Mary and Daphne #80 (Patreon)

“I’m sorry I can’t come over,” Nana said. She didn’t need to apologize. I get it – she needed to make a pandemic bubble, and it made more sense for her to do it with her kids and grandkids than us. Makes total sense. Doesn’t keep us from talking on the phone though. If it wasn’t raining, we’d be talking over the fence.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t have to apologize every time we talk. Are you keeping busy?”

“It’s amazing how many things we can find to do if we just make them up. Are you staying outta trouble?”

Why’s she gotta ask questions like that? Loaded question, too. “No more trouble than I can handle,” I answered with bravado. Maybe even a little braggadocio. And a touch of bravura.

“Mine always got in trouble on rainy days.”

“Your what, Nana? You never had one of me.” Which came out without me really meaning for it to. It’s just that she says stuff like that sometimes, and I always think the same thing: she never had one of me.

“Sorry. You know what I mean.”

“I’m not a little girl.” Ooo, turns out I was in a snippy mood. Wish I’d known that before I called.

“I know. I’m sorry. I just …”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be snippy. Just that I’m … blegh.” I’m blegh. The whole world is blegh, and as world leader, I’m blegh, too, both because I am and because I have blegh constituents’ blegh-ness to represent.

“Light at the end of tunnel, though. Do you know when you might get a vaccine? You’re prioritized, aren’t you?”

“I have no idea. My immunologist says she doesn’t know anything. I can’t believe no one even has a plan … I wanna drink now.”

“It’s nine–thirty.”

“I know. Getting a late start.”

“Ha! Tell me about your vacation instead. You still haven’t.”

“It was good. Fine.”

“You told me that part already, silly. What did you guys do for a whole week?”

What did we do for a whole week? Well, here’s how I’ve pieced it together in my head: we went on vacation; the break in the routine made me forget about COVID for just long enough for me to forget my mask; I totally freaked myself out and had a meltdown.

“We just social distanced elsewhere. We went snowshoeing … There was a sauna.”

“I hope you had more fun than that. Was it at least nice to get away from the house for a bit?”

“Yeah. It was.” That part was good. “It was a nice break … Hard to come back.”

“I’m sure.”

“How’s your family?”

Well, that wasn’t our best conversation. There really isn’t anyone to talk to during the (increasingly long) days. Mary, obviously, but all my other friends are working. Maybe if I had kids, I’d have some stay–at–home mom friends, and then I’d be a stay–at–home mom, too, instead of unemployed and lonely. We could use some more friends anyway. Normal ones we’ve never seen naked and who have never touched my butt. Don’t get me wrong, I like our friends, and we do have some vanilla friends, but all our close friends are from the scene.

I did go to college out here. You’d think I’d have some friends from back then who were still here. Or anywhere. Who goes to college and doesn’t have any college friends?

And work friends are really important to have, but not many make that transition to outside–of–work friends. I had none of those. Not anymore their fault than my fault. Just the way it is. End of the workday, and everyone just wanted to go home. Weekends, and you just don’t want to be thinking about work. That line between the two is good, or it seemed so back then. It went work–line–home. I hated office social events, too.

My awkward was always on full blast, or so it seemed to me (I’ve been told I’m a terrible judge of that), and then I spent way too much time thinking about this or that thing I’d said. And it always just seemed weird to think of interacting with someone outside the setting I was used to knowing them in. Weirder, when you think about it, that you can see someone every workday for years and then one day never again. Something so artificial about work relationships. Or at least I think there must be if it’s so easy to just cast one aside.

No one ever teaches you how to make friends as an adult. People help you make friends when you’re a kid. Being a kid just comes with all sorts of ways to make friends, too. School, sports, activities, clubs. And groups, too. How do you be part of a group as an adult? Wish someone had told me at my last track meet that it wasn’t only my last track meet but my last time ever being part a team. And work is not a team. People can call it that, but a team is something you join because you want to, not because you have to or you won’t be able to eat. Still, it was good having common purpose.

But Mary can do it. She’s made new friends as an adult. Mostly as part of the scene, but not only. She can do almost anything, but I gotta remind myself that’s just the way it seems from where I sit. There are lots of people like Mary (but only one actual Mary). How come people like that can make new friends, but not me? What do they know that I don’t? How are they different?

Truthfully, I wasn’t very good at making friends as a kid either. I was monogamous in my friendships, so to speak. I had my handpicked circle, and I really didn’t like it when one of them would try to add someone. They were interlopers. I was jealous and protective. I didn’t like that my friends had friends outside our circle, which was odd because I was friends with some really popular people, and I was decently popular too. Just in a more distant way. Two of my friends thought I had social anxiety, and I did. I just didn’t like new people.

Not like I mean to be that way, and I didn’t like being that way then either. Even now, I’m not a big fan of new people coming into our friend groups. How screwed up are people that even when we want more connections, we don’t want to actually meet people or let them in? We’re more worried about losing what we have, even when there’s no risk of it, than afraid of missing out on what we might gain.

And how screwed up is it that who we are at age five is pretty much who we are at thirty–one? They say you get less neurotic with age but that your personality is pretty much your personality forever. I hope not. Sigh…

I knocked on Mary’s office door. “You busy?”

“I can take a break. What’s up?”

“I’m lonely. Wanna make lunch together?”

“It’s only ten.”

“I’m stress eating again,” I confessed. All I want anymore is sugar and fat. I had seven meals yesterday. Eight if you count the cosmo I kept topped up from early afternoon through bedtime.

“How about some fruit,” Mary suggested as she got up from her chair and glanced at her phone before putting it in her pocket. As if we we weren’t all attached to those things too much already before the pandemic.

“Kay … Can I put peanut butter on it?”

“A little bit, silly goose.”

“I’m not a silly goose,” I said all plaintively and goose-like as I started toward the kitchen. “I just like peanut butter.”

“Hey,” Mary said and grabbed my wrist gently. I turned around, and she put her hand under my chin to lift my gaze to hers. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m just … blegh.”

“Let’s be blegh together then.”

“Kay.”

It’s better being blegh with someone than being blegh alone.