Читать книгу What It Might Feel Like To Hope - Dorene O'Brien - Страница 9
Оглавлениеeight blind dates later
I was drunk and lonely and tired of Googling my name only to find a high school drama teacher in the throes of a failing Pippin production, a fat bastard who brews his own beer, and a host of other Johnny Danes who by comparison should have made me feel celebratory but instead only darkened my mood. I moved on, and that’s when I found her website, when I had exhausted myself with searches of football scores, ’62 Impalas and Johnny Danes. She soared into my head the way she had soared into my dreams so many times before, uninvited and unwelcome. Of course she looked good. Who puts an ugly picture of herself on a website? She was now writing bodice rippers, their covers a lurid blur across my flickering screen, a collage of tint, lace, and skin. There it was, another bullet on my growing list of disgraces: I had been dumped by a romance novelist.
So there I sat, reading about Cyril and Morgan, Devon and Lord Stoke. “His face hardened impossibly. ‘Aye, ye tempt me, Brianna. I think aboot succumbing tae ma lust an’ usin’ yer pretty body.’” This one had a Scottish vibe, women running across moors from supermen going commando in kilts. Closer inspection revealed that all of her books, apparently written in a matter of months, had a theme. The cover of Matrimonial Merger features stockbroker Jefferson Steele and his voluptuous bespectacled secretary Reena reaching toward each other across a mahogany desk, folders, pens and other office paraphernalia captured in mid-flight after having been pushed off by greedy, impatient hands. The excerpt read, “She touched his beefy chest, slid her hand down the front of his $300 Brooks Brothers dress trousers. ‘Looks like the stock market is up,’ she purred.”
Wild Card is about Jack, a handsome card sharp with unnaturally large biceps, and Keira, the casino owner’s daughter, a dark-eyed brunette who for some reason has playing cards spilling from her cleavage as she turns from his embrace. I tried to predict what the excerpt would say as I shuffled to the kitchen for another beer: “Jack stared at Keira’s bosom for a moment before saying, ‘That’s quite a pair’” or “Keira slid her tongue across Jack’s throbbing abs and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll raise you.’”
I MET SHELBY WHEN SHE brought her car into Merrick Chrysler where I manage the body shop. Normally I don’t pay much attention to traffic in the garage, but I heard her car before I even saw it. It was a new Sebring, its front and back so far out of alignment they should have been on separate vehicles. The metal, twisted beyond even my comprehension, groaned as she slowly wheeled into the fifth bay. Everyone in the shop turned and stared as she clacked toward the intake station in her too-tall heels, one of which promptly caught in a drainage grate, tipping her forward onto the oil-stained concrete.
“Easy,” I said, not to her but as a warning to the porters—a couple of high school punks who spent their lunch hours smoking weed out back–not to let her see them laughing. I helped her up, and what amazed me most was that she wasn’t the least bit embarrassed, a trait, I now realize, not uncommon in romance writers. She said that she had locked her brakes on I-84 after looking up to see a jackknifed semi before her, sending her car into three spins before it settled neatly against the median. Who doesn’t notice a flipped semi on the freeway in front of them?
She asked if I could fix the car and I scratched my head because I was confounded not only by the car—how had she driven it from the accident site to the dealership?—but by her. “How long will it take?” she chirped.
“Well,” I said, “we’re going to have to look at that frame, see if we can get it on a straightener—”
“Will it be done today?” She smiled. “I have a blind date tonight!”
This was Shelby, a woman who could not see a crisis if it slammed her in the head and then rode over her. A fire in the kitchen? We’ll eat out! A sick friend? I’ll donate a kidney! An earthquake? I’ll get a broom! I was drawn to her immediately, her confidence, her cheerfulness, her limping around her mangled car with a broken heel, pointing out the obvious: This door won’t shut! This wheel is bent! It’s all crooked! She was unlike the other women I had dated, whose dispositions collectively suggested that the world had offended them in extreme and unforgivable ways. I offered to drive her home, I made her vehicle a top priority, I even gave her a box of tree-shaped car fresheners. Who had I become? For the first time in my life, an optimist. To the dismay of my mechanics, I demanded they put the lopsided Sebring on the straightener and pull that little car like taffy. This was no small task as the car seemed to have taken to its deformity and put up a damn good fight.
I asked her out to dinner that very night, surely a poor substitute for her blind date, one I would work to keep her from rescheduling. Sure, I’d just been dumped by the latest in a long line of girlfriends who had ultimately found that I was either too boring or too distant, which when you think about it is really the same thing. But Shelby’s optimism, viewed against the darkly brooding women I’d recently dated, was attractive, contagious even. So we went to Joe’s Crab Shack and watched apathetic teens sing uninspired versions of “Happy Birthday” to tables of screaming kids and senior citizens who looked by turns confused and ecstatic. Then I drove her home to an apartment building about three miles from my house, the Garden Arms, which, from what I could tell, had neither.
“This was really nice of you,” she said.
“Well, I had to eat.”
“Still.”
“Maybe I could pick you up in the morning, drive you to work.”
“Oh,” she said before staring at me as if looking at my face long enough would reveal whether I was a serial killer. Finally, she asked for my number. “Can I call you later and let you know?”
“Not a problem,” I said.
She did call that night, and the night after and the night after that. For the next week I drove her to At a Fast Clip where she bleached hair and cut bangs and generally made women happy for what remained of their day. When her car was ready I didn’t tell her, instead making up stories about a faulty part or a failed alignment test. Sure, I was starting to like her, even if she was short and about ten pounds over the red line on the imaginary scale in my head. She was perky and consistently interested in everything I said.
Before long Shelby and I were inseparable, spurring each other on to new heights of buoyancy. The mechanics eyed me suspiciously as they chewed on the donuts I brought to work each morning, and my mother was convinced I’d been diagnosed with a terminal disease when I started calling her twice a week to inquire about her bunions. My friends stopped inviting me for beers when I proved to be too cheerful in the face of their personal calamities: nagging wives, spiteful bosses, ungrateful kids. I didn’t care; I had Shelby, my mainline to euphoria. If someone had told me that I would one day be reading my ex-girlfriend’s romance trash on the Internet, I would have clapped him on the back and bet my life savings he was wrong.
But there I was, staring through the saloon doors spanning the cover of Three on a Stallion, which featured a bosomy, befeathered redhead posed between a half-dressed cowboy and a Boss Hogg type replete with bolo tie and gold-encrusted pinkie ring. Where’s the horse? I wondered.
The double meaning of No Man’s Land was not lost on me: a defiant blond in full camo, hands on hips, looking haughty and disinterested as men dressed in sailor suits, dress blues, olive drabs, Flak jackets and riot gear gaze from a confusing collage of desert, ocean and sky in the background. The tagline for this one read, “It had been years since a man had crossed Terra’s border and that’s just the way she liked it. That is, until Malkham invaded.”
I tried to read some of the excerpts on her site, but when I saw the words “Tanner pulled the coverlet down to reveal Ciara’s shapely legs, his eyes tracing their curves up toward her womanhood,” I slammed down the last of my Bud and stumbled into bed. I didn’t dream of her, but if I had it would have gone something like this: Shelby glaring at me, disappointment spilling from her pores before the machete in her hand cleaves off my penis. You don’t need a Freudian therapist to unravel that.
When I went to my mother’s the next day she accosted me before I had even removed my jacket. “I have a thought,” she bellowed.
“What’s up?” I asked as I plopped onto a kitchen chair, resigned to cold rigatoni and an unfailing exuberance that was hard to bear without Shelby beside me, smiling, encouraging my mother to share bodily emission updates, coupon-savings totals, the escapades of Mr. Bojangles, a flea-bitten, imperious cat that seemed intent on disfiguring my face.
“You remember Mrs. Candello?”
I searched my memory banks, knowing it was entirely possible that she did not exist there. Lately my mother has grown forgetful, repeating the same stories, misplacing her thyroid pills, believing that our shared history is so entwined that our list of acquaintances must be identical. “No,” I said, “can’t say that I do.”
“From the grocery store?”
I shook my head.
“Bingo?”
This went on for several minutes until I deduced that Mrs. Candello had a daughter near my age who was in dire need of a date.
“Mom, I don’t want to go on a date.”
“Well, of course you do!”
I shook my head. “Give me one good reason.”
“I can give you plenty!”
I stared at the chipped plate on the table before me, the paper napkin folded neatly under a child-sized fork, the paisley pattern in the plastic tablecloth. When our eyes met, her look carried the weight of her disappointment in my selfishness and the gross injustice to poor Alice Candello, a nice girl with a tiny overbite who daily underwent the strain of fielding telephone complaints from angry AT&T customers.
“Do you know how difficult that is, dealing with irritated people? The woman’s a saint. You’re too good to have a cup of coffee with a saint?”
“I’m sure she’s great,” I said, exhausted before I put the first bite of cold, wet noodle into my mouth. “But I don’t want to start anything–”
“She’s not asking for a marriage proposal. Just a cup of coffee. Maybe she won’t even like you,” she said almost hopefully before placing a warm glass of RC Cola beside my hand and lowering herself onto the chair next to me.
“I’m sure she won’t.”
“Oh, Johnny, you’ve been so negative since …”
“Since what?”
She ignored my question, serving herself a congealed mass of pasta with exaggerated concentration while patting Mr. Bojangles, who seemed to have materialized from her outstretched hand before regarding me with steely eyes.
“Since what?” I persisted.
“Since what what?”
“I’ve been so negative since what?”
She shook her head as if having a silent argument with an invisible antagonist. “Since you and Shelby broke up,” she blurted. “She was such a nice girl.”
“She was—is—a nice girl. I just wasn’t ready for, you know.” I swirled my fork in the air. “Anything.”
Her eyebrows and nose seemed to reach for one another and I imagined the rusted cogs in the wheels of her mind working to produce meaning. I placed my hand over hers. “I appreciate that you’re doing something nice for me. I appreciate that you want me to be happy.”
“I don’t know why Shelby didn’t make you happy. She made me happy.”
After cleaning up the kitchen I drove home through the snowbound streets and thought about Shelby, whose mother probably did not need to engage the heroic extremes mine did to launch her child on a date. I stared at the passenger seat from where Shelby had once snorted iced tea onto the windshield after I told a moderately funny joke, where she once winked so hard her contact lens sprung from her eye, where for weeks after our breakup the indents of her butt cheeks remained outlined in the leather cushion.
It had been a year since I told Shelby that moving clothes into my closet without permission, choosing engagement rings without my knowledge, and leaving copies of Brides magazine on my coffee table were undermining her desired outcome. I should have known what I was up against when she started sleeping at my place more often than her own, cooking my favorite meals, and asking how many kids I wanted. We were in our late twenties and had only been dating for six months. Six months! She told me, ironically, that time didn’t matter when you were in love but that she was ready now.
PAINFUL THOUGH IT MAY BE, human nature drives us to tongue the crater left by a pulled tooth, save the collars of deceased pets, troll the websites of former lovers. I was curious to know if Shelby was in a relationship or if she was so devastated by our breakup that she’d sworn off men entirely. When I clicked on her site, the screen exploded in green and red, the cover of a holiday-themed book called He Was Naughty, She Was Nice featuring a teary-eyed, Christmas sweater-clad blond clinched in the embrace of a shirtless torso—apparently the reader could crown the body with the face of her own personal villain. They are outside in the snow. At night. Under a mistletoe-laden pine tree. Maybe this is brilliant. What do I know? But a Christmas sweater? Shirtless in freezing temps? Why so many mistletoes? The tagline: “This Christmas, Holly would not be the gift that kept on giving.” I tooled around the site until I located the Author Bio, which was a strange blend of personal and professional information: Originally from Bad Axe, Michigan, Ms. Duchene now lives in Boise, Idaho, with her one-eyed dog, Mabel. She has written six romance novels by night. By day she is a hair stylist. “Be careful,” she warns her customers, “or you’ll end up in my book!” Would her bio even mention a significant other? I clicked on the Contact Author link and stared at the online form, which of course required I leave an email address for her response. I left the site and then did what any normal, red-blooded American man would do: I paid $12.95 on Amazon for a paperback romance written by a former girlfriend now living with a one-eyed dog.
Exhausted, I slapped down the lid of the laptop and searched the refrigerator for anything edible. As the lump of leftover rigatoni rotated in the microwave I stared through the kitchen window. The snow was falling softly outside, my mother was on a weekend trip with her neighbor to Amish country, and I did not have to work for the next two days. Life’s small gifts should not be minimized. As I watched Rear Window on TMC I developed a new appreciation for the characters and the storyline, all this voyeurism and obsession and eroticism delivered without one awkward line.
The next day I selected a small fir from the church parking lot where Ned Pearson had set up a miniature forest from his tree farm. Last year Shelby insisted we buy the biggest pine on the lot only to come home and cut it in half to get it through the front door. Once it was vertical she shook out a tree skirt—where had that come from?—and hummed “Let It Snow” as she worked the quilted material around the metal stand. Under the tree the next morning were seven packages of various shapes and sizes, wrapped in shimmering paper and adorned with handmade paper bows, all addressed to me. Were they hidden in a closet? Had she snuck them from her car while I slept? I was simultaneously thrilled and annoyed, and I considered secretly opening them to determine her investment so that I could reciprocate, but I knew I would never be able to restore the presents to their pristine condition. Instead, I asked what she would like for Christmas, and she cocked her head, smiled and said, “Oh, Johnny, you know what I want!”
I didn’t. I bought her seven gifts: a crock pot, a pair of Magic Scissors, a battery-operated candle, a bottle of White Diamonds, a digital pedometer, a Target gift card, and a fiber optic holiday sweater. She looked less than pleased with all of the gifts but the sweater, which she wore later that day to dinner at my mother’s. My presents included a pair of Hugo Boss leather gloves, a digital camera, an iPod docking station, a fist-sized chocolate heart, custom car mats, a hand-knit scarf, and a ring.
I SAT ACROSS THE TABLE from Alice Candello at Fin–dark wood, musty smell, overpriced seafood–and learned that she is, indeed, stressed, as evidenced by the crescent-shaped stains under the arms of her satin blouse and the speed with which she downed a $42 bottle of merlot. She did not stop talking—about implacable customers, her obstinate cockatiel, traffic on I-84 where, I could not prevent the thought, Shelby had once spun her car like a carnival ride. The handcuff-sized bangles on her wrist clanked each time she lifted her glass or waved to the waiter to ask for more bread, to request a less tart salad dressing, to demand he open a window as she fanned herself with the cocktail menu. After her fourth glass of wine she’d thrown off any pretense of being on a first date, openly flirting while grinding what felt like a size 18 gumboot up and down my left shin and engaging in a strange dialect of drunken baby talk. I am not an easily embarrassed man, but she was making a Herculean effort, even if unconsciously. By the time the main course arrived, I was mentally rehearsing what I would say to my crestfallen mother: I’m being transferred to Parma, I’m allergic to birds, I’m gay.
But the utter failure of my date with Alice Candello did not deter my perpetually upbeat mother, who apparently had a slew of friends with desperate, defective daughters: recently divorced LuAnn Plug spent the evening chatting about the myriad ways she’d like her ex to suffer (stoning, overpass collapse, shark attack), Stacy Kaminski barely spoke, instead giggling like a mental patient, and Renee Dubois anxiously glanced around the restaurant like a witness protection inductee on her first outing before admitting that her former boyfriend was a stalker but, really, she said, that didn’t stop him from loving her.
THERE’S NO OTHER WAY TO say it: my mailman is an asshole. Two days after my ill-fated date with a woman who mistook tracking devices and night-vision goggles for the accoutrements of love, I stood at the curb in a knee-high snowdrift left by the plow and worked a large, tightly fused clump of flyers, bills, and a padded envelope from my mailbox. Shelby’s book. I threw a frozen pizza into the oven, cracked a beer, and exhumed the paperback from its plastic sheath. The colors on its cover were even brighter, the sweater tackier and the scene more bizarre than they had appeared on her website, but that didn’t matter. I found myself attempting to satisfy a curiosity I could not name: Did Shelby have literary talent? Had writing these novels changed her? Had I made a mistake in letting her go? As far as literary talent, how hard can it be to write a romance? But maybe spending time with desperate female characters had opened her eyes to their, well, desperation.
I smiled as I read about Holly, who could have been Shelby herself, or at least the person Shelby saw herself to be: selfless, positive, spirited, unappreciated. Holly even looked like Shelby: short, blond, freckle-faced, snub-nosed, cute. If you’re wondering, as I was, her boyfriend Nick looked nothing like me: square-jawed, muscled, stylish but with an incurable propensity for removing his shirt. I already hated him. Nick stood Holly up, broke promises, flirted with other women while Holly made meals, scheduled events and booked trips for a man who cancelled or ignored her. Why? I wondered. Why did Holly put up with him? Maybe women did not give up on men as easily as men did women. Maybe women read romance novels because they understood the general hopelessness of men, commiserated with the dejected heroines. Maybe that’s why LuAnn Plug imagined her ex plummeting to his death from a fiery helicopter or running headlong into razor wire. All that effort wasted. All that hope shattered. But I never did that to Shelby. Or at least not to the extent outlined in her book.
I read well into the night. When Holly finally releases Nick—who actually runs off to Europe with Margeaux, leaving her no choice, really—she meets Kris, a kind, bespectacled, stable man who owns a toy factory. Her life is now “constant” and “content.” She wears her favorite Christmas sweater to a holiday dinner with Kris’s mother, who flits around the kitchen like an epileptic comet and squeals with delight when she opens a Christmas sweater for her cat, Mr. Bojangles. I laughed aloud, imagining both the slashing I would face if I advanced on the real Mr. Bojangles with a sweater and Shelby including me—or something related to me—in her book. Clearly I was on her mind as she wrote her holiday romance. I put the book aside for a while to savor the warmth of being remembered, the memory of being happy.
Meanwhile my mother persisted in battling my resolve, determined to whittle her list of prospective daughters-in-law to zero; when she engaged her exaggerated limp, clutched Mr. Bojangles to her bosom and claimed that she was not long for this world, I acquiesced. While Mona Lambers rambled on about cross-stitch patterns I wondered if Holly would take Nick back; when Loreen Womack ran to the restroom for the fifth time—Bladder infection? Coke addiction?—I wondered if Nick would or could change. As Patrice Dombrowski chucked oysters into her mouth like an eating-contest contender I hoped that, ultimately, Holly/Shelby would be happy.
The book sat, untouched, on the coffee table like a talisman, like a spell, like an unfulfilled wish. Finally, after a particularly bad day at work—the porters never returned from lunch, one of my mechanics cracked the windshield on a year-old Town & Country with a dropped wrench, an unsatisfied customer threatened to shove his boot so far up my ass I’d taste leather—I decided to reembark on my reading odyssey in an effort to mine some sort of hope from He Was Naughty, She Was Nice. The next scene described a holiday party—five pages of partridge-adorned wreaths, candle-laden mantels, the aromatic properties of pine—after which Holly, Heylei, and Anastasia engage in a three-page discussion of the gifts they received from their boyfriends: Tiffany earrings, Pandora charms, Gucci clutches, spa days, trips to Bermuda, engagement rings. I did not take this personally.
Apparently no romance would be complete without revenge; the cad must not only lose the girl but must be made the fool, must come to his senses only to realize his transformation—real or imagined—has been futile, for the woman he is now determined to win back has found happiness in the arms of a man who is both lesser and greater, paunchy and cerebral but also generous and kind. By the time Nick bursts through the garland-strangled front door wearing the green and red sequined sweater Holly had made for him, the reader not only anticipates but savors the knowledge that his punishment will be both severe and satisfying. The room collectively sniggers as Nick approaches Holly, shyly proffering a basket of unwrapped gifts, which include a crock pot, a pair of Magic Scissors, a battery-operated candle, a bottle of White Diamonds, a digital pedometer, and a Target gift card. That I took personally.
I put down the book and picked up Sheila Kravitz with a newfound will to see the best in people, suppressing my curiosity about why these women were single (after all, I was single, though that was the result of vigilance and resolve). I ignored Sheila’s eye tic. I overlooked the force with which her man hands clutched the fork and knife, sawing like a primate into the bloody steak on her plate. I even managed a smile when she made it clear that she was an old-fashioned girl and not amenable to “roving paws.” Then I went home, opened a free Gmail account under the pseudonym Clint Harris and launched an email at Shelby through her website:
Dear Ms. Duchene,
I really enjoyed your most recent book, He Was Naughty, She Was Nice. You are a talented writer. I liked the descriptions of the meals, the holiday décor, and the characters. I was wondering how you come up with ideas for your books? Are they pure fiction or do you base your work on people you know? Thanks and keep writing!
Sincerely,
Clint Harris
Shelby’s response was almost immediate:
Dear Clint (I hope I can call you Clint!):
Thank you for your kind words. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays so writing the descriptions was fun! Many of them were obtained as I drove around looking at decorations while listening to Christmas carols.
I felt something between a pang and a jolt then, recalling last year when Shelby and I tooled around the neighborhood with a thermos of hot chocolate listening to Bing Crosby and Mannheim Steamroller songs and taking in the rooftop Santas, outsized manger animals, high-voltage light displays. I teased her but had to admit that the over-the-top exhibits and booming music had made me smile. I read on:
Much of what I write is made up, or fictional, though sometimes I will model an event after a real-life experience or a character after someone I know. I hope that answers your question! Please check back for publication information on my next book, Urban Safari: Hunting the Two-Legged Beast.
Happy reading!
Shelby
I replied of course:
Thanks for your quick response. Being as I am a man, I was wondering how men feel about your insights into the male psyche. For example, I think you were spot on in that a jerk like Nick does not deserve Holly and that he should be punished—maybe he will even learn a lesson about how to treat women. But I was wondering what was so horrible about, say, a gift of perfume or a gift card or even a pedometer in the current health-conscious craze. Again, just curious!
Thanks,
Clint
I waited until, as a writer might say, the sun fell into the far-off hills and the stars filled the sky and I grew tired. The next morning, I checked my Gmail before work and found only an Olga’s coupon, a GoFundMe request and a loan consolidation offer. All day at work, as I greeted customers, calculated estimates, and kept loose tabs on the porters, I wondered if Shelby had figured out it was me. I thought I did a good job of masking my identity, but maybe she understood the complex workings of the web in a way that I never would, somehow following the string of my fake name and account back to me. My paranoia dissolved when I saw her response later that evening.
Dear Clint:
While I know that more women than men read my books (and romances in general), I do think lots of men read them and understand that certain behaviors are unacceptable. The presents listed in the book are fine for, say, your aunt or your mother or even someone who requests those gifts specifically. But when Nick offers Shelby those gifts, he reveals that he has not considered who she is and what she needs from him. Generic merchandise will not please her (or any girlfriend, especially one he is hoping to win back). Hope that answers your questions!
All the Best,
Shelby
But when Nick offers Shelby those gifts? Was that a Freudian slip, a revelation that Holly is Shelby’s alter ego and Nick is me, or at least a symbol of my thoughtlessness? I finished the book that night, though of course the ending was predictable: the party guests openly mock Nick’s pathetic attempt at reconciliation, and after he is physically thrown from the house he stares through the front window as Kris bends to one knee, pulls a black velvet box from his pocket and looks hopefully up at Shelby/Holly. I threw the book across the room while simultaneously wondering if Alice Candello might be more palatable if she laid off the wine.
The next day I decided that I would have dinner with my best girl: Mom. I bought the fixings for her favorite meal: chicken, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic, white wine for the crock pot cacciatore accompanied by baby potatoes smothered in butter and finished off with a dessert of chocolate ice cream. Though she had been the author of the torment I had endured on numerous blind dates, she’d always had the best intentions. When she arrived, I greeted her at the front door and took her coat. “Right this way, Madam,” I said and offered my arm.
“My,” she exclaimed, “all those dates turned you into a gentleman!”
“I was always a gentleman,” I protested.
“Yes, but you’re nice again!”
I was trying. She sat down in the living room as I trotted to the kitchen to check on the potatoes and fetch the remainder of the wine I’d used in the recipe, and when I returned my mother was bent over, pulling something from under the sofa. Shelby’s book.
“What’s this?”
“A poorly written book,” I said, reaching for it, but she just stared at it, mesmerized.
“Shelby wrote a book?” She looked from me to the cover and back again. “It’s so … bright.”
“Here.” I pried the paperback from her hand and ushered her to the table, where I would painstakingly steer us clear of anything resembling a serious conversation. After commenting on each element of the meal—the peppers were cut in perfect strips, the chicken was not at all dry, the potatoes were very white—my mother insisted on helping me clean up. When she entered the kitchen she stared at the counter, spellbound.
“Isn’t that the crock pot you gave Shelby?”
I trod lightly. “Yes. How about some chocolate ice cream?”
“Why is it here? Are you back together?” she asked hopefully. “Is that the reason for this special dinner?”
“No, Mom. She didn’t want it. She left it. That’s all.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.” Then she considered for a moment. “Who wouldn’t want a crock pot?”
“Shelby, Mom. Shelby didn’t want a crock pot.”
Over dessert I caught my mother staring at me pityingly and in response I offered an almost manic performance to demonstrate that I was fine, just fine—happy, in fact—laughing like a maniac at her Reader’s Digest jokes, springing from the couch to refill her wine glass, saying that the blind dates had not really been so bad.
“I’m so glad,” she said. “Because Mrs. Sitterly’s daughter Sally is lovely. She owns her own daycare center. Can you imagine?”
I could. A room full of diaper-clad, sticky-fingered puking machines.
“I think kids could cheer you up,” she stated confidently as she patted my knee. “Bring you back to your old self.”
I wanted to ask about this alleged old self she clearly missed, but I understood what she meant: effortlessly cheerful, consistently engaged, much more tolerant with her and even Mr. Bojangles, who I suddenly recalled had urinated on my new leather gloves with impunity last Christmas. Even Shelby, who must have paid a hundred bucks for the now piss-soaked clumps, patted the unapologetic cat on the head and tsked about aging and bladder control. Why couldn’t she have been more patient with me?
“I’m fine,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced myself.
“How about another date,” she said with a wink. “Get you right back in the saddle!”
When my mother left I spent the rest of the evening imagining what I would rather do than embark on another blind date: undergo a root canal, take a punch in the mouth, get thwacked with a cattle prod.
SALLY SITTERLY WAS LATE, BUT that was all right with me, the new and improved, back-in-the-saddle, determined-to-be-patient man. I tried not to think about my mother’s face and how it rose and fell with the tide of events: the successive failures of her matchmaking efforts, the discovery of Shelby’s book wedged under my sofa, the initial hope and subsequent disappointment triggered by her vision of the inadequate, offending crock pot. I had to hand it to her; she did not give up easily. Eight dates, each a particularly excruciating endeavor, though of course I kept the gory details to myself. These were, after all, the daughters of her friends and I was the common denominator in an equation that persistently equaled disaster. My mother just wanted me to be happy. Maybe it was my fault, this dating purgatory, for thwarting Shelby’s blind date so long ago. Maybe I’d kept her from meeting the man who would have bought her the perfect gifts, supported her literary endeavors, drawn her fully into his life. The man she had not given me the chance to become. I sipped my beer. I cringed as I considered the name Sally Sitterly and the type of woman who might own a daycare center: merry, serene, hearing-impaired. What the hell, I thought. Kids are all right.
“Sorry I’m late!”
I looked up as the familiar voice registered, and there she was, all smiles and sequins, the fruit of my mother’s most recent effort: Shelby.
