Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop: The Visit Home

“Thank God that’s over!” Sarah collapsed on her bed and kicked off the 3 inch heels she tortured herself with all evening. “Bachelorette parties always call for as much glamour as you can muster without killing yourself completely!” She rolled onto her stomach and looked at Amy standing in the doorway.

“Are you coming in, or what?”

Amy looked at her for a brief moment then stepped into the room and sank into a decrepit beanbag chair. A few beans popped out through a ripped seam and joined their already liberated compatriots on the floor.

“I can’t believe you still have this old thing, Sarah. Actually, I can’t believe you’re still living at home. Whatever happened to busting out of this town and seeing the world?”

Sarah grimaced. “Yeah, well. Plans don’t always work out the way you think. Besides, I didn’t really want to be on the other side of the ocean with Mom sick. It was good that I was here. And now…well, it’s kind of hard to leave.”

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten about your mom. Sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral. They won’t let you out of a final exam unless it’s immediate family.”

“Don’t worry about it. I totally understood”, Sarah said as she rolled back over and sat up. Her long brown hair tumbled down out of the loose chignon she’d put it in. She slid off the bed and walked over to an antique dressing table. Small bottles and tubes of makeup cluttered up the surface. She idly fingered a couple of them as she stared into the mirror. Glancing back at Amy through the reflection she smiled suddenly. “Besides, why live it myself when I can experience life in the big city vicariously through you?”

Amy laughed. Her life was not that glamorous though she doubted Sarah would see it that way.

“Don’t pin all your hopes on me. When it comes to big city life I am a complete failure! Do you know, I’ve been there almost a year and I still haven’t seen the art museum? Or been to the theatre? I’ve seen absolutely nothing, done absolutely nothing, except work.”

“That can’t be true. Surely you’ve done some things on the weekends with friends.”

“Sarah, I don’t have any friends. It’s so hard to meet people and I work so many weekends that I just don’t have time. Plus, you know me; I suck at friend-making. If you hadn’t accidentally spat gum in my hair when we were five I doubt I’d be able to name anyone in the world as a ‘friend’.”

Sarah bent over in uncontrollable laughter.

“Oh my GOD! I’d completely forgotten that!”

She collapsed on the floor, giggles escaping despite her best attempts to be serious again. Once she’d regained her composure she sat down again on the bed.

“What about people from work? Don’t you talk to anyone there?”

“Yeah, about work stuff. But no one has invited me out and I don’t talk to anyone about personal things. There’s a real clique-y mentality there. If you aren’t ‘cool’ you aren’t allowed in.” Amy toyed with a thread hanging off her dress and frowned. Sarah leaned down and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, sweetie. What aren’t you telling me? I know that look. There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”

Amy looked up at her and opened her mouth to lie, to say that everything is fine, she was happy, she was good but the expression on Sarah’s face stopped her. If she couldn’t be completely honest with Sarah, her best friend in the whole world, the person she had shared every single secret with, who could she talk to?

And so she talked: about how high stress her job was, about how she felt she didn’t fit in with the corporate culture and, most importantly, about her daily interactions with Abigail. As the words tumbled out Amy finally admitted to herself how miserable Abigail made her day to day life. By the time she finished she was a weeping mess. Sarah just slid off the bed and sat next to her, her arms wrapped tightly around Amy’s shoulders, vainly trying to give her the strength she needed.

“It’s alright”, she soothed. She passed Amy a box of Kleenex and waited while she wiped her eyes, smearing the carefully applied makeup across her cheeks. Amy sniffed loudly and tried to smile,

“Aren’t I pathetic? I must look terrible.”

“Yes, but only moderately”, Sarah teased. She grasped her friend by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Amy, why haven’t you told me any of this before? You’ve been working at that place for almost a year. I can’t see your reaction to all this being that extreme if she was just a minor annoyance.”

Sarah paused and looked her friend over more closely.

“You’ve lost weight. And the makeup you had on tonight was disguising some dark circles. Amy, this can’t be healthy. Isn’t there someone to talk to at work? A Human Resources department?”

Amy barked out a forced laugh, “There’s no point. She’s the darling of the upper executive and anyone lower either thinks she’s fabulous, because that’s how she acts around them, or they’re so terrified of her they refuse to say anything. Honestly, if I didn’t know better I’d think she was being perfectly pleasant to me, most of the time. But it’s her tone…and then of course the times when there are no witnesses. She’s vindictive, spiteful, belittling, conniving…she’s a bitch through and through. For whatever reason, Abigail needs to put others down to make herself feel better and I seem to be her whipping post of choice.”

Amy stood and began pacing the limited open space in the room.

“The worst part”, Amy continued, “is if I had just let it slide maybe she would have moved on. But one day after a particularly brutal week I confronted her and told her to just back off. She smiled as sweet as you could imagine and said she didn’t know what I was talking about and if she had given the wrong impression about her opinion of me, well she was so sorry. It was sickening. But at the time I questioned myself. Maybe I was imagining all this. Maybe it was just my own crappy friend-skills popping up again. So I apologized for my outburst, apologized, and we went back to work. The next week she made my life a living hell.

That was 3 months ago and she hasn’t backed off at all. Rumors have been spread about me that caused the other staff to distance themselves. Executives look at me sideways…but I do my job and I do it quite well so they don’t have a reason to fire me…yet.”

“Oh, Amy. I’m so sorry”, Sarah whispered. “I wish I could do something for you.”

“Thanks, Sarah. Actually, just getting it all out has really helped. Maybe if I just blow off my frustrations to you I’ll be able to get through it.”

“Anytime. Day or night, you call me. And even if you think it’s pointless, maybe you should talk to HR. Maybe there have been other complaints and yours will be a tipping point.”

Amy stood and stretched. She glanced at the clock on Sarah’s wall and groaned. It was much later than she thought.

“Sarah, I have to get going. I want to get back home early tomorrow morning so I can work on this presentation I’m giving on Friday.”

“Can’t you just work on it at work? I was hoping we could grab some breakfast at Trudy’s. You know, like we did in the old days. I miss hanging out with you, Amy.”

Amy grabbed her friend in a tight hug. “Oh, Sarah, I miss you too. But this is a special project and I have these deadlines that are a priority before this. I wish I could stay. We’ll make plans for you to come up one weekend to visit, okay?”

She moved away and gathered up her coat and purse from the floor. As she walked out Sarah said,

“Good luck with the project. And with your situation. My grandma used to always quote this to me whenever I had a conflict with someone: people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Don’t ever give Abigail the satisfaction of beating you down.”

This post is part of Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop. I chose prompt #4.  Want some more of this story? I wrote this piece here that follows pretty closely