One Last Heart-to-Heart

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From elementary school on, my friend Meredith enlisted me as her sole confidante. The plump, pretty daughter of two conventionally minded parents, she talked with them about math class or Girl Scouts or what she most longed for at Christmas. Any topic more personal, we both knew, managed to upset their orderly, defended world so that they tended to lash out, confused and angry. I remember sitting with Meredith in the family living room after school, bored and fidgeting on the maroon velveteen sofa, while she engaged in spirited but severely edited conversation with her mother. I hungered for the moment when we could both sprint upstairs to her bedroom and talk about the important stuff, our feelings, our friends, our impressions. Her younger brothers, affable enough in their own ways, were miniature versions of their father—impatient with any sign of vulnerability or sentiment, quick to make fun of our “girly” concerns, patronizingly confident in their superior sense of logic. So I became the keeper of Meredith’s inner life.

I knew everything worth knowing about her. She trusted me with secrets: which boys she had crushes on, how much her parents paid for their beach house, when she’d bought her first box of tampons, what kind of cigarettes her little brother Teddy hid in his backpack. We spent the night at each other’s houses, where we read bits of our diaries aloud to one another, or analyzed the dance we’d gone to the weekend before. Later, we sat in coffee shops recounting the first thrilling, confusing dates with boys. Though no one could have pried it out of me, I always knew exactly what Meredith weighed and what she wished she weighed, what she ate for breakfast on weekdays (fresh orange juice, cinnamon toast and one scrambled egg), what kind of nightgown she wore to bed (pink flannel, with a ribbon down the front) and which of her brothers had gotten to second base with the prettiest cheerleader on the squad (Teddy definitely, and possibly Roger as well, though he might’ve been bragging). Most private of all, I knew she still slept with Harry, her teddy bear from second grade, through her senior year in high school.