Of course she’d known about my engagement to David, whom she’d met a half dozen times in the three years we were together. She’d known the salient—to her mind—facts that he’d graduated with an M.B.A. from Yale, was a partner at Ernst & Young, and most important of all, that his family had money. I’d magnanimously divulged the date of our wedding to her a full ten months in advance, but should’ve waited to tell her until the weekend before, like I’d really wanted to, since seven months later it was over. But hey, live and learn.
But never before had my mother been privy to accounts of my fledgling dates that were too raw and tender to predict which way they might go. That is until now, when she could read about my romantic exploits in a national magazine.
“Robert and I have only gone out a few times, Mother. I barely know him,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t really like him so that we could change the subject.
But, as I knew she would, my mother pressed for details. I thought about telling her what a nice guy Robert was, about his intelligence and his quirky sense of humor. But I knew this would be pointless. Sighing, I rattled off the kind of facts I’d give if I were a soldier captured behind enemy lines.
“Hmm. University of Chicago law school,” she mused. “I suppose if you’re going to end up with a husband from the Midwest, that’s a fairly good school. But of course Harvard or Yale would be far preferable.”
“His business is very successful.”
“How much does he make?” she asked, in her usual blazingly direct fashion.
“I usually wait until date number four to ask for a copy of their financial portfolios and Swiss bank account numbers.”
“Hmm. I’ll have to ask Martha how much her nephew makes at the recruiting agency he owns.”
Martha, my mother’s bridge partner and best friend, was the Martha Smith of the so vastly rich Smiths, that their servants had servants. The family owned a vast worldwide network of, for lack of a better word, stuff—oil companies, food companies, and strangely enough, dozens of miniature golf courses because their son Skip had taken a liking to this plebian pastime when he was ten, giving it up a year later for yachting or snooker or whatever super-rich kids did.
“You said he had his own law firm before that, as a solo practitioner? Well, I can’t imagine he hasn’t at least doubled or tripled his income. Thank God for that,” she added.
My mother was well enough off financially, due to life insurance policies my father had taken out when Susan and I were kids. After he died, she’d never had to work again. But she wasn’t even close to the same category as the Martha Smiths of the world, and had had to slowly ingratiate her way into their circle by hovering around the edges of their vast wealth until, finally, her years of effort had paid off and they’d let her join their club as an honorary member. If there was one thing my mother excelled at, it was being enchanting. That woman could make a pair of swans swoon—when it suited her.
I quickened my pace and could see the beginnings of a circular mashed area forming in the powder blue carpeting, like a mini running track.
“I’ve been in touch with Sally from your office about the details for the wedding,” my mother continued. “It seems as though your magazine is only willing to pay for seventy-five guests.”
She always referred to Tres Chic as “your magazine,” as if saying the name would give too much credence to my chosen profession. My mother refused to acknowledge that her daughter had to work for a living instead of being a wife and stay-at-home mother, which was, in her eyes, the only acceptable place for a woman. Not barefoot and pregnant mind you, but well-heeled and pregnant.
“I think it’s too early to be focusing on details like this,” I said.
“Nonsense, Samantha,” she persisted. “Your wedding is just six months away.”
“Just because it’s scheduled doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
“Seventy-five is completely unacceptable,” she continued as if talking to herself, which I believe she was doing most of the time. “I’m just starting to put the list together. It looks as though we won’t do with less than four hundred. Probably more like five hundred.”
Then without warning, I did something that I hadn’t done in probably thirty years in the presence of my mother’s eyes or ears: I started crying. Not the noble, silent tears streaming down my face type of crying that I might have been able to hide. This was a cathartic-tidal-wave-wiping-out-the-village-my-life-is-over racking sobs that involuntarily burst out of me like a stream of obscenities from a Tourette’s sufferer. I was so confused after last night’s dinner with Javier that I’d barely slept.
My crying fit went on until I sensed, rather than heard, silence on the other end of the line. For some reason this calmed me, and I was able to sputter down to a small whimper and then silence.
“Samantha,” she said in a gentle voice that I hadn’t heard since I was a child, “I had eighteen years with your father. They were the best years of my life. I want you to know the happiness I felt, and I know you will if you just keep trying.”
I plunked down onto the couch. I’d assumed I was past the age when I could be shocked by anything or anyone, especially my mother. I was wrong. On the few occasions I can remember my mother mentioning my father after he’d died, she’d only done so when the topic had become unavoidable. But she had also zeroed in on my deepest, darkest fear, that I’d be alone for the rest of my life. Could our first actual conversation in forty years be the start of a genuine mother-daughter relationship?
But the nanosecond had passed.
“Anyway, we’ll discuss the guest list next week,” she said airily. “I’ve got to run! It’s time for my volcanic clay Thai body scrub.”
* * *
And in the quest to find the perfect man in Milwaukee, it was time for me to make an utter fool out of myself. An hour later at high noon, I stood behind a volleyball net, barefoot and ankle deep in sand, on the shores of Lake Michigan. I was wearing a plunging V-neck one-piece swimsuit, and bouncing about—my boobs, not my body. I suppose I could have worn a sports bra like all the other women here. But that would’ve required me to acknowledge sand volleyball as an actual sport.
I’d warned Elaine when I saw the Over Thirty-Five Co-ed Singles Volleyball League on my schedule that I didn’t think this was a good idea since I’m allergic to organized sports.
It had all started in grade school when I was humiliated every single day of my life on the playground in the game of four square—a game in name only. Chamber of horrors wouldn’t come close to describing what I’d experienced. Lynette Harris, the most popular girl in grade school, was the queen of Square A. Square B was always occupied by her best friend, Tess, and Square C was reserved for her lesser subjects. But it was Square D where Lynette unleashed her own special brand of torment on the unpopular girls like me.
A typical day on the playground involved waiting in line to play as many times as I could during our thirty-minute recess. When I’d finally step onto the hallowed four-sided figure of Square D, Lynette or one of her minions would spike me out anywhere from two to thirty seconds later. But every so often, like a cat playing with a half-dead mouse that it had every intention of killing, she’d let me advance to Square C, giving me the faintest ray of hope that I might move on to Square B and, dare I even think it, Square A? But the impossible dreams of Squares A and B eluded me throughout my grade school career.
Although six straight years of getting spiked out had scarred me for life, I harbored no ill will toward Lynette, who I liked to imagine had grown up to become one of the nation’s handful of female serial killers and was now on death row in Florida or Mississippi.
But that was all in the past, and at this very moment the volleyball was hurtling right at me. Usually this was when a man jumped in front of me, shoving me rudely out of the spot, which I’ve learned is called my “zone.” Normally this would piss me off. But since my natural inclination when the ball comes toward me is to
scream, throw my arms up protectively over my face, and then crumple into a fetal position, none of which seems to assist in getting the ball over the net, it was fine with me if some guy wanted to plow into me like a punching bag and take over.
But it was now too late for anyone else to get it. I heard a chorus of male and female voices cheering me on, “Hit it, hit it!” Closing my eyes tight, I clasped my hands together into a two-handed fist, and made a swinging motion upward. I heard a soft womp, opened my eyes and saw the ball bounce once at my feet and die.
I turned around to face my teammates. The woman behind me, a beefy, strapping mountain of a woman who frankly scared the hell out of me, mumbled a curse under her breath and glared at me.
People in nine-to-five office jobs might have envied me right then, I supposed. Getting paid for hanging out on a sunny beach playing volleyball sounded great in theory. But there were definite advantages to the office job—you bought your morning coffee, slumped into your cubicle, stared at your computer screen under the artificial glare of fluorescent lighting for eight hours, and then dragged yourself home, only to start all over again the next day. The only things to do battle with were secretary spread and the thought that one day you might wake up in a nursing home with nothing to show for your life. But on the whole, it seemed better than possibly getting strangled by my own teammate whose name I’m guessing was Brunhilda, a former member of the East German women’s weight-lifting team.
I whipped my head back to face the guy on the opposing team positioned opposite of me, who promptly leaned into the net and said in a low voice, “It would probably help if you didn’t close your eyes when you’re trying to hit the ball. Just relax, don’t try so hard.”
He wiped the sweat off his brow with a quick backstroke of his hand. A mass of blond curly hair escaped over the tops of his ears and out the back of the Brewers baseball cap that he wore backward. I took note of his black tank top and red swimming trunks not to mention his thick muscular thighs covered with blond hair.
“Easy for you to say,” I wanted to tell him. I half expected that if I dared turn around again, I’d see my teammates stringing a noose over the lifeguard stand.
We started playing again. As the ball magically avoided me for the next ten minutes or so, I had begun to relax, although I was still too nervous to actually be having fun. It was then that my eye caught the ball coming right at me again.
“Okay, I can do this,” I told myself. “I can, I can, I can!” I forced myself to keep my eye on the ball, only to misjudge its trajectory. In an attempt to dive for it, I slid face-first across the sand, my mouth open in stunned disbelief until I finally stopped moving, with my arms straight out over my head, hands still clasped together white-knuckled in a death grip. It occurred to me that if I lay there long enough, they might think I’d died. I quietly spit out as much sand as I could, making a little puddle of saliva under my chin. Then the pain hit. My forearms and knees felt like they were on fire.
I felt a pair of strong arms lift me up from behind to a standing position. I was a picture of stunning beauty—completely coated in sand, my left knee bleeding, the right a red roadmap of scrapes, and both forearms scraped raw. And to top it off, a long string of sandy drool dangled from my chin. I turned around to see that it was Mr. Cute Guy from across the net who’d rescued me. The only way this could get worse was if one of my boobs had popped out of my suit. I looked down. Mercifully, they were both still intact.
With the little dignity I had left, I gave my teammates a little wave and scuttled away like a crab. I limped over to the sidelines, bent over to grab my gym bag, and slung it over my shoulder.
“But your volleyball career was off to such a promising start,” said Mr. Cute Guy, running up to my side as he slipped an arm around my back and helped me to my car.
“Hey, Joe, are you coming back?” yelled a guy on his team.
“No,” said Joe. “See you next week.”
I fumbled for my keys inside my gym bag. Joe took them, opened the passenger door, and helped ease me into a sitting position.
“I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” While he sprinted off to the north, I found a bottle of water inside the bag and rinsed the sand from my mouth, pouring the rest over my body. Joe returned a minute later with a medium-sized brown paper bag.
“I’m always banging myself up. I keep a little disinfectant and a lifetime supply of Band-Aids in here,” he said, rummaging through the bag. “Here we go.” He pulled out a bottle of iodine and a few bandages.
“Now this is going to sting,” he said smoothly, staring at my knees.
“Ow.” I flinched and looked down at the Band-Aid on my left knee. “Snoopy?”
“I’m all for equal opportunity in the world of cartoon characters. How about SpongeBob for your right arm and Scooby Doo for your left?” he asked, holding up a bandage in each hand.
After he’d finished playing doctor, I’d expected him to leave, but he lingered as I slipped on a pair of jean shorts and a T-shirt over my swimsuit, and fifteen minutes later, he and I sat across from each other in a booth at an old-fashioned ice cream parlor called Cream City. Joe devoured a hot fudge sundae loaded with pecans while I licked my single scoop of Death by Chocolate from a sugar cone.
We talked about what brought us to a sand volleyball court on Lake Michigan and our jobs.
“I became an engineer because my father was one and his father was too,” he said, shoveling a big spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “But if I won the lottery, I’d quit and never look back.”
It turned out that Joe got paid to work as a chemical engineer for a food company, tackling such problems as figuring out the exact formula needed for the latest M&M color. But Joe’s job was more of a hobby than a profession since he devoted the rest of his life to all things sports and music. He was also on a men’s volleyball team and played rugby on Sunday mornings and softball two nights a week. On weekends, he played guitar in a garage band at weddings and the occasional opener for has-been bands at church festivals.
Was he filling up his life because he didn’t have a woman in it or because he didn’t want one? These thoughts bounced around in my head until he asked for my phone number when he dropped me off and gave me a peck on the lips.
“Hey, Sam, don’t forget,” he said. “Next Thursday is my birthday.”
He’d only mentioned his birthday four times, as though it were a national holiday. But I hoped that he wanted me to save the night so I could help him celebrate.
“I’ll call you,” he said with a wave and then drove off.
When I got home and checked my voice mail, I found messages from Elizabeth and the man with the voice from the newspaper personal ad, Dr. Mark, whom I called back despite the embarrassing message I’d left for him. I reached Mark on the first ring, actually half a ring, as though he’d pounced on the telephone the moment it had sounded.
At first Mark seemed normal enough. He told me he liked piano jazz bars, that his favorite authors were Salman Rushdie and Hunter Thompson, and that his favorite hobby was taking exotic action vacations, something an orthopedic surgeon probably had no problems budgeting for. His next trip was planned for Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
“Did you know that scientists are predicting that the snow on Kili is going to be gone in just fifteen years?” he said, and with barely a breath added, “So Sam, how would you describe your build?”
“My build?” I asked, taken aback by his bizarre segue to what was probably the deal breaker for him—no fat chicks. “What do you mean?”
“Your ad says that you’re 135 pounds, but, well, you know how that goes,” he said chuckling.
“No, why don’t you tell me how that goes?” I said, not chuckling.
“Well women tend to ignore the actual numbers on the scale, if they weigh themselves at all,” he said as if giving a lecture. “Women fudge ten, fifteen, even fifty pounds in my experience.” Right, and
men suck in their guts, add three to six inches to their height, and do the comb-over on their bald spots. But I guess when you have the nerve to claim that you look like Mel Gibson, it’s easy to imagine that you have a license to grill women about their vital statistics. I was tempted to tell him that I only had another one hundred pounds to lose to reach my goal weight of 135, to see how quickly he came up with a sudden orthopedic emergency to get off the phone.
“I’m 135 pounds give or take a pound or two fluctuation, if that’s all right with you,” I said.
“Great! Would you like to go to dinner Monday night?”
“I think I’ve got something going on Monday night,” I hedged.
“How about Tuesday or Wednesday?”
Warning. Warning. This guy has way too much time on his hands.
“I left my calendar in my car,” I told him. “Let me check my schedule and give you a call back.”
He didn’t seem happy about it but he agreed. As soon as I hung up, I called Elizabeth.
“He’s an orthopedic surgeon who looks like Mel Gibson. He goes on exotic vacations, has a voice like God, and you’re wavering about whether to call him back? Do I have the situation summarized correctly?” asked Elizabeth, as if she were addressing a courtroom.
I mumbled a “hmm,” knowing it was pointless to argue with her when she was on a lawyer roll.
“On the other hand, if everything about him is true,” she continued, “why in the world does a guy like that need to call a personal ad? He must have some fatal flaw.”
“Exactly. I’m not calling him back.”
“Aren’t you at least curious to see Mel in person?”
“No,” I lied. “But it would be fun to show up on a date with him wearing a fat suit.”
“Sam, you’re too picky,” she said.
I groaned inwardly. Too picky, indeed! How could one be too anything when it came to the most important decision in life? Think of how hellish it was to live with a bad roommate much less a person that would require thousands of dollars and half your worldly possessions to get away from permanently.
Adventures of a Salsa Goddess Page 13
