Maiden Names

To Diana Conway from Judy Busk

We were young girls together,

Eleven or twelve at most,

Yet our conversations soared to galaxies afar.

We carried books by wagonload,

Dug for fossils, climbed a rock or two

And swore that they were mountains.

We lost each other later in a maze

Of married names that easily removed all trace

Of those two friends together.

I think of you, Diana, and I know

Our paths must be in parallel.

I only hope someday they’ll cross again.

People who have read my book of poetry, After the Fire, may remember the above poem and the story that went with it.  The Conways came to Bisbee, Arizona, and moved into a house at the top of Yuma Trail, just up the street from ours, in the summer of 1955.  The Conways had two kids—a boy and a girl.  Diana was a year older than I was, and her younger brother, Joey. was the same age as my younger brother, Arlan.  Diana and I quickly bonded.  We both loved reading, and we made weekly treks to the Greenway School Library—which was open one day a week during the summers—hauling books back and forth in our family’s Radio Flyer wagon.

Mr. Conway had been hired as an announcer at the local radio station.  Unfortunately, his new job lasted only two months.  At the end of the summer they left town, moving on to California.  After that Diana and I stayed in touch as pen-pals. The summer before I started high school, I took a train from Tucson to LA and spent a week with Diana and her family at their home in Sherman Oaks.  We continued to correspond through college, but after that, we lost touch.  

In the early eighties I began looking for her—to no avail.  It was as though she had vanished into thin air, and that’s when I wrote the poem, hoping that someone who knew Diana might read it and put us back in touch.  That didn’t happen, so a few years later, I tried again.  While writing the first Walker Family book, Hour of the Hunter, the main character was named Diana in honor of my long-ago friend, and part of the dedication said, “and to Diana Conway, wherever she is.”

Eleven years later, that dedication paid off.  While attending Left Coast Crime in Anchorage in 1991, I met a woman who said, “Who’s the Diana Conway in this book,” she demanded holding up a copy of Hour of the Hunter, open to the dedication page.  “I know someone named Diana Conway, and she lives right here in Anchorage. Minutes later, I was speaking on the phone—well, blubbering rather than speaking—to my long-lost friend.  She had attended seventeen schools in the course of grade school and high school.  I attended two.  She was a bit taken aback because she hadn’t been searching for me in the same way I had been searching for her.  Just like that, our long-interrupted friendship was back on a penpal basis.

It turns out, however, that Diana Conway wasn’t the only one of my childhood friends who had disappeared into the ethers.  Before the Conways moved into that house on Yuma Trail, another family lived there—a large family, complete with seven kids, just like ours.  We mostly paired off by age, and Donna and I became pals.  They were Catholic, so the kids went to St. Pat’s school in Bisbee rather than Greenway, but from kindergarten through third grade, Donna and I were thick as thieves. 

In Bisbee, Phelps Dodge was the major employer.  Each summer, the company shut down the mines  and everyone involved went on vacation.  People who didn’t have family members employed by PD stayed home during Shut Down.  (By the way, the Busk kids made out like bandits watering lawns for people who were out of town.)  In 1953 Donna’s family went to California during Shut Down and never returned—with no explanation.  Like the Conways would do several years later, they simply vanished into the black hole of California.  Just like that, my best friend Donna was gone.

Since putting Diana’s name in a book had finally given me back my one missing friend, when it came time to write Web of Evil, Ali #2, I tried pulling the same stunt.  I didn’t put Donna’s name in the book—I used her brother’s name for one of the characters, and guess what?  It worked.  Months later I received an email from someone who knew the brother.  I wrote back to him, explaining the whole story and giving him my contact information in case Donna was interested in being in touch.

Months later, Donna called me.  We spoke on the phone for the better part of an hour.  She explained that life in their household had been anything but perfect.  Domestic violence wasn’t something that was even hinted at in Bisbee, Arizona, in the fifties, but clearly it had existed in that household.  When the family left on “vacation” during Shut Down that year, their mother loaded her kids into the car and set off for California with no intention of ever returning. For months she and her kids lived in a relative’s garage somewhere in the LA area.  Donna’s parents never divorced, and when her father was ill and dying, her mother took him back and cared for hm until his eventual passing.  

Donna grew up.  Eventually she had returned to Arizona, living in the Phoenix area where she married and had a good job, achieving a level of stability in adulthood that had been absent from her childhood.  During that phone call, she told me that it never occurred to her that she might have been a good enough friend that anyone would have been looking for her.  So although she was complimented to know that I had searched for her, she had no interest in resuming our friendship.  Remembering those “old days” was just too painful.

I’ve abided by her wishes, but this week, as I was re-reading Web of Evil, I encountered her brother’s name and all of this came back to me in a flash.  Now I’ve shared the story with you.  Why?  Because I’m guessing I’m not the only person my age who has lost and found friends.  And the thing is, sometimes, when you find them again, the best thing to do is to let them go.