Today's discussion is difficult, because it sounds as though I'm dissing someone in my family. But I need to analyze why I often feel toxified in subtle ways after long conversations with my sister. One thing that bothers me is her streak of cagey-ness---some would even call it issues with lying---which causes her to skirt around and evade the truth, tiptoeing carefully around it like a curfew-breaking teenager who ingenuously omits portions of what she did that evening to questioning parents. At our ages, it's annoying. I'm not a parent figure and she's not a teenager. So why does she lie by omission so much? It happens a lot, but the most recent incident irritated me majorly.
Here's what happened. Last June, she and her daughter went to Italy. Her daughter posted the pix on facebook, which is the only reason I knew about it. But when talking with me, both before and after her trip, my sister took great pains to edit out the fact that a vacation in Italy was a part of a trip to the East Coast. (Trust me, dear reader, it was not a well-intentioned omission to spare my feelings that I, too, wasn't enjoying a vacation in Italy. Nothing like that. She knows I can afford a trip overseas too, if I want. Sparing feelings is also not her strong suit, at least not with me.)
Continuing with this story, she had told me in May that she was going East soon to visit her daughter in Boston and see a couple of high school girlfriends in Long Island. The three planned to drive to NYC for a night on the town. Sometime during the trip, my sister actually phoned me in the middle of a week day, allegedly from Long Island, saying she had just arrived in Long Island and was waiting for the girlfriends to pick her up. That phone call, in itself, was weird. It was almost like a cheating-husband-deciding-to-check-in-with-the wife before checking into the motel kind of call. It was even more strange, in that she rarely calls me when she's home, let alone on the road. "It costs too much," so she doesn't have outgoing long distance from her landline and the cellphone signal sucks, so if she calls me, she asks me to call her right back, which I do. Anyway, during the call from "Long Island," she said she would be returning to Denver the following Sunday. A few days later, I texted her to ask for more details about the reunion. I was interested in hearing more about the the high school friends since they had been my friends, too, and both their older brothers had been friends/objects of romance during high school. She texted back that she was at work and would call me later to tell me. But she never called back. In late June, I saw the Italy pix on facebook and thought it was bizarre that she would forget to mention that major leg of the trip. But then it struck me why. A trip overseas contradicts the identity she embraces and the image she unconsciously but persistently tries to project (to me, at least) of a pathetic, aging, single woman without enough income, no husband, a too-high mortgage, a job with no paid days off or paid holidays, and a crappy health insurance plan. I hear that tale time and again.
The next time we connected on the phone, I didn't mention her trip, and of course she didn't volunteer it. This past Sunday, we talked after barely talking all summer, and at the end of the conversation, I said, as a genuine afterthought to my announcement that we are going to Italy in December, that I had noticed on facebook that she had been there recently. "When did you go?" I asked. Hedging, she replied, "Well, uh, I went there seven years ago." (that trip, which I knew about, is a story for another time). I said, "Oh, you took J. with you seven years ago?" (J. was in the facebook photos too.) Pause. "Uh...what do you mean?" she asked evasively.
Do you see what I mean about dancing around a straight answer?
She finally said that she'd gone to Italy as part of the East Coast trip. I asked, "Why wouldn't you tell me about an exciting thing like that?"
Because, she said, she felt stupid spending the money when she shouldn't have. "I just wanted to do something for J. since she had just passed an important test in graduate school. And I felt depressed about turning 60. But I felt even worse after because I couldn't afford it."
But you DID afford it, I thought later. There are plenty of people in this world who wouldn't be able to scare up enough cash or credit for a trip to the state border, let alone to Europe. There's a difference between not being able to afford something at all, and spending money you wish you'd saved for a rainy day.
More important, this incident, following a string of them over time, suddenly opened up my eyes to the tacit roles that we seem to have established with each other. I must be a slow learner. Apparently, my "role" is supposed to be to feel sorry for the bum deal life has dealt her, and her "role" is to live up to that image. Going to Italy (openly) causes a mis-step in the waltz.
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