancy wasn’t unwilling. But she wanted more time to consider. Twenty-four hours later, back at home, she knew what she wanted to say to him.

“I’ve got a problem. It isn’t easy to say this, but here it is. You and I should be having sex. I know this so absolutely that I can’t rationalize around it. For a year you’ve been wavering. It’s time for us to do it. Resisting doesn’t make our friendship better; the hypocrisy is killing it. I don’t think you’re trying to hurt me. I think you’re scared of something. I need more.”

“Okay, we’ll just quit.”

She’d expect that. She could accept it. To hell with whatever this was.

He’d stand, grimace, speak: “I could storm out of here, grieve for two weeks, and then say this. I’ll condense it. Are you saying I can fix this by fucking you?”

“You moron,” she’d retort. “I’m only willing to consider this love and business gamble if you’re willing to see what the gamble is!”

“You mean, like sex and love and work and fun and forever?”

“Those, and the fact that all odds are against us. That we’ll probably have to gulp back pain and disentangle us later.”

“Okay, partner,” he’d say. “Will you go away with me next weekend?”

“What?”

“Somewhere nice, with a big bed and coffee in the room.”

“And a good dinner, with cocktails and wine, to help me be less nervous?”

“You won’t need that.”

“Watch me.” She’d flush and hesitate. “Are you serious?”

Then he’d hold out a steady right hand. “Deal?”

That’s what she’d like to say and hear. She let herself have the fantasy, knowing that its price would be pain for its absence. As it was, when they had returned home she’d been eager to send him on his way. Especially when his enthusiasm for a joint business venture led him to monkey, uninvited and unauthorized, with her stationary bike.

“I don’t want to kick you out,” she’d begun.

“But you’re kicking me out.”

“I know how much you hate traffic. It’s after 4 and will only get worse.”

The next day Nancy had attempted a business plan. Blank page. She thought some more about it for another couple of days. She knew they couldn’t be partners. She didn’t trust his business sense, sincerity, reliability, sensitivity. She couldn’t see it working if he were involved with someone, or she were, or they were with each other.

She called him four days after their return.

“I have something to say that isn’t easy. I don’t think we can be business partners.”

“Okay.”

“I think you’re in love with someone and that devastates me. We can’t be partners. I wanted to let you know as soon as I could.”

“No problem.”

“Good.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

She knew exactly what words they’d said, and she knew they’d communicated much more than the words. At least, he’d heard more, and she really didn’t know what he’d do with it. Like bullets fired into rocky places, like lasers loosed in mirrored rooms, their words struck and echoed and rebounded into infinity, slicing away the bonding until the structure simply collapsed.