Party Pandora

By Cornelia

There's a certain drift I've learned to expect in small talk--those polite domino questions poised in soldierly single-file, requiring only the nudge of an introduction to begin tipping and clicking against one another. They are intended as filler, these questions, the grownup equivalent of "what's your major?"

You may trot them out in a doctor's waiting room, or with the stranger in the next seat on a flight to Houston. Perhaps at a wedding shower, when you know the bride-to-be from high school, while everyone else met her in college. They are icebreakers, frothy social lubricant, something to pass the time until the persons introduced find a topic in common, or-- having made an appropriate nod to courtesy--excuse themselves to refresh their punch glasses or see if anyone needs help in the kitchen.

They are not intended as Pandora questions. They are not meant to take any risk...

Are you traveling for business or pleasure? How do you know Ava? Are you from here originally? Do you have any kids?

Yes, I say, I have kids.

Boys or girls?

Daughters.

How old are they?

They're twelve, I say.

Twins! How lovely... are they best friends?

And here is where the dominoes stop, for me. There's a break in the row, broad enough that the last piece to fall can't knock against the next in line. Two paths branch out after the gap, and I have to choose which fork I'll flick into motion.

The lie is easier. I can say, "yes, my daughters have always been the best of friends, they chatter up a storm," then excuse myself to find more punch.

It may be some other innocuous question--did they ever have a secret language? are they in the same class at school? do you have trouble telling them apart?--but the answers all fork in the same two directions, and my choice always requires the same weight of decision.

If I tell the truth, my conversational companion will be required to stay by my side for at least a good ten minutes to express appropriate sympathy, to ask the weightily appropriate followup questions that neither of us probably want to take on in the midst of a wedding shower or a plane ride or a doctor's waiting room.

If I tell the truth, things are no longer inconsequential, no longer froth. There's no chance of a quick polite exit for that punch refill. The honest "no" makes sure of that.

No, they are not best friends. No, they don't attend the same school. No, I don't have any problem telling them apart. No, they don't have a secret language, because one of them has no language at all any more.

No.

No to all of that, because one of my girls has autism, so the dominoes can't do what they're supposed to, and now the two of us must contemplate an arc of grief together, because in the midst of these festivities I have laid the burden of truth on you, a stranger.

And then I want to rush through the next part--the kind hand on my arm, the well-meant questions about how severe it is and what I think caused it (the vaccines?) and whether or not we have enough help--the part where I try not to tear up because then I'll make the other person cry too, and my GOD how I don't want to do that to anyone.

Is it hard for her sister? Is it hard on your marriage? Is there any hope she'll recover?

I answer: Yes and Yes and Not really. But what I really want to say is "let's talk about your kids or your job or anything but this--because it's okay, it really is, and you have already been so kind it just kills me, and thank you so so so much for that...."

[The hardest are the ones who look me deeply in the eyes and say, "Can I give you the name of the friend of a friend who knows all about Tomatis therapy/auditory desensitization/yeast-free diets/magnets/Phyto Bears/Vitamin B6 and magnesium/chelation/insert name of miracle here-- it’s worked wonders with so many children like yours..."

But those people are blessedly rare, so I avoid the temptation to shake them by the shoulders and say, "HELLO, if any of that WORKED don't you think it would be on the cover of fucking Newsweek?" Even though I know they're only trying to be kind, to offer hope.]

And I always wonder if I shouldn't have taken the Easy Lie route, at that point. Whether I should've just said "yes" to the first hard question and elided over reality, for the sake of conversational ease.

Here is why I don't: because too often being honest has given a stranger entree to share his or her own pain, his or her own arc of grief.

Our son is three, and we're worried...

My best friend's child was diagnosed with autism last month, right after they'd moved to Chicago...

My niece may have leukemia, and I don't know how to help my sister cope...

Our grandson...

Our daughter...

It happened again at a writing conference I went to recently. A man I was seated next to at dinner asked all the polite questions about my daughter. He kept going until I thought he had to be bored to tears, and then he began to tell me, quietly, about the fears he and his wife had for one of their own grown children, how they'd struggled with the tragedy of her late-onset affliction for many years.

I got the feeling he didn't often have an opportunity to speak of it. We finally clutched hands under the table, willing each other luck and strength and a happy ending. Bolstering each other's courage.

It helps, that stuff. I don't ever want to close the door on the chance of it happening, even for the sake of courtesy.

E.M. Forster wrote in Howard's End, "only connect!"

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect...

Connection requires that we take risks. Sometimes connection can only happen when we have the courage to knock over that first Pandora domino at a party.

I say go for it, because connection goddamn matters.