life's surprises

my ex-friend is having a baby. well, he's not having a baby. his girlfriend is having a baby. this is weird.

i don't know how to explain how, exactly... we stopped talking months ago. it had been a slow crawl toward disaster from the beginning.

i think we met at cold stone. i had taken to going there with a girl friend and her friends from the academy. at the time, i lived only a few miles down the boulevard, and i desperately needed the company. she and i had known each other since we were thirteen or fourteen, and we finally had time to see each other and catch up. sometimes i drove out there, sometimes i took the train. she would always show up with a hoard of guys, maybe a few girls. one time he was in there with two other guys. they remarked on something about me being irish - i can't remember if i was trading tattoo stories with a friend or wearing a shirt from ireland. all-in-all, it wasn't remarkable.

the memory meeting came after ring dance - he had to check out of his hotel room, so he came to stash his stuff in ours. another of the girls introduced us briefly, but we were more concerned about ditching him and navigating the confusing hotel to find our friends for a lunch date. a lunch date at a place that only took cash, it turned out. i ran across ninth avenue to an ATM, and on the way back i caught him on the corner. "hey, aren't you... ?" after a smile and a reintroduction, he was off with our group for the rest of the day.

of course, the endless trade of facebook pictures, comments, friendings, etc., followed the ring dance like normal for any computer-savvy twenty-something these days, but his stuck with me. we got to talking more often, and even hung out. i went on board sometimes to visit with him - the two of us scampering around, climbing up roofs and into the chapel and laughing. i became an honorary member of the academy's dance team, making trips on board twice, three times a week, for long practices and routines.

i was glad for the friendship, and wasn't aware of anything more.

tom was the apple of my eye, a graduate of the academy who was then at flight school in florida. he remembered tom, and didn't like him. i would sometimes vent to him, which i know now wasn't fair to do, but most of the time he just allowed me to have fun and take my mind off of the poison apple. i visited tom in florida, once, and i called him while tom flew a kite on the beach. he was surprised to hear from me, and immediately picked up on my disappointment in the success of the trip.

he told me that he loved me the week i got back, and i told him that it had to stop.

the next month was a torrid affair of break-up and make-up for my doomed relationship, and he was annoyed that i didn't tell him when i broke it off for good, finally. his best friend cornered me on the street during an all-academy celebration at a bar. i was drunk and i made something up about recovering from the breakup.

really it was that i didn't like him at all. i couldn't. we talked and laughed and had good times together, but there was nothing there for me. honestly i thought i was dead inside, killed by tom, but that wasn't it. in a matter of weeks, i had fallen smitten for another guy at the academy, a fellow dancer and friend.

within a month, i met mark - the man i will marry. i never again thought of the many male distractions, but half-tried to maintain the friendly facade i'd cultivated with my friend. things remained rocky for a few weeks. proposals were made and denied, late-night love confessions thrown aside, and when the embers of my desperation-driven cigarettes burned out, our friendship had failed.


recently, i thought again of him. i asked mark what he thought of a friendly email, just to check on him. the academy class had graduated, all were off to jobs. i had given up contact with many of them after the debauchery of last year, but i still wondered. the email was too friendly, ostensibly happy and not nearly as solemn as it should have been. he wrote back today, saying that he is fine - "life is wonderful." i know his content tone, and yet he only used periods in his writing. he will be sailing for a company this fall, and he is expecting his baby girl in mid-september.

my mouth hung open as i pointed to the screen and sat back to let mark read the message. "mid-september? must've knocked her up in january, then." mark wanted to know why i seemed upset. it's just... i asked him how he would feel if he found out that one of his friends was expecting - surprised, no? he assented but his eyes were still questioning.

the girl is from his hometown. i vaguely remember some old photos of parties after we'd stopped talking, before we finally gave up. i also remember his catholic virginity, his free spirit, his desire to sail tours in alaska for little pay and more adventure. she's pretty, the girl. dark hair and a solid smile, tan skin and short for him. they look happy enough in his photo, though she's not wearing his hat.

a baby girl? him? ohh... i don't know how to feel about it.

"wish it were you? jealous?" mark's snide jealousy cut through my thoughts, and i looked up at him, surprised. no, and no. it wouldn't've been me, any way you look at it.

we used to share with each other our thoughts, our hopes. once, we sat on the roof of the boathouse on board, right on the edge of the long island sound. the orange-lit dark sky with all its airplanes above us, small ships out before us, a bridge or two and so many people in the distance. i was fearless in his eyes and he was comforted in mine. we stayed there all night.

i wanted to be in the academy, he wanted to be at a liberal arts college studying writing. we were opposites and jokingly argued, but we were kindred in so many ways. he encouraged me to rise up out of the rut and place myself firmly in the clouds again.

i've made huge changes in my life since i lost my friend, and i wish he could see, understand, that he had something to do with my motivation to do so.

i want to know where he went. i didn't deserve his friendship, because i didn't know what to do with it. but i want to know where that dreamer went. i want to know if he'll pass that along to his daughter - if he ever took his girlfriend up to the boat house, if he still talks the same way he used to. i want to know if he still reads and writes, what his hometown is like, and why he's sailing merchant vessels in the fall.

i want to know what happened to my friend, and i'm afraid that i had a hand in what's become of him.