On a cool fall day in 1986 I received a phone call regarding
the shocking death of a dear friend. I
had known Mary for ten years, and lived with her for the first three of them. I
was holding Cliff, my then-eight-month-old son, watching as Ken was about to
take the air conditioner out of the kitchen window of our first apartment in
Port Chester. It’s an odd thing to remember, the removal of an air conditioner.
If you ask what I was doing when JFK was killed or where I was on 9/11, I could
tell you those circumstances as well. Details small and large become interwoven
with tragedy, vivid and enduring bits of memory that complete a story. I stood
in my tiny kitchen with the phone to my ear, wondering how in the world she
could be gone. Cliff and I stood at the
now unobstructed window, staring out at the trees and sky in silent
remembrance. The last time I had seen Mary was soon after Cliff was born. She stopped
by my apartment for a visit, before catching a train to the Buffalo suburb
where her mother lived. By then she had moved to California, far from the cold
climes where she had grown up.
She’s been gone twenty-seven
years, but in my middle age I miss her more instead of less. I miss her voice
but I can still hear it, the deep, confident tone and the distinctive Buffalo accent.
In all this time I have not stopped wishing to sit with her once again, to talk long into the
night about all the things we’ve done and seen. My friendship with her made a
difference in the way I lead my life.
She taught me not to be afraid of becoming a grown-up. I’ve not had a friend like her since, and
likely won’t again.
“Only your real
friends will tell you when your face is dirty.” That was Mary E. Boies, the
person who immediately came to mind when I read the Sicilian proverb in a
writing journal I own. She had no reservations about telling me the truth. She
was funny like that. Never one to keep her opinions to herself, there were
occasions in our time as roommates when I failed to honor the roommate contract
in some way-- I hadn’t cleaned up after myself for instance, or she was annoyed
with my boyfriend for overstaying his welcome--when Mary spoke up like the head of the household, no holding back. After the boyfriend graduated
and left Buffalo to return home, I was fairly consumed by student-teaching and
developed a mad crush on my cooperating teacher (the term used at the time to
describe the teacher-mentor in the classroom) The mad crush lasted for the
entire semester, and it concerned her. When I started with the “Mr. Goraj-this”
and “Mr. Goraj-that”, she saw the dreamy far-away look in my eyes and warned me
to snap out of it. In matters requiring the sensibility
usually reserved for grown-ups, Mary excelled. Sometimes I think she
burst out of her mother’s womb already filled with the wisdom of a woman,
skipping over the awkward years when one makes most of the dumb mistakes of
youth. She was ahead of her time, living her dream, like a bigger, blonder
version of Mary Tyler Moore’s Mary Richards. She even had the same hat, the one
Mary Tyler Moore throws up into the air, come to think of it.
I first met Mary in
the winter of 1976 when I answered an ad thumb-tacked onto the commuter board, the
type with phone number tear-offs at the bottom. She had hand-written the words with
a fine-point Sharpie on sturdy construction paper, “Looking for a third
roommate—female only”. Her sign, adorned
with her signature graceful bold lettering, stood out among the messy, loose leaf-ball-point-pen
signs. We made plans for an interview to take place the next day.
The house was located on busy Elmwood Avenue, a mostly residential
area on the main road near our college in Buffalo. Across the street was a submarine
sandwich place, a Laundromat and a small convenience store. On the next block was
a restaurant named BullFeathers, where Mary and I would later splurge on what
were possibly the best Buffalo chicken wings I’ve ever tasted.
I was nineteen years old, naïve, and desperate to find
housing after my first apartment didn’t work out. At the interview, I assured
her I was not unruly or into self-destructive extra-curricular activities. She
trusted that I would be able to pay the rent and utility bills on time. She
smiled at me, and made me feel comfortable. Not easy, considering my
generalized anxiety and the fact she had a prepared list of questions and house-rules
in her hands. We liked each other right away, and I moved into the second floor
walk-up right after the Christmas break. To this day, I can’t believe my good
fortune. It was a great apartment, more
roomy and cozy than my last place, with a balcony perfect for the consumption
of alcohol and people-watching. Other
roommates would come and go over the next three years, but Mary and I remained faithful
to our commitments to school and to each other. We got along like sisters, groaning
about the amount of schoolwork we had to do, drawing up schedules for bathroom
cleaning, and planning the occasional beer and wings party. We’d have hilarious
conversations about guys, student-teaching, our third roommate, and the
relentless snow. She loved Joni Mitchell and I was obsessed with K.C. and the
Sunshine Band.
We didn’t have much in common, really. We got along well
because she had a kind heart and an irreverent attitude, two qualities I found
appealing. She once talked me into accompanying her to a strip club, where men
in skimpy outfits danced provocatively on a five-foot-square “stage” made of
cheap plywood. I was certainly a strip
club virgin, and I couldn’t remove the shocked look from my face once the show
began. Naturally, Mary thought my expression was priceless, and I didn’t hear
the end of it for weeks afterward. My mother doesn’t know this, but Mary and I
dared each other to stuff dollar bills into the nether regions of their
barely-there thongs. It was odd, it was weird, it was funny, and a little
uncomfortable, but it was an experience I’ll never forget.
I’m not sure why Mary liked me; perhaps she enjoyed being a
mentor, and I was like an empty shell waiting to be filled with all the life I
hadn’t yet experienced or understood. My innocence, my tendency to follow
instead of lead, and my general lack of worldly knowledge put me at risk of
screwing up royally. She was only a couple of years older than I, but she had a
strong mothering instinct; she handled all the bills and dealt with the
landlord. I was immature and mostly clueless about such things. She nurtured
and encouraged me, gave me advice and was interested in what I was doing. She
seemed to know all the answers.
After she graduated, she chose to remain at 1021 Elmwood Avenue
with me and our most recent roommate. One
day, Mary came home in tears. She had found a job as a long-term substitute
teacher in one of the local high schools and the kids had been giving her a hard
time. Mary was a big girl, but she didn’t have the kind of tough exterior one
would need to work with the occasional smart aleck. I thought she was beautiful, but I don’t think she was
comfortable in her curvy body at the time. After four years of working towards
her secondary education degree and finishing with honors, she began the process
of reinventing herself. Teaching was in
her blood and she was good at it. Ever the optimist she made lemonade out of
lemons by working with college students instead. By that time I had graduated and had moved
back home to Westchester, where I found a job teaching junior high school
English. Eventually she moved to Hawaii to work at a college as a dorm director;
she had found her niche.
The following year she moved to California to work, again as
a dorm director. She was working on her second Masters degree in teaching
writing. I still have a few of the cards
she sent me from her home in Arcata. One of them alluded to wanting to
experience life as fully as she could. I believe she didn’t see herself growing
old. I dismissed it as nonsense, but it wasn’t the first time I had heard her
voice her concerns. Because she’d had an older brother who died young, Mary
felt a longing for adventure, and a true appreciation for each day in the event
a long life would not be her destiny. It was eerily prophetic.
In one of her letters dated 11/6/1984, she asked a question,
“Dear ‘Ugly’ (her pet name for me), my thoughts have been with you a lot lately--is
there something new? Love, Mary.” I hadn’t yet told her I was pregnant with my
first baby. And when Cliff was born, she
was happy for me, giving me the advice and encouragement that was her
specialty. She didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that my baby was born
with Down syndrome. It didn’t seem to matter.
“You and Ken are lucky to have him, and he’s lucky to have you.” I hope
she knew how grateful I felt to hear those words.
Our all-too-brief
friendship remains a jewel in my box of memories. I can’t explain how it’s possible to love a
ghost more and more as I grow older but I do. I especially miss Mary on the
days l feel most alone, days where I dwell on what I don’t have, or days I
doubt my abilities to write or to teach. I could sure use her advice, though
she’d probably just tell me to snap out of it.
She was one of the strongest people I have ever known. But
at thirty-one years old, driving her car on a dark, wet and winding California highway,
she lost her life. My guardian angel through my college years, Mary had become my
ethereal, true guardian angel dressed in white wings.
I still keep in touch with Mary’s sister, Annette. She’s the
only connection I have to Mary now. But every so often I sense her big, blond presence
and I swear I can hear her voice, “Hey, Ugly, wipe that dirt off your face--it’s
not a good look for you.”
