I was paying bills one afternoon, writing checks. Then it dawned on me why the date I kept writing over and over looked oddly familiar. I picked up the phone to call Molly and wish her a happy birthday.
“How did you remember?” she asked.
“Some things you just don’t forget,” I said.
We spent an hour or so catching up and trading news, filling in the gaps. We weren’t in much contact these days and hadn’t been since a falling-out 10 years before. There was no fight, or even a disagreement between us — it was one of those misunderstandings that just took on a life of its own. Except for a few notes exchanged by mail when there was a death in each of our families, we didn’t speak for six years.
It’s not uncommon that friends lose touch for extended periods: Kids arrive on the scene, a new job requires travel, a divorce complicates everything. But a long, strained silence between friends has its own architecture. It forms a foundation, then walls, then structural supports that are self-sufficient. Over time, the silence becomes a fortress through which there’s no entry.
Molly and I had built such a fortress purely by staying out of touch. So when I sent her a note, six years later, my point was not to rebuild the friendship; it was to start the demolition process.
At first we spoke nervously, then candidly, and managed to clear a path. But how could we figure out what happened six years before, when it was never really clear at the time?
We couldn’t.
Instead we relied on the good faith of an old friendship that had stumbled on some unexpected fault line.
A few days after we spoke, I received an invitation to a family party Molly was throwing. Hand-written on the front were the words, “You’re always welcome.” In the scheme of things, her words seemed more wishful than true. But if normalcy was not yet possible, graciousness was a fine stand-in.
Over the next few years, Molly and I spoke and visited on several occasions. While the visits became warmer with time, the simple ease of our early friendship was never really restored. I always sensed that our miscue had left some residual doubt. So I was glad when, on her birthday, the conversation had a different tone.
I’ll never really know what caused the tangle with Molly, or why it spiraled into something else and hardened into years of silence. Nor am I sure where we are right now on the spectrum of friendship ”“ whether we’re at some fixed point at a safe distance, or moving in some clear direction.
Meanwhile, Molly and I continue to chat on occasion, our newsy, catch-up talks an easy medium. The sturdy friendship we had in the past is gone. Only time will tell whether two old friends, still fond of each other, will build on the loss.
(Joan Silverman is a writer in Kennebunk. This article ran earlier in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)
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