Not Even Asking

Soon after I invited RCW to the grand soiree, she asked tactfully if Emma would be coming.

I said that I'd thought about it but my conclusion was that if Emma came, it would all be about Emma. It would involve watching her and being scared she would explode or implode. I knew, too, that she would expect to stay at my house.

The few times Emma has stayed at my house, she has completely disregarded my rule against smoking in my house or car. Emma is a chain smoker. Three packs a day is her average. There was a time when I was used to this, but not anymore.

Emma has also damaged things by dropping cigarettes.

The one time we shared a hotel room together - I paid for it - it was a non smoking room and she smoked. Luckily, this was back in the day when people were expected to cheat and no one enforced the "you will pay this much money if we have to get rid of the smell of cigarettes." And I knew she would kick up a fuss about not being allowed to smoke in the park. ("WTF? It's fucking outdoors!" she would say.)

Plus there is the usual Emma baggage and I knew she would want to talk about it, but I've had my quota for a good long while now. Lately whenever she begins to complain, I shove her in the direction of her shrink. I'm too tired to deal with it anymore. She asks for my advice and then she never takes it. So... why ask again?

I don't have the energy to deal with her. Honestly, I don't know if I will ever want to see her face to face again.

RCW phoned yesterday and we laughed our asses off for about half an hour (alas, my ass came back). And then Emma called. In that dead voice I dread, she said, "Oh....hey...it's Emma. You know....today's my birthday."

Mine was in June. What a coincidence!

I wished her a happy birthday and asked if Sven had taken her anyplace nice. It seems he had. Nice. And apparently her crazy mother hadn't interfered with it, which is a gift in and of itself.

"You know...I was thinking...Maybe if I could scrape together some money, I could come visit you in October."

Noooooooo. No. No. Nichts. Nein. Absolutement non. Don't even go there.

"Maybe, I don't know, Columbus Day weekend?"

Okay. Who squealed?

And I decided the "these are not the droids you're looking for" approach would work best for me. I said, "Honey, it's a real problem of time. If I don't work, I don't get paid."

She sighed. "Yeah. I figured that would be problematic."

We moved on from there. She told me about a woman in their little town that Emma thought liked her. "I thought we were friends. But she won't answer my phone calls. And I just found out that she'd been telling everyone she was going to Japan to teach English for a month while her daughter's visiting her boyfriend in Ireland."

I can't tell you how many of these little friendships Emma's been through.

She is so completely in the wrong place. I know she loves her land and her garden. I know she loves the critters, from the ducks to the wayward cattle. But I don't think she's in the right place. She's surrounded by stodgy elderly Norwegians who once voted on whether or not anyone not of Norwegian extraction would be allowed to live in the town. The recession hurt the little boomlet of artsy fartsy people moving in. And even most of those, she didn't get along with for one reason or another.

I can see Emma and Sven owning maybe ten acres or so outside Madison or Lacrosse, someplace that still has a kind of hippie chic going for it. I think it's dawned on her that she's not going to bea able to keep the 100 acres they have, that in about five years, it's going to be way too much for them to handle.

So. In case you were wondering, Emma will not be at the party.