“Anyways, look who my cousin spotted at the mall!”
Ravita slid her phone across the table with a blurry photo on it—Sandy Gauntlet, the Belladonnas’ guitarist, caught mid-stride outside a shopping centre.
And I sat there with chewing my sandwich, looking at the photo of Sandy. I smiled and handed the phone back.
“That’s so cool.” I try to be as convincing as possible.
She looks at me a beat too long, like she’s deciding whether to push.
"Everything okay? Your parents or something? You’ve been gone a lot."
"Yeah. Just the usual stuff. Don’t worry about it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You know how it is."
"I don't, actually. My family's pretty low-pressure. They just want to know I'm happy."
"That's nice."
"Is yours not like that?"
"It's complicated."
"How so?"
I looked at my sandwich. "My father has specific ideas about how things should be."
"What kind of ideas?"
"Like, who we should date. What we should do for work."
She nodded. "That's rough."
"It is."
She didn't push.
Marnie already stopped asking why I was bailing on things because she got tired of my deflections.
Gerald has stopped coming by my desk. I told him that I couldn’t do dinner—that there was someone, sort of, that it was complicated—and he said “of course, no problem”, and now he takes the long way to the printer to avoid my aisle.
I started bailing on lunches. "Sorry, I have to meet family." "Work thing just came up." "Doctor's appointment." I was meeting Rhonda at a café across town, a place none of my colleagues go. Just two women having coffee, which is what any observer would see—just two women sitting and talking.
Ravita ate alone those days.
I’ve skipped so many Sunday dinners in a row—two “work deadlines” and one “I think I’m coming down with something”—and Karen has left a voicemail about every one, each one sounding concerned. So this Sunday I go.
Sunday dinner at my father's house. Karen had made cabbage rolls.
My phone buzzed. Rhonda sent a photo of a cool painting in a hotel lobby. A banana with eyes.
I kept my hands on the table, folded at the edge.
"You seem distracted, Lena," Karen said.
"Sorry it’s just work. Tax season again, you know how it is."
