“Well, you drive me nuts, too,” she says, with a little pout that takes a few seconds to dissipate. “But I’m still really glad to see you.”
“Me, too,” I say, wondering how I can have such mixed feelings—and how they can shift so quickly and radically, even from one minute to the next. “So how long do you think we can go without arguing?”
“Jeez,” she says with a little laugh. “It’s like you want to fight with me.”
I tell her that’s silly, that I hate fighting with her.
“Me, too,” she says. “God. We’ve had some doozies, haven’t we?”
I nod, almost fondly.
“Remember Chick-fil-A?”
“Of course.” I laugh, conjuring the details of perhaps our most epic fight, occurring when she was sixteen and I was fourteen. Every morning, she drove me to school in our family’s ancient Volvo, dropping me off at Pace before she headed the couple of miles over to Lovett. The problem, of course, was that we could never agree on our departure time, and she was always running late. (She must still hold the record at Lovett for the most tardies in a school year.) On that particular morning, though, Josie had promised me, multiple times, that she would do her best to get me to school early, as I had left my math book in my locker and needed to finish my homework.
All was fine, until she pulled into the Chick-fil-A on Northside, announcing that it would only “take a sec” to get a chicken biscuit. Incredulous, particularly after I observed the long drive-thru line, I tried to talk her out of it, even resorting to begging.
“Too late,” she said as a car pulled up behind us, trapping us in line. “Sorry, Charlie.”
“God. Why do you have to be such a bitch,” I said.
“Why do you have to be such a nerd,” she replied, then went on to mock me for caring so much about my math homework.
Our arguing quickly escalated as we inched along, until I went too far, making a snide comment about how she really didn’t “need those extra calories.” As soon as the words were out, I regretted that particular brand of meanness, especially knowing how self-conscious she was about her weight, and how hard she’d been trying to drop a few pounds before prom. But before I could apologize, she hauled off and backhanded me as hard as she could in my left breast. It hurt so much that tears immediately filled my eyes, and I remember thinking that a blow to a guy’s balls couldn’t be any more painful. So of course I slapped her back, and within seconds, a wild hair-pulling, name-calling melee ensued in the middle of the Chick-fil-A drive-thru. Of course, I got to school late that morning, disheveled and miserable, and for days afterward, I worried that her blow to my boob might somehow cause breast cancer. A small part of me even hoped for some real damage, if only to reinforce to my parents that I was their nicer, better daughter, and that their middle child might be the most selfish person on the planet.
“God. That was so redneck,” Josie says now, laughing.
“I know,” I say. “Total white trash.”
She continues to smile, but informs me that I’ve just used “a racist expression.”
“How do you figure?” I say, weary of her political correctness, which I know she simply parrots from Gabe.
“Well, why specify ‘white’? Name another instance when you actually specify the majority….It just seems to imply that all other races are de facto trash,” she says.
I roll my eyes and say, “That’s a bit of a reach, but whatever….”
We stare at each other an awkward few beats, before she slaps her thighs and says, “You know what? I think we should go out, after all. Is there a low-key spot around here?”
“Of course,” I say. “We’re in the Village. It’s all low-key…but did you want to talk about Daniel first?”
“Nah,” she says, waving me off. “We have all weekend….That can wait.”
At Josie’s request for a burger, we decide on the Minetta Tavern for dinner. We have a nice, relaxed time, without so much as a fleeting undercurrent of tension, and an even better time once back at Ellen’s. Against all odds, we fall into one of our rare, lighthearted zones with lots of reminiscing, mostly about our childhood, before our adolescent friction set in.
Daniel’s name comes up here and there, but only in the context of family lore from before we lost him. As we get in bed and start to fall asleep, it really hits me how much Josie and I have shared over the years. I think of the expression from the cradle to the grave—and the fact that she is the only person in the world I can say that about.