Dan looks over at me seriously. "Do you really think this is going to work?"
I shrug and stop typing. "It’s worth a shot, right? It’s as good a chance as any, and yeah, I think it might work."
"So what you’re saying is that we’re just trying to palm her off on to some poor, unsuspecting man so we can get a bit of peace and quiet."
I smile at him. "I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but that is the general idea, yeah."
He laughs. "Okay, what else do we need?"
"Likes gardening? She’s always complaining about her garden." I add that to the list.
"And shopping."
"Oh, can we get someone who’s good at DIY? He can put up her bloody bookshelves for her."
Last month Dan had been roped in, or more precisely, lassoed, to put up bookshelves in my mother’s newly spare bedroom. She needed somewhere to put her Catherine Cookson collection. And he’d tried, bless him. He'd been there for two hours, working harder than he'd had to work on our entire house. When the shelves were finally up, although they looked perfect to me, apparently they weren't.
Mum came into the room and demanded he take them down again while lamenting that, "If you can’t do a job properly, you shouldn't do it at all."
I add DIY to the list.
"I need more to go on," I tell Dan.
"You’re never going to find a guy good enough, no matter how much you have to go on."
"Have a little faith, Daniel. All she needs is a little romance in her life."
"Hmm."
I know he isn’t convinced, but I am. This is great. This is doable. I don’t actually expect to adhere to everything on the list. It’s just a rough guide. Although some things on there are essential, like being able to drive—because Dan and I are not going to be ferrying her around for the rest of our lives.
"So, now that we know what we’re looking for," Dan says. "Where do we look for him?"
"Maybe I could start by asking around in work, maybe with friends and stuff. If you ask all your mates too, we’re bound to find someone with a father or an uncle or a friend who’s single and looking."
"Okay, but I’m going to make sure my friends know exactly what she’s like. I can’t dupe my buddies' fathers into dating a psycho. I couldn’t live with that on my conscience."
"Don’t be so melodramatic."
CHAPTER 4
I'm more excited to go into work on Monday morning than I have been in a long time. I want to begin grilling my co-workers about their fathers, uncles, cousins, friends and otherwise.
Work itself is not a very exciting prospect. I'm a nail technician at Beehives and Bikini Lines, a local hair and beauty salon. This is a job that's only mine because my best friend, Jenni, is the manager and head hairdresser.
It isn't particularly exciting or even that interesting, but I never could work out exactly what I wanted to do with my life, and now I'm too old to change my career and I wouldn't know what else to do anyway.
I wait until lunchtime when Jenni, Liz, and I are all in the kitchen.
"I have a question for you guys, and you have to promise not to laugh at me," I say.
They both look like they’re about to laugh even before I’ve said anything. Funny how that sentence has that effect on people.
"I’m trying to set my mother up on a date, and I was wondering if you girls know of any fifty-ish, single men who’d be interested?"
"I thought your mum was never dating again because all men are from Pluto."
Oh yeah. I remember that particular rant well. Mum had come in to have her hair done (why, why, why couldn’t she choose another salon? Any salon, apart from the one I work in. Was it really too much to ask?) And the innocent joke from Liz about how men would be after her with her new haircut had resulted in a quarter hour rant about how all men should be shot, and really, who was buying that men came from Mars and women came from Venus rubbish? Women were from Earth, and clearly men were from a completely different galaxy where there was no such thing as women to teach them how to behave.
And I’d had to show my face again the next morning.
"Well," I say. "It’s a bit like a blind date. The thing is, Mum won’t date without my encouragement. If I tell her to find a date then she’ll moan and complain about not knowing where to look and tell me she's too old, but if I can tell her that her date is waiting at such and such a place at a certain time, I’m almost positive that she won’t stand him up."
"Almost positive?" Says Jenni.
"Very positive," I correct.
Jenni shrugs. "Good luck to you, Mac."
"How about William, you know, the window cleaner?" Liz asks. "He seems lonely. He's always hanging about in here."
"That's because he's a cross-dresser," Jenni says.
"A cross-whatter?"
"Dresser. He likes to wear women's clothes when he's at home," she says.
"How do you know?"
"One of my clients knocked on his door one night and he answered in a blonde wig, lipgloss and black stilettos. Apparently he goes by Wilhelmina on the weekends."
"That's a great idea, Mac," Liz says. "He and your mum could have loads of fun talking clothes and makeup."
"No," I say. "Absolutely not. I cannot have a stepdad who looks better in a dress than I do."
Jenni laughs.
"No wonder our windows are so shiny, he probably spends half the day admiring his bloody reflection in them!"
"Getting away from cross-dressing window cleaners," Jenni says. "I could always ask my dad. He hasn’t found anyone serious since he and my mum divorced six years ago."
"That’s great," I say. "That’s exactly what she needs."
Jenni calls me after work that night.
"My dad says yes," she tells me.
Yippie! I have secured a date. But what now? I haven’t even told my mum that she is soon going to have a long list of dates to go on. I can’t just send her to meet any old Tom, Dick or Jeffrey that crosses my path. If this guy isn’t perfect, then the whole exercise will be pointless. And the first guy is the most important. If the first man she meets is a bust, then she’ll have no faith in my matchmaking skills and will strap on her parachute and bail out. Even if things don’t work out with the first guy, then she still has to believe I’m capable of finding a decent man in an ocean of mediocrity. This one has to be good, and there is only one way to ensure that. I have to meet him first. If he isn’t what I’m looking for, if he will never in a million years get on with my mum, or if he happens to be cruel to animals or small children, he isn’t getting past the bouncer at Mum's front door—me.
"Mac?"
"Yeah, I’m here. Just thinking, sorry. Um… Right. I’d like to meet your father, if I could?"
"I thought you wanted a date for your mum?"
"I do. It’s just that it’s, well…" I struggle for a nice way to put it. "It’s a very specific type of man that she needs to meet, and at this time in her life I don’t think there’s any point in just blind dating every guy I can find. He has to be compatible, otherwise she’ll get disheartened."
"So you’re screening men?"
"Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but yes, in a way I suppose I am."
"That’s actually a pretty good idea."
"You think?"
"Sure. Who knows your mother better than you do, right?"
"That’s what I was thinking. Okay, so if she was in her twenties she’d probably have fun dating around, but she’s nearly fifty, and I think she’s pretty much given up on ever finding another man. I have to show her that there are men her age out there who are as lonely as she is."
"Okay, so where do you want to meet my father?"
"Starbucks?" I suggest off the top of my head.
"Fine by me, and I’m sure he won’t mind. Time? Date?"
"When’s he free?"
"When I told him I had a blind date for him, he said Friday night."
"Friday is fine for me. Six
okay?"
"I’ll let him know."
"Make sure he knows that he’s meeting me and not my mum, I wouldn’t want him to get a nasty surprise."
Jenni laughs. "I’ll tell him."
"Thank you so much."
I hang up. Hah! That was easy. Doubt me again, why don’t you, Dan?
CHAPTER 5
Is this weird? Meeting your date’s daughter before you meet your date? What if he doesn’t pass my test and I don’t want him to meet my mother? What am I going to say to him? You’re no good. Next!
I walk into Starbucks ten minutes early on Friday night. Jenni has told me to look out for a six-foot tall, fifty-three-year-old, who will be wearing a navy suit as he is coming straight from the office where he works. I hope that he might bear a striking resemblance to Jenni, as that might narrow it down a bit. It isn’t too crowded at this time of night, there are a couple of people with laptops, and a few people talking to friends.
"You’re not Mackenzie, are you?"
I jump out of my skin. I hadn’t been expecting him to approach me.
"I came in right behind you." He smiles and reaches out to shake my hand.
"Hi," I say. "Jeffrey? Nice to meet you."
"Jeff, please, and it’s nice to meet you too."
He looks nice. He has a big mop of almost black hair, nice white teeth and Jenni’s nose.
"Shall we get a place?"
We slide into a corner booth.
"I hear you’re interviewing dates."
"Well, not interviewing exactly, but my mum hasn’t dated for a long time and I just want to find a good guy for her."
"That’s a nice thing to do."
"Thanks. Shall we order?"
"It’s my treat tonight," Jeff says. "So order anything you want."
Ooh. Points for offering to pay.
"I’ll just get a coffee," I say. "I'm having dinner with my boyfriend later."
"Well, I think I’ll go for a hot chocolate and a muffin. What kind of coffee do you want? I’ll go and queue. You sure I can’t get you anything else?"
"Just a soya latte, please."
"Okay, back in a jiffy."
He gets up to stand in the queue, which gives me a chance to study him. I like the fact that he’s not only offered to pay, but also voluntarily stood in the queue. Bonus points. And he’s nice looking for a fifty-three-year-old. I’m not terribly into the older man look myself, but I can appreciate that someone his own age might think of him as cute. Do fifty-year-olds even use the word cute? A few flecks of grey are starting to show in his dark hair. Not the blond I was hoping for, but if he’s a nice guy then looks don’t really matter. And he has smiley blue eyes and plenty of laughter lines. Plus he looks good in a suit so my mum could take him to her yoga Christmas party easily. He also gets double bonus points for being clean-shaven and smelling good.
"Here you go." He puts the coffee down on the table in front of me. "So, Jenni says you’re a nail technician."
"Yep," I say. "I’ve worked there for three years now. What do you do?"
"I’m a lawyer," he says. "A divorce lawyer."
A divorce lawyer? Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all. And Jenni wonders why he hasn’t found anyone serious since his own divorce. That’s karma right there. If you spend all day breaking couples up, how do you expect to become one half of a couple yourself? But I’m not about to say that to him.
"That must be an… interesting job?"
"It has its moments. Just today I was dealing with a woman who wanted co-custody of a rug. Seriously, their first child was conceived on it, and now it's all threadbare and falling apart, but this woman is insisting that she take it for half a year and her husband take it for the other half. The husband is willing just to give it to her, but she really does want to share it. It can be quite sad sometimes. I mean, yes you can see the irony of that situation, but you can also see the sadness. To my client, that rug represents the happy times they had doing the horizontal tango on it, and she’s not only desperately trying to hold on to those, but she doesn’t want her husband to forget them either."
Bonking! Is this really happening? Jenni’s dad is talking to me about his clients bonking. I wasn’t expecting this. "Wow," I say, truly lost for words.
But it’s nice that Jeff can see the problem of being a divorce lawyer. So far, so good. Apart from the bonking bit, of course.
"So, tell me about your mother?"
"Well," I say, trying not to picture Jenni’s dad and my mum doing the horizontal tango, as he calls it. "She’s forty-nine—fifty in a few months, which she hates. She’d rather be twenty."
"Wouldn’t we all?"
I laugh. "Tell me about it. And I'm not thirty yet."
"Really? I thought you were younger than that."
I roll my eyes. "Such a charmer," I say. "But flattery won’t get you anywhere with me. Try it on my mum though, but tell her a believable age, not twenty."
He laughs and his eyes crinkle up. He really is sweet. I can see my mum liking him. Particularly if he says she looks young.
"She’s a yoga teacher, and she loves animals. You do like animals, right?"
"Yeah. I have two black Labradors who take up a lot of my free time, but I love them like family."
Wow. So far, so great. He is ticking every box. I briefly consider getting my list out and going through it with him, but I think that if I can just work some questions into the conversation, I will not only get a good picture of how good a conversationalist he is (full marks so far) but I can keep it less businesslike. After all, he isn’t on a job interview. This is just a… date interview?
"So, what else do you like to do in your free time?" Actually, I wonder how much free time he gets. Lawyers are known for working long hours, aren’t they? And I really need someone who can keep my mum occupied for, well, all the time, really.
"Do you get much free time?" I ask quickly, before he’s had a chance to answer the first question.
He smiles. "More than you might think. I’ve worked there for a long time, so I get a little leniency with hours. I generally do eight in the morning to five or six in the evening, and rarely have to go in on weekends."
That’s a relief.
"And in my spare time," he continues. "I usually just spend time with my dogs. Take them for walks or just hang out in the garden to trim some weeds."
"Wow. Well, the only problem I can see is that your two Labradors would probably eat Eleanor’s Yorkshire terrier alive."
He laughs. "Don’t worry, they’re not into live meat. They only like the tinned stuff. And unless your mum’s Yorkie comes in a tin, they’ll be nice to… him?"
"Him. Baby. And being in a tin can be easily arranged if he pees on my houseplant one more time."
Jeff laughs again. "Oh dear."
"Like I don’t have enough trouble keeping plants alive without dog pee involved."
"Jenni said you were funny, but for some reason I didn’t believe her."
"Jenni’s great. We have a great time in work."
"I bet you do."
I nod. "I don’t want to be rude, but can I ask what happened with her mother? Why did you two split up?"
I mean, come on, if he’s a slimy, cheating, control freak then I want to know now. But then again, is he really going to tell me the truth?
"Jenni didn’t tell you?"
I shake my head.
"I fell in love with someone else and my wife cheated on me with another man. We stayed together and tried to make it work, but it just didn’t. Eventually I asked for the divorce, but we both knew it wasn’t working out. Neither of us could get past what happened."
"That’s horrible," I say, wanting to reach across the table and comfort him. But I don’t. I keep my hands to myself. Let Mum comfort him.
"It was a long time ago. Getting on for six years now. How long has your mum been separated?"
"My dad left about ten years ago."
"That’s tough."
; "Yeah, but you get over it, don’t you?"
"You have to."
I smiled at him. Connection. He got me. Okay, so it isn’t me he's supposed to get, but he understands about people leaving and being betrayed. He’s a catch. My mother would be lucky to date him.
"So," he leans forward. "What’s protocol here? Do you tell me if I’m suitable now? Do I get a little rejection slip in the post?"
"I’m not really sure," I admit. "This is my first time too."
"Ah."
"But I think you’ll get on really well with Eleanor, so I would like you to meet her."
"Phew," he smiles. "That’s a relief."
"Yeah. Maybe you’ll be her perfect man and I will have succeeded without even trying."
"Okay, so should I call her? Will she call me? Will you?"
"Um…" God, talk about being unprepared. What was I thinking doing this? I have no idea where to go from here.
"Okay, what if we set up a time and place right now, and I guarantee that she’ll be there?"
He nods. "How do you know when she’ll be free?"
What’s a nice way to say "her only plans involve watching Eastenders on our couch"?
"Trust me, she doesn’t have anything on at the moment."
"Okay, how about Sunday night? Eight o’clock? There’s a beautiful restaurant over on South Bank Street. I’ve never been in, but I drive past it every night and it looks lovely. It’s always full, which has to be a good thing, right?"
"In that case, isn’t Sunday a bit soon for reservations?"
"It’s a walk in and wait."
"Oh, right. Yeah, okay then. Sunday’s fine."
"Shall I pick her up? Meet her there?"
"I tell you what, I’ll drive her to the restaurant and hang around until she spots you. If you could take her home afterwards, that’d be great."
"Yeah, fine. Okay then. Wow. I’m really looking forward to this. I haven’t really been on many dates lately. Or, you know, any dates."
I smile. "That’s good, neither has she."
He smiles too. "That’s good to know. Tell her I hope not to disappoint."
Kismetology Page 2
