Jackie had grown up on the lower end of the social scale—parents divorced at a young age, a mother who found the answer to life’s problems in a bottle and on the arm of a pinky-ring-wearing sleaze bag, a father who decided too late that two children and a wife and the settled-down lifestyle weren’t for him, and an older brother who had been in and out of jail for anything from petty theft to domestic abuse. It was any wonder Jackie picked herself up out of her Seattle suburb, ramshackle home and applied for U Dub and actually got accepted with her mediocre grades.
I was undoubtedly proud of how far Jackie had come and how she was able to have enough sense and self-confidence to set straight a better path for herself, but I hated it when she fell victim to the habits of her upbringing—the chain smoking, the drinking, the pot, the promiscuity, the inability to hold down any job (blow jobs withheld), and the general irresponsibility and self-inflicted harm. Sometimes I felt like slapping her and telling her that she was wasting a perfectly beautiful and opportune life. More so now than ever. You simply cannot take life for granted.
When Claire and I arrived, we found Jackie in the kitchen mixing a cocktail. Music blared and had it not been for an unlocked door Jackie probably never would have heard our knocking and we would never have been able to get in.
The smell of cigar smoke wafted in the air.
“Jackie!” I yelled over the tunes of The Kooks.
Normally I, and any person not intoxicated, would have jumped at the sound of someone sneaking in the apartment. Jackie, rocking her body to the tunes, slowly turned around, messily clinking with one hand a spoon in her glass, and holding a smoking cigar in the other.
“Girls!” she shrieked. “What the hell took you so long?” She was obviously well inebriated. We had our hands full. She took a long puff of her cigar and made an exaggerated exhalation in our direction. “The party’s just getting started. Can I make you a drink?” She held up her glass to us. “A smoke?” She waved around her cigar.
“Jackie, what’s going on?” Claire asked in a sympathetic and sweet tone. I think she had gotten most of her initial anger out in the cab drive over here.
“Life sucks, but the party’s greeeaaaat!”
“Jackie, what is going on? What happened?” I pressed.
Jackie led us into the living room and sat down on the love seat. She took another puff of her cigar and offered it to us once again.
“Put that nasty thing out, Jackie.” I waved the smoke away. “It’s not healthy. You know those things will kill you.”
She took another long drag and chuckled. “I’m young. I’m invincible. And I’m not like you and Claire, all healthy and shit. If I ran or worked out, I would die.”
“Yeah, that’s our point,” Claire said blankly. “What happened, anyway? Why weren’t you at your favorite bar? What happened with Hank?”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” Jackie interrupted. “I’m sorry about that. The drinks, eh? Yeah, Hank and I are splits-ohs, so the drinks aren’t exactly free anymore.” She rolled her eyes. Except for the fact that she was smoking a stogie, was highly liquored up, and nursed a potent cocktail in her hand, she was acting like a thirteen-year-old.
“We could care less about the drinks, Jackie,” Claire said. “What happened with Hank? Are you okay?”
By the looks of it, I’d say ‘no.’
“Ugh, Claire. So many questions. So many, many questions.” Jackie took a big gulp of her drink. “The relationship ran its course and we’re through. No big fuckin’ deal. I don’t care. He doesn’t care. It’s fine. It’s all gooood.”
Jackie’s rash and immature behavior was more than enough to watch, and now I had to hear it. I took the cigar and drink out of Jackie’s hands.
“Hey,” she scowled. “Give those back.”
“You’re liquored up enough, girl. And Emily would kill you if she caught you smoking these in her apartment. Not to mention the landlord.”
So that was a little half-truth. Emily probably would have turned a blind eye to the smoking, as she herself let loose now and then and was prone to acting a bit like Jackie in the whole wild-and-fancy-free department. The two of them knew how to party and fancied drunk and dizzy nights out on the town, a little puff-puff on the reefer, and the occasional one-night-stands. Probably a reason they got along particularly well. Alright, so I could be thrown into that fancy-free group too. Must I bring up Chad again? Or my relapse with Brandon? But for the most part, Jackie and Emily were the “wild ones,” Jackie the clear winner of the two. And sometimes it was downright exhausting.
With the carcinogenic items aside, Jackie explained to us that earlier that night she and Hank had gotten into a big fight about their relationship, arguing about the general no-strings-attached deal they had apparently made with one another. Hank agreed that he would still see other people and wouldn’t hold it against Jackie to do the same.
Problem was, in the two months they had been seeing each other, Hank had found a flirty college girl who had seen the same thing in him as Jackie had (a quick and somewhat painless way to be wined and dined). But Jackie hadn’t found anyone else she was interested in.
Two months in with Hank and no “better” prospects in sight, she said she just got “a little too comfortable in something I never should have gotten comfortable with in the first place.” She didn’t like Hank splitting his time with another girl (probably because she didn’t have anyone to spend the other half of her time with), so she told him he had to choose. It was either flirty college girl or her. He chose the younger and apparently larger-breasted option.
“He sucked in bed, anyway,” Jackie said casually. “It’s not like I’m missing out on all that much by not being with him. Of course his penthouse was super nice and he bought me a lot of cool shit. And you must admit, the free drinks were pretty badass, but really, I’m not missing out. His stupid new floozy will get the ax, too. Eventually she’ll get what’s coming to her, just like I did.”
Jackie often did that to herself, and I detested it. She never found anything wrong with putting herself down, or in accentuating her faults or blaming herself for the way things happened in her life. It wasn’t her mother’s or her father’s negligence that had given way to such a bad home life. It was because she wasn’t pretty or smart enough to deserve their love. It wasn’t that school actually was difficult or that she didn’t really apply herself. It was that she was too stupid and unworthy to get anything above a ‘C’ average. It wasn’t because she had the propensity to choose assholes for boyfriends. It was because that was the best she could do because she was trash.
As we had done countless times before, Claire and I stayed with Jackie through the night and well into the morning, comforting her and encouraging her to make better choices next time around. And Claire and I were always good for a group hug, a late-night get-together in front of the television, and pancakes in the morning.
Unfortunately, Jackie’s kitchen cupboards and refrigerator didn’t produce any of the necessary ingredients for homemade pancakes—definitely not my signature blueberry ones. With Jackie’s temporary relocation to Hank’s place and with Emily off the continent, the kitchen was mostly bare. The half-empty box of Bisquick in the cupboard and the quart of milk and half-dozen eggs from the convenience store on the corner saved us. A big pancake breakfast and freshly brewed coffee was just what Claire, Jackie, and I needed. We had all been there before. The scene of Sunday morning chit-chat over pancakes or waffles or omelets was a familiar one, and a favorite of all of ours. It’s astounding what can be accomplished with the girls on a weekend morning.
It’s pretty amazing, I thought as I stabbed at a fluffy piece of pancake, that I could have such a close group of girlfriends in my life. Even with all of the complications we go through. Even with how different we can be from one another. We all just…fit somehow. I thought of Robin, and Lara, both friends who may not have “fit” as of late, but would hopefully, as old times, be one of the six close-knit girlfrien
ds I simply couldn’t live without.
Jackie may have been facing her own bout of drama (then again, who isn’t?). And it was probably going to take her some time to pick up her pieces and move on, but for whatever it was worth I offered her my sincere consolation. I had been down that road…was still wandering down it, in fact. She made sure that I knew that my breakup with Brandon, a relationship of three serious years, and my fall out with two of my best friends over a huge ordeal, were a lot tougher to get over than a “middle-aged asshole who couldn’t screw his way out of a paper bag.” (She always had a colorful way of describing her exes.) I concurred, but the point I was trying to make was that Jackie didn’t have to be alone. She could turn to me, to Claire, even to Lara or Robin or Emily. We would be there, as we always had been. And always would be. I knew that more than ever since I had, as Jackie pointed out, been through a tumultuous experience. And I knew that I would still have that network of female friends who would be there for me, who would love me, and who would hopefully forgive me…even if it had taken me awhile to forgive them.
“That’s what we do,” Claire said. “We’re there for each other. It was the same freshman year. It’s the same today. It’ll be the same when we’re eighty-year-old grannies. We’re best friends, Jackie. Isn’t that right, Sophie?” She looked at me, smiling.
I nodded in agreement, swallowing another bite of pancake. “That’s right.” I looked over at Jackie, who had her short, dainty legs pulled up into her chest as she pushed her pancake pieces around her plate. “It’s just what we do.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When it rains, it pours.
That Sunday afternoon, after Claire and I helped Jackie clean up the apartment, I received a phone call from one of the ladies from Studio Tulaa. It was regarding Pamela. God had taken her earlier than any of us had anticipated.
I wasn’t sure how to react to the news. I didn’t know if I could actually believe it. Pamela? Gone? Funeral details already underway? I just sat on the edge of my desk chair, staring blankly at my business paperwork.
Should I cry? Get angry and throw something? Deny the truth? What was I supposed to do? What was anyone supposed to do in this situation? How could it be? She’d been told just a few weeks ago; she was meant to have weeks left. And now she was gone? How could Pamela not be here?
It was when I delivered the news to Claire a few minutes later that I finally cried the tears that had been building and building. Pamela was gone. I moaned into Claire’s shoulder as she gently rocked me. I told her that it wasn’t fair. That bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready to move on.
“No one’s ever ready, Sophie, honey,” Claire said. “There’s never any preparing for this, no matter how much warning we may get.”
Claire offered to go with me to the funeral, if it would help. For now I couldn’t even think of it. Pamela was supposed to have a garden party. Not a funeral. There was never a funeral to plan. It was always about a garden party.
“Maybe the garden party plans can be the funeral,” Claire suggested. “Maybe that’s what Pamela would want. Do you think?”
I didn’t know what I thought. Pamela wanted to celebrate life and maybe she had wanted to be at her own celebration of life…her own wake. She would expect that we would be in tears, but she would want us to celebrate her life, and celebrate our own. Because, as she had said to me that last afternoon I had seen her, “Life is so very precious, Sophie. Do not take it for granted.”
“Perhaps the garden party can be the wake.”
Claire’s idea was a good one. And probably one that had already run through the minds of Pamela’s family, if they could even think that far at the moment.
“That’s true,” I whimpered, wiping away my tears, but to no avail. “Pamela would want that. The funeral’s probably going to be on Sunday…in a week…. The garden party’s not scheduled for another two weeks or so, but we can change it all probably. We can give Pamela the garden party she dreamed of and honor her that way.” I nodded my head, assuring myself that these ideas were not bad at all.
“You knew this day would come sooner or later,” Claire said softly. “Not that that makes it any easier, but you knew this day would come.”
I wailed, knowing full well the truth in her statement. Pamela’s life, like everyone’s, was just a lease, and her time had come. Learning to accept her death and continue my life was going to be difficult, but it wouldn’t prove to be impossible. In forgiveness, and acceptance, I knew that I could find contentment and eventually peace.
I would help Pamela’s family in any way I could to plan the most spectacular garden party, funeral, and wake. It would be just what Pamela wanted. It would be the perfect way to honor her memory.
***
I’ll admit that trying to wrap my head around Monday morning work, and the catering plans for Pamela’s garden party that coming Sunday, and facing the fact that I was meeting Lara later tonight, was a bit too much to handle. For anyone, I’m sure. And on a Monday. But I guess when life doles out lemons, what can you expect?
As painfully difficult as it was to talk funeral arrangements with Pamela’s daughters, it had to be done. The garden party was bumped up to the twentieth to follow the funeral at the local church. The reality was almost too much to handle, but with everything careening together and with less than a week’s time on hand, there wasn’t much room to deny the difficult truth.
Actually, a very small, and I mean very small, part of me was looking forward to the garden party. It was going to be a true celebration of life. We would talk about the memory of Pamela and the beauty that she brought into the world. We were going to unveil the English garden she had dreamed of having. We would honor her memory. We would say, “We miss you, Pamela. You will always be with us.” And, “Here’s to you and your beautiful garden.”
With the funeral arrangements in order and the garden party plans underway, all I had to do for the remainder of the day was to…well…get through the day. Get through work one croissant at a time. One batch of white chocolate lollipops at a time. And then eventually it’d be time to pack up a small batch of some cherry chocolate cupcakes after a dinner out with Claire and head on over to Lara’s. As much as I was looking forward to talking things out, I was scared the day had finally come.
Where would we begin? Who would say something first? What would that something be? Would there be instant crying? Hugging? A feeling of distance? The best remedy to an approaching anxiety for these sorts of things is to push the questions out of the mind entirely and meet up with your best friend for an early dinner after work. So that’s precisely what I did. Once I got off of work, with a freshly baked batch of some leftover cupcakes that Oliver and I had made in tow, I met Claire for Italian.
We chatted, perhaps lingered a bit over dinner. Evidently Jackie had given Claire a call letting her know how much she appreciated our help out with her breakup.
“She told me to tell you she’s sorry she acted like a big baby,” Claire said.
Seeing how the craziness between myself and Lara and Robin had unfolded, there was little Jackie could do that could really ruffle my feathers. Besides, she was always doing something outlandish and immature. A few curse words, far too many drinks, and childish tantrums weren’t going to get my dander up in the least. I guess Jackie sort of got an easy street pass with me. With most all of us, actually. Even with Claire—unless she had a drink in her.
Jackie was…well…Jackie. We loved her just the same, but hated to see her path down destruction. Holding a pathetic grudge against her for acting childishly would have been just as bad as scorning her and leaving her to her own ruinous path. We had to be there, as her friends, to help her up when she fell, to hold her hand when she couldn’t see the disaster dead ahead, and to hug her when she hurt.
Claire said that Jackie’s attitude toward the breakup was “très normal.” She’d probably be on the market again for
yet another “winner” in a matter of a week or two. All’s fair in love and war, apparently.
I shared with Claire the latest in regards to the upcoming garden party arrangements. Planning such a thing wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as difficult as I had anticipated. Knowing beforehand that Pamela’s lease on life was short didn’t ease the pain of loss, but I had taken the news much better than I thought. Was I prepared? No. There’s really never any amount or form of preparation one can take for these things. You’re never prepared for death. But maybe I was handling the news better than I had imagined because there were so many things on my plate as it were. Or maybe because planning the wake…the party…was one step nearer to closure. It was one step closer to being able to wish Pamela my love and say goodbye.
Claire had offered again to join me at the funeral if it would help, but I knew that this was something I needed to do on my own. I needed to go without that friendly hand to hold. I needed to pick up the pieces and try this one on my own. Though “on my own” was really a loose term as I knew Claire’s hand would always be there—even if I found that I needed it midway through the day of the funeral or, as I expected, immediately afterward. The reassurance that I had Claire there for me—a true and kind friend—was going to be reassurance enough for me to brave the funeral and attend Pamela’s wake on my own. Just like I was going to kiss Claire goodbye and thank her for the treat of dinner, and head off to Lara’s…on my own.
Chapter Twenty-Three
There was some kind of a mid-term study break get-together going on in the commons area of the all-female dorm I lived in my first year in college. As enticing as free cookies and milk were, and as much of a mid-term study break as I could have used at the time, I wasn’t the least bit interested in doing anything other than rushing over to Lara’s apartment across campus. Lara was the best and most personable camp counselor I could have asked for during freshman orientation earlier that school year, and she was just the right person—the right friend—I wanted to see regarding getting over a horrible breakup.
When Girlfriends Break Hearts Page 18