The Best Girlfriend You Never Had Analysis
“The Best Girlfriend You Never Had” by Pam Houston begins with a woman named Lucy talking about her friendship with an architect named Leo. She is enamored with his knowledge of architecture, the fact that they express themselves to one another through poetry and their mutual love of a local restaurant. Leo, however, is in love with a woman named Guinevere. The story is about the dangers of staying in a relationship where only one person is loving or caring.
Guinevere is a Buddhist and a disciplined one at that. “Air conditioning, she says, is just one thing she does not allow herself” (Houston 770). Although Leo is enamored with Guinevere, she has her eye on a man from New York that “Told her in a letter that the only thing better than three thousand miles between him and the object of his desire would be if she had a terminal illness” (Houston 770). Although love with this man is impossible, she nonetheless wants to pursue it.
While on a walk together, Leo and the unnamed Lucy see a wedding from across the pond. Leo calls the couple, “Suckers,” and she cannot help but say to him, “Like you wouldn’t trade your life for his right this minute” (Houston 771). Leo tells her to save that for herself or one of her boyfriends who are afraid of commitment. She opens up to him by confessing, “If I saw me coming down the street with all my stuff hanging out, I’m not so sure I’d pick myself up either” (Houston 771). He reassures her by telling her that “Of course she would.” She then tells him about how she wants someone with whom she can be close.
Lucy goes on to recount how when she first moved to California, how she had gotten drunk on the city after initially moving. She talks about all the men she was with before and how none of those relationships meant anything. Leo does the same thing and ultimately comes to the same conclusion. She then says, “[She] had men falling at her feet” in Alaska (Houston 773). Lucy is suffering from self-esteem issues by lamenting how fruitless her past luck with men had been. While staring at a poetry book, Leo says, “I bet a few men have fallen for you down here” (Houston 773). Leo, not lifting his eyes from the book, indicates that there is a subtext underneath what he is saying.
He then asks her, “Aren’t I the best girlfriend you never had?” in a melancholic manner. Lucy goes on to say the last woman Leo referred to as the “Love of his life had only let him see her twice a week for three years” (Houston 773). Since the woman was a cardiologist, she did not have time to fall in love. She spent all day repairing broken hearts, so why bring the work home with her? After Leo asked her to raise the number of dates they had, she broke their quasi-relationship off.
While recalling this story, Leo stands on a bridge looking out over the water. He steps down not from a changed perception of himself, but from the number of suicides that had already happened there that year. Because it had been precisely 250 people so far, he did not want his death to be associated with an “insignificant number like 251” (Houston 774).
While talking on the bridge, Leo asks Lucy if she thinks she could jump off the bridge. She proceeds to dodge the question, but Leo catches her, saying, “You’re the only person I know who’d get your throat slit sooner than admit you’re afraid” (Houston 775). The idea of kids and getting married gets thrown in the air only for it to fall back down.
When Lucy tells Guinevere that she has fallen for her boyfriend Gordon, it is clear that she is looking for an escape more than anything else. She wants to be with him only because she feels she is running out of time to enjoy life and thinks marrying Gordon would keep her entertained and happy. Although by all accounts, Gordon is incredibly abusive, Lucy’s lack of self-esteem is closing more doors than it is opening. Guinevere ultimately tells Lucy that marrying to keep the man happy is not worth it.
The story ends with Lucy approaching the water. Rose petals are on the concrete, staining it. When she tells Leo she is scared; she’s saying a myriad of things. She is saying she is scared to be at her age and single and that she is scared of the future as Gordon is violent. In the end, by admitting she is scared to Leo, she has opened herself to the hope that things are going to be different going forward.
Works Cited:
Updike, John and Pam Houston. “Gestures.” “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century, by John Updike, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, pp. 565–788.
