Vanessa

My blue dress is still hanging in the wardrobe. And today, as I turned the corner onto Maryoteya Road, I thought of you.

It’s funny, I should have remembered my wedding day and the tense hour I spent clutching my husband’s hand in the car as we drove to the party, frantic with nerves on what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life.
Instead, you came into my head and I remembered the night we rattled down the road in your little Pica to the wedding of your next door neighbor.
You were attempting to multitask between driving, drinking vodka coke out of a coca cola bottle and checking your phone to see if your latest boy had called.
I didn’t like him; I didn’t like his greasy hair or his eyes. There was something about him that made me unable to look into his eyes, but I smiled at him for your sake, and laughed when you squealed at the phone “Call MEEEEEEE!”

You were desperate, you were giddily happy, you were all over the place and messy. I was scared and kept asking you to let me drive, but you reminded me how often you’d been tipsy and driven perfectly well, so I begrudgingly relented. Today, I know that I should have insisted.

We got to the venue, you glittered your way to the bar, made space for me to park myself in front of the smoked salmon, while you ordered your gin and tonic. You made small talk and smiled right, left and center as I watched complete strangers fall in love with you. That’s the beauty of you, you seemed to spill over to other people’s lives, charm them with the tilt of your lips, your flashing eyes and that “Honey, let me tell you…” drawl, which always sounded better with a drink in your hand.

I skimmed the room for my fiancé, with whom I’d just had a fight. And then, hours later, when things just kept getting worse, he dropped me off at the Jazz Club (practically flung me out), and you were there.
Cigarette in one hand, beer in another, new haircut getting in your eyes,you opened your arms and scooped me in close, so that I was pressed against the blue heart tattoo on your right breast, the one you'd had done on a drunken whim back when you were young and dangerous.

And when making faces and dragging me to dance on a table didn’t change my mood, you starting poking my breast which made me laugh and poke you back in self defense, then Nahla swooped in for a group photo and we posed, laughing.

The photo on my wall shows us young, vibrant, necks titled back, mouths puckering up for a kiss. There was so much potential in that night, so much chance for our futures to include more memories of us and our laughter, moments that would stay even when men changed and skin aged.
Something to keep us warm when we were old with rheumatism, you laughed.

You let me curl up on your couch at three in the morning, wearing your green La Senza pajamas and crying mascara tears onto your tshirt.
You made me your famous pizza sandwich- Rich Bake bread, mozzarella, ketchup and basil in the oven grill.
You sat there and let me bitch, whine and complain about the man I was supposed to love yet hated so much in that moment.
Today, I know that you were going through shit yourself, that the boy I thought you wanted was someone else, someone you were ashamed of telling me about, perhaps because I was too self involved with my impending wedding drama.
Or maybe you were afraid that I would judge you.

And this is the part that kills me. I wasn’t the friend that you were to me. You gave me refuge and solace unconditionally, you loved me. Even when you knew I was being unfair or an asshole, you still let me in.

The next morning, my eyes dry from sleeping with my lenses in, you lent me your oversize Gap jeans and a striped yellow sweater (which I haven’t touched and still lies in a drawer. Sometimes I pick it up to breathe it in and I can smell something of you).
You would have let me stay, you said, but the family was coming.
You grimaced at the word ‘family’ as if they were the mafia, but I’d seen how you loved to run errands for your dad, and the conversations you enjoyed with him. The way you imitated his heavy Egyptian accent, and joked about his naivety and fierce love for you, these were things that kept you going. And I respected how important family was to you.

(If they asked me right now what the happiest moment of my life was, I remember that day in the sun, salt dry on skin, one foot in the water and the other on sand. We sat in our plastic chairs right on the edge where the waves reached out to touch our feet. We sang 90's rap songs, you photographed my profile, Mariam pretended to drown in the shallow end, and I really didn't want anything more than that.)

You handed me the blue dress in a shopping bag and told me to keep the jeans because they looked good on me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell you that they were too big, because you were my family.
And I loved you in a way that I’ve never loved a man. You had a generous heart so big you could fit all of me and so many others. You were the self-designated godmother to my unborn children, warning that you’d be a terrible role model, drinking over their cribs. I saw the delicate way you held Nina's baby, and I knew that someday you would bring so much joy to your own.

And it hurts today that I don’t know how you liked to mix your drinks, that I can’t remember what nail polish colour you prefered. It hurts that others knew your secret that you wouldn’t tell me, that they supported you when I didn’t even know you needed me. You called me almost every day that week to check up on me, hear my voice, and tell me that you’d missed me. But I was too wrapped up in my own little world, and I never called back.

And when they told me that your car turned over three times, that your greasy-haired boyfriend knew you were dead just by looking at your face on the dashboard, I remember my body just letting loose into uncontrollable spasms and they had to hold me down.

Since then, there are moments where I know there’s someone I should be calling, someone to whom I could talk for hours about my most insignificant problems and hear nothing but love and comfort in return. I vaguely remember that person exists, and when I look through the list of numbers on my phone, you’re there.

Your father won’t return our calls, he won’t let us back into your room to press your clothes against our faces, maybe steal a scarf or a necklace even, something to keep hanging onto you.

The truth is you never let go of me, you were there for six years of my life, chain-smoking, cracking sardonic jokes, playing with your hair color and allowing me to ridicule you for your choice in men and your red nose, things we both had in common.

You were there at Lucille’s for breakfast, telling me about your latest escapades so that I could live vicariously through you. You sat there surrounded by your paint tins, smoking by your studio window in the early morning, listening to Mariam work through her feelings and come clean for once and for all.

You were on the balcony of your place in Ein Sokhna, watching me argue on the phone under the stars and calling down, asking me if I wanted pasta. You were the first to give me a housewarming gift, the first to offer to beat up the man who broke my heart. You let me drive your Pica before I'd got my license and couldn’t figure out how to change gears. And your house was always open.

The blue dress is still hanging in my wardrobe and I want you to know that I’ve done my best to be a better family to our friends.
We try to get together once a week, but what with work schedules and Nahla living in the suburbs, our relationships are reduced to phone calls, text messages or facebook poking.

But you’d be proud of me, I think, and maybe you were your proudest when I was crying my eyes out at your funeral, only to stop in mid-sob, blow my nose and suddenly start laughing.
“I need to start taking serious drugs,” I said, and the people around me gasped. But I knew, had you been there, you’d have wanted me to laugh, at myself, at the ridiculousness of the situation, at the loss we had just experienced far too soon.

It doesn’t get any easier, and it will probably never make complete sense, but I wanted you to know that you are there in the space on my couch, in the phone call I never make, in my overambitious desire to love and cherish every moment, every human being.
And I think Vanessa is a beautiful name for my kid.