I couldn’t smile. I knew I should. My feelings were not hurt. I was not ruffled. I simply felt nothing at all, and least of all, enthusiasm, the driving force behind any real smile.
“I was at home!” I said. “I had lots of things to do, I couldn’t get out the door. The dog didn’t want to go outside – because of the cold, you know – his wolf ancestors would have laughed at him! I don’t know, I was slow, I’m sorry…anyway, how has it been?”
“Good-“ The word was drawn out in a way that made it sufficiently long and expressive to require no further elaboration.
“Good,” I said, voice raised, fake, agitated that the interaction was a struggle, was ruined, that I was ruining it.
Lucille turned back to Alice and resumed her conversation. “He gave me this look,” she was saying, “he glared at me like-“
“Are you sure?” I knew it was the wrong thing to say but I couldn’t help it. She was so damn paranoid. So self-centered. No one, I felt sure, had glared at her.
“What?” She had heard, of course.
“Are you sure he glared at you? Because I feel like you sometimes think people are glaring at your or have a negative attitude toward you and they don’t really mean to. Their faces look like that because that’s their resting position, or the person is thinking about something else.
“Ellie, you weren’t there!” she cried. “How would you even know unless you saw the look? When has that even happened? How is this something I “sometimes do”?”
Her defenses were rising.
Suddenly the moment was interesting. Everyone watched and listened carefully without appearing to do so.