The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken (34 page)

“Soy milk, darling,” my mother trills.

Of course. I keep forgetting that the vegan thing means non-dairy creamers. I make a mental note to dash to the grocery store for real milk before anyone needs further caffeination. And maybe I’ll stop at the liquor store on the same trip. God knows I’m ready for a drink.

As we start to push through the crowds towards the exit, my mother takes Oscar’s arm and begins earnestly explaining about the horrors of the American dairy industry. “They used to get seven or eight years out of a cow, and now they normally cull them after two,” she laments. Oscar, to his credit, doesn’t venture an opinion. He arranges his face into a suitably sober expression and nods solemnly.

Once they’re safely four or five paces ahead, my dad takes pity on me and offers to switch drinks. I wouldn’t normally take him up on this, but it’s the only way he can find to rebel against the tyranny of his wife, and I can’t bring myself to take that away from him. He grins conspiratorially as I relieve him of his high test coffee.

We’re not quite in the driveway when my brother’s kids stampede out to meet us. They’ve recently turned five and I, being the prejudiced aunt who sees them two or three times a year, think they’re the most gorgeous little beings ever. Ben sports what looks like his Halloween costume. “Auntie Zoë! I’m a pirate!” he calls happily.

I roll down the window and give him my best arrrggh before he adds, breathlessly, “And Courtney’s going to walk the plank!”

“No I’m not and you can’t make me!” Courtney starts to make her own dash towards me, blonde banana curls streaming underneath a glittery pink tiara. She’s tripping over the folds of her princess dress but somehow managing to stay upright.

As I step out of the car, Ben swings his pirate sword to keep his sister at bay so that he can pounce on me first. “Auntie Zoë! Come see my pirate ship!”

“No! Come see the castle first!” Courtney squeals, as she tries to muscle her way in. After I manage to sneak in quick hugs and kisses, each of them seizes one of my hands, and united in their task for the moment, they start to drag me towards the front door. I glance back at Oscar apologetically. He smiles and shrugs and looks uncharacteristically indecisive about whether to join the children’s pirate expedition, or to stay behind and risk whatever line of questioning happens to fly out of my mother’s mouth. Maybe he regrets coming already.

Ben stops short on the front step. “A coconut hit Daddy’s rental car yesterday and made a big dent,” he reports, suddenly solemn. “And then Daddy said a very bad word.”

“That’s too bad,” I say. “But at least it didn’t hit a person.”

“That’s what Mommy said.”

My brother, Scott, has registered our arrival. “Hey, sis.” He plants a kiss on my cheek and asks, “So aren’t you going to introduce your new man? He must be either brave or severely limited to come here for the weekend.”

“I’m hoping for brave. I hear you had a coconut incident.”

“Yeah, it took me four hours to sort out a new rental car, with the holiday weekend.”

“Auntie Zoë!” Ben pleads. “Let’s go!”

“You go see the pirate stuff. I’ll help Oscar with the bags,” Scott says.

We step into the foyer and one of my father’s paint by number projects, a large homage to Rembrandt, greets us. Thank God I told Oscar about Dad’s hobby. He said it sounded harmless, but this particular example of his early work might be enough to force a re-evaluation of that opinion.

Ben and Courtney stop, drop to the floor and exchange their sneakers for slippers. Another quirk of Mom’s that I failed to warn Oscar about. Though if he’s planning to stick around, he might as well get used to the craziness now. I kick off my own boots, and trade them for the least offensive available option, rubber flip flops. Laurie, my sister-in-law, who I’m sure brought her own slippers, yells hello from the kitchen.

“Let’s go say hi to your mom on the way to the castle,” I say to the kids.

The kitchen, which normally has so little to offer it propels me to seek fast food outlets I’d never patronize in New York, looks as if it’s been transformed into a set for Martha Stewart’s program. That is, it would look like their set if every inch of wall space weren’t covered with examples from Dad’s paint by number still life period. Most of these, his early works, clash with each other. Mom says he likes the kits because he’s colorblind. I always thought she was joking, but now that I see the arrangement of finished work, I understand that she’s been right all along.

Laurie rolls out dough for pie crusts, next to several overflowing bowls of perfectly cored, peeled and sliced apples of various varieties. I know this because each one is labeled. Laurie is one of those women whom other moms love to hate. She has two rambunctious children, but her house is always immaculate and the meals are always to die for. And she does it all while looking an awful lot like a modern take on one of those fifties TV commercial housewives who smilingly pushed their vacuums around in dresses and high heels. Laurie used to work as an associate in one of San Francisco’s biggest law firms, but she gave it up when she ran out of maternity leave, and as far as I know, she’s never been happier.

My mother doesn’t get it. She thinks Laurie should “apply herself.” Laurie and Scott think Mom should mind her own business, and that Mom’s just bitter because she never had a career and she wishes she had it to do over. It always makes for at least one tense exchange per holiday.

By the time Laurie and I have gotten through the basics, such as how the flight was, the kids are squirming to get me out of the kitchen before I’m sucked into adult conversation. Laurie asks if I’d like a glass of wine, and I say I’d love one for the road.

“Pirates only drink rum!” Ben protests.

“We can pretend it’s rum.”

“Okay.” His face wrinkles in concentration for a moment, then he says, “I’ll have one, too!” A split second later, he remembers to add, “Please, Mommy.”

“Only grown up pirates get to bring drinks upstairs,” Laurie says. I see a glimmer of protest spark in Ben’s eyes but he decides not to push what he must recognize as a bad position. “And Aunt Zoë’s going to need one as soon as she hears about the sleeping arrangements.”

“What sleeping arrangements?”

“Scott and I are at the Hyatt. Your mother plans to put Oscar in the guestroom and have you bunk with the kids.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Laurie rolls her eyes. “She thinks it’s positively
immoral
for the grandkids to see their Auntie shacked up. But don’t freak out. Scott already booked you guys a room, weeks ago, when we first heard about this. You’re welcome to drive over to the hotel with us later.”

“My mom will lose it if I don’t sleep here.”

Laurie shrugs, as if that’s part of the point, and reaches for the wine bottle. Normally it would annoy me to hear my sister-in-law criticize my mother, but in this case, I can’t say she’s wrong. Mom should be thrilled I’m serious enough to bring my new guy home. And since she’s so worried about my biological clock, she shouldn’t be so judgmental about my sex life.

My new boyfriend, my brother and my parents catch up to us as Laurie pours me a generous glass of wine. Oscar has sportingly traded his Ferragamo loafers for worn gray slippers, which Dad has probably tried to toss several times in recent decades. I manage quick introductions before the kids start pulling at me to get moving. “Want to come see a pirate ship?” I ask Oscar again, thinking it might not be best to leave him with the adult members of the Clark family.

“And a castle!” Courtney corrects my invitation.

“Absolutely,” he says, with a huge smile in my direction.

Upstairs, I’m so surprised when Oscar gamely drops to his hands and knees to access the ship and fort crafted from old sheets and sofa cushions, that I stand there for a second, taking in the whole scene, before Courtney re-commandeers my full attention to the castle tour.

Evidently Oscar likes children. We’ve never discussed the kid question, probably because we never really see any children in New York. Maybe it’s something I need to bring up, assuming we survive this visit. I’ve always pictured myself with kids, at some vague point in my distant future, but certainly not on Angela’s stepped up timeline. What if Oscar is in more of a hurry? He does have a decade on me. I wonder if this is a deal breaker for him. If it is, wouldn’t he have told me right off the bat?

Later, I take my mother aside and tell her that there is no way, since I am over thirty years old, and I have this great new man who gave up his holiday weekend to be with me, that I am sleeping down the hall from him. When I was upstairs playing pirates, I ran through various scenarios in which I explained to Oscar that my hippy mother was really a prude, but none of them were appealing enough to re-create in reality. Mom puts up surprisingly minimal fuss, probably because she knows I’m more than willing to make good on my threat to join my brother and his wife at the Hyatt. Either that, or she sees Oscar as her fastest possible route to more grandchildren. Without further drama, Oscar and I shuffle our belongings upstairs to the guest room, which houses a perfectly serviceable, though quite squeaky, queen sized bed.

I open my suitcase and start hanging my clothes for tomorrow in the closet, in hopes of not having to iron. Oscar takes out his laptop and asks whether I mind if he checks his messages before heading downstairs.

I tell him no problem, but my expression must say I suspect he’s willfully hiding from my relatives. Not that I would blame him, if he’d known them for more than about half an hour.

Oscar sighs. “I’ll be right down, if it’s so important to you. Just let me answer a few emails.” He pulls me towards him and plants a kiss on my forehead. Maybe under the correct circumstances, that would be cute, but in this moment, it feels patronizing and dismissive. I try to remind myself that his work demands a huge commitment of his time, even if everyone else is in holiday mode. I, once again, need to stop creating issues where none exist.

As I head back downstairs, I hear Laurie grumbling to my brother that it’s not fair, since my mom never let them co-habit under her roof, prior to their engagement.

Dinner feels roughly seventy-four hours long, but in reality lasts only about ninety minutes. Basically, in lieu of normal conversation, my parents take turns interrogating Oscar. Dad’s questions about his career, and what he thinks about the market downturn would be bearable, if Mom didn’t chime in at every opportunity to make wholly inappropriate inquiries, such as whether Oscar wants children.

My normally cool, self-possessed guy blinks like a young doe in headlights. “I suppose so, yes,” he finally says, as neutrally as possible.

This is all the validation my mother needs. “Well, you shouldn’t put it off, you know,” she trills. “Zoë’s not getting any younger, are you, darling?”

I feel my face burn red. My dad asks whether anyone would like more mahi. Scott says he’d love some, and volunteers to go retrieve it from the grill.

My mother smiles like a criminally insane person and bats her eyelids madly at me.

“Mom,
please
,” is all I can think of to hiss.

Oscar decides to ignore the moment of colossal Clark family dysfunction and remarks that the squash is excellent.

“I am so, so,
so
profoundly sorry,” I tell him three long hours later, when we’re safely locked in the guest bedroom.

“Your mom’s something. I know you warned me, but I don’t think I was prepared.”

“She’s had a filtering problem all her life, but it seems to get worse with age. Plus she’s been lobbying for me to have babies since I graduated college.”

“But she’s got two grandchildren already.”

“She loves Ben and Courtney to pieces, but my brother’s kids are still a bit like a consolation prize for her. Not that she’d admit it, but she desperately wants me to reproduce. I think she thinks it would give us some kind of sacred earth-motherly bond.”

Maybe this line of discussion is the opening I need. Maybe he’ll say something about wanting children eventually, and we can have a heart to heart talk about our shared hopes for our shared long-term future.

No such luck.

“Well, at least she’s not boring. Although now that I’ve seen what you’ll be like in thirty years...” Oscar says playfully, and kisses my earlobe. I snuggle closer into the nook under his arm, close my eyes and drift off thinking I’m the luckiest woman in the world.

Because my brother is a kind man with a good soul, he has reserved a tee time that requires Oscar and Dad to leave before breakfast, thereby avoiding the lumpy flaxseed porridge my mother would try to push on them first thing in the morning. I get up early, too, to make sure Oscar gets out of the kitchen with plain old coffee, instead of the Asian virility tea with which Mom threatened him at dessert last night. The plan succeeds, mainly because my mother is momentarily distracted by her sun salutations.

As I close the front door after Oscar and Dad, who looks like he’s about to start apologizing as soon as he’s sure his spouse is out of earshot, I exhale for what feels like the first time since we landed. Laurie will arrive any moment now, and she’ll want company in the kitchen. Ben and Courtney will be vying for Auntie time, and Mom will spend the morning wringing her hands about the evils of the food industry. Which in Laurie’s case means she’s preaching to the converted, because I know my sister-in-law has procured a vegetarian-fed, humanely raised “happy” turkey from a small, local farm.

I go back upstairs and jump in the shower, but instead of the hot, steamy cascade that used to fall from an over-sized shower head in this bathroom, I get a trickle from some foolish low-flow faucet. It takes three times the usual amount of time to rinse the conditioner from my hair and I decide that this is one of Mom’s environmental “improvements” I could live without.

I wrap myself in a towel, slide my slippers back on my feet, and pad back into the guestroom. Oscar’s briefcase rests propped against the closet door. I move it to retrieve my clothes and see that it’s the undamaged replacement he bought himself around the time the O’Malley scandal broke.