November 2nd was Anabel's 77th birthday. At dinner she confided that Lebanese women don't wrinkle. "My grandmother was gorgeous in her 80's," she said.
When I awoke at 3am, a guest in Anabel's Charleston home, she was already at the computer, the smell of roasted chicory coffee announcing the end of sleep.
I met Anabel in a writing class in autumn of '85. Charleston was new to me, having recently arrived as a vagabond perusing the country, and she became my first Southern friend.
Thirty-seven years later we marvel at the length and breadth of our friendship, tested by politics, marriage, a child, divorce, deaths, and distance. Still it is Anabel I call when my demons haunt, when I am powerless over my second ex.
Anabel has published four novels and a book of short stories since that class in 1985. She has also written my obituary, filing it away in the copious cabinets in her front closet - the ones that also contain a file with every address, phone number and business card I've had since we met.
In 1987 or 8, Anabel found her way to AA, vying with my first ex for longest time in sobriety. I never knew she was a drunk. The way she tells it, she was guzzling gin and tonic every afternoon while seated in her easy chair with pen and composition pad.
Anabel is a blue blood, the pampered only daughter of local retail magnets who emigrated from Lebanon in the 1920's and made their way through hard times and discrimination to high society. Anabel eschews all this however, having rebelled and left home for college and a career in journalism at 20.
Anabel was voted "Most Beautiful Senior" in her high school, and never wanted for suitors. She went to Mexico City for a solo vacation at 25, and was quickly discovered by a handsome admirer who squired her around the capital, begging her hand in marriage when she left.
She didn't marry however until her mid-40's, and then to a felon, a brilliant self-taught bank robber. Arnold spent eight years in the pen reading anything he could get his hands on, which turned out to be a fairly complete education. When he and Anabel found each other at a 12-step meeting it was the beginning of a 27-year romance.
Arnold, who grew up in Robert Mills Manor public housing with an alcoholic single mother, was surprisingly debonair and well spoken. Still, Anabel was embarrassed to introduce the broke former convict to her family until shortly before the wedding.
A long time smoker, Arnold died of lung cancer in 2015, the same year my mother succumbed to pancreatic cancer, and a close friend of Anabel's and mine passed from COPD. It was also the year I separated from my second husband. The season's Day of the Dead altar at our restaurant was heavy with sorrow and regret.
And this too has passed. Now Anabel and I are more laid back. We work less, date some, try to keep in shape. When I visit we still walk, but Anabel is slower with her new knee. Anabel sponsors many young women, who often miss their meetings with her or fall off the wagon. She is philosophical, having finally gotten clear on what is her stuff and what is not. It is an honor and inspiration to know her.
Comments