The Untitled Leap -- Chapter 5

In retrospect, Mary wished that she had told Laura about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sooner.

When the show originally aired, Mary considered her love of the show to be an adolescent regression that  she best keep to herself. She would mention it to Laura sometimes in passing, but never in detail.

“I like Buffy,” Mary said, “because we were both skinny blondes in Southern California, faced with  evil, and fighting it in our own way.”

The show was actually set in the fictional town of Sunnydale, but it had been filmed in Torrance, California, where Mary had spent her teenage years.  But then apparently the crew had been overly zealous in their demolition of the high school in the third season finale. The neighbors complained, and they had to shut down their production there.

She told Laura, “It was nice to see a skinny blonde kicking ass. I just wished I had had that superhuman strength. That would have come in handy.”

Once she was really sick, Laura started watching the show.  She discovered it one day through the glory of syndication. So many channels, and the choice was clearly Buffy. Sometimes Mary and Laura would watch it together, lying back on their pillows to witness the opening with the melancholic, yet determined theme song accompanied by the montage of Buffy with her friends continuously battling to end up victorious for at least one more season. Once Laura started watching Buffy, in their phone conversations, Mary always asked, “Where are you? Where are you now?” and Laura would tell her where she was in the series, a seven-season epic, an ambitious project for a dying person.

Laura was able to watch through Season 3.  She saw Buffy through high school. She never saw Buffy's death at the end of Season 5, and how her friends, through witchcraft, through hasty love and the conviction that they could not live without her, brought her back to life. It was immediately seen as a mistake. She was first feral and confused. There was a question of whether her mental facilities had been compromised. And then she recovered, at first not telling her friends of her disappointment of leaving the place where she had gone, a place she called heaven. She ended up different, a distant, cranky, more disciplined person who no longer spoke in wisecracks. Most fans, Mary thought, hated the new Buffy. She found her true.

***

After Laura died, Mary would talk to her about Buffy.

“This is the part of the story you didn't get to yet,” Mary said, “Although in heaven, I would imagine that you get to whatever you want.”

When Laura died, Mary wished she could rent billboards that announced her friend's death. She wanted T-shirts in all different colors that said, “My friend died” on them in different fonts. She imagined she would wear the one in cursive the most. But since the first idea was out of her means and both were socially absurd, she walked a lot and looked at birds, and thought about her friend.

She knew she could never bring Laura back. She didn't have many photos of her at all. Both of them hated to have their picture taken. They preferred stories. They chose words.

If Mary could tell anyone anything about Laura, she would say:

That she made the best cottage cheese and noodles that you could ever imagine. Was it something in the seasonings, in the ingredients she bought, something in her tools, her technique? There was something there that Mary could never replicate, although she continued to try.

That she was always the person to go to if you had a problem. Mary could call her up and tell her anything, and Laura would listen and say, “Uh huh, uh huh” several times as if she were a doctor about to make a diagnosis, and then she would say, “That reminds me,” and then she would launch into the story of a television episode. Often it was “Seinfeld.” Sometimes it was plot related. Sometimes a character reminded her of one of the people involved in the problem. Sometimes, Mary had no idea how the story truly related to the problem. She would hang up the phone, enormously relieved and think, “But we just talked about TV. How could I possibly feel better?”

That she was the type of person who would go down to a bus stop carrying a potted plant, strike up a conversation with someone also waiting for the bus, and they would be on the phone list. They would be her lifelong friend forever.

That her favorite bird was the egret.

That she made leggings her personal trademark.

That she could talk faster than Mary typed.

That she knew the best places to get tacos in San Francisco.

That she loved to dance.

That she gravitated naturally to poker.

That she liked all things English.

That she was a person of ingenuity and imagination. That when she decided to do something, she did it. That she had many different careers in her life, and when she said what the next one would be, she wouldn't say it as an announcement. She would slip it into the conversation like an interesting aside, and then the next thing you knew, she was taking a class to learn what she needed to know, or she had met a person who had  a friend who was in the field, or she had read a book about it, and done the exercises, and had now she was doing it or being it or whatever she had said that she had wanted. Sometimes Mary wondered if that's why she died so young, that she had this list, and she just got through it so fast. She wondered if she could have told her to slow down. Wasn't there someone on TV that they liked who did that? She couldn't think of a one.

That if you went to a movie with her, you had to be prepared to change your seat, because she was quite small, and often couldn't see over other people's heads, and she wasn't the type of person who would put a coat over the seat in front of her to save the view. You would just get this opportunity to change your perspective. You would get to throw the dice with her, and see the big screen from all different angles. And at each new seat, you would talk to the people around you. Often the conversation started by “Excuse me,” while you tried not to step on their feet, but then you would add another sentence or two, because that's what Laura inspired in you, to look at people and say a few words, because she had made you understand the value of connection.

That before Laura died, she wrote in a book to Mary, “What will I do without you?” “But wait,” Mary thought, “Who's leaving who?”

Comments

[Lisa Kenney]

Whenever I hear people say that something in a book made them cry, I never know quite whether to believe them. I think that either they're exaggerating, or that I have a difficult time responding to the written word versus imagery. I had to sit for a few minutes before I commented because this chapter made me cry. Well done.

[Wendy]

Thank you, Lisa. That means a lot to me. I'm sorry I'm behind in my reading. I will read your chapters this week. I'm really sorry I didn't get to it last week.

[Lisa Kenney]

Wendy, No need to apologize. This is very time consuming stuff and I feel guilty that I wrote a fairly long (probably too long) chapter this week. I'm always happy when someone reads at all because it takes a lot of time.

I need to say it again, this chapter really touched me. All of it.

[Timothy Hallinan]

Jeez, Wendy --

That was a kick in the stomach. I really had no idea we'd lose Laura this early. It completely snapped my head around.

And it's very, very artfully done. The entire metaphor of the friendship expressed through the shared frame of reference of television, turned around to show us Laura dying before she gets to a certain point in "Buffy" -- and THAT PARTICULAR point; the wonderful closer about changing seats in the theater. And the list of things she would tell people about her friend. And the T-shirts. And, and, and.

Just really wonderfully, elegaically done.

Tim

[Wendy]

Thanks, Tim. Actually last week, I felt I like couldn't make a sentence that I liked, and woke up that Sunday morning with the idea of this section in my head. So I just went with it. It was really the part that wanted to be written next, although now I have to go back. So, it's a bit of an organizational mess, I think, but it's just the way it's coming out.