My Very Best Friend (56 page)

The blessing was given.

We had asked people to bring their favorite flower to drop into Bridget’s grave.

The Stanleys and their wives dropped carnations. The Stanleys said, together, “Go with God, Bridget.”

Rowena dropped a yellow rose and a rock necklace. Kenna dropped daffodils and a note, written on her drug prescription pad, that said, “I love you, Bridget.” Olive dropped tulips wrapped with a knitted red scarf with a butterfly on it. The butterfly had two blue tears in its eyes.

Gitanjali dropped a handful of spices and said a prayer in Hindi, her palms together. Malvina dropped white baby’s breath and stood there as other people passed by. I heard her say, choked up, “I’m sorry, Bridget. I’m sorry.”

Lorna and Laddy stood on either side of the grave, then tipped over a sheet filled with wildflowers. They were both crying, ashamed. I could tell by their flushed faces.

Ben Harris dropped part of a honeysuckle vine.

The reporter, Carston Chit, dropped in red gladiolas and said, “Peace, Bridget. Courageous woman.”

The flowers piled up over her coffin. People hugged us, wished us well, cried.

We waited until everyone was gone, then Pherson took out Queen Bridget’s crown from a bag he’d brought and placed it on her coffin.

Toran dropped in a handful of her colored pencils, his hands trembling.

I dropped in my letter to her. It was short, in a pink envelope.

I love you, Bridget. I will always miss you. You are my very best friend. Love, Charlotte.

What else was there to say?

Silver Cat trotted up and looked in the grave. I picked her up, so relieved to see her again, and held her close in my arms. Toran put an arm around me and petted her, Bridget’s cat.

Silver Cat let out a wailing scream-meow. I swear that cat is a person with fur.

Before I left, I walked over to my father’s grave for the first time. He had a view of the sunrise. My father had loved sunrises. A whole new day, he would tell me, then he would launch into a song or a legend or a story.

“I love you, Dad. I miss you.” I kneeled on the ground, near his gravestone. “I have missed you every day. Your voice still rings in my ears, your advice, your love, your laugh, your bagpipes. I can still smell you. You smelled like Scotland. Like the wind, the North Sea, scones. I can’t believe you’ve been gone for twenty years. Seems like yesterday. It seems like forever. You have been with me my whole life.” I put my hands together. “Dad, the unicorn came for Bridget. I need you to watch over her for me. Take care of her, tell her your legends and stories. She needs you.”

Just then the wind lifted my hair and I heard bagpipes, faint, light. It was “Scotland the Brave,” my father’s favorite. I closed my eyes as it grew louder, as if my father were stepping closer to me, his kilt swaying in the wind. I let my tears fall on his grave.

Sometimes the people who are gone come to us. I don’t know how, there is no scientific explanation for it, but they do. You must only be watching for it, listening closely.

ST. AMBROSE DAILY NEWS

A LETTER FROM CHIEF CONSTABLE
BEN HARRIS

To the village of St. Ambrose,

As all of you know, Bridget Ramsay passed away on Tuesday from AIDS. Bridget was one of our own, her family here in St. Ambrose for generations. She told her tragic story, with eloquence, here, in this paper. It brought tears to my eyes many times. As a man, I’m not afraid to say that.

These last months have been difficult for the village of St. Ambrose. We have wounds that may never heal. People took sides for or against Bridget, and they took them vociferously, sometimes with scant regard for others’ feelings, or for Bridget’s personal rights as a Scottish citizen.

It has caused much soul searching and pain for all of us, which is dwarfed by the pain that Bridget’s family and friends feel. We are, I believe, different people than who we were before Bridget returned home.

Friends, Bridget is not the only villager, the only Scotsman or Scotswoman, who will have AIDS. She was the first, that we know of, in St. Ambrose, but she will not be the last. How some treated her was abominable. They reacted with fear, judgment, and disdain, disregarding medical evidence that she was not contagious. This was extremely regrettable. Others embraced Bridget with open arms, gentleness, and compassion.

We must do better when this happens to us again. We need to do better. We will do better. Not only for the next AIDS victim but for all of us. How we treat others in their moments of crisis tells us much about ourselves.

I will miss Bridget. That she reached out to people who had done her wrong, that she designed a park for all of us in St. Ambrose, that she donated her own money, in particular after what had occurred here, tells of a woman with integrity, a forgiving soul, and a love for the people of St. Ambrose.

When you enter Bridget’s Park, A Place for Everyone, this spring, pause. The scent of the roses blooming will come to you. The flower beds will be a rainbow of color. The children will shout and laugh in the fountain, the orchestra will play from the gazebo, the trees will offer an oasis of shade, the grass a place for all of us to walk barefoot and relax.

Pause.

This park came to us as a gift from Bridget, with help from her brother, Toran; her best friend, Charlotte Mackintosh; her lifelong friend, Pherson Hameldon; and the villagers of St. Ambrose.

Pause.

Think of Bridget.

Thank Bridget.

Enjoy, as she meant for you to do.

Sincerely,

Chief Constable Ben Harris

St. Ambrose

I spent a lot of time thinking at our fort, on the beach, and in my mother’s garden. I repainted two of my mother’s birdhouses—one a log cabin, the other tall and skinny, blue, with a star on the roof—that I’d found under a pile of leaves.

Bridget had been my best friend. It had not been a normal best friend relationship where you would see each other, at least periodically. If I had been a more social person, less awkward, less of a loner, more trusting, I would have had other friends.

But I didn’t. I wrote my books and I wrote letters and looked forward to Bridget’s letters as I would a visit from a best friend. It’s sad, in many ways, I get that.

But between Bridget, my mother, a few quirky neighbors on the island, my work, and my cats, I was content enough. Terribly lonely and alone sometimes, but content.

Yet my friendship with Bridget was entirely false in many ways. She wasn’t even remotely truthful with me about her life. The letters she sent to me were fabricated, by and large. She wrote about the life she wished she had.

The only hobby I know of that she honestly loved, that I loved, was gardening, and she rarely did that.

She lied.

She lied by omission and she lied blatantly.

So was the friendship not a real friendship?

In many ways it wasn’t. We didn’t have truth and honesty between us; surely that is key in friendship.

But I understood why she lied. I wish she hadn’t, but she did. She was raped repeatedly as a teenager. She was impregnated by a rapist, a man posing as a priest. They took her baby away and put her in an insane asylum with the help of the rapist. Her father was a punitive, religious fanatic obsessed with her virginity, her mother a weak woman who drank too much.

It’s no wonder she reached for drugs. How was she to tell me that? It’s no wonder there were bad men in her life. How was she to tell me that? It’s no wonder her life imploded. How was she to tell me that?

Bridget wasn’t who I thought she was. She lied to keep me, and our friendship, above the disaster her life had become. I was the one light in her dark life. She danced with me in her head as I danced with her, as we danced together as children. She pretended. She escaped. I would miss her letters forever, miss knowing I had a friend.

I could not imagine my life without her.

She was still, and always would be, my very best friend.

20

“You haven’t written anything. All these months. In Scotland. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Be honest.”

“No, I haven’t.”

Maybelle Courten knew about Bridget’s death. I’d told her the minimum, but it had still been a long story. I gasped and choked and had the ugly cry through the whole thing. She listened. She was compassionate. She said, “Bridget’s your best friend in the whole world and she died. That sucks. I’m so sorry, Charlotte, I truly am.”

She sent a huge bouquet of yellow roses to me after our conversation.

But now we were back to her usual harangue.

“I know you needed time after Bridget’s death, but use how you feel in a book. Give those feelings to McKenzie Rae.”

“If I gave my feelings to McKenzie Rae, she would want to jump off a cliff.”

“Then make her want to jump off a cliff. At the end of Book Nine, she’s going to try to get back to her soul mate. Go from there. How does that happen? Where does she have to go? What does she have to do? Will it work, or does she go somewhere else in time? Back to the wagon trains, World War I, Vietnam . . . Why does McKenzie Rae Dean want to jump off a cliff?”

“Does she? I don’t know.”

“You have to know. It’s her life. You created her. Try this one on: You’ve got your man, now let McKenzie Rae have hers.”

“If I actually let McKenzie Rae find a way back to her soul mate, as I threatened to do at the end of Book Nine, as she’s going to attempt, that could end the series. Potentially. It would be so climactic, how could I backtrack out of there?”

“I don’t want you to give her up for selfish reasons. I make money off that gal. But you’re my friend and I want you to be happy, and this paralysis you’re feeling tells me that you’re about done with McKenzie Rae.”

I ran a hand through my hair and thought about that. I also thought about how nice it was to have hair that wasn’t fried and tangled.

The fog suddenly cleared in my head around the block of wood called writer’s block. The smoke dissipated. The haze dried up. The block broke. I felt . . . relief.

“Yes, that’s it. I’m done.”

“Then end her story. Give her the happy ending.”

“A happy ending? Is that realistic? I have never tried to wrap up McKenzie Rae’s life in sweetness. I think a happy ending would be a cliché, unrealistic, pandering.”

“Everyone wants a happy ending.”

“But we don’t all get it.”

“Sometimes we do. Shouldn’t McKenzie Rae?” She paused. “Shouldn’t you, with Toran?”

I thought about that while Maybelle shouted, “Eric, your teacher called today. I can’t believe it. You have an A in science! Excellent work, Einstein. Sheryl wants to talk to you, Charlotte. She wants to be a writer. Hopefully she won’t write about her hooker clothing. Can you talk to her?”

I could. Sheryl and I talked for a long time about writing. She was interested in historical fiction. I did not address her hooker clothing.

Afterward I sunk into the Adirondack chair on Toran’s deck. The sun sank, a golden orb on a string, an invisible hand letting it drop. Color whirled through the sky as if someone had stuck their finger in pastel paint and shaped it into a curlicue. Toran was walking toward me from the large red barn. Behind him was one of his tractors, his apple orchard, his rows of blueberries, and the tunnels that would hold the potatoes come fall.

I had my happy ending.

McKenzie Rae Dean should have hers.

I waved to my happy ending.

I unhooked my bra, then pulled up my new white lace shirt and flashed him.

I saw him laugh.

The celebration to officially open Bridget’s Park, A Place for Everyone, took place on Saturday at noon. It was officially winter but, miraculously, we had a sunny day, and the blue, scoopable sky had no clouds.

The red, blue, and yellow castle play structure was securely in place. The kids slid down the slides, bounced on the wood “drawbridges,” climbed up the ladders, and hid in the castle towers on the second story of the play structure. They raced from the platforms to the tunnels and scooted up a winding stairway to the lookout point. They laughed, they screamed, they called to each other. Bridget would have loved it.

Separate from the castle, there were three sets of swings, two long slides, and a merry-go-round, all filled with kids. The fountain was on, and kids were playing in the water, shooting up from the ground. It was too brisk to do this, but their parents had given in to their pleas and the kids were having a splendid time.

Couples strolled through rose gardens that would be a lush swoosh of color in the spring. There were people in the community garden at the end of the park, building raised beds for summer. They would later plant corn, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and other vegetables.

People rode their bikes along the cement path that wound all the way around the park, the old and the young, together. Blankets were on the grass for picnics.

Bagpipers and drummers, once again with Pherson and Toran, started the festivities. A local rock band played in the large gazebo, and up next was the St. Ambrose symphony. Later there would be traditional Scottish dances, and a local harpist and violinist.

True Scots, loving our food, were also having a village potluck, with tables sprawled across the park. I have never seen that much food.

I’d had Sandra make a castle cake, then had ordered two more flat sheets to go with it, again decorated with castles. The Gabbling Gobbling Garden Ladies had decorated the park with balloons and organized games for the kids.

Later in the day Toran would speak, and we would have a moment of silence for Bridget, but for now Toran and I sat on one of the many benches in the park and watched people. We held hands.