tomorrow is my friend beth’s birthday. i always remember her birthday because it comes right after my sister’s birthday, and at one point she and my sister were probably the people i was closest to in the world.
beth and i met shortly after i first moved to new york. i was working in a residence for people with learning disabilities, and she was the newly appointed assistant manager. it was a shitty job – the kind of shitty job you have to do in certain fields before you get to move up to non-shitty jobs. the kind of job where most of the staff don’t care, and the managers even less so. except for her. working with people with learning disabilities just made her eyes light up. she happily gave up her evenings and weekends without pay, because to her it wasn’t a sacrifice to do something she loved. it set her apart.
beth’s work was also an escape from her homelife – a life full of drama and abuse that she never seemed to be able to free herself from. there was a long-term wifebeater named tommy – the stereotypical hard-drinking irish guy who’d slap her around and stomp on her soul. there was a cold, distant mother that never really cared to begin with, and only used her improbably successful daughter to boost her own ego. there were the stray animals she was forever taking in and nurturing through long nights of sickness, nursing them to health. there were fights and abortions and depression and more fights.
i’m not quite sure how or why she and i became such close friends through all of this. i suppose because we were both had a similar innate, shoot-from-the-hip sensibility. maybe because we both had a crude sense of humour and a tough-girl facade. most likely, above all else, because i was a sympathetic ear for the never-ending soap opera that was her life. in retrospect, she needed me to be a rock, and i needed to be needed. she was, by turns, kind and caring and effusive and a incorrigible liar. the kind of liar who confides in you about the lies they’ve told others, yet still expects you to believe in truth. it was never malicious, or even intentional – she lied to get help from the people she didn’t think would help her, because she didn’t think she deserved to be helped. she intuitively used people – but she did it with such fragility and open need that you had to forgive her for breaking your heart, even as you picked her up off the floor.
after several long years, she finally left tommy. i helped her move out. and then she decided to make a clean break of it altogether and move to louisiana. something about the heat and the languid pace drew her there. there were tears and exchanges of rings and hours of long-distance phone calls. in the end, she spent two years waitressing nights at a bar and grill chain in lafayette, declared bankruptcy, wore herself into the ground like a used cigarette butt, and finally decided to move back. when she was getting ready to move back to brooklyn, i flew down to help her drive the van back. we spent a weekend in new orleans drinking, dancing, getting tattoed and watching sunrises over the mississippi.
after moving back to new york, i helped her get a job working in my department as a care manager for people with learning disabilities. it was a job she was ill-suited for, and she hated it – i always felt guilty about that, and covered for her lapses more than i should have. in the meantime, tommy had been replaced by rob – different name, same manipulative, controlling personality. she drew them to her like flies, men who saw a vulnerability to exploit – like a warm open mouth waiting for a kiss and getting a left hook instead. there were more arguments and abortions and depression. she eventually took a job as a veterinary assistant, and wept every time she had to euthanise an animal. she was in a bad way.
eventually, finally, she began seeing a therapist. she started her own pet-taxi service. she broke up with rob. and for a while, she balanced without training wheels, riding wobbily along, but riding nonetheless.
the problem was when she looked down and realised there was nothing holding her up but herself. that, of course, was when she crashed. it’s easier to believe in gravity than your own strength.
i was living in boston then. it was the day that i’d finalised my divorce, and i came home, put on pyjamas and crawled into bed at seven o’clock, hoping for sweet, oblivious sleep. so when the phone rang at nine, i almost didn’t answer it. and of course, it was beth – in the throes of suicidal despair. telling me all about the note she’d written, the pills in her hand. the connection kept dropping as my cordless phone battery died, and then hers. she told me she was taking the pills. i told her i was calling the police. i called the police. i sat on the phone with her waiting for them to arrive. she pretended to be mad, but never hung up. i hung on.
one of the many ways beth bent her life, twisted the people in her life, was to never have any of her friends meet. so i never met her friend marnie, who called me a few days later and told me beth was okay, was getting out of the hospital, was on anti-depressants, was staying with her for a few weeks. i had no way to contact her
she called me a few months later. she sounded good. we talked only a few times after that, and i knew she was getting back together with rob. whenever she did something she thought i wouldn’t approve of, she laid low and avoided talking to me. i don’t know why she needed my approval. i don’t know why i needed to approve.
and then, suddenly, i was moving to london. i rang her up, made a special trip to new york to see her before i left. i was staying with my friend jo, and when i arrived and called her to meet up, she told me she was moving apartments that weekend, but she’d call me back later that night after she was settled. she never called back, never answered my calls.
and i haven’t seen or spoken to her since. i often wonder if she’s still alive. when i google there’s not a trace of her, except as the name of a character from the old t.v. show “dallas”. and some part of me has to wonder if she lied about that too.
but for all her faults, beth was my dear friend. and i miss her.
happy birthday beth, wherever you are.
the jealous sound – naive
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