13.

NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR NICE CLEAN CLOSET

She had the cool, worldly aura of someone who’d just traveled to the neighborhood Goodwill and dropped off eight garbage bags full of her life. The dewy glow of a Decision-Maker. I should have trusted my instincts and sneaked out the back door of the restaurant before my friend saw me waiting at the hostess stand. I could have called from the parking lot, said I was stuck in traffic and would have to reschedule lunch for another day when . . .

Too late. I’m hugging her hello.

“Hi!” we both chime. “You look wonderful!”

I step back from the hug and scan my friend’s face for why she looks so much more wonderful than I do. What has she done to herself that she didn’t tell me she was going to do? Why the dewy glow? Surely she would have mentioned if she were planning . . .

But the evidence is all over her.

I look into her clear, sparkling eyes. I see unwrinkled blouses lined up by color on matching hangers.

I look at her youthful smile. I see a neat stack of blue jeans that were the same size as her rear end when she got out of bed this morning.

I catch a whiff of hibiscus, which I thought was perfume when we hugged, but which I now realize is the smell of fresh Bed Bath & Beyond shelf paper.

I can’t believe it. Another girlfriend has sneaked off and done it without telling me: Botox of the closet. Storage-room peel. She’s given her entire home a deep cleanse and rejuvenating lift.

I could have been so happy today, eating a peanut butter sandwich on Wonder Bread made with a leftover IHOP grape jelly pack from the bottom of my purse while leaning on my kitchen counter. Could have been with a friend who’s still like me: me.

Way too late. We’re led to a patio dining area edged by a picket fence and locked down like inmates under rutabaga-striped woven flax napkins. Prisoners of Lunch. We live in drought-ridden California, so the waiter interrogates us about our commitment to hydration before filling our glasses with water. We’re handed menus listing $20 rations of locally grown chard and raw root vegetables. I hunger for Skippy Super Chunk. I hunger for the day before yesterday, when I could have told my friend I had other plans.

I take one try at the conversation I thought we were going to have today:

“How was your trip to Paris?” I ask hopefully.

“WE CANCELLED PARIS!” my friend bursts back.

I knew it.

“WE DECIDED TO HAVE A STAYCATION INSTEAD SO WE COULD ORGANIZE OUR WHOLE HOUSE! I DROPPED THE LAST BAGS OF STUFF OFF AT GOODWILL ON MY WAY HERE!!” she exudes, plucking her iPad from her tidy purse. She clicks play. Not only did she spend her staycation organizing her whole house, but she organized the photos of the organizing. Before and after shots set to soaring victorious music. Liberation of the Linen Closet. Arc de Underwear Drawer. A slide show of the Trip Through Stuff that she and I have been cheering each other on to take the last few years but neither of us could ever stand to start. We’ve pored over “Simplify Your Life!” articles together as if they were exotic travel brochures. Laughed about trying to scale the mountains of belongings we no longer need. Laughed with relief that there was someone else we could count on to never actually do it.

“Look! That’s my kitchen cabinet!” She points at the iPad and exclaims, “My spices are in alphabetical order!” . . . “Look! I redid my whole bathroom!” . . . “And my closet! I got rid of every single thing that doesn’t fit!”

“Wow,” I say. It’s the only word I can get out. I was prepared to feel a twinge of envy when she showed me shots of her wrapped around her sweetie under the Eiffel Tower in the moonlight. I was braced for lovebird selfies on the Seine. This is worse. Abandonment extraordinaire. I want to get rid of everything that doesn’t fit in my closet! I want to travel to the bottom of my bathroom cabinet! . . . I . . .

I take a gulp of my precious California water, then another. And another. Something besides jealousy is stuck in my throat.

My friend taps the pause button long enough to glance up at the waiter who just arrived and deftly order a red quinoa and oak leaf salad with persimmons and cashew ricotta crumbles, pomegranate vinaigrette on the side, warmed buckwheat bun—tapenade, no butter—without even asking me what I’m having. Without rummaging through all the menu choices together like we always do, trying everything on ourselves and each other before we decide to wear the exact same thing in our stomachs and on our hips. Without turning the menu into a Great Big Food Closet like girlfriends do, which is half the fun of lunch. She’s moved on from ritual. Moved on from me.

I glance around the patio. I could still escape, except if I try to leave without finishing my water I’ll be arrested. I grip the menu and order the kale and shaved Brussels sprout special in as defiant a voice as I can muster, pretending that I too have decision-making skills that don’t include the other person at the table. But that other person is too busy showing off her simplified new world to care that I’ve just chosen food without her input.

“Look at my T-shirts!” she exclaims as her slide show and music soar on. “If I hadn’t worn one in six months, it went out!” . . . “I got rid of boots! Can you believe it?! Boots!” . . . “I tossed out old files, greeting cards, pens with no caps, plastic food containers with no lids!” . . . “I feel so FREE! I got rid of all that STUFF! I have so much SPACE!!” . . .

“Wow,” I say again. Her happy pictures hurt my eyes. But why? The lump that isn’t jealousy is still stuck in my throat. What is it? My friend and I have spent hours coaching and counseling each other to get out of ruts. “You have to let go!” we tell each other. “Free yourself from the past so you can move on!” This is exactly what we dreamed of doing. Why aren’t I thrilled for her?

Her slide show zooms dramatically into a shot of the pristine pencil drawer in her kitchen. Six nice fresh pens—with caps!—all pointing the same direction, cute compartments full of untangled paper clips and rubber bands, a fresh roll of tape, two pairs of scissors. It isn’t that she cleaned out a kitchen drawer and I didn’t, I think. Isn’t even that her whole house looks like this and mine doesn’t.

It’s what else I see when I look at her pictures. My mind zooms in like her camera. It goes right through shots of my friend’s perfect kitchen drawer, through images of my own jumbled kitchen drawer . . . to a mental view of the desk drawer in my daughter’s bedroom: broken kindergarten crayons mixed with souvenir pens from college tours, butterfly stickers, tearstained SAT practice quizzes, Professor Snape’s wand, a class photo with all the boys’ faces scribbled out. One drawer in a roomful of drawers full of a thousand goodbyes to my child’s childhood that I know I have to face but am still nowhere near ready to start.

My friend’s slide show has moved on to a slow pan of her tidy linen cabinet. It makes me think of what’s waiting in the overflowing linen cabinet in my parents’ house: “perfectly good” towels from 1955, afghans crocheted by my great-aunt, Dad’s stiff olive-green World War II army blanket, doilies from the village where Mom was born, the chenille bedspread from my grandmother’s house that can with one touch transport my sisters and me back to being five years old. Shelves packed with things too special to use, too precious to give away, that will all have to go somewhere else, sometime in the near future. One cabinet in a houseful of cabinets, in a lifetime of cabinets full of a million goodbyes I can’t stand to think about.

That’s what I see when I watch my friend’s slide show—the giant job ahead. The huge rearrangement that starts with a kitchen drawer and leads to the dismantling of life up until now. Now I know what that lump is that’s still stuck in my throat—it’s What Comes Next.

I take a $3.50 mouthful of the kale that was just delivered, hoping to dull the overwhelmingness of it all. Big mistake. Kale doesn’t dull anything. Chewing all these superfood nutrients to the tune of my friend’s super-healthy ability to streamline her world just makes me hyperaware of every sense. The more antioxidants I swallow, the more ill I feel.

I can’t watch her show anymore. For all my talk about wanting to organize and simplify, I’m not ready to look at the big picture my friend just opened up. The great big closet full of changes, decisions, and goodbyes. The Big Life Closet. I know how to buy trash bags, plastic storage boxes, and cute trays full of little compartments. I know how to turn up dance music on Saturday morning and make in and out piles. But I don’t know how to do what she did—undo a life I’m nowhere ready to have undone.

I don’t want my daughter’s room to ever look like she didn’t grow up in our house. I don’t want to downsize my parents’ big, wonderful lives into a shoebox of special things. I don’t want to face the nice clean empty shelves of the future—drawers without Mom’s scarves in them, closets without Dad’s neckties, a room without twenty stuffed animals on the bed. I know the people I love need me to help escort them to the next stage, and I will do anything for them. But I can’t stand what else that means: that I’ll be helping them disappear. I can’t stand facing the great big pristine blank pages of the calendar ahead when they’re gone, when I’m not needed to help with anything, not necessary for anyone.

Where are the books on this? I want to ask my friend. Where are the cheerful magazine articles on how we’re supposed to sort out all this??

I don’t ask. I’m too afraid she’ll answer with the truth. Will say what we’ve always said to each other: You have to let go! Free yourself from the past so you can move on!

She’s too busy humming along to the grand finale of her presentation to answer questions anyway. “Ta-da!” she sings to the last shot of her bathroom cupboard. “I even got rid of all the half-used shampoos and conditioners!”

She clicks the end of the slide show, beams, and tucks her iPad back in her purse. I squeeze my friend’s hand and tell her how proud I am of her. Kale remains are carefully boxed up to throw out at home. Water glasses are drained and surrendered. The check is split and paid. Dessert menus are rejected.

“No dessert for me!” my triumphant friend says. “I fit into every pair of jeans in my closet!”

“No dessert for me, either!” I announce.

“I may never eat dessert again!” she proclaims.

“Me either!” I echo “I am done with dessert forever!”

I drive home. Open the front door. Eat dessert.

I would have eaten dessert on the way home but for fear that my friend would have, by some horrid coincidence, stopped at the same 7-Eleven and seen me in line with a frozen ice cream sandwich. I’ve had all the girlfriend input I can take for now.

I walk through my house—past the closed door of my daughter’s intact bedroom . . . past pictures of Mom and Dad in front of the home that’s still packed with their lives . . . past all my own cupboards and cabinets full of decisions I’ll make some other time. I change into my sweat suit, toss my lunch outfit on the bed, clip the leash on my dog, and leave the house for a nice long walk without even opening the closet door in my room.

I got a good look in the Big Closet over lunch. I’ve seen enough for one day.