Patty laughed. “We will.”
Patty had a friendly, outgoing personality, but she didn’t talk to most people about her innermost thoughts and her family problems. I knew another side of Patty. The Patty who took care of her brothers and sisters when her parents were “out of it,” the Patty who talked about her insecurities and doubts, the Patty who preached about principles like honesty and devotion. She listened to me in my darkest moments and defended me if someone made fun of me.
It’s not that I was a dork or anything. I was just quiet and shy and not especially pretty. I felt out of place among all the Irish kids. My parents seemed old-fashioned and different, probably because they weren’t Americans and they spoke Yugoslav. Like the Irish, they came here to make a better life, but most Yugoslavs I knew pined endlessly for their homeland lost to Communism or argued about what happened during World War II. No one else in our school went to the Bohemian Hall in Astoria for Croatian dances on Sundays. I stopped going as a senior, but every once in a while my parents made the whole family parade in to waltz and polka and be seen. I never said much about that side of my life to my friends at school.
In the dark bar, Patty suddenly noticed some guys we knew. “There’s Vinny and Brian,” she said, craning her neck and waving to them. I straighten up like I always did around boys, hoping to make up for my lack of looks.
“How’s it going, lovely ones?” said Vinny in his charming way.
“Hi there, Patty, Sonja,” said Kevin, almost like he had to. I looked around and didn’t recognize any of the girls in the bar. They seemed older, tougher—probably Inwood girls. They were what a grown-up would call floozies, loose girls, with their hair piled up in curls, ready to go off with any guy. They lived for drinking vodka tonics and being loud.
“Devil with a Blue Dress On” blared from the jukebox. I liked it when people danced; there was such a warm, “up” atmosphere, and the square wood floor rippled with the spinning lights. It was fine to dance even without a partner. On nights like tonight when there weren’t many people at O’Neal’s, they didn’t turn on the lights in the dancing area. We drank and ate popcorn.
Not much into drinking and pretty much out of luck with boys, I didn’t know what to do with myself. The boys I wanted never seemed to be interested in me, maybe because I wanted them from a distance, like Mickey, the drummer for a band that played at St. Paul Friday night dances. He never said hi to me when he saw me, but then again, he didn’t even know me.
But Patty… Patty gave me such wonderful attention. We trusted each other. I felt much closer to her than to any guy. Her boyfriend, Bill, usually didn’t hang out at the bar; he was at practice or somewhere else with his buddies and would come to O’Neal’s toward the end of the night to take Patty home. I had to find someone to take me home too; it was dangerous to go all that way alone.
I liked thinking about romance and love and the possibility of being with some cute guy, but the reality of kissing them was something else. On my rare date-like times with boys, I kissed because they wanted it. Maybe I hadn’t come across the right boy yet. I sometimes found myself in awkward situations. Once, Kevin led me up to the top floor of some building I’d never been in and spread his coat on the cold cement floor, wanting to make out. I felt icky about it, but we did it.
Patty lived by Devoe Park. I lived on the other side of the projects. One day as we walked home from school, I got more and more agitated as I talked about the problems I was having with my father. “He just won’t let me stay out past midnight, and now he’s saying I can’t go to so many Friday night dances. I don’t get what his problem is!” I felt Patty was in some other world.
“I don’t think you really care if I’m your friend, do you?” I demanded, picking a fight.
She looked at me, puzzled: “What are you talking about, Sonja?”
“Just what I said,” I yelled. “You wouldn’t care if I lived or died!”
We went back and forth, our emotions escalating until I got worried about what passersby might think, but there was no way I could stop the roller coaster.
Patty’s softened voice and I barely heard her say, “I love you.” I just couldn’t take it in at that moment. I was convinced this was the end of our friendship. How could she like me after this outburst? I felt I must have lost the person I cared about more than anyone. When we parted, there were tears in her intense dark eyes, and I was still angry.
I walked home full of regret. I had ruined everything, but she was not the perfect friend I thought she was. Life was not worth living. I just wanted to be by myself down in the basement, turn on the Bee Gees’ Greatest Hits and brood.
My father was working in the garden when I got home. I ran up the porch steps, yelling the obligatory, “Hi, Dad.” He barely looked up from the soil he was digging. I was glad he didn’t have something for me to do. I walked through the hallway back to the kitchen and then to my room and realized I was alone. What a relief that I didn’t have to interact with anyone! I got my pen and some flowery stationery and went downstairs.
The record player was already set to go with the Bee Gees, “to love somebody, the way I love you.” I let my tears flow.
Then I put on the Byrds, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Yes, there is a season, to everything. The songs helped me pick up my hope, but the big gaping hole in my heart seemed bottomless. I didn’t want to fight with Patty. I just couldn’t help myself when I felt scared. It happened at home that way too. There was always yelling and picking fights—that’s how my parents communicated. But I cared about Patty a lot. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted things to be different with her.
I began a letter to my best friend. I went over what I thought had happened, then I said how sorry I was for yelling at her. “I love you very much and do not want to lose you.” I began to cry again, the songs tugging at my heart.
“I just can’t imagine living without you, you’re too important to me,” I wrote. It was a jumble of feelings, but I knew I had to give her the letter.
We had first met when we both got parts in the school play two years before. It was unbelievable how my life opened up after that. These were kids who were “above me” in status and here I was doing theater with them. I was shocked at first that Patty wanted to be friends—how could she, I wasn’t at all popular. We had a lot in common, though. Our families were both messed up. Her mother had bouts of craziness, and her father had a problem with alcohol. My father was crazy, too, and would lash out, violent like a wild man, sometimes. Because we shared these dark secrets with each other, we felt different from the other girls and that much closer to each other.
The morning after I wrote my letter, Patty was waiting at our usual time to walk to school with me. I didn’t expect her to be there. I handed her the letter and didn’t say a word. She opened it right then and there.
“Oh, Sonja. It’s no big deal. I care about you too. Of course we’re still friends. I guess I don’t really understand what happened yesterday, but it’ll be okay.”
Tears surged to my eyes but I blinked them back. She grabbed my arm, “Come on, let’s go or we’ll be late,” she said and from then we were closer than ever.
A year later, at O’Neal’s, Patty motioned me. “Come over here and sit down. I want to tell you something.”
She led me to an empty table. We sat across from each other with our beer mugs. She was cheerful, flinging her hair behind her right ear and giving a deep laugh that rose gradually to a high girlish squeak. The bar was as dark as a movie theater. I couldn’t make out the beautiful features I knew so well—her attentive eyes, the unstraying strokes of her eyebrows, her smooth unblemished skin, her confident mouth.