Good morning
I was thinking about those mornings when Tsela was staying with me. She’d come down, in her grey sweatpants, several shapeless tops piled on, her pink nike sandals, her hair partly up in a topknot – like all the guys in Brooklyn, she’d laugh. I was on the kitchen loveseat in my wool bathrobe, talking on the phone, my morning ritual, to update my sister or my best friend Lynne about the intricacies and the dread of the lawsuits swirling around.
She’d pour a bit of the coffee I had made, dilute it with boiling water, add 0% milk and put it in the microwave. Belgian, and she destroyed any taste of coffee. Oh, and her favorite beer was Budweiser. Light. Head spinning. First stop we'd make at the grocery store on this continent was to get a can of Bud light.
Some mornings, all we’d manage was a “Good morning!” as I continued my conversation about depositions and discoveries and as she stuffed her laptop into a grocery tote, zipped up my red fleece and went off to the shed to write.
As I remember those mornings, I miss Lynne, in my bathrobe, with my coffee. The friendship will never go away, but it has been pockmarked. By the pandemic. By my falling in love. By our divergent paths. By her increasing sense that the world is closing in on her, that everything in the city and her life is falling apart.
I notice that she has not called even though she knew that I had been planning to see my dying friend, who would likely die any day now and did. That she is never the one to call. Probably she doesn’t want to bother me, or she assumes I am strong and can’t need her. Or maybe she isn’t thinking about it at all.
And just as I was about to hit the SEND button, Tsela calls.
Beautiful vivid scene, and then a feeling-full description of the questions about the friendship with Lynne, trying to figure out why she does not call. The friendship "pockmarked" -- loved that.
ReplyDeleteSuch a clearly and beautifully delineated scene, a precious and comfortable friendship. Sadly gone somehow awry leaving the writer to try to fathom the reason...and then the surprise of a call. As readers we are relieved and hopeful
ReplyDeleteYes, the opening scene is so vivid, we see Tsela in her grey sweat pants, shapeless tops and pink Nike sandals. The author absorbed on the phone. Two of them going about their comfortable business side by side, influencing each other. And then Tsela's life closing in on her, distant. The phone rings. The whole piece the opening of a stage play I would love to see.
ReplyDelete