The Last Best Friend
By Mary Ann McGuigan
I should be a pro by now at navigating a first day at school. I’ve attended thirteen different grammar schools, spent much of my life as the new girl, the one who doesn’t know which kids have sweaty hands, which ones will steal your test answers.
But this is different. This is college, a small inner-city Jesuit commuter school attended mainly by Catholic high school graduates, almost entirely male. Everyone seems to know where they’re going and who’ll be there waiting. Except me. My self-esteem is about what you’d expect from a kid who grew up in an Irish war zone. I’m a trembling mess of nerves, who wants to hide behind a tree, except the campus has only one, almost as skinny as I am.
After a ninety-minute bus commute—my mom moved us out of Jersey City just in time for my freshman year—I found my way to my first class, but now it’s lunchtime, and I’m hungry and unsettled, standing outside the door of the only cafeteria, a huge barn of a room with noisy crowded tables that have no place for someone at a loss for what to say. I can’t open the door. I can’t. Through the glass I see girls talking and laughing with guys I can’t imagine ever noticing me. I look the part, long straight hair, tight bell bottoms, hardly any makeup. But I have too much baggage to believe a world so sure of itself might welcome me.
When two boys exit, I stand there, frozen, then step aside and pretend I have to consult my class schedule. That’s when I hear her say my name—one of the many things we have in common. I met Maryann over the summer, at a job tutoring little inner-city kids who were under the impression I come from a family with more money than theirs. The kids enjoyed us both, mainly because we were not exactly sticklers for the rules. Maryann would make sure they did most of the work, but when they got restless, she knew when to stop. She was as relaxed with the kids as she was with me. I never felt the need to make stuff up with her, the way I did with the girls in high school, Jewish girls with closed sororities and families that could send them to the best schools.
I remember one day Sandy Lefkowitz complaining that her mother had made roast beef again for dinner and she was sick of it. Others chimed in with epicurean complaints of their own. When my turn came, I made something up about meatloaf. The truth was there’d been nothing in the house to eat the night before. With Maryann, I didn’t have to be anyone other than myself—with my temper and my contradictions, the good and the not so good.
“So how’s your first day going?”
I know it’s Maryann before I look up. She has an unmistakable voice, somewhat nasal but lilting. And she has a look about her, in her eyes, as if she knows what’s really going on. You don’t have to spend a lot of time with her to see how she absorbs facts like a sponge—she told me Aeschylus died when a tortoise fell on his head—and how caring she is. When the first graders we tutored got tired, they snuggled on her lap.
“Pretty good,” I say, with a shrug. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hear more.
“You having lunch?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty hungry.” I can’t help smiling, can’t believe how lucky I am that she appeared at this moment. We spend time together that day and nearly every day that follows. We’re like sisters.
We party hard, share the worst, celebrate all of it. Our crowd is on the wilder side, a rag-tag group of blue-collar nonconformists who sense what’s waiting in the years ahead will bridle us, make us lose sight of our best hopes. So we come close to the edge sometimes, but Maryann knows when to stop and I follow her lead. We marry the guys we’re seeing then. Her marriage lasts longer than mine, but hers breaks up before my second one ends. Sometimes months pass without a word, but we always find each other again, take up where we left off. When we talk about men, she laughs that laugh she has, the one that reminds me how little say we have in the way life goes.
Maryann tries not to fight with life. By that I don’t mean resignation or defeat, but rather an acceptance and ultimately an appreciation of what life is presenting you in that moment. It makes me believe that in the end, everything would be all right.
She and I are so different in this way. I rage against injustice—Viet Nam, my mom, men—and Maryann will gently point out that mostly you have to work with things the way they are. When we worked together tutoring, we saw that our students had what would be called ADD, but basically they were just kids who hated school. Well, it was 1968, and I arrived prepared to save the world. Maryann had no glorious agenda. She was just going to make some money and maybe help some kids. One day the little fellow I had was in no mood to do his homework. And I was losing patience. Maryann saw what was happening, sat down with us, closed the book for a while, and let him talk. As I recall, we didn’t get a whole lot of the homework done, but I got to know the kid, learned he had three sisters and three brothers, just like me; hated getting up early, just like me; wore his older sibling’s hand-me-downs, just like me.
Maryann isn’t much for traveling, always busy with her kids or working. She’s a librarian now, the perfect job for someone with her kind of patience, her conviction that answers are waiting to be found. So I’m surprised when she agrees to spend a weekend in Tarrytown with me. At lunch on Sunday before we head home, she seems ill at ease. I ask her what’s wrong and she tells me finally that they found a growth on her pancreas but that she’s had surgery and there’s nothing to worry about.
But there is. Months go by before I see her again and each time I do she looks thinner, more ghostly. I press for answers, but not too hard, and she insists she’s on the mend. I believe her. I need to. I need her. I find out later that she told everyone the same tale, even her children.
She stays busy, preparing for her daughter Andrea’s wedding. She’s good at parenting, providing her children what they need to find their way. I’ve complained more than once to her that the demands of children and work and writing are overwhelming. Finally, in her quiet, honest way she says maybe when we try to do too many things, we don’t do them justice. I think it’s unkind, because I assume she means the hours I spend writing aren’t what I should be doing. She’s right, of course. I’ve tried more than once to put it aside, but its grip is too strong.
I arrive at her daughter’s wedding in plenty of time, hoping Maryann and I can have a moment to share the excitement, but I can’t find her. As I wait in the vestibule, her brother approaches me, looking serious. “We had to take Maryann to the hospital this morning.”
I struggle to stay calm.
“She got pretty weak, from the pain, I think.”
I think of her disappointment, the photo she keeps in her wallet of the first day Andrea stood up on her own.
“We’re going to the hospital after the reception. I hope you’ll come with us.”
Andrea walks down the aisle, trying to smile, but the slope of her shoulders betrays the weight she carries. Later, I stand at the foot of the hospital bed, with Maryann’s brother, her son. The bride in her flowing gown with her new husband stands near Maryann, who can’t stop smiling.
We speak on the phone the next day. There has been some talk of her being allowed to go home, but that has changed because of yet another complication. As she tells me this, I don't say what I really think, but she knows me so well that she must sense right through the phone line my anger and frustration with the way things are going for her. I ask her when she thinks they’ll let her go home. She sighs. “Mary Ann, I think we have to leave it in god’s hands now.” True to form, I say, “Well I’m not too impressed with god this week.” And she laughs the way she does when I’m pulling so hard on life’s leash.
I fear I’ll never be able to fill the place Maryann has in my life. But already, every now and then, her ability to accept and appreciate people comes out in me. I’m able to offer the comfort she offers me, and help someone believe that everything will be all right.
When I return to work, I tell my boss about the wedding, the hospital visit, our phone conversation. He asks me what kind of cancer Maryann has, and when I answer pancreatic, he tells me I should take the rest of the day off and go see her. I don’t like the quiet urgency in his voice, but I go to the hospital, spend the rest of the day with her.
She can’t speak, but I hold her hand—remembering the way she’d hold her cigarette—let the ash lengthen at its tip, precarious—quietly observing what life might try next. I pray she won’t linger in pain, that she’ll know when to stop.
END
Author Bio: Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction has appeared in The Rumpus, Pithead Chapel, Word Riot, and other journals. Her fiction has appeared in The Sun, North American Review, and other journals. Her collection, "Pieces,” includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. “That Very Place,” her new collection, is due out in 2025 with Unsolicited Press. Mary Ann’s young-adult novels are ranked among the best books for teens by the Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library. Her novel, “Where You Belong,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. For more about her fiction, visit www.maryannmcguigan.com.