About Friendship

Truth & Beauty: Ann Patchett's Memoir About Her Friendship With Lucy Grealy
By Sheila Bender

Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face, and five-time novelist Ann Patchett were acquaintances at Sarah Lawrence, where Lucy was legendary as a poet and inspired her classmates with her courage in facing and healing from constant surgeries to restore her face, scared and disfigured from cancer surgery when she was nine. When they were both entering the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of Iowa Lucy heard that Ann was making a summer trip to find an apartment. Ann received a letter from Lucy asking her to look for one for her as well. When Ann found that the price of rent made separate places unaffordable for each of them, she rented a two-bedroom unit in a duplex and Ann and Lucy became roommates.

Ann Patchett describes Lucy' walking into their place shortly after Ann arrived that fall:

When I turned around to say hello, she shot through the door with a howl. In a second she was in my arms, leaping up onto me, her arms locked around my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist, ninety-five pounds that felt no more than thirty. She was crying into my hair. She squeezed her legs tighter. It was not a greeting as much as it was a claim: she was staking out this spot on my chest as her own and I was to hold her for as long as she wanted to stay.

At Iowa, where no one knew Lucy, classmates often questioned Ann about her ability to live with Lucy, whose disfigurement, they assumed, was too upsetting to live around. Ann had for years admired Lucy's heart, mind and spirit and their friendship deepened quickly as they wrote and taught and shared their dreams.

The story of the women's friendship spans the years in Iowa and beyond, when with published and acclaimed books under their belts, Lucy's needs remained paramount in Ann's life. Ultimately, Lucy's battle with heroin addiction ruined the ease of their friendship. Lucy dies during the cycle of months when Ann is at her most impatient with her. Mourning her friend, Ann soothes herself by writing a memoir, "That was part of Lucy's genius in having so many friends. We all lost our patience with her, but never at the same time. If one of us was tired, there was always someone else to pick up the lamp and lead her home." For Ann "home" is now the immortalization and evocation of a devoted friendship. Lucy hated dealing with her mail and didn't open it. When bags of it depressed her, Ann had them sent to her to go through. Lucy needed bailing out financially; she usually didn't save for financial droughts during times of success. She didn't meet contract deadlines for books and she lost contracts. Lucy needed company when she faced months of surgery and recovery, from bone grafts and other procedures to restore her jaw. What some might have brushed off as codependence, in Ann's understanding and love, was true need. Ann found she was inspired to use her best self in helping Lucy.