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“Can I get you anything to drink?” Zach said, leaning into Frida.

“Yes, I’d love a nice—” she started to say.

Barbara interrupted and shouted.
“There they are!”

Frida watched Ellie and Lucy laugh while trying to get through the crowd. Like the Red Sea parted by Moses, men formed a path on either side of the two beautiful young women, something the girls didn’t even notice.

“Lucy Sustamorn!”
Barbara shouted as she stood up.

But Lucy couldn’t hear her through the crowd.

“Lucy! Yoo-hoo!”
Frida shouted, but the young women still couldn’t hear them. A man had stopped Lucy’s friend and was asking her something. She could see the friend shaking her head no as Lucy grabbed her hand and proceeded to walk through the crowd.

“Yo, Luce!” Johnny shouted, but Lucy was bending down to say hello to a bunch of people sitting at a table in the front. She was introducing her cousin to the table. The cousin nodded to each person.

“I’ll go get them,” Zach offered.

As the song playing over the speaker system ended, Barbara snagged the opportunity, yelling,
“Lucy Sustamorn! You get over here right now!”

The entire bar suddenly fell silent. Lucy and Ellie looked to the back of the room, where Barbara, Frida, Johnny, and Zach stood.

Barbara began to shove her way through the crowd.

“Make a break for it!” Lucy cried, pushing Ellie toward the door.

make a break for it!

It was a moment I had dreamed of for so many years, walking into that bar with Lucy in my short little black dress. The bar was alive with young people, all in their twenties, some still dressed up from work. A lot of the men had taken off their ties and unbuttoned the top buttons of their shirts. Some of the women were in little shift dresses. They had taken their hair down. The rest of the younger people were in jeans and T-shirts.

Lucy seemed to know everyone in that bar. Even with my newly restored hearing, I couldn’t make out a word she was saying to anyone, so I just nodded, a smile plastered on my face. The bar was packed with more people than I’m sure the fire code allowed. All of these young men made way for us as we passed by, like Moses and the Red Sea. I couldn’t believe it!

“Hello, beautiful!” a young man said to me as I walked by. I smiled as I nodded to him.

“The music is so loud,” I shouted to Lucy, and she laughed.

“Lucy!” a table of men called out and she bent down to give one of them a peck on the cheek.

“This is my cousin!” she said, pointing to me. At least I think
that’s what she said. I just nodded and smiled again. You would not believe how loud the music was. But I didn’t really care.

Those few moments, walking through that bar—that was what I needed. I felt so young, so full of energy. I felt more beautiful then than I had the entire day.

And then I heard the last voice in the world I wanted to hear.

“Lucy Sustamorn! You get over here right now!”
the voice came booming across the bar.

We both looked in the direction of the voice. Practically the entire bar looked in the direction of the voice.

Standing in the back of the bar were Barbara and Frida, looking as if they’d been dragged behind a city bus for several miles. They were wet and disheveled. Frida looked like she was close to collapsing.

“Make a break for it!” Lucy said as she pushed me toward the door.

Now, believe me, I’ve seen Barbara angry. You don’t want to get on my child’s bad side. I’ve seen fury come out of her that no rational person should have. Barbara’s wrath could scare the bejesus out of the strongest man.

I thought about running out of the place. What could I have said to her? How would I explain the situation?

But then I saw Zachary.

That boy was so handsome, smiling at me as he stood there next to the two drowned rats. And what was with Frida’s hair?

I had two options: make a break for it, as Lucy proposed, or stand up and face the situation.

Barbara continued to shout, and Frida looked like she wanted to cry.

“Mom, Aunt Frida, let me explain,” Lucy said as she walked toward them.

Frida looked straight into Lucy’s eyes. “Where is your grandmother? We have been looking for her all day!”

“Do you see how upset your Aunt Frida is?” Barbara said. “Look at her!”

“She’s a wreck,” I said, dumbfounded. I’ve seen Frida overreact about things, but this level of hysteria was something I’d never seen before.

“And who the hell are you?” Frida asked me. “Why are you using Ellie’s credit card all over town?”

“Jesus, Frida! It’s because I am—”

“Hold it!” Lucy stopped me. “Let’s take this outside, where we can hear one another.”

“Is everything all right here?” Zachary asked, unsure as to just what was going on.

“Luce, what the hell is this?” Johnny asked.

“I think tonight is over,” Lucy said to Johnny. “I have to go and talk to my mom and my aunt.”

“Do you have to go, too?” Zachary asked, taking my hand.

I didn’t know what to say. I looked over at my daughter, who was completely beside herself. I looked at Frida—oh, Frida, in that dreadful sweat suit. I told her she looked like a powder puff when she bought the thing. I kept looking back and forth, from my daughter, to this handsome man, to my best friend, thinking about my one day off from life.

“I’ll meet you back here in one hour,” I said to Zachary. “Just give me one hour.”

Barbara and Frida and Lucy were already pushing their way
through the crowd and I hurried to follow them. Right as the doors opened and we got outside, Barbara laid into Lucy in a way I’ve never seen before.

“Where is your grandmother, and who is this person who has been using Grandma’s credit card all day long?” she shouted, pointing at me.

“Mom, you need to get a hold of yourself,” Lucy said in an attempt to calm her.

“No, Lucy, you have no idea how sick and worried your mother has been,” Frida interjected. “We were so out of sorts that we locked ourselves out of both my apartment and Ellie’s. We’re starving. We’ve been robbed. It has rained on us. Someone just dropped a bottle of beer down my back. We’ve walked miles and miles for one answer. Where is your grandmother?”

The three of us just stopped and stared at Frida. This was not the Frida I knew.

“Look, first things first: let’s get you both back to the apartment and out of these dirty clothes and give you a hot meal,” I said, taking Frida’s arm.

“NO!” Frida shook off my embrace. “I want to know who you are, and where Ellie is.”

I looked to Lucy for an answer, but she didn’t have one. I signaled to her that maybe I should just tell them. Lucy shook her head no.

“This is my friend Michele,” Lucy answered them like she wasn’t making it up. “She didn’t steal Grandma’s credit card; Grandma told her to get the stuff she wanted.”

“She told her to get three cakes?” Barbara asked her.

“And to put them on Ellie’s mother’s table without a tablecloth?” Frida added.

“Yes, she did!” I told them, like it really happened.

“Well, why would she need to try on and buy one of your dresses?” Barbara asked.

“Because . . .” I had no answer and again looked to Lucy for help.

“Because she’s my model and I was out of that dress,” Lucy quickly lied.

“So why did you tell me that you were cousins?” Frida demanded.

“We were just playing with you!” Lucy told her.

“Why on earth would you play with me?” Frida asked. She must have been really upset, or she wouldn’t have used Lucy’s slang.

Lucy just stood there, unable to answer her. Maybe Lucy wasn’t such a good liar.

“Look, let’s just get you back to Gram’s apartment and out of these clothes. We’ll get you both something to eat,” Lucy told her.

“Yes,” I agreed, helping Frida as Lucy took her mother’s arm and we started to walk. “There’s a chicken in the fridge.”

“Just get me home,” Frida said, taking my arm. “Just get me back there.”

You wouldn’t believe the stamina you need to hold Frida up, even if you’re a twenty-nine-year-old. My apartment was only a few blocks away, but believe me, in those few blocks I resolved I was going to get Frida to lose some weight. We walked in silence
through the streets of Philadelphia. At one point, Lucy and Barbara were already a block ahead of us.

“I just want to find my friend,” Frida said to me softly.

This broke my heart. “You will, Frida, I promise you will.”

“You’re not a bad person, are you?” she asked me as she took a look at me. “You haven’t done away with Ellie, have you?”

“Of course not.”

“You’re not a nurse, and Ellie isn’t hurt, is she?”

“Now you’re talking crazy, Frida,” I said and shushed her.

She laughed. “You sound like Ellie.”

“I promise you, wherever Ellie is, she’s fine.”

“I just hope you’re right.” She was breathing heavily. “I don’t know what I would do if Ellie was hurt.”

“I promise you, she’s fine,” I repeated.

“I’ll tell you something.” She stopped me. “These women are not just my friends. They’re my family. And they’ve done nothing less than treat me as family. I’ve gone all day long without food or a bathroom or even water, and I’d go tomorrow, too, if I thought Ellie or this family was in any kind of trouble.”

“I’m sorry you had to feel this way all day,” I told her. “I really am. All I can say is that things will work out, and everything will be explained.”

“Are you sure?” she asked with sadness in her eyes.

“The most important thing now is getting you upstairs and out of these clothes and putting some food in your body. Your blood sugar must be at zero right now.”

“It’s in the negative numbers. You can’t imagine the depths it has sunk to,” she said as she began walking again.

“What do you think Ellie would say to you if she knew that you hadn’t eaten anything all day?”

She stopped and looked at me again. “She’d be very worried.”

“That’s right,” I answered as we continued on.

“You know, you remind me of Ellie a little bit,” she said.

“I’ve been hearing that all day.”

“I even thought . . .” She started to chuckle. “I even thought, when you and Lucy were kidding me and saying you were her cousin, that you looked like Ellie. I thought you looked just like her when she was younger. You know, it’s uncanny how much you look like her when she was younger.”

“Yes, I’ve been told that, and that’s why we played that little trick on you. I’m so sorry we did that to you. You didn’t deserve that.”

“That’s okay. I should have known better.”

We continued to walk.

“It’s just . . .” She stopped again and looked at me. “It’s just . . . your eyes. I know those eyes. That’s what got me confused.”

She stared into my eyes for a few moments, and I stared back into hers. In a way, I was hoping she’d just say it. I hoped that she’d figured it out. I thought Frida would understand, that Frida would be happy for me in a way only a true friend could be. She wouldn’t be jealous or let out my secret. Later I’d be able to tell her everything—what I did with my day, the things I saw and experienced. She’d love to hear about it as much as I’d enjoy sharing it with her.

“No,” she said, gesturing. “That’s crazy.”

“What’s crazy?” I prodded.

“I’m an old lady. I get crazy thoughts in my head.”

I continued to walk my dearest friend back to our apartment building.

Now let me tell you something: I always knew that Frida was the truest friend. A lot of people wondered why I spent my life taking care of her; a lot of people couldn’t understand how two women who were so different could have been such close friends. Through the years, some women would tell me to forget about Frida, to not invite her to things. “She’s a bore,” they’d tell me. The hoity-toity ones would say, “She’s really not our kind,” when Frida wasn’t wearing the latest styles or when she took out a pad and paper to add up her part of the dinner bill. I never listened to them. You want to know why? The answer is very important, and it’s something that you should know if you don’t know it already, so listen up: Friends come and go in your life. Friends go in different directions for different reasons. Most times it’s because they choose different paths. Frida and I have fought over the years about the way our lives were going, but we’ve always stuck it out with each other. We have always been by each other’s side 150 percent when no one else was. Husbands are wonderful, but some of them stray. A true friend? She’s the only one who will never let you down.

It’s wonderful to have a lot of different friends, but it’s most important to have one friend who will be there for you through good times and bad. If something grand happens in your life, she’s as happy for you as if it happened to her. If you are sad, she’ll stay by your side until everything is better.

My mother had a saying she used when speaking of her
own best friend, Hester Abromowitz, the one I told you about who worked at Saks, the one I gave the eulogy for. I’ve always remembered this one thing my mother said about her, and I always thought it applied it to Frida:
It’s not the friends who ride up with you in the limousine, it’s the one who comes home with you on the bus.

Today, Frida took that bus, and then some.

We walked in silence for the rest of the way back to the apartment.

When we finally arrived, Ken took over and helped me into the elevator with her. Frida collapsed in his arms as I continued to hold her hand.

“Mussels in spicy garlic and tomato gravy,” Frida mumbled.

the fallout

A little to the left,” Frida instructed as I massaged her shoulders. Frida always has pain in her shoulders. It’s the way she carries the world.

We were back in my apartment and no one was talking. The second after I put my keys in the door (you’ve never seen Barbara and Frida happier than when they saw me take my keys out of my purse), I grabbed two of my bathrobes and gave them to Frida and Barbara. Then I ran to the refrigerator and put that chicken on a plate.