When I was a kid, I thought of Monica as my best friend. We lived next door to each other, played together almost every day and saw each other. We studied at different schools, but it didn’t interfere with our communication. While my parents were at work, we used to go to each other’s houses and pretend we were in a rock band and drummed on the plates with pencils. When we got older, our interests changed a bit, and the two of us would go to discos and meet guys.
Monica was less careful, and it so happened that she got married at eighteen. She and her husband went to live with her parents, they had a daughter, and I became a niece. We maintained a good relationship, though our paths diverged considerably-Monica had a family and I had studies.
When I was twenty-something, Monica shared a domestic scandal with me-her parents were fighting over money. Mom just brought her paycheck, she knew where she put it, and the money disappeared. The woman was already thinking both her son-in-law and her husband, and Monica confessed that she took it. She saw the money lying on the floor and picked it up. In her own house, you know? And she didn’t even think to ask her family whose it was – she just spent it on clothes for her daughter and herself.
I judged, but I couldn’t say anything. Monica was a girl of character, and she’d have a fight with me, too. So I didn’t say anything, but I kept it in my head for years, until Monica had a fight with her husband. My goddaughter was thirteen, a relatively adult. Here Monica’s sweetheart and decided that it was time to leave the family, said he would file for divorce. Monica’s property (including the apartment and its contents) were going to divide equally. And then my friend rushed to me late at night with two requests – to hide in her casket with her family jewels, which she did not want to share with her husband, and to take her daughter with her for a while.
I didn’t refuse the second request-the girl would have been better off in a quieter environment, but I didn’t take the jewelry. Even though Monica was my friend, you never knew what would go through her head. Then she accused that something was missing from there, we’ll fight, and still will demand compensation. Since she can take someone else’s, and about others thinks the same.
I looked after her daughter for a week and a half before Monica’s husband moved out, but I don’t regret that I had nothing to do with her jewels. As I suspected, Monica later complained to me about the elderly woman next door to whom she had left the box.
– There were two earrings, and now there’s one. They’re solid gold, and they’re heavy, too. The old woman probably thought I wouldn’t notice…” she said.
I just exhaled with relief that it was not about me.
So it is true what they say about that friends to keep close, but not even closer than the enemies. People can be very different, you can expect anything from them. Even from the closest and most faithful. And to be slandered by my childhood friend I would not like at all.
