Mother always said, keep your enemies close but your friends closer. She was a big believer in friendship though I don’t think she ever had very many of her own, not for very long anyway. She always said that if I had a true friend, I would want for nothing.
I had a few friends in grade school. I remember them. But we sort of drifted apart as we got older and moved into junior-high and high schools where the competition for good friends was tougher. Mother was there for me though. Maybe we were friends, but I don’t like to think of it that way.
Mother was in her mid forties when I was born and started drawing social security by the time I was grown. She always said that our time together on this old world might be short, but we’d sure make of it what there was to make. And we had some good times. We did our best.
When I was 12 mother took up with a truck driver named Rufus. He was a long-haul trucker in his sixties and was only in town for four or five days a month. Mother would leave me with a tv dinner and go off with him for the evening. She said they went dancing, but I remember seeing mother dance at her niece’s wedding once, and I hate to say it, but I don’t think dancing was her thing.
Rufus kept coming by for seven months then stopped. The brakes failed on his truck late one night while taking a turn outside Silver Plume, Colorado. Mother said he never had a chance. Those weeks after Rufus were a dark time for mother. That’s when she started saying that line about keeping friends close. I never knew my father, so Rufus was the first man I ever saw her lose. Dark time.
But mother bounced back. Being so young, I didn’t realize right away that once she’d had a taste of the company of a man, she wouldn’t want to go back to the way things had been before. But I learned pretty quickly. It was only a few months later that Carl started coming around.
Carl was a retired elementary school teacher and didn’t know how to talk to me at all. He only seemed to understand little kids. I was 13, but he treated me like I was eight. One time he bought me a coloring book.
Carl’s heart gave out one night when mother was staying over at his house. She called me after midnight to tell me she’d be coming home and I should unlock the padlock on the front door.
Kevin didn’t last long. A week was all. Mother never did say what happened to him, but she did make me dress nice for his funeral.
After that there was a long spell where it was just the two of us again. Those were good times, but I know mother wasn’t happy. She loved me, no doubt, but part of her really needed a friend.
Roderick was a surprise. He was the first black person I’d ever spent much time with and I think he was my favorite of all mother’s friends. Once he took me to a minor league baseball game. Just the two of us. I really didn’t think it would be my kind of thing, but it turned out we had a great time. He bought me a hot dog and even let me take a sip of his beer. Later, I made the mistake of telling mother about the beer and she yelled at both of us. When mother sent me into the back room, I heard her tell him how our family had a bad history with drinking. He said he was sorry and they made up.
Roderick was killed a few weeks later by a police officer in a mixup over a gas station robbery. Mother said he was just standing there and wasn’t robbing anybody, and I believed her. I still do.
Chester was nearly 70 but in good shape. He had a granddaughter about my age. She went to my school, so I’d seen her around. She was one of the popular girls and I remember thinking that this was a good friendship opportunity for me. But, sadly, it didn’t work out that way. Before mother and her grandfather got together she didn’t know who I was. After, she ignored me on purpose.
I think mother blamed herself when Chester was eaten by that lion. This was on an outing to the zoo. I’d never been and was very excited to see the monkeys, but mother wanted to see the big cats right away, so I never did get my chance. I remember thinking, as the police took us home, that I could try again when we went back for the car, but mother said she’d never set foot in that zoo again. And she was, as usual, true to her word.
I think it’s fair to say mother went into a real funk after that. She spent the next week in her room with the lights off and the drapes drawn. It was a dark time. She only came out to use the john. I made chicken soup for her every day, but she only ever ate the crackers.
After a while she did come out and try to get on with her life, but I don’t think she ever got over what happened.
I graduated with my G.E.D. at 19 and mother told me that very day I should move out. Luckily I’d been working. Summers at the car wash, plus sweeping up at the beauty salon all year round. Having no one or nothing to spend my money on I’d put away enough to rent a room in one of the neighborhoods near the mall. I know mother hadn’t meant to be mean when she kicked me out, but I couldn’t help but feel bad anyway. Like I said before mother was pretty much all I had and I was pretty much all she had. I think now that might be why she wanted me to move out.
About a month after I left home, mother was hit by a drunk driver. She was walking across the road and I guess the guy didn’t see her. They said he was just over the legal limit for driving, but just over was enough to put him away for a few years. It’s hard to blame him too much though. In her day mother had driven much drunker than that.
Somehow making friends got a little bit easier for me after mother was gone. I’ve had a few that I can look back on and really smile.
The first, Leslie, I met in the mall parking lot. I didn’t really know how to act at first, but after a while we got along pretty well. Leslie fell from the roof of an apartment building.
Next came Morgan, who was truly a wonderful person, and choked on a fish bone.
Then, Pat. Drown when swimming in the public pool.
The last is Jamie. We’ve known each other for three months now and are still good friends.
Like I said the main thing mother taught me was to keep my friends close. She said that thing about enemies too, but I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those, so it never stuck with me too much. Honestly, and I never did ask mother about this, but I don’t think I ever understood why I’d want to have an enemy around at all.
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