FALLING OUT
My ex-friend Rachel has left Sacramento and moved to Boston. I know this only because a mutual friend of Rachel’s and mine passed the information on to me. For the last two years of her stay in Sacramento, Rachel wasn’t talking to me. The incident that triggered our falling out still strikes me as trivial. On Friday nights, Rachel often met Julie and me for dinner at some local restaurant or another. On the night of our falling out we were scheduled to meet at a local Indian restaurant at six-thirty. But Rachel telephoned our home at six o’clock to suggest a change of plan. She had called in sick at work that day in order to look for another job. Now she was reluctant to go out to dinner lest she be seen by one of her co-workers and her sickness be exposed as a fraud. Rachel wanted to know if we could order a pizza delivered to our house, and then she would drive over and eat dinner here with us. Just before Rachel called, Julie had complained to me that she was tired and wished we didn’t have plans to go out for dinner. It was Julie who took the call from Rachel. And when Rachel informed Julie that she didn’t want to be seen dining out at a restaurant, Julie used this as an excuse to simply call off the get-together entirely. In a very nice way, she told Rachel that she was tired and, if we weren’t going to be dining out, she’d rather just skip dinner and go to bed. Rachel sounded disappointed, but not inordinately so. She didn’t raise a fuss when Julie nixed the pizza plan. But after that night, she never returned another call from Julie or me, and she never really socialized with us again. In 2008, at Christmastime, we bumped into her while attending a showing of White Christmas at the Crest Theatre. She was cordial and chatted with us a bit before the movie started. But nothing was said about getting together later on. We saw her one more time, at a party hosted by a mutual friend, but I don’t believe we did more than nod and say hello to each other that time.
I was sorry to lose Rachel’s friendship. She was young and smart and energetic. She was also, like me, a writer. She aspired to be a successful author of young-adult fantasy novels. I still have manuscript copies of a couple of her unpublished novels. She gave them to me to read and critique. Although I am not well versed in contemporary young-adult fantasy literature (I’ve never read a Harry Potter novel nor seen any of the movies), I liked Rachel’s novels and believed that, with a little polish, they just might find a publisher. I don’t have a lot of friends who are aspiring novelists, and so I try to hold on to the few I do have, no matter how eccentric their behavior might be (and, as I’ve mentioned before, most of the writers I know are at least half crazy). Rachel’s departure from my life left a gaping hole in my literary circle. And it was a rather small circle to begin with.
Rachel isn’t the only friend Julie and I have fallen out with in the last few years. For much of the past decade Julie and I spent a lot of time with a married couple whom I will call Al and Janet. I have known Janet since we were schoolchildren. After high school we kept in touch sporadically. But when Julie and I moved from Placerville to Sacramento in 2004, I rekindled my friendship with Janet. Pretty soon, she and her husband Al were joining Julie and me almost weekly for some sort of entertainment. Together the four of us went out to movies, restaurants, sporting events, plays, parties, and other events. Janet worked at a radio station and was always getting us free passes to movie premiers. For three years or more, Julie and I rarely had to pay for a movie ticket. In 2005, Julie and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Europe with Al and Janet. All four of us had a great time. But about three years ago, the good times came to an end. All four of us had been invited to my brother Steven’s wedding up in Eugene, Oregon. A week or two before the wedding, at a get-together at my sister Cynthia’s house, Janet made a comment that seemed uncalled for. She announced that Steven’s wedding would probably be a particularly emotional event for my mother since Steven had always been her favorite child. This struck me as nonsense, since my mother has never shown any sort of favoritism towards any of her children. It struck my sister Brenda even harder. She was hurt by the comment and told my sister Cynthia so after the get-together was over. As a result, Cynthia called Janet and asked her to please not repeat the comment at Steven’s wedding because it wasn’t true and might hurt some of our other siblings’ feelings the way it had hurt Brenda’s. But Janet blithely informed Cynthia that my mother’s favoritism of Steven was so obvious that everyone in the family was surely already aware of it. She said that she had no intention of keeping quiet about the matter at Steven’s wedding. Since I was very close to Janet at that time, Cynthia asked me if I could persuade her not to raise this painful subject at the wedding. Not wishing to confront Janet directly, I mentioned to her husband, Al, that the subject was a sore one and it would be nice if Janet wouldn’t bring it up at the wedding. Al told me, “Janet had no intention of ever mentioning it again until Cynthia called her and told her not to. That really irritated Janet. Nobody tells Janet what she can and cannot say. You can be sure that she’ll raise the topic at the wedding, if only to prove to Cynthia that she doesn’t like to be ordered around.”
And that was the end of our friendship. Al and Janet did indeed show up in Eugene for the wedding. And she did indeed raise the subject of my mother’s (nonexistent) favoritism towards her youngest child. Fortunately, the comment was ignored and quickly faded away. But Julie and I were angered by Janet’s behavior. When we got back to Sacramento we stopped taking calls from Al and Janet. Eventually they got the hint and quit trying to contact us. Three years passed during which we never once saw either Al or Janet. After a year or so I began to feel guilty about the split. I have known Janet all my life. She has her faults, but so do we all. Julie and I talked occasionally about seeking a rapprochement with Al and Janet. Several times we were on the verge of calling them and trying to put the relationship back together, but inevitably something prevented us from carrying out our intentions. Two weeks ago, however, we finally began the reconciliation process. Cynthia was arranging a party for my Sister Shauna, who was coming down from Portland for a visit, and I asked her if she could please invite Al and Janet to the get-together. As it turned out, Al had to work that night. But Janet showed up, and Julie and I had a good time chatting with her and catching up on three years worth of personal history. None of us even mentioned the wedding incident.
In years past, Julie and I always celebrated Valentine’s Day with Al and Janet. The four of us would have dinner together at some Sacramento restaurant and then go to a movie theater to take in a romantic comedy. Some new romantic comedy always debuts on Valentine’s Day weekend. One year it was Something’s Gotta Give. Another year it was Fifty First Dates. This year, the big Valentine’s Day release is called, predictably enough, Valentine’s Day. It was directed by Garry (Pretty Woman; The Runaway Bride) Marshall and features an all-star cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Shirley McLaine, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jaime Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Patrick Dempsey, Queen Latifah, and about a dozen other marquee names. Before the end of our reconciliation meeting, Julie and I had arranged to meet Janet and Al for dinner and a viewing of Valentine’s Day on Saturday, February 13 – Valentine’s Day Eve. The next day, however, I received an email from Janet informing me that Al had a scheduling conflict that would prevent him and Janet from joining us on the 13th. She asked me if we could get together on some later weekend. I told her that was fine with me. I don’t know if perhaps Al is still angry about the three-year hiatus in our friendship and is not eager to seek a reconciliation or if his scheduling conflict is real. I hope the latter is true, but time will tell.
For about a year – I think it was mid 2005 to mid 2006 – Julie and I were really close to one other couple besides Al and Janet. This other couple was Dawn and Jeff. Dawn works for the same company as Julie. At that time, I was doing a lot of notary work for the same company. Dawn and Julie and I saw a lot of each other at work. But in mid 2005 Dawn and her husband Jeff sold their house in El Dorado Hills and moved into a rental in McKinley Park. They wanted to rent a house for a while until they could decide which part of the Sacramento region they wanted to buy their next home in. Julie and I live in Land Park, which is just a mile or so from the McKinley Park area, and so, soon after Dawn and Jeff’s move, we began spending a lot of time with them. When we weren’t spending our Saturday nights with Al and Janet, we were spending them with Dawn and Jeff. We had some great times together for about a year. We tried to talk Dawn and Jeff into buying a house somewhere near midtown Sacramento, so that the four of us could continue to socialize on a regular business. Alas, when Dawn and Jeff finally found their dream home, it was located out in the Serrano development at El Dorado Hills. We met them for a few friendly dinners after their move. We made vows to stay in touch. But after we were no longer geographically connected, the friendship just began to fade. An entire year passed during which we never saw each other socially. And then, two years after moving into their dream home, Dawn and Jeff split up. By then, the glory days of our friendship were so far in the past, that I didn’t feel comfortable calling either of them and offering my sympathy and support. It’s sad when a friendship ends suddenly – the way our friendship with Rachel ended. But it’s just as sad when it dies of benign neglect. I don’t think Julie and I are ever again likely to be close to Rachel or Dawn or Jeff. But perhaps our friendship with Al and Janet can rise like a Phoenix from its own ashes. I guess we will know in a month or so.
One of the first personal things Rachel told me about herself was that she suffered from what she called “Lariam nights.” A few years before I met her, Rachel had traveled to some tropical part of the world. Before the trip her doctor had prescribed an anti-malarial medicine called Lariam. The medicine worked. Rachel did not contract malaria during her stay in the tropics. But after she returned she began to suffer some disturbing side effects of the drug. The most alarming of these were nocturnal hallucinations. Rachel used to wake up in her apartment late at night and find it full of people. Since she lived alone, this tended to be an unsettling experience. At first she thought she was losing her mind. She visited a doctor who informed her that Lariam is known to produce bizarre side effects including vivid hallucinations. But Rachel was actually lucky. Some Lariam users had suffered complete psychotic breakdowns. And in the summer of 2002, four soldiers at Fort Bragg murdered their wives after suffering from what their defense attorney’s claimed were Lariam-related psychotic episodes. According to a report on the CBS News website, “In scientific terms, Lariam can cause neuro-psychiatric adverse events. In plain language, it can make lose your mind.” Rachel didn’t lose her mind, but she lost a lot of sleep on account of those hallucinations. The last time I talked to her, the hallucinations were still a problem, although their frequency was diminishing. She’s off in Boston now, and I hope she left her midnight visitors behind in Sacramento. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, I find myself troubled by memories of the friends with whom I’ve fallen out through the years. These midnight visitations are not nearly as scary or dangerous as Rachel’s. But they haunt me nonetheless. And Rachel, whose nights were once haunted by ghosts, now sometimes haunts my own nights. I hope she is well.