something weird happened over christmas. on christmas day, actually.
we were in the process of opening presents, around noon, at my parents’ house when the phone rang. because my father has yet to appreciate the purpose of the answering machine they’ve had for years – i.e., guess what? when the phone rings, YOU DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER IT IF YOU’RE BUSY because this machine does that for you – he immediately shuffled to another room to listen to the message as it was being left. my mom figured it was probably one of her friends, or maybe a distant relative, calling with a “merry christmas” greeting. she, YB and i could hear that whoever was leaving the message was doing a lot of talking.
a minute later, my dad returned, looking confused. (this is not surprising, as he no longer processes information on the first go-‘round and only seems to half-listen most of the time, anyway.)
“it was a woman from new brunswick,” he said, making “new brunswick” sound as foreign and remote as mars, “who’s in town for christmas.”
“OH!” said my mother. “that was for vickie!”
wait. what?
“it was deepa. her mother wanted your phone number.”
deepa (not her real name) is a girl with whom i went to high school. she was a couple of years older than me, indian and suffered from lupus. she was very smart and very nice, and she walked with a cane. the steroids that she took for her disease routinely made her face swell, and her cheeks were always red. we had one class together, and were friendly in the halls between classes, but weren’t close pals or anything. i had thought of her on occasion over the years, and wondered what had become of her.
last summer, my mother called me after one of her fitness classes at the local community centre. “did you ever have any high school classes with a girl named deepa?” she asked. i said yes, relayed the above information and she said, “her mother is in my yoga class.” apparently, our moms had started talking one day, and my mom mentioned which high school i’d attended. deepa’s mother said her daughter had attended the same school, around the same time, and wondered if her daughter knew me. anyway, in the weeks after i’d confirmed that deepa and i had, indeed, sat in the same lab for four months, her mother filled my mother in on what life had been like for deepa.
in a word: crappy.
apparently, her conditioned had ravaged her body and left her contemplating suicide on multiple occasions. she’d had umpteen surgeries and dealt with severe depression. but she was married and now living in new brunswick.
cut to early in december when deepa’s mother evidently asked my mother for my phone number because deepa wanted to get in touch when she swung into town for the holidays. i didn’t know this info exchange had happened – if i had, i probably would have discouraged it. deepa and i had one class together. i doubted she even knew who i was.
so, on christmas day, deepa used the phone number her mom had passed along and called my parents’ house (my mother had said i’d likely be there over the holidays).
i listened to the message. it was long, but friendly. “this is a message for vickie,” it began. “my name is deepa, and we went to high school together about a million years ago.” she went on to say that she hoped i was well, and that i should call her when i get a chance. then she wished my family a merry christmas and said it would be nice to get in touch.
i wasn’t sure what to do. i mean, we had ONE CLASS together. after she graduated, we didn’t stay in touch at all. what would we talk about? i wondered if she’d actually asked for my number, or if her mother asked for it independently, thinking deepa needs more friends. either way, it was kind of weird, and my gut was telling me to ignore the message and not return the call.
but, i argued with myself, that would then put my mom in a bad spot. what if deepa’s mother confronted her at the gym, asking why i hadn’t called back after deepa’s message? i didn’t want mom to have to lie, and it was christmas day and the season of giving… and i kind of just wanted to just get it over with. i figured returning the call on christmas day might ensure we could keep it short – “oh, gotta go! we’re sitting down to eat now!” – so, i headed to the basement for some privacy and dialed the number.
deepa answered, i introduced myself and she seemed glad to hear from me. then she said, “i have to be honest with you, when my mom told me your name, i didn’t remember you.”
oh. well, this is suddenly way more awkward.
“so i pulled out a yearbook and looked you up,” she continued. “i guess you were a couple years behind me, right?” i said i was, suddenly realizing i should have listened to my gut and that deepa clearly had no idea who i was.
“when i found your photo, i thought, `yeah, she looks kind of familiar,’” deepa said.
WTF? why call me if you have no idea who i am????
“so, what have you been up to since graduation?” she asked.
by that point, i was looking to make this conversation short and polite, so i gave her a super-brief recap of, oh, the past 23 years. then i said, “how about you?”
and so began a very long, very detailed, VERY very TMI account of her life and, mostly, her medical history. she talked about all her surgeries, and the challenges she’s faced, but said she has a great support system and network of friends. she talked about how she could never see herself living in toronto because it’s so unfriendly – she actually said, “i could fall down on the street and have people annoyed with me for getting in their way!” – and how she’s been able to travel because of her husband’s job. she talked a lot about him, actually -- how they met, why he was the most amazing man in the world, how he helped through all her trials.
but she spoke in a way that reminded me of someone who might be overly medicated. her speech was a little slurred, and her thoughts and feelings just kind of poured out in a tidal wave of oversharing. as she talked, i was getting more and more uncomfortable. when she started talking about how she had to have a hysterectomy last year because, in her words, “i was hemorrhaging so much every time i got my period,” i wanted to hang up and run. again: we had one class together, didn’t really know each other well and hadn’t spoken in 23 years, and she was telling me about things that were very private, very graphic and not really the stuff of breezy holiday chats between strangers.
as she continued (she did almost all of the talking), i kept hoping my mom or YB would venture down to the basement, so i could signal one of them to call me off the phone. but neither did so, eventually, i just interjected and said, “oh, i’m going to have to go. we’re getting ready to sit down to eat.”
then she said, “oh! i didn’t even ask you if you’re married! are you?”
“nope,” i said.
“oh, so i guess that means you don’t have any kids? even though you don’t need to be married to have kids.”
“nope!” i said.
“so, are you seeing anyone?”
“nope!” i replied, wondering where this line of questioning was going and how much more she wanted to know.
“oh,” she said, “that’s okay, too.”
?!
i reiterated that i had to get going and she said it had been nice chatting. then she started to say, “so, now that i have your number, when i get back home…”
and i cut her off. i know it might seem cold, but i didn’t want to stay in touch and, again, wasn’t really sure why she wanted to chat with someone she didn’t remember in the first place. i figured maybe her mother had said something like, “this girl vickie remembers you from high school and would love to hear from you!”
regardless, we have NOTHING in common as adults and not much of a teenage foundation on which to build a new friendship, so i wanted to nip this in the bud.
“really,” i began, as nicely and gently and jovially as possible, “it’s fine. our moms wanted us to catch up, and you didn’t remember me, anyway. it was nice to hear from you, though.”
it was not the most graceful exit or rebuff, but i knew i had to make it. deepa isn’t someone with whom i’d want to forge a friendship, and our entire conversation – which lasted maybe 15 minutes – was so uncomfortable and awkward that i couldn’t imagine having another one.
thankfully, she seemed totally cool with that. (again, maybe her mother had pushed her to call me and she, too, had no clue why. so maybe she was just as relieved.) she wished me well, i did the same, and that was that.
