The last time, on my last visit to Pocatello, I sat in Buddy’s waiting for Rose. Waiting on my barstool by the jukebox, drinking beer and playing song after song, until I had to go break another twenty for quarters, and while I was standing by the cash register, the Idaho State trooper came in and looked around and then walked right up to me and said, “Ms. Lish? Jackie Lish?” I nodded, wondering why a State trooper would be patrolling Buddy’s parking lot and what did I do? Forget to re-register my plates? Then he said, “Ms. Lish, I’m sorry to have to tell you that your friend has been in an accident,” and I knew that it must be bad, because they don’t send State troopers into Buddy’s to get you if everything’s going to be all right. Rose was killed almost instantly, in spite of the helmet she was wearing, and Tamsin’s father died, too, a few days later, without regaining consciousness. Tamsin was going to graduate from high school in a few days, and I was in town for that and to help celebrate her eighteenth birthday. After the funeral, I called and quit my job and had a friend pack up the stuff in my apartment and send it to me, and I’ve lived here in Pocatello ever since.
Actually, that bad night wasn’t the last time Rose and I met at Buddy’s. It would have been if she’d showed up, but, of course, she didn’t. The last time we met at Buddy’s was when I came back for my mother’s funeral, a couple of years earlier. I hadn’t been to Paris in a long time, and my brother Kip had to hunt me down by calling the University Alumni Office. Rose met me at the airport and drove me straight to Buddy’s for lunch. She said I needed the garlic to help me get through the funeral and seeing all my relatives after being away for so long. She was right: all afternoon I sucked the fumes of my own breath, reminding myself that as soon as it was over, I could leave and go to Rose’s house, where no one would ask me wasn’t I married yet? and when was I going to come back to Paris? and did I know that DeMaughn Young’s wife died last winter and his two cute little children sure missed having a mommy? Not “their mommy,” just “a mommy.”
