Three’s company
When my daughter was leaving for college, she was sad about leaving her friends behind, and concerned that new friends would never be as close as her childhood ones.
I reminded her that some of the best friendships I have came later in life. I mentioned Katherine and Jenny, two women I met in grad school. She looked at me strangely, as though to say: “If they’re such good friends, how come I don’t know them?’’
Actually, she wasn’t meant to. Katherine, Jenny, and I became a threesome in our 20s, and have kept it going for 30 years, outside the parameters of our daily lives. Few of my other friends have even heard of them. I barely know Katherine’s daughters and only met Jenny’s live-in boyfriend once.
It seems to me that as women get older and their lives get more complicated, their friendships become more pragmatic, more about mutual support and common interests - work, kids, bridge, book clubs - and less about having fun and the joy of purposeless conversation. Maybe it’s because we don’t see each other that often or because we steer clear of the daily grind, but this never happened with us. A year can go by without seeing each other, but whenever the three of us get together - it doesn’t work with just two of us - the old chemistry kicks in and our mental age reverts to 26, the age we were when we first met in a writing class, our adult lives were just beginning, and everything seemed funny and fascinating. Particularly ourselves.
We had nothing in common except writing. I’d just moved here from a sheltered suburb of Winnipeg. Katherine, then an art librarian, was from a hard-scrabble working-class Vermont family, and her stories revolved around old barns and church pie contests and colorful, high-strung relatives. A signature family event we often revisit was the time her mother - overwhelmed by a move to New Hampshire and by four small children - stomped all over her birthday cake. (“Is something wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. . .’’ Katherine would mimic, in the first New Hampshire accent I’d ever heard.)
Jenny was from a more refined intellectual family near Boston. A family argument in her home involved silence and gritted teeth. (Please. Pass. The. Peas.’’) The only time I met her father, he explained his hobby was writing “chapbooks,’’ which sent me scurrying to my dictionary. Jenny shared his other arcane passion, which was railroads -
Our music group was key. Supremely ungifted though we were, we formed an ensemble - two recorders, one guitar. We still debate how bad we were; typically at least one of us would still be playing when the piece was over. But mostly we just talked, the conversation zigzagging indiscriminately but usually doubling back to books. We told the same stories so many times we developed a shorthand for them. “Sewing machine’’ was code for the time Jenny and her teenage boyfriend ran away from home, hocking her sewing machine to pay for bus tickets (she lowered it out her window so her parents wouldn’t see). A PRM was a “perfectly realized moment,’’ a term introduced by Katherine, who had experienced one in a restaurant when she overheard a couple quarreling. (“It’s not the salmon, Harry,’’ the wife said. “It’s the last 25 years.’’)
But a few months ago, Jenny e-mailed with bad news. Her boyfriend of 14 years had abruptly left her. She had to sell the house and move. We called an emergency meeting, and Katherine and I persuaded her to move South, close to her beloved Smokies.
“House has sold!’’ was the subject line in one of Jenny’s next e-mails. Last week we said goodbye over dinner, the night before Jenny drove out to North Carolina with her cat to a town she’d picked, characteristically, because it hosted an annual white squirrel festival.
We stayed till the restaurant closed. The waiter looked a bit puzzled by the sight of three women in their 50s linking baby fingers on the table. But it was our pinkie swear, our promise to Jenny we’d see her at the squirrel festival. And it was just one more PRM of what I hope will be many more.
