THIS IS LIFE: A Love Story of Friendship by Annie Murray Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of M.F.A. in the NEOMFA Program YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY May, 2011 THIS IS LIFE: A Love Story of Friendship Annie Murray I hereby release this thesis to the public. I understand that this thesis will be made available from the OhioLINK ETD Center and the Maag Library Circulation Desk for public access. I also authorize the University or other individuals to make copies of this thesis as needed for scholarly research. Signature: ________________________________________________________ Annie Murray, Student Date Approvals: ________________________________________________________ David Giffels, Thesis Advisor Date ________________________________________________________ Phil Brady, Committee Member Date ________________________________________________________ Mary Biddinger, Committee Member Date ________________________________________________________ Peter J. Kasvinsky, Dean, School of Graduate Studies and Research Date © A. Murray 2011 ABSTRACT This thesis explores the universal journey of self discovery against the specific backdrop of the south coast of England where the narrator, an American woman in her early twenties, lives and works as a barmaid with her female travel companion. Aside from outlining the journey from outsider to insider within a particular cultural context, the thesis seeks to understand the implications of a defining friendship that ultimately fails, the ways a young life is shaped through travel and loss, and the sacrifices a person makes when choosing a place to call home. The thesis follows the narrator from her initial departure for England at the age of twenty-two through to her final return to Ohio at the age of twenty-seven, during which time the friendship with the travel companion is dissolved and the narrator becomes a wife and a mother. It is the story of a young woman with grandiose ideas and expectations who learns to redefine terms like “happiness” and “success” as she begins to understand what it means to be an adult. The thesis is presented in three parts, which mimic the experience of arrival, acclimation, and departure. iv Prologue March 2005 Akron, Ohio The wind finds the narrow pathways between cars, tunnels between my car and the silver Pontiac. I’m wearing a long canvas jacket with bright blue and green flowers on it and a homemade scarf, but the wind is sharp, persistent. Caitlin stands in front of me, in an evening gown. Red of course, and sparkling, with a daring slit that reveals the pale flesh of inner thigh. Her wide set eyes are heavily lined but smudged. She decided last minute to make her going-away party an Oscar party, but I found out too late, my name nowhere near the top of the list of people to call. I hadn’t really felt like it anyway. Her hair is down in loose waves, curled hours ago with hot rollers, and it flies behind her and over her face, blindfolding her unexpectedly and then revealing again. My hair is short, layered, flat-ironed, highlighted. I’ve been spending a lot of money on my hair lately, on clothes, on spinning classes at Fitness One that I went to a grand total of two times before abandoning. Impulse buying. I finger the long gold earring that hangs straight and delicate from my right ear, feel the swirls of the green rose that sits at the bottom. The wedding’s only seven months away. In my head, each frivolous purchase is one less calla lily, one less floating candle. The wind changes direction. A thick strand of hair gets caught in Caitlin’s lip gloss, sticking for a heavy second, then tumbling to her shoulder. It’s an Ohio wind, and we both know it well, both grew up with that wind snaking its way underneath wooly hats, up coat sleeves, down spines. Even though the temperature has sat above freezing 1 all week, and the last clumps of snow have diminished, melted and trickled down thirsty sewers, the wind smells like snow. Like freezing. Like cold, packed earth and slick tarmac. “I love you,” Caitlin says. Her cheeks are pink, and her eyes are red, watery, one slightly more open than the other. She’s drunk, crying. Even her shoulders are pink, bare and goose-pimpling in the wind. “I know. I love you too,” I say, nodding my head. My hand rests on the handle of my car. I want to get in, crank up the heat, turn on the oldies station and just sit for a moment while warm air pours over me from grated vents and cold air wraps around my car, making creaking sounds. I want to think while the engine idles, think about all the ways we have failed. And then I want to go home. It’s late and I have an hour drive ahead of me. Terrified of freeways, I have never driven from Youngstown to Akron by myself until today, Caitlin’s going-away party. I spent most of the evening alone, sitting on a backless stool at a high-top bar table, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights, taking thin sips of my white Russian and stirring the ice until it melted. Watching Caitlin. Occasionally I made small talk with one of her friends I’d never met and wouldn’t remember, and I had a brief conversation with her dad. But mostly I just watched the way she filled the room, the way she illuminated the space she was in as though a spotlight hung just out of sight, the way the people around her changed when she talked to them, awakened. “No, I mean, I really love you. I do.” We’re in the parking lot now, just us. We stand outside a small bar in a darkened plaza of squat storefronts, a middle America bar that promises and delivers neon Coors Light signs, muted sports on overhead TVs, a cigarette machine. Caitlin is gesturing big drunk gestures, and her speech has a searching 2 quality. I know this Caitlin. I know her well. She wants to get this right. “And I know everything got yucky between us, but Annie? I love you. And if things would have been different, just lined up just slightly different, I don’t know.” Shoulders slump, remembering. “You know?” My left hand tightens in my pocket, gripping my keys. “I know.” “We could have been crazy old ladies together, living in some fabulous mansion. Or on a houseboat. Or anywhere, you know? Tuscany. Cyprus. We could have had a whole life together.” Caitlin’s voice rises on the word “life,” threatens to crack. The wind shifts and barrels into us. I lose her words but she keeps speaking. “…I don’t know why it didn’t happen that way. It just didn’t.” She’s crying openly now, tears brimming and spilling, nose running. “But I really do love you. Despite everything.” She throws her arms around me, squeezes. Her hair blows in my eyes, and long strands wrap around my neck. It smells like smoke and snow and shampoo and perfume. And I think of all the times we’d been this close and how today feels faraway already, even though it’s happening right now. “Hey,” I say into the side of her face, into the wetness. “Hey, I’ll see you soon you know.” “I know,” Caitlin says. “I just can’t believe I’m going back there without you.” We slide out of the embrace, and the wind relaxes momentarily, chasing a scrap of paper underneath a car. Caitlin tucks her hair behind her ear, wipes her face. Back there. I remember creaky boards beneath my feet on a long pier, the blue-black mussel shells littered on the sand, the curve of a pint glass, the sharp smell of battered cod. The air around us rushes again, electric, filling the empty spaces between cars with a 3 momentary savageness. My jacket billows below the last button. Caitlin grabs her dress just in time, fingers with painted red nails pulling the shimmery fabric together where it splits. “You should get back to the party. It’s cold, and you have a lot of people waiting for you inside.” “Yeah, yeah you’re probably right. Listen, thank you so much, for coming tonight.” Caitlin looks over her shoulder at the glass and metal door of the bar. “How’s my hair?” “It’s fabulous.” We both laugh, and she hugs me again, quick but hard. I watch as she walks toward the door, the curve of her hips, her pale skin, watch as the wind follows her, pulls her by the dress and hair. 4 Part I “This joy you feel is life.” ~Gertrude Stein 5 Chapter 1 Fabulous Girls Everything was purple. Not even a nice purple, a mulberry or a plum, but a dingy grayish purple like slush under streetlamps. Or brain matter. Caitlin and I sat on the kitchen floor of our newly rented flat and sifted through the damp mound of ruined laundry. Purple t- shirts. Purple socks. A pair of Victoria Secret cotton panties with the word “pink” now ironically scrawled across the backside. In purple. Not even a week into our year abroad, and our prudent wardrobes had already been decreased by a third. What care we had taken in packing our suitcases, rolling clothes into tight tubes rather than folding, stuffing underwear inside boots. How resourceful we’d been, making each item count. An hour before, we had been alone in the flat for what felt like the first time since we arrived. We were sharing the two-bedroom accommodation with two French girls who seemed nice enough but worked 5 AM breakfast shifts at a hotel and slept through the majority of the daylight hours.