Karla felt great joy in watching her kids riding their horses as they cantered around the property. Ben and Jackie were the fifth generation in the family to live on that land, and Karla also loved to see them walking up and down the gravel roads—beautiful kids set against such natural beauty. When Bruce was home, he’d have coffee with Karla on the deck every morning, after which he’d “commute” to his office right there in the house. It felt pretty romantic sometimes.
Nothing was forgotten, of course. Karla was in Montana on the day that would have been Christie’s eighteenth birthday. “It was a hard one,” she wrote.
Back in Minnesota, Edina High School remembered Christie at its graduation ceremony by setting out a vacant chair with a single rose on it. “What a kind gesture,” Karla wrote to the other girls. “It meant a lot to us.”
A few weeks later, Kelly happened to find herself in Edina, meeting a man set up through eHarmony. She and her date were walking to a restaurant for ice cream, and Kelly realized that the last time she had been in this restaurant was on her birthday two years earlier, with Marilyn and Karla. Just then, by coincidence, Karla called.
“Can I call you back?” Kelly asked her.
After the date was over, Kelly drove over to Karla’s former house, parked on the street out front and put the top down on her convertible. A memory came into her mind of the day she came by this house to pick up Karla before the fortieth birthday gathering at Jenny’s. Christie was out front in her soccer uniform, her hair, short and fine, blowing in the breeze, a smile on her face as she waved good-bye and told her mother to have a great time with her friends.
Kelly pulled out her cell phone and called Karla’s house in Montana.
“Guess where I am?” Kelly asked.
The two of them ended up talking about Kelly’s health, the other Ames girls, life in Montana, Kelly’s date.
“I’m trying to take an intellectual approach,” Kelly told her. “I want to be smart about dating. I don’t want to be like a man and think with my penis.” To reiterate her point, Kelly found herself speaking loudly into the cell phone: “I’m not going to think with my vagina this time!”
At that moment, a man was walking by and heard every word she said.
When he passed, Kelly told Karla: “This guy—I’m guessing he’s a former neighbor of yours—well, he just gave me the strangest look. Guess that’s life with the Shit Sisters, huh?”
Both of them laughed. Then things felt more subdued as Kelly found herself looking at Karla’s former house and just remembering.
Jenny ended up losing the baby she was carrying at the reunion at Angela’s. Especially given her age, the miscarriage was a blow. Would she be able to get pregnant again?
Some of the other Ames girls assumed she might not try, but she did, and she showed up at the Berkshires reunion with a surprise: She was pregnant. Several of the girls were in tears when they saw her. They wanted to plan a shower for her, but Jenny asked them not to jinx anything. She said she wasn’t preparing the baby’s nursery. She wasn’t thinking about names. She wanted no gifts until after the baby was born.
Kelly asked if she could put her hand on Jenny’s stomach while the baby moved, and Jenny welcomed that. “I did this when you were pregnant with Jack, and we were staying at Marilyn’s for Christie’s memorial service,” Kelly reminded Jenny. Jack turned out to be such a terrific kid, and so Kelly hoped for a similar blessing this time for Jenny.
The pregnancy was indeed uneventful, and at age forty-five, Jenny gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl. The baby was named Jiselle.
In October 2008, Angela in North Carolina had her own unwelcome news. She, too, had breast cancer, and it was a particularly aggressive form. It was the same type of inflammatory breast cancer that took her mother at age fifty-two.
“The cancer has not moved outside of my breast and the lymph node under my arm pit,” Angela wrote to the other girls. “My chemo starts next week. My oncology team is also treating Elizabeth Edwards, who could go anywhere in the country for care, but has stayed here. So I do feel as if I have an A-team of professionals, and feel so blessed that somehow I ended up with them. Thanks for your friendship and love.”
All the girls responded quickly, with love, advice and humor. (Marilyn joked: “I hope we don’t become the Sisterhood of the Traveling Hats.”)
Kelly made plans to fly to Maryland and stay with Jenny, and then they’d drive down to North Carolina together to be with Angela. They timed the visit for the period—ten to fourteen days after the first treatment—that Angela would need to shave her head. Kelly thought it was important for her daughter, Liesl, and Angela’s daughter, Camryn, to see their mothers go through cancer treatment with their friends. “That view of life is certainly a gift we can provide our girls,” Kelly told Angela. Jane talked to a nurse she knew in Massachusetts, and she suggested that perhaps eight-year-old Camryn could be shown photos of Kelly without hair, so she’d see that the hair will grow back.
On learning of Angela’s cancer, Kelly sent an especially heartfelt note to her:
I am reaching out to you across miles and miles, and I am holding your hand—both hands. I am proof that you will come out on the other side of treatment and you’ll be more vivacious, more healthy and more loving than you have ever been. In the next months, all the colors of the world will become brighter as your life takes on new meaning.
Kelly then alluded to the next Ames girls reunion:
I am standing before you and saying with absolute certainty that next summer we will again climb mountains together. And if you become weary, I will carry you. When we both start to stumble, our sisters will be there, walking beside us, ready to catch us and help carry us up that mountain.
As you go through this deeply personal journey, there will not be one moment when you are alone; not one moment when you are without unconditional love. We are always with you, Angela, always beside you. Your sister, Kelly.
There’s a Spanish proverb: “Tell me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
The story of the girls from Ames will have many more chapters, of course. To end here is arbitrary, because each year will bring new interactions, new reasons for reflection, new insights into who they are. There will be losses ahead, they all know that, but there will be great joys, too. And they have no doubt that they will be there for one another always, whatever happens. That now goes without saying.
There was a photo taken at Jane’s house back in Ames in 1981, their senior year of high school. In the snapshot, every one of the eleven girls was smiling. In the back row stood Karla, Cathy, Sally and Karen. In the middle row: Jane, Angela, Marilyn and Sheila. Seated on the floor: Diana, Jenny and Kelly. They had no idea that day where their lives would take them, or that they’d bring twenty-two children into the world, or that they’d all remain so central to each other’s life. On their faces, there was no indication that the ride would not always be easy, that they’d have disappointment and great grief. Just full-on smiles. Adult life awaited them.
During the reunion at Angela’s in North Carolina, they posed on the back porch steps for a photo replicating that 1981 picture. All of them took the same positions, with only Sheila’s spot unfilled. This time, their smiles were even broader. They touched each other even more effortlessly. They looked even happier. And why not?
In this moment, 1,163 miles from Ames and half a lifetime later, not much had really changed. There was much to be grateful for. They still had each other.
The Ames girls, 1981 Top row: Karla, Cathy, Sally, Karen Middle row: Jane, Angela, Marilyn, Sheila Bot tom row: Diana, Jenny, Kelly
The Ames girls today, in the same pose from the 1981 shot on the previous page
Afterword
The week that the hardcover edition of this book was released, in April 2009, the Ames girls were called home.
First, they were invited to sign copies of The Girls from Ames at the local Borders store in Ames. They
sat at a long table, a ten-woman assembly line, scribbling their names beside their childhood photos at the front of the book. The line of townspeople kept backing up, as the girls spotted familiar faces—old teachers, neighbors, classmates, cousins—and rose to share hugs and memories. They signed a couple hundred books.
After that, the Ames girls drove across town to a meeting room at Iowa State, where they had been asked to make an appearance. As the author, I was invited, too.
None of us knew what to expect. I figured it might be a small crowd. Maybe most everyone who was interested had already stopped by the bookstore to say hello.
But when we arrived, it was a remarkable sight. More than five hundred people had crowded into the room. It felt as if the entire town had come to wish the Ames girls well and to recognize the power of friendship.
The women took the microphone, one by one, and spoke of how Ames remains in their hearts, and about the values they had absorbed there. They talked about their parents and other adults in town who taught and inspired them. They then gave brief updates on their families and the places they now live. Karla, struggling with her emotions, chose not to mention Christie’s death. Many in Ames were aware of Christie’s passing, and the rest all seemed to have the book in their hands. Soon enough, they’d reach chapter twelve and they’d know.
Sheila’s mother and brother had driven up from Kansas City, and were invited to share the stage with the Ames girls. It was an overwhelming and tearful moment for everyone, standing there together, feeling Sheila’s presence. Jenny told the audience that the Sheila Walsh Scholarship at Ames High School had been put into place, funded in part by a portion of proceeds from this book. It would be awarded annually to a female graduate nominated by her peers. “The main qualification is that the winner be a good friend to others, just as Sheila was to us,” Jenny said.
Kelly didn’t say much, but she found herself smiling, soaking it all in. “What an incredible night,” she thought, “being here to witness my friends speaking so articulately. I’m so proud of them.” On stage, Kelly briefly mentioned her bout with breast cancer—there had been no recurrence, she was feeling good—and then Angela talked about her own cancer journey.
Angela explained that she had the same form of inflammatory breast cancer that had killed her mom in 1995 at age fifty-two. In the back of her mind, she always knew cancer was a possibility because of her family history. “But I thought I’d be in my fifties, not forty-six with a nine-year-old daughter.”
She told the crowd that after she began chemotherapy, the other Ames girls rallied to her side with gifts of robes and candles. They ordered a cleaning service for her house, and sent flowers after every treatment. Kelly and Jenny even drove down to North Carolina together. Knowing Angela would be losing her hair due to the chemo, they wanted to be with her for moral support when it was time to shave her head. (It’s best to shave before the hairs start falling out in bunches.)
Kelly had lost her own hair during chemo, and it had grown back. So she thought it would be helpful for Angela’s daughter, Camryn, to see her with a full head of hair. She could be a living, upbeat example that Angela’s hair loss would not be forever, that life could return to normal after cancer treatment. “Kelly and Jenny helped me turn something that could have been traumatic into something that was very ceremonial, and even fun,” Angela said.
She told this story very lightly to the Ames audience. She didn’t talk about the raw emotions everyone was feeling as her head was shaved, or how powerful a moment it was when Jenny and Kelly both leaned forward to kiss her bald head. She didn’t describe how her daughter had stood there, soberly watching this lifelong sisterhood in action. Or that Kelly had broken into tears. “Are you sad because you’re remembering your own treatments?” Angela asked her. Kelly had nodded her head yes. But actually, Kelly’s emotions had swelled for other reasons: She worried that her own fear of dying and leaving behind motherless children would be felt by Angela.
In Ames, Angela skipped these harder memories and spoke with a smile. “So my head was shaved, Kelly and Jenny went home, and they kept calling: ‘So did your hair fall out yet?’ And I kept telling them, ‘No, not yet.’”
Days went by and then weeks. Her hair wasn’t falling out. It was almost comical. Her friends had left town and left her with a shaved head—maybe unnecessarily. “I told them, ‘Well, thanks a lot for shaving my head!’” she said.
The crowd in Ames laughed as Angela spoke. There was something joyous in her delivery, despite the obvious pain at the root of her story. She wore a scarf on her head because, eventually, five weeks after her head was shaved, she did lose her hair.
Angela then told the audience about medical studies mentioned in The Girls from Ames. “Research shows that women with advanced stages of breast cancer have better survival rates if they have close friends,” she said. “I believe this. My friends have helped me remain hopeful and optimistic. It’s their love, actions and prayers that will make me a survivor.”
The crowd applauded and the evening continued. The Ames girls had become hometown celebrities.
A week later, back home in North Carolina, Angela had a mastectomy. She told the Ames girls that she went into surgery feeling buoyed by her visit to Ames, as if she had been physically strengthened by the embrace of her community and by the love of her friends.
The rest of the Ames girls also returned to their private lives. Meanwhile, around the country, women who’d never been to Ames, who might not even be able to place it on a map, began immersing themselves in this book.
In the weeks and months after the book’s release, it was a thrill for the Ames girls to hear from so many readers. In email after email, women wrote that reading the book led them to reflect on their own childhood friends. Hundreds of women visited www.girlsfromames.com to post heartfelt stories about their longtime bonds, offering vivid reminders of the old saying: “You can make a new friend. You can’t make an old friend.”
We heard from a group of fifteen women who call themselves “Las Quinceaneras” (The Chosen Fifteen). They met as first-graders in Cuba, lost boyfriends during the Bay of Pigs incident, later escaped to the United States and have maintained their friendships for fifty years.
We heard from four Illinois friends in their forties whose favorite activity over the years has been scrounging up tickets to The Oprah Winfrey Show. They’ve gone together twelve times, and have also made girlfriend pilgrimages to see Dr. Phil, Ellen DeGeneres, Tyra Banks, David Letterman, and Regis and Kelly.
All sorts of groups told us they have their own way of referring to themselves: The SSGs (Same Sweet Girls), The Doo Wha Diddies, The Hens, The Magnificent Seven, The Losers, The Maf (as in Mafia), The Council, The Goula Belles, The Sweet Potato Queens, The Green Pinto Gang, The Fearsome Four, The Zig Zaggers. The DGs wouldn’t tell us why they call themselves The DGs. They’ve vowed to take their secret to the grave.
Book clubs all over the country began inviting various Ames girls to call in to their gatherings via speakerphone. I’ve joined the calls, too, and have been so impressed by the penetrating questions and intuitive comments. (Our contact information and a book club guide are on the book’s Web site.)
It also has been great fun to see how these book clubs embrace the spirit of the book. Some have baked and decorated their own brown-blobbed “Shit Sisters” cakes to serve during discussions. Two groups made Maxi Pad slippers and sent us photos. One book club made a CD for each member with all the music mentioned in the book. And a great many groups of women have posed for staircase photos, mirroring the Ames girls’ photo on the book’s front insert. We were even sent a photo of one group of male friends on a staircase.
“I feel as though I take away positive, helpful information from every encounter with a book club,” Kelly told me. “I’ve had some good laughs with all of these women. They’ve helped make me a more enlightened person.” Almost every week, people tell her that they are the “Kelly” in their group
of friends. “I’m not exactly sure what that means,” Kelly says, “but it makes me smile and feel less alone in the world.”
Each Ames girl has discovered how readers relate to their “character.” Jane, for instance, as the only Jewish girl in the Ames friendship, hears from women who played that role in their own groups of friends, or were the only Christian in a group of Jewish friends.
Sometimes readers take the Ames girls by surprise. Karen was signing books at a bookstore in Massachusetts, and a woman in line complimented her on her necklace. “Thank you,” Karen said, then looked into the woman’s misting eyes and realized she had read chapter thirteen. As always, Karen was wearing the gold chain with the “mother and child” charm on it, in memory of her daughter lost to spina bifida. The woman showed Karen her own necklace; her charm was also for a child who had died. It was a fleeting encounter, but Karen was taken by the power behind it. They were two strangers, crossing paths briefly, connected by loss.
Some readers became protective of the Ames girls. A woman in Hawaii wrote to take issue with Diana’s description in the book’s “Guide to the Ames Girls” and on our Web site. I’d written that Diana “works at a Starbucks in Arizona.” Given the challenges women face balancing work and motherhood, the reader asked that Diana’s description be changed to: “certified public accountant by profession; now works at Starbucks by choice.” Good point. For this edition, we’ve made the change.
Many readers saw parallels to their own lives when they read chapter six, about the night some of the Ames girls turned on Sally at a sleepover. We heard from readers who recalled being “mean girls” themselves; others shared memories of being targeted. They wanted Sally to know how much they admired her for holding her head high, and for finding it in her heart to forgive. “I’ve forgiven everything,” Sally told a crowd at a bookstore in Minnesota. “I mean, it happened such a long time ago. It happened thirty years, six months, five days, six hours and ten minutes ago—not that I’m keeping track . . .”
The Girls from Ames Page 32
