My Very Best Friend

by Cathy Lamb

  “I am happy to hear it.” Toran’s voice broke. “So happy.”

  “But then I thought I shouldn’t come because I was sick and getting sicker, and I’d be a burden again, but I wanted to see you. I knew . . . I knew I was dying . . . I’m so sorry.”

  We talked. We cried over the hopeless, devastating truth of it all. We ended up laughing, Bridget, even now, so funny.

  She said, “Do you think I look more like a pasty scarecrow or a ghost? What do you think of my new look? I call it AIDS chic. I’ve travelled the world, and I know one thing—the drugs are bad everywhere.”

  We hugged.

  We forgave.

  What was the point of anger now, anyhow? Toran could be angry with his sister for not staying in rehab, for continuing down her destructive path. I could be angry that she lied. There wasn’t enough time to be angry.

  And what was there to forgive? A sixteen-year-old girl, one nightmare after another, piled on her innocent head. What she had done was heroic. Angus Cruickshank said he would kill Toran if she told. So she didn’t. Her intent was to save the life of her brother.

  This is what happens when nightmares claim the lives of young girls. They become women who are haunted. Then they reach for things to take away the pain.

  And the cycle begins.

  “There is one thing I can’t forgive you for, though, Charlotte,” Bridget said.

  “What is it?”

  “That American accent. You must start talking like a Scotswoman again.”

  Bridget told me later, “You are gorgeous, Charlotte. Absolutely stunning.”

  “Thank you. I had a makeover.” We laughed about what Louisa said to me.

  “You’re not a mouse, Charlotte.”

  “Gee. Thanks, Bridget.”

  I picked up Bridget’s letters again that night as she slept the sleep of the half dead. I thought of her writing these letters, The Diary Letters, saving them, bringing them home, so one day I would know what happened, so there would be a record of her life. I felt as if I were being ripped inside out.

  February 12, 1975

  Charlotte,

  How do you live without a child that you love? How does life go on? I know she’s alive, and somewhere out there, but she is not with me. I am her mother. I have told myself that I shouldn’t want her, that she was the child of a rapist, but I can’t help it. I fell in love with my daughter when I held her in my arms that day in the hospital. She had Toran’s smile, my nose, our blue eyes.

  My baby, not a baby any longer. Are they being kind to her? What does she look like? Does she have brothers and sisters? Is she healthy? Is she happy? Does she dream about me? I dream about her.

  She’s gone. She’s lost. She’s somewhere. Where? It hurts me. I can’t hold her, can’t hug her. She’s mine. They took her. I never wanted them to take her.

  He made me watch him throw his silver cat.

  Love,

  Bridget

  March 16, 1975. Or the 17th or 18th

  Charlotte,

  She’s gone. Legend’s gone. I try to live without her, but I can’t. I try to work without her, but I can’t. I try to walk by little girls with blond hair and I try not to check to see if they’re Legend. How would I know? I try to hold my arms, empty, they’re empty. I can’t hold empty. I can’t hold air. She was mine. Lovely daughter.

  I try to breathe without her but I can’t.

  Love,

  Bridget

  April in 1975. Don’t know the day or date. Maybe the 5th or 12th.

  Charlotte,

  What does Legend look like? What is she doing? Is she safe? Do they hug her and read her stories? Can she draw or paint? Is she scared or sad?

  Does she feel me? Does she know that she’s not with her mother? Does she feel lost? Will they tell her, will she look for me when she’s older?

  Will I see her again? I don’t think I will.

  They took her. I never said they could.

  Love,

  Bridget

  Could Bridget have murdered Father Angus Cruickshank?

  She would have been only twenty years old. She was gentle, sweet, and sensitive.

  But women who are gentle, sweet, and sensitive can be driven to murder. Happens all the time when they’re continually abused or feel that their life—or worse, someone else’s life—is at risk. In Bridget’s case, not only was she raped, Angus Cruickshank was directly responsible for taking her daughter away from her.

  Could she have done it during one of her trips home, maybe high on drugs and raving?

  Would I ask her?

  Would I want to know? If I found out, what would I do with that information?

  I certainly wouldn’t tell the police. I laughed out loud at that. Me, telling the chief about Bridget killing her attacker. Hell, no.

  Was it fair to ask her that question and put her on the spot? What would be my motivation for asking?

  I knew that answer, quickly. I would want to know if Angus was dead and gone and couldn’t hurt other young Bridgets. I would also want to know if Bridget got her revenge.

  Bloodthirsty, I can be, yes, I can.

  “I want to save Bridget.” I held Toran’s hand as we walked on the farm, the blueberry bushes in rows, undulating with the land, the leaves of the apple trees whispering when puffs of wind traveled by. “I want to take her to a doctor, to a hospital, and I want to save her.”

  “We’ve talked to everyone, Charlotte. She’s too far along. There’s no one who can do anything.”

  It was true, we had. I had called contacts at home from my college and master’s degree days, including Drew, who had a college friend who had recently transferred to a university in San Francisco to study AIDS. The doctors had nothing on this disease yet. They talked about clinical trials going on, new research, studies, developments, but there wasn’t much hope for them anywhere and Bridget was too advanced.

  “It’s new,” Drew’s friend, Dr. Jess Lewis, told me. “Five years ago most of us weren’t even aware HIV and AIDS existed. We’re scrambling to catch up, to understand this, Charlotte. It’s wiping out gay men, addicts, and their partners. Blood transfusions, mother to child. It’s spreading to the heterosexual population, especially in Africa. We want to stop it. We want to cure it. Education is the way, but we don’t have any medication that can help Bridget. There’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

  I made more calls, so did Toran. We researched and studied.

  We were at the hopeless acceptance part. Bridget had gotten there long before us. “I’m going to die. I know it. I accept it. In a way, I’m ready. In a way, I’m not. The most important thing is that I beat Charlotte in poker. That was an embarrassing loss the other night.”

  The three of us had played. Bridget had run out of chips first.

  “I can’t save Bridget.” I felt my voice pitch. “I want to save her.”

  “Hush, love. Hush.” He wrapped an arm around me, pulled me close.

  “I can’t save her.” I could feel myself start to hyperventilate. “I want to save your sister.”

  “Char, take a breath.” Toran cupped my face with one hand and held me with the other.

  “I can’t . . . I think I’m having a . . . a . . . a . . . panic attack.” I tried to breathe.

  “One breath with me, Char, one breath.” He leaned in close, eyes worried.

  I locked my gaze with his, my heart thumping, my nerves shot, my breath shallow, quick.

  “One more breath, luv, one more.”

  He hugged me close, he stroked my hair, he murmured and reassured. I breathed again. My hands shook. “I want to save her.”

  “One more. . . .”

  I took one more breath, then another, until I could breathe, between the whispering apple trees and the undulating blueberries, Bridget upstairs dying.

  The desire to make love can come from many emotions. Passion, for sure. Lust. Laughter, fun, connection, friendship.

  Making love can bring comfort, escape, a r
espite from life, a gift.

  It can mask grief, if only for a short period.

  Toran and I cried together, in his bedroom, over Bridget. I cried so hard, I soaked his chest and tried to dry him with the sheet.

  “Don’t bother, sweets, don’t bother.”

  So I didn’t, but then I lifted up and kissed the tears from his cheeks and temple. I kissed the tears that were on his mouth, that had trailed down his neck.

  He kissed mine and we held on tight, riding that passion into oblivion.

  We cried again afterward.

  Bridget had made improvements since we brought her home from the hospital. She had slept, she had eaten, though not much, and been taken care of. It wouldn’t last, but I’d take this respite.

  For the last year she had been living with a friend, an ex-addict, on her family’s remote farm in England. “It was the only way we knew we wouldn’t get hooked on drugs again. Tristy and I went to rehab, then took off for her parents’. I didn’t want to contact Toran until I knew I could stay sober. I figured he was better off not having me in his life than having to deal with seeing me sober, then getting on drugs again. It hurt him so badly when I did that.” She groaned and started to cry. “And it hurt him badly when I disappeared, too. Honestly, Charlotte, sometimes I hate myself so much, I can hardly get up.

  “I kept the photo of you and your cat stroller. I looked at it every time I needed a laugh, needed to know you were out there, when I was depressed, and felt dirty, lonely.” She took a deep breath. “I am so sorry, Charlotte, that I wasn’t the friend you thought I was. I was so ashamed. I wanted to be someone else, someone not dirty.”

  I held her hand. Guilt had swamped me since she’d been in the hospital. “You have never been dirty, ever. You’ve always been beautiful.” Though she was sick, exhausted, despairing, she was still stunning underneath the fragility, and the scars that spoke of a thousand lasting hurts.

  “I want to apologize to you, Bridget. I failed you. I’m sorry that I didn’t fly over. I should have. I hate flying. It’s this debilitating fear I have, and I didn’t want to return to Scotland because of my dad, but now and then I sensed something, I didn’t know what, and I should have come. I am so, so sorry. I feel awful. I was not a friend to you.”

  What would have happened had I flown over sooner? Maybe when we were twenty, twenty-five? I would have seen what was going on. I would have insisted that she fly back to the U.S. with me. I would have paid for her rehabilitation. Counseling. She could have come to live with me.

  But I hadn’t. A decision not to act is a decision. And now I had to live with that.

  “You never failed me. You were my escape. I knew I had a true friend in you. I loved getting your letters, hearing about the island, the cats, your garden, your work, your life.”

  We talked, raw and open. In the end we decided that the only thing that could help us was chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips.

  “I wish I wasn’t dying, Charlotte.” She swirled the ice cream on her spoon.

  “I wish you weren’t, either.”

  “Thank you for not lying to me, telling me that I’ll get better.”

  “You’re welcome.” What would be the point of that? False hope? She knew she was dying, and if Toran and I were pretending that she wasn’t, then who did she talk to about her impending death and how she felt about it? No one. She’d be more alone than ever. We had to take care of her and make sure whatever time she had left was as happy as we could make it.

  We held hands.

  “I’m sorry about your daughter. I know you love her.”

  She made a tiny whimpering sound in her throat. “I do. I love her. I worry about her. I hope she’s well, healthy, happy. She was a beautiful baby.”

  I held Bridget and rocked her as her weakened, diseased body shook with grief.

  “It’s too late now. I’ll never see her,” she gasped.

  “Bridget,” I whispered, holding her tight. “I am so sorry.”

  “I have missed her every day.” Her face fell. “Every minute.”

  I hugged her. Sweet Bridget. She wasn’t crying because she had AIDS and was dying, she was crying for the lost daughter whom she loved with everything she had.

  “I can’t get over losing Legend,” she whimpered. “I can’t.”

  I held my Edgar Allan Poe journal on my lap late one night after checking on Bridget. My writer’s block seemed even more unscalable, a brick in my head, grief holding it in place.

  I had no energy to write my tenth novel. I felt like I’d been hit by a meteor

  I was with my best girlfriend.

  She was ill and dying.

  The block in my head was not going to move.

  “They will condemn her. Hate her. Pitchforks and fire.”

  “Who, Grandma?”

  “Bridget. That dear and lovely girl.”

  I watched Bridget helping my mother dig in the dirt. They were planting marigolds and begonias. “Why would they do that?”

  “Because people are scared. I see fear for her. They’re scared of her. It’s a mob, yelling.”

  “No one’s scared of Bridget.”

  “They will be.” She hugged me, then whispered in my ear, “Stand by her.”

  “I will,” I whispered back. “She’s my best friend.”

  A few days later, when Bridget was sleeping, I drove to the nursery in town, then home to my garden.

  I found peace in planting petunias. It was late to plant them, but they were what I needed. Petunias are simple flowers, but they are vibrant bursts of color. I planted pink, purple, and white in clay pots, two wine barrels, and three silver buckets that leaked. I placed them on my deck. I had bought four more clay pots for Toran’s house and filled those, too.

  I mowed the lawn, front and back. I picked weeds. I deadheaded the roses and the daisies.

  Then I lay on top of my new picnic table, bought at a thrift store, under the same oak tree, spread like an umbrella that was as “old as time, maybe older,” where my mother had placed her table. I watched birds flit back and forth.

  I watched two butterflies.

  I listened to the wind.

  I breathed. I smelled the faintest hint of the sea, a dash of salt, a hint of mint tea. I grieved, deep, harsh, calm, all at the same time.

  A garden softens out life, that’s what I know. It does not take away the pain, but it blunts the harshest angles of it.

  “It’s the best thing ever,” Bridget told me. We were sitting on Toran’s deck watching the waves crash on the shore in the distance, breathing in crisp air, the leaves beginning to change, orange, yellow, brown, green, a new season coming up.

  “What is?”

  She smiled, the corners of her blueberry eyes crinkling up. “You and Toran. La la la, romance is in the house.”

  I laughed, crossed my legs. A vision of a new position last night with Toran hit quick. I am flexible. “Yes. It is.”

  “I’m glad, Charlotte. I always thought you two would grow up and marry each other.”

  “We might have. Who knows? If my dad hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have moved to Seattle.”

  “If your dad hadn’t died, I think a lot would have been different.”

  “Me too. I’ve thought the same thing.”

  “I think I would have told your parents what happened.”

  “My father would have been an avenging, fire-blazing angel for you. My mother would have had the police on it in seconds.”

  “Yes. It wouldn’t have helped everything, but it would have helped a ton. But anyway”—she cut that conversation off—“I am grateful that you’ll be my sister-in-law.”

  “We’re not there yet.”

  “You’ll be there soon, and you’ll have a whole bunch of tiny Torans and tiny Charlottes running around.”

  I thought of that: brown-haired mini Torans and mini Charlottes. Then I thought, Bridget won’t be here to see them, which set everything in black for me.

  I
reached for her hand. “If we have a baby, we’ll name her after you.” I knew Toran would want that.

  Bridget’s chin trembled, then the tears fell.

  “Bridget.” I put my arms around her.

  “Hopefully she won’t be a hellion.”

  “If she is, we’ll love her even more.”

  She sniffled. “I don’t think you should name your son Bridget.”

  “Nah, you’re right.”

  “Talk about school yard bully cannon fodder . . .”

  We laughed together.

  It tore at my heart that Bridget would never know her namesake.

  “And I do think,” she said, sniffling, “we should include your cats in the wedding ceremony. We’ll dress that stroller of yours up in pink, ribbons and bows . . .”

  “They can be the cat ring bearers.”

  “Only if they don’t meow during the vows. They would have to promise to keep quiet. It’s a solemn occasion. . . .”

  Bridget is so funny.

  I had read about AIDS victims rejected by family members and friends, towns flipping out, neighbors turning their backs, schools refusing entry, and general torch-wielding hysteria.

  People were afraid. They were uneducated. Their fear often manifested itself in group think, which has never been known for rational thought. They didn’t like what AIDS said about the person, either. It was against their own morality code of what they thought was acceptable. Gay? That was an easy judgment call: Sinful! It’s a choice to be gay, they choose it, they die for it! It’s a lifestyle! God’s wrath! Amoral! Disgusting, repulsive. Contagious!

  Drug user? They got what they deserved!

  And in St. Ambrose? How would they respond? We were not going to make any announcement about Bridget’s diagnosis. Why should we? It wasn’t spread casually. You couldn’t get it by walking by her in the park or breathing the same air. Bridget was no threat to anyone.