Friends

   

Jill

 In 8th grade, I had a best friend, Jill Hartmann. School mornings I'd walk to her house from my family home on the SE corner of Wilcox and Christy, and together we'd make our way to Susan R Buder Elementary. Jill was smart, artistic, and a brilliantly perceptive girl. We had met the previous year and soon became the best of friends. As is the often the case with best friends, we could see the spark in each other's eyes, recognized it; we got each other. We had both been social outcasts but now had an ally. Before Jill came along, I had been told by a classmate, her eyes lowered - nose held high, that I read too much, and they didn't want me to hang out with them anymore. I was stunned; how was that bad, was it even possible? Not being able to figure that out proved the point I suppose. I spent the summer between 7th and 8th grade at the library, riding my bike alone to the many parks in south St. Louis, babysitting neighbor kids, and at home listening to albums I checked out from Buder Branch. The Sounds of Silence album etched itself into my brain. I was a rock and island, too.

    Then, Jill transferred from St. Mary Magdalene to Buder. We walked home from school the same way, up Landsdown, across Brannon, down Devonshire. I met her beautiful mom, Barb, and her cute little brother, Craig. Her mom had a strong sense of design, and their apartment, which looked like nothing from the outside, was beautiful. I immediately filed away several of her mom's style techniques; hang pictures lower on the walls, pay attention to tone and texture in a room's palette, she loved warm Mediterranean tones. Jill had her own little studio in her bedroom which she shared with Hasmer, her hamster, and the little room smelled of linseed oil. I still have a painting of a cat on a braided rug that she painted for me that year, it's a cherished possession. We loved antiques, clothes, shoes, we both had stylish mothers. She had an aunt who was connected to Nina shoe company, so Jill had many a fine pair of shoes, but, alas, her foot was smaller than mine, so we couldn't share shoes, but we shared clothes, often. One day when we were raiding each other's closets, I noticed several of her poor boy tops had been patched in the same spot on each shirt. She told me the tops had been her moms and that her dad, during their divorce, had cut the hearts out of each of those tops, but her mom had carefully repaired them. I couldn't bring myself to borrow such a sad shirt. The thing to do was wear a poor boy with short or long sleeves under a sleeveless poor boy, hip-hugger jeans, or plush colorful brushed denim pants, desert boots or in Jill's case fantastic wedge heels. We loved music, I remember playing Alice Cooper albums on her mom's little turntable in their living room. Jill wasn't supposed to have anyone over after school, even me, but we'd break the rule. I got her busted once or twice because I did not put down the lid of the toilet. We saved babysitting money to eat at Mi Pueblito on Gravois, sometimes walking there barefoot, which I can barely stand to think about...

poor boy tops

    Jill's dad, Jim, was a very funny man, with a strongly ironic, dry-humored presence. He'd pick us up sometimes to spend the weekend at his house. We'd listen to music, and eat the good food his young wife Marlene made, walking around South County. Marlene spoke to us frankly about sex, something neither of our own mothers did. I liked Marlene. Jill's mom would occasionally take us to exotic places, like Cyrano's, for dessert, or to hear classical music by the Pops Orchestra at the park, where we'd people watch and eat pizza. A few times she took us to Balaban's, I really wanted to try Barb's Bloody Bull, a drink she ordered in her distinctive clipped voice. She made it sound incredible, but I didn't really like alcohol then. Jill liked it a little too much, eventually. Please don't think I judge her for that. She was an incredible human being, coping with her trials and tribulations with incredible insight and humor. Always able to see bad situations in a perspective that sapped the poison right out of them. I honestly believe she was close to saintliness.

   One of those things you might realize at the time but are too young to work out is how difficult it is for two girlfriends to like the same boy. Jill definitely took the backseat in expressing her feelings for a boy we both liked in 8th grade. She was gracious enough to be happy for me when he became my square dance partner. In my mind, since she wasn't vocal about how much she liked him, she didn't like him as much as I did, so I didn't need to consider her feelings. Later, I realized that it was only because she was much more thoughtful and considerate than I was. Neither of us had had a boyfriend, and we were both hoping to meet one who would live up to the album cover romances we held tightly to, in our heads. Since 4th grade, I'd had one unrequited crush on a boy, after another, and boys that liked me weren't the ones I liked. I was extremely self-conscious, though, so that was fine. But even if I liked a boy, talking to them was excruciating. In fact, a few years earlier, a boy that liked me had come outside my house one summer day and called out, "Oh, Dede", which was a thing then. You didn't knock on the door or ring the bell, you stood outside a kid's house and called out like that. I was thrown in a panic when I heard him, I knew whose voice it was, a nice and smart boy, cute, too, but I crawled under my bed. Later, another boy started coming over and I literally ran down the street from him, hearing him say, bewilderedly, "what's wrong, I thought you like me?" The summer after 8th grade Jill would meet a boy a few years older, that I immediately disliked, and the feeling was mutual. At first I was envious of the amount of attention he was bombarding her with,  but it wasn't long before he showed signs of possessiveness that I quickly perceived would become problematic for Jill. I had a very strong instinct for detecting crazy.  By the end of the summer, she could see it, too.  We developed a new dynamic that would eventually cause friction...me being protective and somewhat envious, and Jill letting me get by with it. We awaited the start of high school eagerly. But it wasn't long  before Jill's mom would take her children and move to California with her boyfriend. It was devastating, and I remember making myself numb by throwing myself into Kurt Vonnegut novels. We wrote each other and missed each other. But time and distance would eventually do their work, and by the time she moved back to St. Louis, I had a baby. The good news is that we did eventually work on the lessons our friendship had brought to each of us; I for one learned so much from her profound sense of compassion and wisdom. More on that another day.

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