by Lou Aronica
“It’s Mickey, dear,” my father said, “and the pleasure is all mine.” He grasped her hand and held it with both of his. He didn’t let go immediately.
“Jesse’s told me so much about you.”
“Well, he talks about you all the time.” My father glanced at me to make sure I understood that he was exaggerating for my benefit. He still hadn’t let go of Marina’s hand. “But I’m sure there’s so much more to know. Why don’t we sit down and you can tell me all about yourself.” He slipped his arm into hers and brought her over to the living room couch. I walked with them, but my father turned to me and said, “You have cooking to do or something, don’t you?”
I could swear he was speaking in a different register. His speech even seemed to have a different cadence. Was this my father’s idea of being smooth? Was this how he chatted up the ladies at Senior Citizens meetings? I couldn’t believe he was putting on an act for Marina. It dawned on me that he was doing this as a way to invalidate whatever he assumed I’d told her about him. He probably figured if he was charming enough, she’d never believe me when I bitched about him in the future.
Though I wanted to stay to see the next act in my father’s performance – especially since he had all but banished me from the room – I actually did have responsibilities in the kitchen. Of course, I could hear most of what they were saying anyway. My father rarely spoke quietly, and this was true of his new alter ego as well. It sounded as though Marina was also speaking a little louder than usual so I could hear her. My father let Marina do most of the talking – about school, about her students, about her family – interrupting only to ask another question or to make an observation such as, “Dedication is one of the most admirable qualities in a human being. But obviously I don’t need to tell you that.” I had never heard him speak this way before. With Mom, he had always been respectful but commanding. With us kids, he had always been provocative and challenging. He treated Matty’s wife Laura the way one might treat a favorite niece, with smiles and appreciation masking the fact that he didn’t consider her to be an equal. But he was fawning over Marina. He was either mocking me in some subtle way, or he was trying to make a move on her.
This went on for a while and I stayed in the kitchen getting dinner ready. I was increasingly glad I’d made the mole. That would draw him out of this character. If the past couple of months were any indication, my father just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to suggest that nothing of value had ever come from any cuisine other than Italian or French.
Eventually, Marina excused herself to check in with me.
“You didn’t tell me he was so handsome,” she whispered as she walked into the room.
“He’s craggy and stooped and twenty pounds overweight. You go for that?”
“He has gorgeous eyes.”
“It figures you noticed that. Has he broken eye contact with you once since you walked in the door?”
Marina laughed. “Your father is very charming.”
“That’s not my father. It’s his body out there, but his soul has been whisked away on an alien starship. Don’t get too close to him. God knows what their mission is on our planet.”
She pulled the wooden spoon out of my hand and put her arms around me. I kissed her softly, and our heads stayed close together afterwards. It was one of my favorite ways to talk to her.
“You look spectacular tonight,” I said.
She smiled. “Your father has better lines.”
I pulled her a little tighter. “No, I mean it. Will you wear this sweater every time we’re together?” I kissed her again, more passionately this time.
She purred a little. “I was about to dump you for your old man. Maybe I’ll reconsider.”
I kissed her one more time and then said, “You’d better get back out there. If not, he’ll come in here looking for you and it really is best for all of us if he spends as little time in the kitchen as possible.”
She gave me another peck on the lips and left. I watched her as she walked into the living room. I’d always thought of Marina as attractive, but she seemed to be getting even more beautiful to me. I’d never had that experience before.
~~~~~~~~
I should have known that my father would love the mole. That was the way things were going to be this night. I kept looking for signs that he was hiding his food in his napkin or throwing it on the floor, but it was obvious he was really enjoying it.
“This is really excellent, Jesse,” he said. “Never had chicken like this before.”
Marina nodded. “I love Mexican food. There’s nothing like it in the world.”
My father smiled at Marina. “Yes, it’s wonderful. I’ve been meaning to try more of it.”
I choked back the urge to remind him about the guacamole he’d rejected the first week he was here or the salsa verde that he told me tasted like soap. I also resisted the urge to snicker when he followed this up with, “I think it’s critical that you keep exploring new things. It keeps you young.” Marina of course had no idea how bull-headed and stuck in his ways he could be, so she missed the irony.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said. “It’s even true for people my age. You have to keep yourself open to everything that’s around you. I wish more people understood that as they matured.”
“They just haven’t had the right teachers.” My father was practically crooning. I figured the aliens had taken his soul all the way to Pluto by now.
I reached out for Marina’s leg under the table and gave it a gentle squeeze. It was partly to comment on my father’s performance. But it was also simply because I wanted to touch her. I’d been doing it all night. There was something going on here. It could have been my own reaction to getting the two of them together. It could have been relief that – as ludicrous as his display was – he obviously liked Marina (I’ll never forget the disastrous day when he met Karen for the first time). It could have been the way she looked that night. Or it could have been the arousing qualities of chocolate and chiles. But I found myself being much more openly affectionate with Marina than I normally was. I liked sitting at a dinner table with her and my father. I liked having her entertain him while I finished the meal. I liked the fact that she was my girlfriend and welcomed my touch. It was all very exciting to me. Like when Jill Somers came to my family graduation party after I’d taken her to the senior prom.
For dessert, Marina brought out the apple pie she’d made, and served it with her own caramel ice cream. Just in case my father wasn’t already convinced that she was the most perfect woman in the world, she gave him an extra scoop of ice cream after she brought out the plates. His expression redefined the term “goofy.” At that moment, he looked like the oldest pre-adolescent on the planet.
It probably would have been a good night to break the ice regarding the sleeping arrangements, but we had definitely not planned ahead for this. There was no way of really knowing what my father was going to be like, and I had envisioned a scenario where things had gone so badly that I wound up going back to Marina’s house with her. The upshot was that about an hour and a half after dinner was over, Marina told us she had to leave.
“Don’t go on my account,” my father said, standing as she did. “I’m going to go to bed soon anyway, so the two of you can have the house to yourselves.”
Marina took his hand and smiled. “Thanks, but I really do have to go. I have some tests to grade before I go to sleep tonight.”
“I hope those children know how lucky they are,” he said. He then kissed her hand and I was certain a reptilian thing was going to leap out of his chest at any moment. Marina pulled him toward her and pecked him on the cheek. I could swear he blushed a little.
I put my arm around Marina’s shoulder and walked her out to her car.
“That went okay, huh?” she said.
“I think he’s gone back to his room to write you into his will.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“He sure was
tonight.”
She pulled me close to her. “I had a good time.”
“Yeah, me too. Imagine that.”
“I’m glad we did this.”
We kissed for a long time. I didn’t want her to leave. In fact, I didn’t want anything but to stand there and kiss her. Eventually, she pulled back and informed me that she really did have tests to grade. We kissed once more, and then again after she got into the car. I waited until she drove down the block before going back into the house.
My father was waiting for me just inside the door.
“That’s some woman,” he said.
“She’s pretty great, isn’t she?”
I walked toward the kitchen to clean up. My father didn’t clean. He didn’t feel it was in his job description. He did what he often did, though, which was to sit at the kitchen table while I cleaned.
“So what are your intentions with her?” he said.
“Intentions?”
“Yes, what are your intentions?”
“Dad, I think people stopped using that term about three days after the invention of the wheel.”
“You know what I’m saying. What are your plans?”
I shrugged. “We don’t talk about plans, except for restaurant reservations or movie schedules. We’re just taking it a day at a time.” Again, I was reminded of the way Marina had said those words a few weeks back. I was going to have to start using a different phrase.
“You do realize that this is a very special woman, don’t you?”
“I could see that you liked her.”
“It would be a mistake to let her get away.”
“I’m not letting her get away, Dad. We’re just not really doing ‘plans’ or ‘intentions.’ You know most relationships eventually don’t work out. We’re just being realistic.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
He said this so sharply that I turned off the faucet and looked at him.
His eyes narrowed as he spoke. “Are you telling me that you think that Marina is just another woman?”
“Dad, if I thought she was just another woman, I wouldn’t have been with her for the past six months. I just think it’s silly to get caught up in a bunch of romantic notions.”
“Like that would be the worst thing that could happen to you.”
“It’s just not necessary. Marina and I really like each other. We have a great time together. We’ve managed to continue to have a great time together without making any promises to be together until the end of the world.”
He waved his hand at me dismissively, got up from the table, and walked away. I turned back to the sink. A few moments later, he was back and he reached over to turn off the faucet.
“I’ve got something I want to tell you,” he said abruptly.
I tilted my head toward him and gave him my best look of impatience. “I can’t wait.”
His gaze held mine for a moment. There was so much disapproval in his expression. I started to feel a little chastened.
“Nah, you don’t deserve it.”
He walked away again.
I stood there for a short while awaiting his return. When it became clear that he wasn’t coming back, I resumed cleaning the dishes.
Chapter Nine
Tom Postron is a friend and, in the loosest definition of the term, a colleague. Six years ago, we did a panel together at a writer’s conference. Afterward, we had a drink and wound up hanging out for the rest of the weekend. Back then, Tom was simply a hot young assistant editor for a major newsmagazine. Within a couple of years, though, he had signed on as Features Editor for the online startup Tapestry. It seemed to be a risky move, since he was fast-tracking at his other job, online magazines were an unknown quantity, and no one could tell how long the new magazine would keep publishing. But Tapestry captured the imaginations of a great demographic group and Tom’s decision looked pretty shrewd. It looked like genius two years later when the Editor-in-Chief decided to move to Montana and Tom was handed the mantle. Three years older than me, he controlled what most writers of my generation considered the best outlet available for feature pieces.
I’d done exactly one item for Tom, and it was little more than a sidebar as a follow-up to something another writer had done a few issues before. I took it at the time as a way in the door with Tapestry, but while the door remained open, I hadn’t found the legs with which to walk through it. I’d pitched Tom on dozens of stories, several of which I ultimately sold elsewhere, but I couldn’t seem to find anything that clicked with him. Still, we stayed in regular e-mail communication, talked on the phone fairly often, and had lunch three or four times a year. Which was the agenda for that morning’s call.
“Hey Jess, what’s up?” he said when he came on the line.
“Just calling to see if I can get on the jam-packed Tom Postron lunch calendar sometime before the turn of the next century.”
“No exaggeration allowed this early in the morning, Jess. You know I’m never booked more than a year or so in advance.”
“Yeah, your accessibility is obviously one of the keys to your whirlwind success.”
Tom laughed and then paused. I assumed he was looking at his calendar.
“How’s the eighth?” he said.
“The eighth of what month?”
“The eighth of next month. Or was I being presumptuous? Are you booked-out several months yourself?”
“Well, I am in incredibly high demand, but let me see if I can move a few things around.”
“Great, I’ll pencil it in. So what are you working on these days?”
Just then, I heard my father on the other line. I assumed that Tom could hear him as well, and that he probably didn’t need the phone to do so.
“Hey Theresa, how’re you feeling today?” Dad said. He used the same line every morning, delivered at the same booming level. It was hard not to be distracted by it, and I usually didn’t make phone calls first thing in the morning because of it. But with Tom, if you didn’t get him before 9:30, you stood little chance of talking to him that day.
I focused back on the call. “A couple of things to pay the bills. I’m working on some more significant stuff, though. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get together.”
“Well, I’m always interested in hearing your pitches. If you want to e-mail me some notes before we get together, go ahead.”
“Yeah, well if you have a couple of seconds, I’d like to tell you about this one thing I’m thinking about.”
“Shoot.”
I stopped for a second to gather my thoughts. I always did this before pitching a story. Nothing frustrated editors more than hearing someone say, “Oh, wait a second, I forgot to mention” or, “Oh, right, there’s this other thing.”
As I was thinking, I heard my father say to my aunt, “It was great. He’s got himself someone completely different this time.”
He was obviously relating the details of the previous night’s dinner with Marina. It threw me off for a second, but I shook it off.
“I’m thinking about doing a piece on Percy Kescham, the Newark kid who was drafted by the NBA right out of high school.”
“Didn’t he last for ten games or something like that?”
At the same time, my father said, “She’s quite a looker and she seems very warm. I liked her right away.”
It was impossible not to cock an ear toward the den under the circumstances, but I reminded myself that I was talking to Tapestry magazine.
“He actually stuck for the entire year,” I said into the phone, “but by midseason he was something like the eleventh man on the roster. The Bucks cut him before the start of the next season, even though they had to eat a huge contract.”
“So what’s the story?”
“What do you mean ‘what’s the problem?’” my father said. “Why do you think there was a problem?”
I continued, though I was now extremely distracted by my father’s conversation. “You flash forward a few years. The gu
y decides he’s going to do something with his life. He gets his commercial real estate license. Last month he gets arrested for fraud. The kid’s got a couple of million dollars in the bank, and he still gets messed up in a dirty scheme.”
“That’s it?” Tom asked.
At which point my father said, “Oh, it’s just that Jesse is getting ready to screw things up with her, I can just tell. I can’t believe he thought about marrying that crazy girl and he’s playing it cool with this one. It’s like he’s learned nothing.”
“Yeah,” I said to Tom. “I’m seeing it as a cautionary tale. Here’s a guy who believed he could do no wrong even, after the biggest thing in his life came crashing down. So he still acts like he’s exempt from the rules and he gets busted.”
“And why is my reader interested?”
My father’s voice was getting louder, though one might have thought that was physically impossible. “I’m not getting excited about it. But you weren’t here, Theresa. You didn’t see them. I just can’t believe he’s gonna screw up with this great woman.” He let out a bellow of exasperation. He seemed way more worked up about this than he should be. “It’s like he wouldn’t know love if it bit him on the leg.”
I wasn’t sure which conversation was going worse for me.
“I think this works on a few levels,” I said to Tom. “You know, there are always issues about whether these kids should come right out of high school or not, and, you know, I think there’s a certain segment that responds to icons – even little ones – going down.”
“I’m not seeing it, Jess. That story has been told a million times before. If you dig deeper and learn something more about his character and what drove him in this direction, there might be something there, but you have to look at the story from that angle. It’s a little bit like what I was telling you the last time we got together.” He hesitated for a moment. “Jess, can you hang on a second?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Tom got back on the line a minute or so later. “I’ve gotta run. The drama is starting a little early this morning. Should be a great day. I’ll see you on the eighth, right?”
