The Best of Friends

by Sara James

  I wanted desperately to talk to her, but I had no idea where she was. Covering the war in Somalia or fires in California? Or there’d been talk of a posting in London. She could be anywhere. How the hell could I find her? From the research station our only link to the outside world was a radio-telephone. Twice a day, at 6 A.M. or 6 P.M.., we could book a call through the central operator, our call sign “Double Three.” But it was a national party line. Every lodge manager and farmer would hear our conversation. I tried to imagine the call.

  Why, Sara? Over. The sound of breathing as everyone waited for her response.

  I wish I knew. Over.

  Through the static I would beg, What? Oh no, Sara. I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up, please repeat. Over.

  Then the line would go dead.

  The voice of the operator would break through, saying, Sorry.

  Weren’t we all.

  It was too much. A dead man, dead baboons, a shattered marriage. Nothing was working out. No explanations, no communication, over and out.

  12

  SARA (1993)

  IT WAS A glorious day in London. After a run around Hyde Park I’d had a quick shower back in my enormous room at the Hyde Park Hotel. In thirty-two years I’d never stayed anywhere half as beautiful as that creamy pink and white suite. I still got a start every time I opened the door—as if I’d walked into someone else’s room and someone else’s life.

  My husband and I had barely spoken since I’d arrived but I tried not to think about it. In calls to my parents I instead focused on all the fun I was having, including a behind-the-scenes tour of “Buck House,” as I’d learned Buckingham Palace was called by locals. My sisters were more inquisitive about the impact of career and geography on an already strained marriage and Elizabeth suggested I was “in denial” and “blocking” when I glibly responded to certain questions, but tunnel vision felt right to me. There would be time to figure out home when I returned there. Still anxious to do hard news, I raised my hand to go to Sarajevo. But it had been less than a year since ABC producer David Kaplan, on assignment there with Sam Donaldson, had been killed by a sniper. In the end NBC sent a more seasoned correspondent, to my disappointment.

  Still, I couldn’t complain. I’d been at the network for less than a year and already had had opportunities to do bureau duty in Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles as well as substitute on the Today show. After one appearance, my photographer pal Ken Ludlow had sent a computer note to say they’d watched in London. Working there was a chance to catch up with him as well as so many others I’d met in Somalia. And it hadn’t taken long for London to start to feel like a home away from home.

  That day when I arrived at the NBC bureau on Tottenham Court Road, things were quiet. I’d read the papers and was having a cup of tea and a chat with my producer pal Justin when someone called out, “Hey, Sara! Phone’s for you. You can pick up in Keith’s office.”

  I was surprised. Could it be my husband? My parents or sisters, perhaps? It was so unusual to get a call that I was worried enough to close the office door.

  Instead the voice was that of a mutual friend of Ginger’s and mine, who was just back in the States from Namibia. I was delighted to hear from him and hoped he’d have news of Ginger and Nad. “Yes, we caught up.” He sounded hesitant, then continued. “Actually, Gin asked me how you were. She said she had no idea how to reach you but wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  The knot in my stomach tightened. I sat down. “What do you mean? Of course I’m fine.”

  There was another brief pause. “Well, she said she’d received a letter from your husband, a letter saying you two are splitting.”

  I stood up again, clutched the desk, knuckles white. “Saying what?!”

  The next pause was longer. “I gathered that you two were getting divorced. Gin is worried about you, and I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

  I don’t really remember the rest of the conversation. He spoke. I asked a few pertinent questions, including getting a number for Ginger, who was briefly staying with friends who had a phone. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I got off the line and gently replaced the receiver in the cradle.

  And then I sat back down. There was a mug on the desk and I tipped it over, poked idly through francs and deutsche marks, lire and rubles. Coins of the realms I’d dreamt of visiting. In those dreams, I’d returned home, pockets stuffed with boarding stubs and receipts, to kick off my shoes and tear open a bag of wrinkled clothes to pull out some treasure I’d brought home for the man I loved. And as every trinket comes wrapped in a story, to tell the tale of how and where and why I’d thought of him and it had to be his. I’d imagined listening to his stories, too, legs entwined, each bewitched by the familiar, reminded that distance can disappear in a kiss. But what I hadn’t pictured, until just that moment, was returning from life on the road to find no one waiting.

  Why should he wait? a small voice inside me whispered. I closed my eyes to stop the voice but it only grew louder, more insistent. Wait for what? What’s left, after all, beyond a dream, a snapshot, a past?

  I opened my eyes and leaned back, noting how the watery sunlight that streamed through the office blinds left a pattern of stripes on my left hand that disappeared as soon as I moved it. My wedding ring was still there. But soon I’d take it off, and the stripe it left would disappear just as surely. And then it would be over. Truly over.

  I stared at the phone. I needed to know more but I wasn’t ready to call my husband. I didn’t know what to ask or where to begin and still didn’t want to believe it was true. And I wanted to wait until I felt more composed to call my parents. And Ginger? I realized that I suddenly felt anxious and uncertain. I decided to call Linda first.

  “Oh, Sara.” LP, the unofficial life coach who always knew exactly what to say, was out of words.

  “Linda, why would he do it? Why write her? Could it have anything to do with the fact that she’s beautiful? Oh my God, listen to me! I’m sure I’m reading way too much into this. I know they’d talked about working on a project together someday. I’m sure he just wants to stay friends. But I don’t know if I could stand that. She’s my best friend.”

  Using the gentle sort of voice you might use with someone who has unexpectedly picked up a grenade and is threatening to pull the pin, she said, “I realize this is a shock. I’m sure he never anticipated the letter would get to her before you two had a chance to talk. This monthlong assignment of yours was kind of a surprise. But, Sara, be honest, you really have known your marriage was ending, letter or no letter. Neither one of you has been happy for a very long time. You need to go forward. And you need to do it on your own.”

  “But why did he write Ginger?”

  “Why don’t you call her?”

  Instead I sat staring at the phone, chewing my lip until I tasted blood, twisting my rings around and around and around. My stomach felt like I’d swallowed broken glass. I felt a surge of jealousy like I’d never experienced before. Jealous that he would write her. Jealous that she was the kind of person he would want to write. And angry that he’d made me jealous of my best friend.

  The shadows pooled in the corner. I’d been through all of the coins. What was it worth, all the money in the world, if you didn’t have what you wanted, the things that were most important? Finally curiosity and a certain futile hope that there had been some mistake prompted me to dial.

  “Gin?”

  “Oh, Sara, thank goodness you called! I’ve been so worried about you and I’ve had no idea how to reach you! Where are you? I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t written to tell me.”

  And then, finally, I wept. I wept because it was sad and because it was real, for that was obvious before she said another word. And because if I’d been brave and honest with my husband and myself, willing to face a hard truth rather than run away from it, things might not have ended like this. I cried because her voice made me feel better, even though she was thousands of miles away
, because I knew she loved me and because we’d known each other so long and because she understood what this felt like better than anyone I knew. At the end she asked, “Oh, Sara, is there anything I can do?”

  “You have already. Just by being there.”

  As I hung up the phone, exhausted and depleted, the person I was angriest at was myself. Clearly my husband had been trying to tell me for months, if not years, that he wasn’t happy. I’d always known you can’t make someone love you. And yet in a way, that’s exactly what I’d tried to do. And because I’d been unwilling to accept that our marriage was in dire straits, unwilling to listen to any talk of divorce, unwilling to face facts, my best friend had found out before I had.

  What had I done? What would I do now? How would I make it on my own? And as I wiped my eyes I wondered something else. Was this, then, the terrible price the Fates exact for granting desire—that you could have the odyssey, the opportunities, but the price might be returning to an empty home? Or were we simply two people who had married young after the briefest of courtships only to discover we weren’t compatible after all? I had waited too long to ask the questions and in the end the answers would change nothing.

  “Sara, I’ll come over as soon as I can,” Ginger promised. “But I want you to remember something. You have a job you love. Hang on to that.”

  For the first time in my life I didn’t know whether work was a lifeline or a noose. And when I flew home, it seemed that the glittery spangle of Gotham had faded to sepia, and for the first time I wished that New York were merely a transfer, and my true destination somewhere, anywhere, else.

  13

  GINGER (1993)

  I RESTED MY HEAD against the window of the Boeing 747 and pulled the thin blue blanket up around my shoulders. The air was stale, dim light from the movie screen enveloped the seats in a gray cloud, a baby cried, a man snored. Unable to sleep, I tried to remember how many times in the past eleven years I’d made this flight across the Atlantic between Africa and the U.S. It must have been at least eight. Each trip marked either the beginning or the end of an event, a chunk of time dedicated to a project, a relationship, a dream, one that was vital and, though I might not have known it at the time, would turn out to be defining.

  By now I was old enough and my friendship with Sara deep enough that our lives were connected in so many ways, in a series of circles—some sad, others crazy, others maniacally wonderful, plates spinning round and round as if in a juggler’s act. They might crash, wobble, and come to a slow stop or they might spin forever, but they didn’t break. The circles connecting our lives were stronger than that.

  For me this trip home was bittersweet for many reasons. For one, it marked the end of our time with the baboons. Rains had finally fallen in the highlands and the Kuiseb River had flowed. One last time we raced the headwaters, swam, and filmed. We felt a strong sense of relief, but it was impossible to feel joy. Cleo and Smudge had survived the long drought, but Bo, their mother, was dead. Pandora had been alive the day before the flood, but we never saw her again. We’d scanned the trees, the cliffs, and then we started counting. Of the fourteen baboons we had come to love, only six survived. Six baboons left to groom, to fight, to mate, to have babies, and to rebuild a troop. They would be doing it alone because for us, this chapter was closed. But at the same time, my trip back to the States would also mark a new beginning. I would try to find funding to finish the film, to complete this circle.

  And then I thought about my other reason for coming home. Sara. She had filed for divorce. Another circle completed, time to move on. Too many times I had been far away when she needed me, but not this time. I had been there at the beginning when she said “I do,” and I’d be there at the end.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER arriving in America, I walked up to Sara and her husband’s perfect white Victorian house. Outside at the top of three stories was a widow’s walk. In the hundred years that the house had been standing, I could imagine all those who had paced there, watching and waiting, at times in vain, for a loved one to return. With so much history inside those walls, this was just another sad chapter.

  Stepping into the house was disorienting. Inside, Sara’s grand piano stood untouched against the living room window. Lining the long hallway with its high ceiling and graceful arches were boxes marked “den,” “books,” and “kitchen,” as if Sara and her husband were still in the process of moving in. Stacked neatly on the dining room table were place settings of china and crystals, those that happy, expectant brides select, but now they were divided evenly into two piles. His and hers, all right. It was eerie, surreal, and so damn civil that I wanted to smash everything in sight.

  I smiled at Sara. “So where do we start?”

  Her lips parted as if she wanted to speak, but in the end she nodded and I followed her upstairs. CD stayed downstairs, quietly out of the way, but his presence was everywhere. It clung to the clothes in the master bedroom; we stepped around it in the bathroom as we picked through toiletries; it was there as we thumbed through the titles lining the bookshelves. To escape it, we delved into Sara’s past.

  Reaching up to the top of the armoire, Sara pulled down a grass basket full of scarves.

  “Oh no!” She laughed for the first time that day. “Look at these. How awful!”

  “Sara, I remember that one. You wore it the night we had margaritas in Charlotte.”

  “Did not!”

  “Okay. Maybe I saw it on the billboard.”

  “Oh no you didn’t. I’ve never even seen it before. These things have reproduced and their offspring are hideous. They aren’t mine. I swear!”

  “Don’t lie to me. You are a closet member of the Junior League!”

  It felt so good to laugh. From girlish giggles to lusty, knowing laughs, laughter has always been present in our friendship. In fact, it is one of the keys to our friendship. When Sara’s eyes flash with a certain sparkle, I know what she’s thinking and I laugh. When I toss my hair, she laughs, knowing there’s trouble ahead. Our friend Luca Babini, a gifted photographer and filmmaker with a thoughtful, probing eye and a sharp sense of humor, shakes his head, claiming we even laugh alike. Sometimes we laugh through our tears and sometimes we laugh until we cry, but mostly we laugh because we always have so much fun together. But on that day, we laughed in spite of the situation.

  In the midst of all those ugly scarves we lay on the bed, spent with laughter and emotion. It was quiet for a moment, then Sara spoke. “Gin, I have no bearings for this. No references. I don’t know what to think, what to feel, except failure.”

  “Sara, you didn’t fail; you tried. And you know what? I’m sure he tried, too. But no one is immune. It just happens.”

  “It” was divorce, and because we had been friends for so long, Sara didn’t have to explain that in her family there were only seemingly perfect marriages. No raised voices, no broken china, and certainly no divorces. In a play she’d never seen, she’d been asked to speak lines she couldn’t begin to know. An understudy thrust into a part she wasn’t prepared for.

  “It’ll be okay. Soon. Sara, you couldn’t go on like this, and after tomorrow, you won’t have to.”

  After Sara went to bed, I walked downstairs to the den to talk to CD. In this huge house, against the backdrop of what should have been such a happy home, he looked sad, lonely. We talked for a while, tentatively, more like strangers than friends. He asked me about the baboons and the desert. We talked about filmmaking, all safe topics and passions we shared. We had a lot in common. Clearly, he still cared for Sara, just as I did, and ached to see her in so much pain. But there was one difference: I loved Sara and, sadly, he did not.

  If this had been a movie, the next morning would have been raining, that steady drizzle through gray skies, the kind of rain that makes you cold, sad, melancholy. But it wasn’t. It was beautiful, clear, and crisp, the kind of day you want to celebrate. Instead we loaded boxes. Sara pointed the movers away from what was staying to what was going. Befor
e we climbed into the front cab of the moving truck, Sara and CD hugged each other good-bye. The big, burly moving men and I looked away. The driver made a lame joke as he started the truck, but at least he tried. I gripped Sara’s hand and CD stood alone outside that beautiful white house while we drove away, headed for the city, through the tunnel to her new life.

  Somehow Sara stayed calm, at least outwardly. At night, in the apartment she’d rented in New York City, I sometimes heard her crying herself to sleep in the next room. By day we each tried to get on with our jobs. I counted my pennies to buy a subway token; often she got picked up in a limo. I fumbled with a mascara wand while Sara had her makeup done for her. Producers didn’t return my phone calls; Sara had them lining up outside her door. Maybe, at some other time, I would have been jealous, but it was impossible to be envious of someone so desperately sad.

  All too soon I would be headed back to Africa, to a life and a man I loved, but I hadn’t sold the film. I had no new work and even less money, while Sara had an amazing career and a life full of possibilities. The only problem was, life, faced alone, seemed to terrify her.

  Nothing I could say or do would take Sara’s pain away. But I’d known her a long time, and knew she was resilient—that soon her spirit would rise, and she would begin to heal. As for me, I struggled to negotiate my way through a professional trough. I had heard “no” many times. Though rejection hurt, I believed in the baboon film, and felt certain that one day a television executive would also believe in the film. The baboons’ story would air, and when it did, I knew I’d make another film. I, too, needed time.