The waiter comes to drop off a bucket of tortilla chips and salsa, and I nervously reach for them. Susan ignores them for the moment. We order fajitas.
“And, you know what?” Susan says to the waiter. “Two margaritas too. Is that okay?” I’m already face-deep in tortilla chips, so I just nod.
“What flavor?” he asks us. “Original? Mango? Watermelon? Cranberry? Pomegranate? Cantalo—”
“Original is fine,” she says, and I wish that she’d asked me about this one too because watermelon sounded kind of good.
He gathers our sticky red menus and leaves the table.
“Shit. I meant to ask him for guacamole,” she says after he leaves, and she starts to dig into the chips with me. “Sir!” she calls out. He comes running back. I can never get waiters’ attention once they’ve left the table. “Can we get guacamole too?” He nods and leaves, and she looks back at me. “My diet is a joke.” Who can count calories at a time like this? I feel good that Susan can’t either.
“So,” she says. “You mentioned it on the phone but I don’t understand. Your mom said she thought you’d be over it by now?”
“Well,” I say, wiping my hand on my napkin. “Not necessarily. She just . . . she called and asked how I was handling ‘things.’ Or ‘the thing’—you know how people use that terminology like they can’t just say ‘Ben died’?”
Susan nods. “The euphemisms,” she says. “As if you won’t remember that Ben is dead if they don’t say it.”
“Right! Like I’m not thinking about it every moment of the day. Anyway, she just asked and I said I was fine, like . . . I’m not really fine, but it’s just a thing you say. Anyone that asked me that would know that when I said ‘Fine’ I meant ‘Fine, considering the circumstances.’ ”
“Right.” The basket is now empty, and when the waiter comes to drop off the margaritas, Susan asks him to fill it up.
“But my mom honestly thought I was fine, I think,” I say. “I think she was hoping I’d say I was fine and that if I did say that, it would mean that she didn’t need to do anything and I was back to my old self. Like nothing ever happened.”
“Well, to her, nothing did happen.” Susan takes a sip of her margarita and winces. “I’m not much of a drinker, I’m afraid. I just thought it would be festive of us. But this . . . is a bit strong, no?”
I take a sip of mine. “It’s strong,” I say.
“Okay! I thought I was being a baby. Anyway—you were saying?”
“Actually, I think you were saying.”
“Oh. Right. Nothing happened to her. You two rarely talk, right?”
“Right.”
“It seems like she’s just one of those people that can’t empathize or even sympathize. So, she doesn’t know how to talk to you because she doesn’t understand you.”
I don’t talk about my family often, and when I do, I speak in short sentences and dismissive comments. But Susan is the first person to see what’s going on and give it a name. Or . . . at least a description. “You’re right,” I tell her.
“Don’t worry about your parents. They are going to do what they would want someone to do for them, and it’s going to be entirely different than what you need. And I say, give up trying to make the two fit. Not that I’m some expert. I just noticed that when Steven died there was a large difference between what I wanted from people and what they wanted to give me. I think people are so terrified of being in our position that they lose all ability to even speak to us. I say let it go.”