Shit! She looks down at her phone and sees that she has two missed calls and an unread text message from Nathalie. She had totally forgotten to take her car into the Volvo dealership! All week long at work, she had told her co-worker and good friend to remember to meet her Thursday morning at 8am at the Volvo dealership so that she could leave her car there for repairs. From there she would get a ride to work. She was worried that Nathalie might forget. Now, here she is, sobbing at the wheel of her car, calling her back and apologizing profusely. “I had the worst morning,” she says to Nathalie, “my kids woke up late, they were so difficult, I had to take the garbage out, because my fricken ex husband is gallivanting somewhere in Hong Kong. I have just too much on my plate. I am the picture of a single mom that is falling apart.” She continues to pour out her frustration while on the phone. Thankfully, the voice on the other side stays calm and reassuring. “Don’t worry, it’s all going to work out. Keep driving down. I will wait here and we will make it to work just in time.” Thank goodness for friends is all that she thought. Nathalie’s loyalty felt like a life preserver in this moment. Wiping her tears away, she pulls herself together as she enters the dealership. She notices Nathalie’s car waiting for her near the front doors. Her heart is still pounding with anxiety but she feels more settled as she sees her friend waving and holding up the large latte that she has bought for her. The day is looking brighter!
The man at the front desk is busy looking through paperwork. He sees a woman pulling into the parking lot of the Volvo dealership. For a fleeting moment he wonders if she was the woman who has an appointment 8 o’clock that morning, but he quickly notices that she is not driving a Volvo. The woman parks her car in the 5 min parking zone. She is there for a while, maybe 10 minutes or so. She is talking on the phone. He forgets about the woman parked out front, until he hears the chime of the door and notices that she is now in the front lobby, looking around, as if she is looking for someone. She doesn’t ask him anything. She glances around, peeks into one of the offices, then smiles at him and walks out.
Sue gets a phone call on the way to work. It is her university friend Nathalie, whom she has shared so many memories with: graduation, trips, dinners, breaking up with boyfriends, marriage, pregnancies. The only time that they get to talk nowadays is on their way to work from the North Shore. Stealing a few minutes here and there during their commute. Sue thinks that Nathalie could really make a bigger effort to get together more often. She seems to have time for everyone else but her. There was a change once the kids reached school. Nathalie shifted her attention to her family and left her out. Sue thinks that time might bring them closer again, but she also knows that it will never be the same as before. For now, she accepts these morning phone calls as a way to stay connected.
From Portfolio of Narrative Inquiry, CCFI 508, 2014