At this moment I’m smiling and nodding while my mother introduces me to a third cousin whom apparently I played with once when I was four.
“Aren’t you just so lucky,” the cousin says. I know I should remember her name but I must have blacked out for a second. I’m pretty sure it starts with an E. Eleanor? Ethel? Evelyn? “Not only did you inherit that amazing ring, but Auntie Margery even allowed you to use her parasol for your shower.”
Oh God. Are we going to have to talk about this umbrella again?
It was a source of stress for Mom for weeks wondering if my marriage to a labourer would be sanctioned by Auntie Margery. Apparently, she was withholding the frothy pink lace antique from many of the cousins these days. I suppose Evan passed muster after all. I was hoping he wouldn’t. But there it is, propped up on display on the gift table with perfectly wrapped presents beneath it. No willy-nilly smattering of dollar store gift bags here.
Over the years I’ve managed to avoid almost every family bridal shower for the Carews and Sheas. Between travel and grad school, then post-doc work and a well-practiced gift to come up with perfectly respectable reasons to miss the events, the last shower I attended was about seven years ago. And at that time I really wasn’t paying attention to the formalities at all. If memory serves, I spent most of it drinking champagne and—well, that’s about all my memory is serving me about now. And now here I am with the entire dining room of a swanky downtown hotel draped in soft pink and pale yellow decor, food and wine flowing, and hating it more and more with each second that passes.
Enid is going on. “Did you know she refused to let me use the parasol when I was engaged to David White? In hindsight, I’m glad she did. It gave me time to rethink my decision to marry him.”
You know those moments when propriety goes out the window and you just say what’s on the tip of your tongue? Here I go.
“You called off your wedding because of an umbrella?”
The look Evangeline is giving me is priceless in its incredulity. “No. It just made me think about his suitability a bit more. What did Auntie Margery see that I hadn’t?”
“And what did you discover?”
I really want to know the answer here, because I can’t imagine such a simple thing causing a re-evaluation of an engagement.
“He wasn’t going to fulfill his promise to me.”
Damn it all. I wish I could remember her name. This seems like the kind of conversation you should be having that involves statements like “What did he promise you, Ester?”
But I needn’t worry. She’s going to tell me anyway. Her voice lowers, as if she’s telling me a deep, dark secret, although I suspect by the way Mom isn’t hanging on her every word that this is old news to everyone but me.
“He wasn’t going to buy me a house in King William Estates. I mean, I’m sure he thought he would. Someday. But there was no way he was going to afford it on his salary, and that was before the market started to jump the way it has.”
“So you called off your wedding because of a house?”
The swanky houses in that area of St. John’s might be nice, but there are better places to call home.
Here we go. Mom is tugging on my arm. “It was so nice to see you again, Irene. Thank you so much for coming.”
But I’m not giving up that easy. And Irene? How the hell did I think that started with an E?
Turns out Irene has a bit of fight in her too, because she’s ignoring Mom as well as I am.
“Not just because of a house, Jillian. Because of a lack of potential for a decent future for me and any others that might come along. It’s easy for you. You might be marrying a construction worker, but he has options. He could go back to being a lawyer any time he felt like it.”
“Excuse me?”
What was this nonsense?
“Oh look,” Mom is saying, tugging harder on my arm. “Ingrid is waving to you.”
Ingrid. My best friend and maid-of-honour whom Mom warned me earlier not to spend the entire shower “ensconced” in conversation with because it would be rude to the guests. Now she’s doing her best to get me to the other side of the room.
There’s something rotten happening here, and my mother is the root cause, I’m sure.
“Mother, care to tell me what that was about?”
“Excuse me, darling. I have to go check on the caterers to make sure everyone is topped up before you start opening your gifts. Go talk to Ingrid for a few minutes and then we’ll get started.”
God damn it all. What has my mother been saying about Evan? I have a sneaking suspicion that by the end of this afternoon we are not going to be on speaking terms. Crap. I hate drama. I particularly hate drama with my mother. And now a month from the wedding it looks like drama is exactly what’s on the menu.
“You look like you need a drink,” Ingrid says, reaching me before I get to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing at all, unless you consider premeditated matricide a problem.”
“What’s Laura done now?” Ingrid links her arm in mine and leads me towards the nearest tray of wine.
“I think she’s lying about Evan and telling people he’s a lawyer.”
As usual, Ingrid doesn’t have my degree of indignation. Instead she laughs. “Sounds like your mother to me.”
“It’s not funny. I thought she liked Evan.”
“I’d say she adores him. But that doesn’t mean she’s not going to be her normal self. Appearances matter to her. You know this by now.”
“I don’t care what I know. All I know is that I’m not going to have her make Evan out to be someone he’s not. Which by extension makes me someone I’m not.”
I take a deep drink of the cool Riesling and ponder how I’m going to handle this. Fifteen-year-old Jillian would have left the room and cried in private. Twenty-five-year-old Jillian would have caused a scene. But now I just feel tired. Angry, but tired. I don’t want to fight with Mom. Honestly, I’m a little out of practice. We haven’t had cross words since I met Evan. I thought we’d reached a point where we were going to accept each other. Seems I was wrong.
A round of applause breaks my train of thought. As if to mess with my mind even more, there’s Mom rushing up to greet Evan, who’s standing in the doorway of the dining room, a huge bouquet of roses in every colour imaginable in hand.
“She planned this,” Ingrid says. “So she can’t dislike him if she told him to be here at precisely 3:35 with flowers for you. If she was trying to hide him away, she wouldn’t have brought him into the lion’s den.”
Whatever moment of insight Ingrid might be trying to convey, I’m not listening. I’m just glad to see him. The anger that threatened to spill out of me is tamed by the sight of him. I never knew I needed a calming presence in my life, until I had one.
“Ladies, allow me to introduce my soon-to-be son, Evan.” Mom is fawning over him like he’s the best thing since sliced bread and it’s making me mad. This room of people that believe he’s something he’s not. And he’s not helping matters one iota by looking as good as he does. Come on, what kind of guy can get away with looking that great in a pair of cords and a cable knit sweater that’ve lived in his closet for at least ten years?
The legion of old biddies and prissy cousins are practically cracking their necks to get a good look at him. Despite my crankiness at Mom and the whole event in general, there’s no denying the tingle I get as he meets my gaze. A cocky smile comes across his face and he strides towards me.
“Sorry to crash your soirée,” he says.
“You’re not sorry at all,” I counter just before he drops the roses in Ingrid’s arms and delivers a kiss that might have the older ladies in need of a defibrillator.
“You’re not mad I came?”
“Are you kidding? I’m wondering how I can get out of opening presents and run away with you, never t to endure another hoity-toity society event again.”
“Going that well, is it?”
No
w I’ve got a problem. There’s no way I’m hurting his feelings by telling him my mother has chosen to embellish his credentials. But I also don’t lie to him. At least I haven’t yet. But there’s a time and place for everything, and right now, avoidance is the best course of action.
“As well as any event planned by Mom can go when it involves this crowd.”
“It’ll all be over soon,” he whispers in my ear. “You won’t have to endure this anymore.” He chuckles. “Well, maybe at least once more when there’s a baby shower.”
“Don’t kid. If we ever have kids we’re moving to Rome as soon as we find out.”
He laughs but I’m serious. I can’t handle my parents in parental mode. God only knows what sort of crazy they’ll morph into should they become grandparents.
8:45 the morning after the shower of doom.
You know that adage, let sleeping dogs lie? That’s my normal modus operandi when it comes to Mom. But I couldn’t sleep at all last night. It didn’t matter that Mom was perfectly nice to Evan for the remainder of the shower, or that she gave him a big hug and kiss before we left the hotel, his truck loaded down with gifts. I couldn’t watch anything she did without wondering if it was an act. So here I am, walking through Bannerman Park with a coffee in hand, my feet crunching the fine layer of frost from a not-so-freak early June chill (which is why I’m getting married in July, not June!), going to ask my mother why she’s ashamed of Evan. This is not going to be a good morning.
Maybe it’s because she’s a surgeon that my mother is so damn meticulous about her schedule. But I know that at 8:45 on a Monday morning I can find her sitting in the sunroom (she calls it a conservatory), a full French press of coffee on the table beside her, and a stack of medical journals dog-eared and full of sticky tabs. That’s what really gets me about Mom. For all of her class-centred views and desire to be part of the townie elite, she’s the smartest person I know. And I know plenty of smart people. I’m a university prof with a PhD. But Dr. Laura Carew leaves them all in the dirt.
It’s hard to merge the two versions of Mom. The society matron with the brilliant surgeon. And yet, she is both at the same time. There’s no switch that she flips when she comes home, transforming from doctor to wife. She just is. I admire that about her, but it also pisses me off. Because both sides of her are annoying when you’re her daughter.
“Jillian, I expected you’d be here this morning rearing for a fight.”
Something else I hate is how she’s able to read me so clearly. You could call that a lucky guess except for the extra mug on the table. My mug.
“The question is, should I let you start ranting and raving now or should I take all the fun out of this and set you straight.”
God damn it. This attitude. This is her “I know better than you” tone, and it’s normally accurate. Crap.
I lay my empty takeout coffee on the table and pour a fresh one.
“You didn’t tell people Evan is a lawyer.”
I know it’s true. She’s too smug.
“No. Technically, your father is the cause of this. But you can’t blame it on him either.”
“Daddy lied about Evan?”
She runs her fingers through her brown hair—almost the exact same shade as mine—and sighs. “No one lied about Evan. Remember a couple of weeks ago when your father and Evan went out for coffee? While they were there, Irene’s father, George, dropped in for a visit. You remember him? He’s a partner in your father’s firm. Anyhow, according to Dad, during that conversation, Evan mentioned that he’d always had an interest in environmental law and he must have said something that made George think he had a legal background. You know how smart Evan is. He could be a lawyer, I’m sure. So that, my dear girl, is where your problem came from.”
I need to let this sink in. Once again I’ve been bested by my issues with my mother. And once again, I’ve been proven wrong.
“So you like Evan? You’re not worried I’m marrying beneath our status?”
It’s not too often I make Mom mad. But if the way she just pounded her mug onto the table is any indication, I might have just poked the sleeping bear.
“I love Evan. He’s great for you. And I don’t care in the slightest what he does for a living. He works, he’s kind, and God only knows how, he understands you more than anyone else on this earth. I know you don’t care about the family history, and expectations, and indeed, the role that I’ve chosen to take on in my circle of friends. And I try not to force it on you. You’ve long thought me to be the thorn in your life, Jillian, but what you’ve always failed to see is that anything I’ve ever suggested to you has always come from my trying to understand you. Not judge you. And Lord only knows, not to force you into doing something else.”
“Come on, Mom. You were the first one to say I should go to med school. You were the first one to tell me getting a PhD in Classics was a waste of my energy. You are always telling me what I should be wearing, and eating, and reading. Nothing I do is good enough.”
“Where you see me telling you what to do, is simply me trying to have a conversation with you. To see what we have in common. To try to get to know you. You’re not sixteen anymore, my darling. I don’t give a good God damn what you do as long as you’re happy.”
This is what I hate. She’s always had a way of making me feel guilty for the way I feel. She turns it around on me, so that my feelings don’t matter, as if I’m being childish and ungrateful. She plays the caring mother card, which in turn leaves me unable to have a real conversation with her.
I bet you’re taking her side right now. Because she talks a good talk. She’s all smiles and concerned eyes, but there’s a passive-aggressiveness there that simmers beneath the surface.
She pats my hand, and I notice for the first time that hers are starting to look a little wrinkled.
“Why don’t you and Evan come over tonight for supper? Better yet, how about we go out for supper? And Dad and Evan can explain how he’s apparently a lawyer.” She laughs. I cringe.
Argh. What else can I do but agree?
11:25 am.
“Why didn’t you tell me what was wrong yesterday?”
As Evan slowly rubs honey-scented skin cream along my back, all the stress of the morning evaporates. The good thing about Evan working for himself is that sometimes, when I call him and plead that I need him, he can come and help talk me down.
Sometimes it involves very little talking.
It was only after the mind-numbing sex that I told him about his new profession. As usual, it doesn’t seem to bother him. And also as usual, he’s more than willing to work his damnedest to make sure it stops bothering me.
“I didn’t want you thinking Mom didn’t like you.”
His laugh is rich, like a warm cup of coffee that’s been spiked with an abundance of Bailey’s.
“I gotta be honest with you, my love. You’d have to work pretty hard to convince me that was the case. I’m the son she never had, don’t you know?”
I jump a little as he puts more cream on my back. It’s cold but his hands warm it, and me, up in the most delicious ways.
“Are you sure you can handle being married to me and all this mother-daughter drama that I just can’t seem to get beyond?”
“My love, your family would have to be pretty bad to stop me from wanting to spend the rest of my life with you. Like, lich-king bad. Demon-spawn bad. And even then, I could be swayed to the dark side because you’re a pretty fine temptress.”
“You just want me to be your dark master again.”
Who knew that role-playing could be sexy? He had to talk me into it a bit, but wow, from time to time, bringing dice and props into the bedroom is a ton of fun!
“Again? More like always.” He drops a kiss onto my shoulder. “I don’t have to be anywhere until noon. Do you want to talk about your mother any more or can we get back to more of this?”
His arm slides around my waist and he pulls me back onto the bed.
<
br /> I do want to talk about Mom some more. But let’s be honest. There’s a time and place for everything. And this is neither for dissecting my mother issues.
Later that evening.
It doesn’t matter how booked a restaurant in this city is. If my mother gets it into her head that she wants to eat there, now, then by God, we eat there. I’m hoping for a perfectly civilized dinner, and so far, it’s going well. There’s two bottles of a decadent red wine on the table, and we’ve just polished off a round of appetizers boasting grouse and moose.
“Do you hunt?” Dad asks Evan, as he dabs a piece of bread in the last drop of juice from his meat.
“Not really. When I was a young fella I went out setting snares with my grandfather a time or two, but I don’t have the heart for it. Dad doesn’t either. Our deep freeze was kept stocked by my uncles in exchange for Dad doing their taxes.”
“I thought your parents were teachers?” Mom interjects.
“Yea, but Dad taught math and physics for years. He’s always had a head for numbers. He finds doing taxes relaxing. He’s certainly saved me money over the years.”
“You don’t have a business accountant?”
Both Mom and Dad stare at him as if he’s just revealed a terrible secret. Then again, money is no laughing matter in their world. Not that it is in Evan’s and mine, either. But they grew up with tales of the Depression nearly wiping out family fortunes. The fear of loss that was instilled in them from an early age never really left. Maybe that’s why they pursued the traditional big money professions around here: medicine and law.
For me, money has always been there and I don’t really worry that it won’t. And I know as far as Evan is concerned, as long as he can pay his bills, keep a roof over his head, have a nice rainy day fund, and have enough left over to buy the newest game to strike his fancy, he’s good. Another reason why I love Evan Sharp. He’s smart with money, but not obsessed about it.
Geek Groom (Forever Geek Trilogy #2) Page 2
