Uh Huh

I'm late. I took the wrong way to get here, don't remember the name of the obscure airline she's booked on, and am sketchy on the city she flew from. I finally arrive at her gate after having embarrassed myself by admitting to several ticket agents that, "I seem to have lost my friend." I'm not just late, I'm 45 minutes late. At this point, I'm muttering to myself, swearing periodically at my stupidity, knowing that she is a nervous traveler and that I should have been better prepared. She will be angry and will let her annoyance ring clear. As I stride up to her gate, a flight attendant tells me her flight is just arriving. Relief.

I've been nervous about her visit, but seeing her disembark the plane I am thrilled to see her. I watch from a distance as she smiles at the attendant and passenger that help her with her many bags and her seven-month-old son, Mikey. She greets me blandly, a sigh, roll of the eyes and many complaints. She's tired, threw up on the plane and needs to eat. But do I get a hug and an introduction to your baby whom I've never met? She wanders aimlessly in search of food ignoring my suggestions, as I struggle to haul her two huge suitcases and diaper bag throughout the airport. I wait nervously already doubting the success of this visit as she gets a bagel to sooth her aching stomach. She only eats a bite or two. I smile, offer help, and wait for her to notice me and redo her greeting. She doesn't make eye contact. The complaints continue. Her back is sore, her head is killing her, and she hates this airport. "How stupid! The flight attendant moved my bags...she even threw away the soda I left there." I try to listen attentively, with sympathy to her barrage of negativity. Ten minutes have passed and already I know the fate of this visit. I tell myself to be patient.

The conversation on the way home hovers around the flight, the small, shifty aircraft and its effects. Mikey is oblivious to all this. Content and quite, he did great on the flight from what I can tell. We spend that night getting them settled. She plops her bags down throughout the living room and bedroom and sets to work settling in, all the while chatting about her baby and of her various ailments, catching me up on their current status. Not knowing if she is really talking to herself or me, I wander through her room, the kitchen and the living room, restlessly trying to follow her words and movement. Soon enough I realize she is simply prattling on, and I don't need to listen to know what she is saying. Once in a while I hear something to the effect of, "My doctor is such an idiot..." or "When I was pregnant my skin was so perfect and now..." These are followed by my occasional uh huh, oh, really! She still hasn't noticed me.

Debi's been to our house once before, but doesn't seem to remember the changes my husband and I have made since then. The little kid in me fights the urge to brag about the fence I built last summer and the landscaping I've done. I want to tell her about the great times Eric and I have had trimming trees, hauling rocks and dreaming of our future family. I want to tell her how wonderfully rich and challenging my marriage is, and how high my hopes are for us. I want to reveal my fears, too. How does a marriage last thirty, forty, fifty years? How does a baby change your relationship? Your lifestyle? Does she have the same fears? I want to ask. I want to explore these uncertainties with her; this one area we have in common. But when I mention a why or a how even about a simple baby issue, much less a why about why she believes what she does, she seems uneasy, even insulted and lets me know with, "When you have a baby your perspective on all of that will change. You'll see."

What do you say to that? It's not exactly a conversation booster. Typical. Shut me up before I say or ask something interesting and she has to respond with anything that requires thought. There is no conversation happening here; it's simply a list of facts from her incredibly dull life. Her hair, car, sister, nails. I guess I know what she's been thinking about for these last two years of unemployment. I am so bad at being a passive listener. I want to understand, question, grow from an experience with a person, not just nod. I'm ready to strike uh huh from my vocabulary by the end of our first night together.

We've planned to go downtown for an extravagant lunch the next day, my treat. It takes Debi nearly two hours to prepare for launch. I'm starving, but expect her to get a move on, as it is now past one o'clock and we've stood up my husband by now. But before we can lunch, we spend another hour hunting down a stroller I lined up to borrow. The woman we were borrowing it from wasn't available when we got there, so instead of going on to lunch and abating my ever-increasing appetite, we wait an hour to get the stroller Debi never uses. On the way home she asks about my upcoming job. "When you want you could tell me about your new position." Now is a good time I figure, so I start giving her the basics, the abbreviated version. Within a minute her head cranes towards Mikey and they play peek-a-boo. I shut up and drive home in silence as they continue to play. She never refers back to the conversation.

Debi's baby isn't sleeping much and so neither is she. I baby-sit as she takes a five hour nap the next day. Yes! She's finally going to feel better, be less cranky and I get time to bond with her amazing little boy. She gets up around two playing immediately with Mikey. I'm wondering if she wants to know how it went. Fantastic I would tell her. But she doesn't ask or thank me for helping out.

We've planned to have a couple of my friends over that evening for dinner and games. They arrive to a rested, but still crabby, Debi. She is aloof, uninterested and utterly distracted by her baby. The guests ask her about her visit and she tells them we haven't done anything yet. She's forgotten about our fiasco lunch from the day before. And today, we had no extra time. After babysitting half the day, I had to do some last minute shopping. I had planned and shopped for an elegant meal of Chicken Marsala, but she didn't like my menu choice, so I spent the afternoon shopping for and preparing our dinner, and then cleaning up the baby mess.

During the altered dinner with our guests, the conversation focuses around hobbies, families, significant others and parenting. She leads the conversation on parenting informing us of how little of this life-altering change we can comprehend. Its importance is something we cannot possibly yet understand. She seems to be forgetting that I am about to embark on this incomprehensible journey. In five short months I will have a baby of my own. Does she not realize how much I've thought about the change this will bring to my husband's and my life? Does she think I don't already feel the significance of bringing a child into this world?

During the rest of the conversation, she watches her baby and gazes out the window, with a tight puckered face that retreats as far back in her chair as possible. She sits in the chair at the head of the table while the rest of us sit in the middle. As the evening progresses, I try to engage her in the conversation, but am not very successful. I steer the conversation now and again to help her jump in, but it's tiring and she's a big girl. The conversation among the two guests and I is natural and easy. They are friendly and try to include Debi, smiling, listening and asking questions when she speaks about her baby. But soon they grow tired of all the effort too and want to discuss larger topics. I see how hard it is for them. The sour look on her face, the nagging I-don't-want-to- be here tone of her voice, the negativity in everything she says is hard to combat for long. I've been feeling it for two days, and I know they are feeling its weight after only two hours.

By the end of the evening, moods have disintegrated into frustration, annoyance and embarrassment for her and for me. The game we play becomes overly competitive, as she becomes increasingly tired. The score seems to matter more with each turn and her voice grows louder and more impatient. She shoots dirty looks at me when I don't follow her clues and the complaints about sleep and headaches grow more frequent. The eyes of the guests dart around the table and the conversation becomes strained. We are laughing less and focus on the game. No one drinks or eats and the music has stopped. Relieved, the game comes to an end. The guests leave and Debi and I go our separate ways to bed.

I'm furious and embarrassed, and feel the need to apologize to my guests. I should have known better. I should have known that she would not mesh with my friends, especially during competition. Every time I have done anything with her that involves competition, it ends in disaster. She loses her temper, denies it and makes everyone uncomfortable.

She and I have been friends for fifteen years. My mind races as I try to sleep. Fifteen years. How long has it been since I've liked her? The last few visits were a string of the same complaints. And I'm well practiced at the uh huh response from our phone conversations from years past. And I haven't needed or wanted her misguided support for as long as I can remember. We hadn't had anything in common for years until we each got married. Even her relationship and marriage was a stark contrast to mine. Met, married and pregnant within six months with no money or education to fall back on.

As I try to sleep, "What a brat!" keeps running through my mind. I'm embarrassed, frustrated and determined. I don't want her in my life anymore, at least not under this pretense of intimacy.

The next morning without a hello or good morning she walks out the front door, avoiding me, reclining on the front steps. I interrupt her pouting and join her. I stare at the beauty of the swaying trees. I doubt she notices them. She looks towards the ground, her feet, her child. I want to scream my disapproval of her behavior from last night, but instead I try the compassionate approach. I guess I also have hopes of gaining the insight and appreciation of her that I lacked last night as I wrestled with my anger. I want to capture the reason for our friendship.

I rouse my courage to begin what I know will be a difficult conversation. I know her ego is fragile, and I know my comments will prick her delicate skin. I ask her how she is and continue with brief questions and comments trying to draw her out. I hedge at her negative attitude, trying to be as gentle as possible, listening much more than talking. I tell her I'm not enjoying our visit very much and wonder if she feels the same.

She breaks down about her health. Fighting the tears, she vents about the pain she is in and the ill effects of all of her medications. I try to be sympathetic, but feel like a phony. Her complaints go back to junior high when she barely passed eighth grade because she missed so many days of school. A debilitating headache, backache, or toothache, laryngitis, or pneumonia. Any and all could strike at a moment's notice.

She then highlights her parenting frustrations with Mikey from her long sleepless night saying, "Mikey is a difficult baby..." I think Mikey is terrific and love him dearly already, but she says with the exception of his sleeping habits, he is behaving unusually well. At home he is bored and cranky. She wants to get involved in playgroups, but hasn't taken any steps to make it happen.

She brings up the previous evening with our guests. I want to tell her how out of line she was, but instead she tells me she felt left out. They were very nice and she liked them, but no one in the group could relate to having a child, no one expressed much interest and I should have helped her more with Mikey. I bite my tongue wondering how that is supposed to excuse her rudeness. No matter what the topic, she blames her collection of illnesses, my guests, Mikey or me for her bad circumstances, all the while claiming a chipper outlook on life. I console her, again wishing I genuinely felt the sympathy she needed. I apologize for the unsuccessful evening and visit. For her, that's all it is, an evening, a weekend. She never asks why I'm not having a good time. I want to tell her, but know I can't. I know that she doesn't want to know.

She's gone now. Flew out this morning. I wonder who will be the first to call and what we will say about this visit. Will I lie and tell her I really enjoyed seeing her, similar to my lie this morning? I don't want to pretend. As I dropped her off at the airport I felt sad, guilt stricken and relieved she was gone. Five minutes from the airport, she dropped a bomb in my lap. Sometimes she feels that I don't like her. She didn't ask it or add anything, just let it drop. Was I supposed to diffuse that bomb or let it go off? I didn't want to hurt her.

She's noticed me.

What will I say when she calls?