Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium
I met my best friend when I was 22. I was an assistant art director with the smallest window office Boston's most legendary Irish Catholic ad firm on the 39th floor of the John Hancock Tower. The fellow who ran the bullpen, Bob, came by with my future best friend. He introduced us and told me he had just hired her to be a mechanical artist. I looked at her and she looked at me and we immediately thought we knew each other. He left us to get acquainted. After chatting, we decided that we did not know each other but we had much in common. She was from Connecticut. She had attended the boarding school one of my sisters was at that time teaching at. She had studied art at a college in Ohio and painted boatloads of n*ked women. And if all that weren't good enough, she and I liked the same kind of guys -- well-dressed men.
She started the next week and over time we became best of friends. She was always game for a prank and together we pulled many. Her mother and uncle had bought her a condo in Back Bay and it was the perfect venue to throw exceptional parties. And we threw them. She had a ritual before each party that I never engaged in as it was against my religion. My religion of drinking that is. And in my religion of drinking, a girl never never ever did shots, no matter what. But my best friend never let our religious differences get between us. After we readied her place and ourselves for that night's party, she got out a bottle of tequila and did a quick shot to take the edge off. Then, as the rest of our female friends arrived, she had them all do a shot too. Tequila never hits a girl head on : It catches up with her later. Those shots of tequila designed to take the edge off of the ladies went on to provide more mirth than any of you can imagine. Since I never did one, I was the only one able to focus a camera. And I still have all the photographic proof...
After about a year of friendship, we decided it was time to meet each other's families. My best friend, my grandmother and I piled into my grandmother's car and we drove to The Publick House for lunch. My mother had driven up from her home to meet us. It while we lingered over giagantic salads and Bloody Marys when my mother asked about my best friend's parents. Her father had been killed in a car accident when she was 11. This loss of father was one of the intrinsic bonds between the two of us because in your '20's you feel very lost without a Dad to help you figure out life. As my friend told my mother about her parents, it became very clear to my mother that she had known my best friend's Dad. My mother and her Dad had gone to college together. More than that, they had double-dated. My mother's great love of her life was a Irish Roman Catholic Naval pilot that she met while at college. (Yes, this Irish and pilot fancying thingummy of mine is an hereditary thingummy - I got it from my mother.) My best friend's dad and the Irish Roman Catholic pilot were fraternity brothers and good friends. My mother was the sweetheart of the fraternity. His fraternity brothers, with my best friend's late father, serenaded her under her dormitory window one night when she and the pilot became pinned. Then she went on to pin his wings on him when he made pilot. But it was an ill-fated love affair because my grandmother refused to let my mother marry a Roman Catholic. Then the Korean War came along and the pilot went off to serve his country. My grandmother pushed the descendent of the Nova Scotian psycopaths upon my mother and the rest is family history. Needless to say, my mother was thrilled with my new bestfriend.
I went to meet my best friend's family. And I was immediately adopted into it by her mother. They are a very kind, loyal, totally vibrant and Mediterranean Greek family. Once, when my friend and I were feeling particularly bruised in the heart by supposed gentlemen of our acquaintances, her older brother needed her to do a favor. He needed her to drive with him from his apartment in Connecticut to her mother's house, also in Connecticut. Then, once she was there, keep her occupied while her snuck his old motorcycle out of the barn and parked it up the street out of sight. His mother and his wife were against him driving it and had locked it up. But he promised, to give her rides on it (plus me) if we helped him. What 23 year-old doesn't want to ride on a motorcycle? Well, my best friend thought I was pretty good with chatting her mother up so we went down to spend the weekend at her brother and sister-in-law's. My best friend's mother lives in one of those great old Greek revival farmhouses with the series attached buildings until you reach a barn. We drove the to the house on Saturday morning. While her mother made tea, her brother disapeared through the kitchen door that led to all of the attached barns. We kept her mother totally engaged while he got the motorcycle out. He came back, joined us for tea and then we left. We drove her brother to where he had deposited the motorcycle and then we were off. Once we reached his place, he took us for rides. He said we had done so well, we earned a treat. That night he took us to a real live biker bar in New London (I think) and ordered us "longnecks". We were not wearing biker clothes. We were wearing Boston clothes. I had on a tartan skirt above the knee, patent leather pumps with black grosgrain bows, black stockings, a sweater, and pearls. It about 2 hours into our visit to the biker bar, when my best friend and I were sitting on a pool table, swinging our legs, talking to very attractive bikers with all of their teeth plus bandannas wrapped around their heads while smoking Camels -- the bikers had tried to play pool with us but had abandoned the game once they saw we couldn't actually shoot pool no matter how hard we had tried and thought chatting us up was a better use of our time-- when her brother walked up and said "Yeah, you two have bruised hearts."
It was one day when we were experiencing a lull in our work and reading the NYTimes, when my best friend noticed a tiny little ad for roundtrip airfares to Tokyo for $600 on some obscure commercial carrier. Flights to Tokyo at that point on real airplanes began at about $1800. She said, "Hey let's go visit your dad." I said "ok". So, we took three weeks off from work and went to visit my dad. We started our journey with a send-off of friends from our club at the bar of the Copley Square Hotel. I remember one guy who had known me almost my whole life asking what our plans were. "None." was my response. He asked if my dad was meeting us at the airport. "I don't know. I left a message with his secretary but he never called back to confirm." At this point my guy friend's concern grew enormously. "What will you do if he's not there?" he asked. "I've got a Visa card and overseas they never check the balance. If he's not there, then we'll take a taxi to the Imperial Hotel and get a room. In the morning we'll call the American Embassy and have them find him for us." Having a dad you could not count on had long taught me to always be prepared. "Are you sure you want to get on this plane?" he asked. "Yes." He ordered us a cab and we flew to NYC. There we were met by a guy I had riden horses with since I was 12. He and his friends took us out on the town. After about 2 hours of sleep, we flew to Montreal. There, I remember calling my roommate to say hi and prove we had made it out of the country. She told me the Irish Catholic Holy Cross -educated investment banker I had been trying so darn hard to catch the eye of had called to wish me a pleasant trip. I almost cried. Then my best friend suggested sending him a postcard from Montreal so we went off in search of a postcard and a Canadian stamp. Then we boarded another plane to Toronto. At Toronto, we boarded another plane. That plane that had an entire Canadian hockey team as well as the Canadian Olympic Apline Ski Team on it all bound for Tokyo. At Vancouver, we were forced to disembark and while they readied the plane to jump the Pacific, the hockey team bought their full legal allotment of duty-free liquor. After re-boarding the plane, they proceeded to consume it. A few hours into the flight acoss the sea, we witnessed the stewardesses being chased up and down the aisles by the hockey players. They were pinching the stewardesses' bottoms. And the stewardesses loved it. Then, when I needed to use the ladies' room the hockey team's manager went for mine. He missed because I swung around so swiftly and tried to clock him one in the cheek. He ducked and I missed him. Then he announced with an Irish brogue "Laddies, stay away from that one." while pointing at me. Then employing his Irish blarney, he told me he fancied women who knew how to hit a man. Then his favorite stewardess, a plump one, came by with the drinks cart. He offered to drive it for her and before you knew it he had commandeered it right back to his "laddies". Ah, the joys of flying steerage...
We finally landed in Tokyo to see my dad was waiting for us. My best friend and I went on to spend three weeks lost in Japan. It was there, while wandering around among millions and millions of Japanese, that I first realised there really was a God who had his hand firmly on my shoulder. Because if there wasn't, my best friend and I would still be trying to find our way back to Boston some 21 years later.
A few years later, when the job offer with a Detroit ad firm came up and I took it, I promised my best friend it was just for one year. Then I would be back in Boston. She was very sad I left and I was sad to leave her. Then, I met P and never went back. Despite the distance, she and I have remained best friends.
Last Lent, Mr. P and I went to church to participate in the Stations of the Cross. I cannot recall what form we used. But the meditation on the Station were Jesus first fell was for those souls who receive blows in life they are unable to get up from. In my quiet moments since then that meditation has haunted me as it seems I know far more people who have remained fallen from the blows in their lives than those that have been able to get up. It is very hard to get up from blows. And some blows are harder than other blows. That meditation has underscored the need for praying for people who receive terrible blows.
This morning I awoke to an email. My best friend's niece, the flower girl in her wedding and the eldest child (12 years old) of her brother that took us to a biker bar all those years ago, has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She flew with her mother to Memphis yesterday where she will undergo 6 weeks of radiation and then follow-up treatment. This is the kind of blow that people do not get up from. I want to see this entire family get up from this one. It is all in God's hands. Please if you are a praying sort, lift this little girl and her entire family up in your prayers. They really need them.
Thanks.
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