We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

At the risk of sounding like a diamond commercial, we share a lifetime of memories, Edi and I. We went to preschool together and then elementary school. I wore green corduroy knickers and a Gunne Sax blouse to her bat mitzvah. We trick-or-treated together, were flashed together in Central Park by a man in an actual trench coat, made ribbon-braided barrettes together. We attended different high schools, but we went to REM concerts together, to David Bowie concerts. We ate mocha-chip Frusen Glädjé. We drank Tab and Fresca and diet Slice, spritzed each other with Anais Anais. We kept toothbrushes at each other’s houses, showed each other our hickeys and hurt feelings, our SAT scores and pregnancy tests. She ended up at Columbia and I ended up here for college, but we went abroad to Italy the same semester of junior year, swallowed our own body weight in gnocchi, and stayed overnight at a brothel in Naples, which we had mistaken for a youth hostel. We presided over each other’s weddings, hosted each other’s baby showers. We held each other’s newborns, and then, during her treatment and my separation, each other’s hands and hearts.