My Friend Iris

by E. Marmer
posted Jun 18, 2015

I had a friend Iris. I say “had” because I ended the friendship definitively and incontrovertibly, about 18 years ago. I said, “Have a nice life,” and hung up on her. You can’t get any more final than that. This was in the old days, when there was an actual receiver to hang up, which somehow made the gesture all the more powerful. But really, all I did was sweep away the spectral traces, the very contorted and disturbing ghost, of a friendship which in truth had disappeared years before that. What led me to such an abrupt and uncouth snipping of any remaining thread? Well, perhaps it was a case of a slow boil finally and suddenly erupting and spilling over. For years, it seemed, Iris had not really cared about our friendship and had done a number of things to show me that. Either that, or she was so self-absorbed that she hadn’t even realized how shabbily she had treated me.

Found on images.search.yahoo.com

We had been close for years in college. The way we met would forever go down in history. I had dated a boy named Gil my sophomore year, but by the end of the summer we had broken up for various reasons. I still loved him, however, and he and I and kept finding our way back to each other on and off for the next 5 years. During one of our “off” spells, he got himself into a spot of trouble, when he mentioned to a girl he had met that he wanted to see the filming of Pinocchio being shown on campus later that week. That girl was none other than Iris. According to Gil, who came to my door on the night of the movie in a panic, Iris was like a steamroller, jumping on Gil’s remark as though he were asking her on a date, and accepting his offer before he could even understand what hit him. Young and inexperienced as he was, and completely lacking in fortitude and finesse, Gil gulped and accepted this turn of events. Except that he didn’t. He spent the next couple of days trying to round up a group to join them, and when that failed, he showed up at my door, an hour before he was supposed to “pick up” Iris, pleading with me to accompany him right then and there so that the “date” wouldn’t be a date. He must have really been desperate to ask me of all people, since we had a confusing and somewhat painful history ourselves, and, indeed, his showing up at the last minute, making me his last resort, attested to that. Still, on some level he knew that our friendship, whatever the rockiness of our romance, was of strong enough stuff to withstand his turning to me for help that he knew I’d give. That’s what I like to think, because the alternative would mean that not only was he inept with Iris, but he cared more about getting my help than wondering if he was causing me any discomfort or heartache by reminding me that he was dating (although apparently not dating Iris).

In any event, we arrived at her door, Gil having talked nervously the whole way there, breathlessly thanking me for saving him, and when the door opened, there she stood. Shorter than us by one third, with very long, thick and wavy auburn hair, a face full of freckles and large brown eyes. Eyes that looked very confused at that moment to see me standing there. Gil mumbled some kind of incongruous, scrambled, and possibly intentionally incoherent introduction, and off we walked toward the hall where the film would be shown. As we shambled awkwardly across the quad in the dark, the proverbial big elephant lumbering right beside us, I considered. Why did I agree to this? Why did I agree to help this boy who still had strings to my heart, who was being a clod? And why couldn’t he have gone to the movie with Iris, and then afterward simply not follow up? She seemed friendly. Spunky and with a strong essence, but certainly not scary. I reached a conclusion. Iris didn’t deserve any of this, and I was going to rescue her. So I addressed myself to Iris, and almost exclusively to Iris, with genuine interest about her background, what she was studying and where she grew up. The dialogue flourished, and poor Gil was as much of a third wheel as he was confounded. It seemed that Iris, having swiftly concluded that Gil was not worthy of her attention after showing up unexpectedly with another girl, was thankful for somewhere else to direct it. We found that we had an easy rapport, and a mutual desire for friendship.

At the the end of the night, which included a stop for a late snack during which Iris and I never stopped gabbing while Gil just sat there like a stone, we made plans to get together later that week. In any event, we went on from there to be good friends. She was direct and assertive, yes, but she was warm, kind, unguarded. She was the most emotionally brave person I had met up till then. Her friendship meant enough to me to keep it away from Gil when he and I inevitably reconnected. He almost certainly thought I was respecting his very clear preference to have as little exposure to Iris as possible, but in truth I was shielding Iris from Gil’s contempt. I cared for her too much to subject her to it, especially when there was a part of me that believed that he just didn’t “get her.” There was a part of me that felt his inability to be straightforward with her or even spend one evening alone in her company was tied to his inability to connect with me. For after all, Iris and I shared emotionally honesty and intensity. We were brave, while Gil was not. When we talked, it was with trust and comfort. I cared for her enough to listen to her tell the story again and again that we met because a boy had asked both of us out for the same date, even though it gave me a pang each time. It gave me a pang because it pulled up my disappointment with Gil for turning to me for help when what I wanted instead was his love, and it pulled up my disappointment with my dear friend Iris, since she knew that Gil was my great, unrequited love.

Later on that year, when Gil and I had another attempt at romance that ended badly, at least for me, I went over to Iris’s. It didn’t seem ironic at all. She did something that I will never forget. She read me a story. I was sitting on her bed crying, and without explanation, she brought a picture book over to the bed and began reading it to me. Like a mother to a child. By the end of the book, I felt soothed, calmer, safer. It remains one of the sweetest, gentlest things a friend has ever done for me. Another thing that I will never forget was how, after I had graduated but came back to visit Iris who was then a senior, we spent the day walking and talking around Providence. At one point, I took her hand like I did with my friends when I was 8. We held and swung hands for a good block and a half. She was the only girlfriend I would have ever felt safe enough to do that with, and I was trying to tell her that she was dear to me. I couldn’t say it aloud, but it seems that she understood and accepted it with her usual wholeheartedness.

We both lived in New York City at the same time for two years and kept up, but once Iris entered the world of high-powered public relations she began to morph from the unguarded, warm, down to earth friend I had known into a competitor. A shined up, stylish and businesslike associate headed for higher things. Her ambition seemed to take over, and she hardened. I moved away and married, and she met and married Todd, a junior law associate who seemed just as enamored with being a young professional as she did. On the rare occasion when we saw them, their interactions with us and with each other seemed to be one witty, acerbic remark after another looking for an audience.

I guess those years apart really sealed the deal. For when my husband and I moved back to the New York area after 7 years in Boston, Iris and I just never got anywhere near where we once had been. Where, in truth, we had not been for almost a decade. Whatever plans we made that involved she and Todd coming to Westchester for the afternoon seemed always to have conditional status, cancelled at the last minute due to their deciding they were too tired, or wanted to spend the beautiful day going for an ambling country drive. When it was our turn to go into the city to meet Iris and Todd for dinner, we always did. And Iris always seemed to welcome my coming into the city with my two year old, in stroller, for a play date with her one year old at her apartment.

The incident that finally stung me into understanding that I no longer meant anything to Iris occurred when she and Todd took a week’s vacation at Lake Mahopac. She actually was the one to make the call, to tell me about their planned trip. About how, since they’d only be about 30 minutes away, they could use the opportunity to come by for a visit. I had just given birth to my son, and told her that of course, of course, I’d really love for them to come and meet our new family member. And I meant it. I meant it when I said it. Because I wanted my friend Iris to look with me, down at my little boy.

We arranged that she would call me when they got to Lake Mahopac, or maybe she just said, “Let’s you and I talk when Todd and I get there.” She also gave me their telephone number there. After not hearing from her, I called on the third day of a seven day vacation, and asked when they’d like to come. Iris’s answer: “We’re waiting for a rainy day, so we won’t feel like we’re missing out on any of our vacation.”

Of course the rainy day never came. Either that, or I might have said, out of some sense of self-protection, “Oh, that’s all right. Let’s forget it and do it another time.” I can’t remember.

I got off the phone profoundly hurt. I went to my husband and told him what transpired. “She doesn’t care about you,” he said bluntly. I spent the next several months coming to terms with that and realizing that she had been putting no real effort into the friendship for years. It was all just half-hearted rote. Phone calls every so often and broken plans to get together, and no real connection anymore. Certainly there was nothing left that would make either Iris or I want to make the effort, let alone compel us, to be there for each other, wholly and firmly there: on site, at the scene of the action, in sadness or joy. The difference between Iris and me, I sadly realized, was that I didn’t want that to be true. It seemed she didn’t care whether it was true or not. Had she understood well before I did what we had become? Had she intentionally put distance between us for some thoughtlessness of mine of which I was clueless? Had she been consciously or unconsciously viewing our relationship the way one does a spent houseplant, which one tends without much enthusiasm and secretly wishes would die already so you wouldn’t have to water it?

So I was completely unprepared when Iris called me six months later. I listened in stunned silence, my neck and head getting hot and my heart beating like crazy, as she asked me if I’d like to come to her apartment (which would have entailed travel for over an hour into the city, with my now 3 year old and my 6 months old infant) for a play date with her 2 year old and to meet her new baby.

Somehow, this call was an even greater insult that the last one. Did she not know how badly hurt I was to realize I was now no longer one of those would-be-a-delightful-addition-to-a- vacation-for a-few-hours friends, and instead, over the years, I had somehow become merely a perfectly-adequate-activity-that-could-fill-some-time-only-if-other-options-were-rained-out friend? Didn’t she know that I had been grieving this newly ascertained truth that we were no longer close? Hadn’t she blown off my invitation for her to meet my new baby? Yet she was inviting me to undertake the difficulty of bringing my 3 year old and infant to her apartment, complete with all the equipment and accessories that would require . Didn’t she know that for her, for all those years, I had swallowed my pang and smiled every time she seized the opportunity to tell people that we met when a boy asked us both out for the same date? Maybe she did that because, to her, that’s all she and I had been reduced to: a funny, not so funny story. “Iris,” I croaked, in a voice choked with emotion, “you treated me so badly last summer that I thought you wanted to end the friendship. So no, I won’t be coming into the city. Have a nice life.” Click.

Did I handle it well? No. Of course, I know that. I didn’t say, “Iris, what you said and did last summer hurt me terribly, and here’s why.” I just blurted a whole bunch of stuff. Then I hung up on her. No question, I was temporarily insane, overwhelmed by a flood of emotions that I only vaguely understood. I pulled a “nutty,” as they say. I even purposefully tied up the phone for about 15 minutes afterward, rambling on to my husband, seeking his consolation. But as I stared at the now silent phone, still quaking, I couldn’t help but wonder what would I have done, if an old friend angrily told me I had treated her so badly that she wished me a nice life and hung up on me. And it occurred to me that I would have called back repeatedly till I got her, and pleaded to know what I could have possibly done to upset her so. If she were someone I really cared about, that is. I was therefore left to consider two possibilities. One was that Iris felt so angry that I was, to her mind, hostile and outrageous for no fathomable reason, that her anger trumped any caring or interests she had in finding out why I would say such a thing and trying to make things right regardless. In that scenario, she was the mistreated friend and I therefore wasn’t worth one more minute of her time. The other possibility was that my husband was right. She didn’t care. Either way, it meant there was no friendship to save. And so I stood up, put away the phone, took a deep breath and picked up my bereavement where I left off, now with a fresh stab of grief.

Still, 18 years later, I sometimes think of her. I think of how she read me a story and how we swung hands. Those were two gifts I will always treasure. I think of them last…. and first. First, the memories come to me. Then, I wonder how she and her family might be doing. Next, I feel the grief for a lost friend and especially that honest vulnerability and emotional bravery that once were, and maybe still are, the wonderful truths behind her brash façade. Then, last, always, always last, I return, with gratitude and affection, to those moments of true exchange and friendship when we were young.