And you're letting a little family shindig get you down like this?"
She shook her head. "Look. It's a personal thing. Between me and my mom."
"And your mom is going to think less of you for being single? A career woman?" I regarded her skeptically. "Murphy, don't tell me you're a mama's girl under all the tough-chick persona."
She stared at me for a moment, exasperation and sadness sharing space on her features. "I'm the oldest daughter," she said. "And… well, the whole time I was growing up, I just assumed that I'd be… her successor, I guess. That I'd follow her example. We both did. It's one of the things that made us close. The whole family knew it."
"And if your baby sister is all of a sudden more like your mom than you are, what? It threatens your relationship with her?"
"No," she said, annoyance in her tone. "Not like that. Not really. And sort of. It's complicated."
"I can see that," I said.
She slumped against the vending machine. "My mom is pretty cool," Murphy said. "But it's been hard to stay close to her the past few years. I mean, the job keeps me busy. She doesn't think I should have divorced my second husband, and that's been between us a little. And I've changed. The past couple of years have been scary. I learned more than I wanted to know."
I winced. "Yeah. Well. I tried to warn you about that."
"You did," she said. "I made my choice. I can handle living with it. But I can't exactly sit down and chat with her about it. So it's one more thing that I can't talk about with, my mother. Little things, you know? A lot of them. Pushing us apart."
"So talk to her," I said. "Tell her there's stuff you can't talk about. Doesn't mean you don't want to be around her."
"I can't do that."
I blinked. "Why not?"
"Because I can't," she said. "It just doesn't work like that."
Murphy had genuine worry on her face and actual tears in her eyes, and I started feeling out of my depth. Maybe because it was a family thing. It seemed like something completely alien, and I didn't get it.
Murphy was worried about being close to her mom. Murphy should just go talk to her mom, right? Bite the bullet and clear the air. With anyone else she'd have handled the problem exactly that way.
But I've noticed that people get the most irrational whenever family was around—while simultaneously losing their ability to distinguish reason from insanity. I call it familial dementia.
I may not have understood the problem, but Murphy was my friend. She was obviously hurting, and that's all I really needed to know. "Look, Murph, maybe you're making more of it than you need to. I mean, seems to me that if your mom cares about you, she'd be as willing as you are to talk."
"She doesn't approve of my career," Murphy said tiredly. "Or my decision to live alone, once I was divorced. We've already done all the talking on those subjects and neither one of us is going to budge."
Now that I could understand. I'd been on the receiving end of Murphy's stubborn streak before, and I had a chipped tooth to show for it. "So you haven't shown up at the reunion, where you'd see her and have to avoid all kinds of awkward topics, for the past two years."
"Something like that," Murphy said. "People are talking. And we're all Murphys, so sooner or later someone is going to start giving unasked-for advice, and then it will be a mess. But I don't know what to do. My sister getting engaged is going to get everyone talking about subjects I'd rather slash my wrists than discuss with my uncles and cousins."
"So don't go," I said.
"And hurt my mom's feelings a little more," she said. "Hell, probably make people talk even more than if I was there."
I shook my head. "Well. You're right about one thing. I don't understand it, Murph."
" 'S okay," she said.
"But I wish I did," I said. "I wish I worried about my uncle's opinions, and had problems to work out with my mom. Hell, I'd settle for knowing what her voice sounded like." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Trite but true—you don't know what you have until it's gone. People change. The world changes. And sooner or later you lose people you care about. If you don't mind some advice from someone who doesn't know