Parting Ways. It's Time.

January 8, 2025, 7:30 PM

Christine Merser:

Please know that I’m putting out good thoughts and hopes that your beautiful home which holds such fond memories for me, is OK. Please be safe. C.

C:

Thank you Chris. We are waiting and praying. Means the world to me to hear from you.

I have written about my friend C., my best friend for 45 years, who I spoke to daily before DT, but who I haven’t spoken to since 2016 when Trump came between us like a wrecking ball. I couldn’t stomach what he unleashed in her, and she stood firm in what she believed. She never stopped being my best friend. It was me who walked away. Totally. We haven’t spoken since.

When I moved to LA for two years to fulfill a contract after selling my company, her husband was thrilled. She had just relocated from New York, which she wasn’t happy about, and they insisted I come and stay with them and live with them for the first few months I was there.

When I moved out three or four months later, her husband tried to talk me out of it. He put up with us mostly, always with the raised eyebrow, but also filled with the belief that the two of us were really something in our own way. I think he may be the only man who truly believed in me more than I believed in myself.

And she was my biggest supporter as a writer. She loved my writing. She made me think I could actually write. And now I think she was right. And, I was joyfully happy for her business success; my first woman friend to make a million dollar bonus and it was in the nineties! Oh happy day.

But we are no longer friends, and I’ve written about it, and I was brutal in my assessment. She is all in for DT, and MAGA. I miss her every day. Every Single Day.

They lived in a very fine house in Los Angeles in the Palisades, high atop the hill overlooking the water. I had my own wing and even took the elevator down to breakfast once or twice just because. We shared breakfast over newspapers—V. and me, Democrats, and C., the Republican, standing alone.

Today, I looked on a map where the fires were. I realized they were right by their house. I waited until early tonight and then I couldn’t wait any longer. I texted her the text I posted above.

We kept texting. She told me they escaped in seven minutes, and she carried with her only her iPad, her passport, and some of her jewelry. They sat in black smoke in the car, watching people leaving their cars and running toward the water. They made it to his son’s house, where they are safe and surrounded by people who care about them.

We went back and forth a little bit, me trying to be funny in a way that isn’t, but also trying to let her know that I was weeping for her and hoping that their house would still stand. Their beautiful house. I asked her to please let me know, and she said she would.

I just got the following text:

We just found out that the house burned to the ground. Nothing remains.

I can’t stop crying. Hours have passed, and I just can’t stop thinking about it all. What can I say to her broken heart?

The house. I lived in it. What remains? The Italian plates that V. bought before they even married and had in his amazing loft downtown in New York, then moved to the Palisades in California. On those plates, over and over again, V. made us pasta dishes that we ate with abandon. Real scallopini. And I made some dinners too, and we ate them on the same plates.

What remains? All those conversations we had around the table in the kitchen. I don’t think we ever ate in the dining room. Some of them had arguments in them, but most of them were filled with laughter—C. is a big laugher. Or they were politically charged. Or they were really interesting because we were all very smart people and tried to think about things that mattered. But she was less strident then, and so was I.

What remains? I couldn’t help but put it together with our friendship burnt to the ground. What remains?

I know how many memories I have in this house. But there are thousands of additional memories of our life together over the 45 years that were ours. Her mother dying. My divorce. OK, divorces. Her divorce. But mostly joy. Cape Cod. Dinners at Shabu Shabu on 70th street. Flights together. Books shared. Every single private thought.

But something else comes to my mind. What can rise out of the ashes. Just having her text me brought up all the years—the decades—we were best friends. And I realize now that I allowed that horrible, tiny disgusting man who’s going to be president in a few weeks to burn down our friendship as quickly as the fire took her home.

What is wrong with me? Why did I allow it? Why did I give him that power? There has to be a better way. I wonder if she’ll let me try to find it. I wonder if she’ll give me grace to find our way back. Now is not the time to ask.

It was just a few days ago that I actually wrote a piece about walking away from MAGA people. I shouldn’t have walked away from her. I should’ve stuck it out. I should’ve fought it out.

Out of the ashes. That is where we are in so many ways right now. What will we build? I have so much more hope today than I did yesterday. And one of the things that I hope for is that she and I can talk and try to figure something out.

Until it’s time to ask her that, I am going to take a minute every day and wish her peace in what was destroyed today.

April 2, 2025, 8:33 AM

It’s months later, and C. and I have just texted—kindly, but most likely for the last time.

I tried. She tried. We never spoke about politics. We went back to our comfort zone, and it felt so good to be connected to that part of me—of such a long, long shared history—where laughter comes easy and quickly, and brilliantly. And a shared history is worth a thousand explanations to others who weren’t there. And, me supporting her trauma about the house, and her supporting an issue I have with my eyes.

As we went back and forth with mundane as well as intimate thoughts, the Trump administration grew even worse than I could have ever imagined. And still, we hung on. And, we never spoke about it. Not once.

And then, over the weekend, I realized I really can’t do it anymore. I kept thinking about her continued support of what is happening in my beloved country, headed toward what I think is hell. I have seen her ‘likes’ on X (someone sent them to me), and it sickens me. Truly. Her comments. Her joyful pictures of the newspaper headlines when he won on her social media.

My truth can’t be ignored by me any longer. The core values that shape who she is—and who I am—make it impossible to keep this conversation outside the walls of our friendship any longer. It’s no longer tenable. No longer doable. Rome is burning. And it’s not just a metaphor—it’s the noun, the setting, the backdrop of our lives now. Our friendship, her home, our country. Burned. To pretend we can sip coffee, brush each other’s hair, and swap stories without acknowledging the smoke in the air is dishonest. We’re standing in the same fire, and silence is feeding the flames inside me.

I finally said something. But not in anger, as in our last conversation in 2016—this time with kindness and sadness and so much regret. She didn’t back down at all. I think she even doubled down. She talked a bit about how Republicans and Democrats are all being threatened, as if what’s happening here is happening to everyone. And, she actually said her family was ok, so she was ok. I didn’t respond to that. I just told her how sad I was, and how I wished her well, and that if she ever needed anything, I was here. And I am.

I publish it all now because it’s time to reckon with the fact that it’s not him that’s doing this. It’s time we all recognize that there are millions of Americans who support him. And men and women in Congress who will not stop him, and they could. And while they might be a minority group in total numbers, they are in power. And they might even prevail—but if they do, it will be over my dead body.

I’m glad I reconnected for this brief moment with her, and I feel so much better about the way we parted. And I’m willing to live with the fact that our love for each other was not enough to overcome a totally different set of what’s important in the world. I am so grateful for all she and V. brought to my life. So grateful. The door is not cemented shut. Maybe one day she will wake up, but it’s not today. And I think she knows, I will never wake up from where I sit.