A wasted life?
My father was just here for three days and we went hiking together. Yesterday morning he asked me, “Whatever happened to So and So? I know she died young, but what happened to her? What did she do with her life?”
So and So was my best friend, my only girlfriend, from the time I was fourteen years old. I know what happened to So and So.
“You mean Meryl?” I asked and he nodded. “She died six, maybe seven, years ago. She died of heart failure, alone, in her kitchen. After a few days, a delivery man found her. She was cremated and somebody scattered her ashes on the mountain behind her trailer.”
“But what did she do with her life?” my father asked. “Did she ever graduate from high school? She was a bright girl. Did she go to college? Did she ever marry? Did she have children?”
“No, she never did any of those things.”
“But what did she do?”
“She lived with a few different guys. She worked as a waitress from time to time. I don’t really know because she didn’t want to keep in touch with me, at least not much after I got married (the first time). Everything I know about her adult life I heard from Pat.”
“Pat Fitzwilliam?”
“Yeah, Pat Fitzwilliam.”
“How did he know?”
“Because he was best friends with Meryl’s old boyfriend, Wayne.”
“Whatever happened to Wayne?”
“He died of a drug overdose years ago. He was maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. Pat stayed in touch with Meryl after Wayne died.”
“Wasn’t she a good artist?”
“Yeah, dad, she was an amazing artist, and she was a good writer. And she was beautiful, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”
“But why would she waste her life like that? Why didn’t she ever make anything of herself?”
I shrugged. “She had a sad life. Her mother died of a brain tumor when she was twelve. Her father was an abusive alcoholic and she had to put him in a nursing home when he was in his late forties and she was just eighteen.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“When I came home one Christmas from Utah. I think I was twenty-one. We went to a bar and had a couple beers. She’d come in from Colorado to visit her dad. That was the last time I saw her.”
“What did you two talk about?”
Funny how I still remember what we talked about. We discussed the reasons she didn’t like my new husband (now ex-husband). She told me I deserved better. She said she had no desire to marry or have children. She thanked me for keeping all her secrets, for remaining silent when she ran away at the age of sixteen and vanished for two years. I was the only person on the planet, aside from the older man she ran off with, who knew where she was. I kept her secret despite the fact that her father forced me down to the police station time and time again for questioning. I figured she was in a much better place.
“What did we talk about? Nothing much.”
That night with Meryl was the last night I ever smoked a cigarette or got stoned or even shared a pitcher of beer with anyone. As young teenagers, Meryl and I both lived through some of the worst moments of our lives. My life got worse for several years after our last night together, hers got better for a while, and then the reverse happened. Mine got better, hers got worse, and she died. She was the blond, statuesque beauty, the talented, enigmatic, imaginative muse - every man’s wet dream…I was the dorky, glasses-wearing, flat-chested, shy, majorly fucked up tomboy. I never expected to make it past thirty. She never made it to forty.
“What a wasted life,” my dad said. “She vanished from the earth without a trace.”
Her father is dead. Pat Fitzwilliam commited suicide. There’s only me to remember her. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. And when I’m gone, they’ll be no one left on this planet who’ll know Meryl was ever here. Her only footprint? A book of poetry she sent me years ago. She wrote a note inside the front cover. Yeah, that’s a wasted life.
Don’t tell me to write a story about it - already did. Rejection slips up the wazoo.
Next ten books to take to the moon:
1. Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay
2. The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols
3. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin
4. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
5. A Game of Thrones, the entire series, by George R. R. Martin
6. Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks
7. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
8. Ahab’s Wife, by Sena J. Naslund
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
10. A Song for Arbonne, by Guy Gavriel Kay
