Love and Other Natural Disasters (29 page)

We both looked up as the glass
doors opened and Charlie emerged from the house, barefoot. He approached and
sat on the other swing so that we flanked Phil.

"So what's your deep, dark
secret, Phil?" Charlie asked.

Phil looked flustered by the
question.

"I'm just kidding,"
Charlie said.

"Oh. I guess I'm just a little
nervous here." Phil cleared his throat. "I've been married before,
you know."

"I didn't know," I said.

"Just the one time, you understand.
It was a long time ago, and we didn't have any children. She's a good lady. She
got married again, had five kids. Jesus, five kids. Can you imagine?"

"That's a lot of fucking
kids," Charlie said.

Phil nodded. "So I'm just
saying, I don't have any kids. I make a good living; I've got a nice house; I
can take care of your mom."

Charlie and I exchanged glances.

"I think I can be a good
grandpa to Liv and Jake. And I know you're both grown, so we could just get to
know each other. I'd like to marry your mom—that's what I'm saying."

Charlie and I were quiet; then he
started grinning. "Phil
Tibbs
wants to marry
Mom."

I began to smile, too. "Phil
Tibbs
is going to be our stepfather."

Phil looked like he wasn't quite
sure what the joke was, but was trying to be game. "I'm hoping so."

"When are you going to ask
her?" Charlie was almost bouncing up and down with excitement. He looked
like Jacob.

"I wanted your opinion on
that. Do you think she'd rather I asked her in private, up in Mendocino, or at
dinner tonight?"

"Dinner tonight," I said.

"Definitely dinner,"
Charlie confirmed.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

I hadn't spent much time in steak
houses in my life. My mom couldn't afford them when we were growing up, so
occasionally we'd go to a chain restaurant that had an "all you can
eat" meat buffet where the price for kids was based on some body weight
algorithm. By the time I was eleven, the forced weigh-ins had lost their charm.
I resented the way my mother was too busy gorging to even talk, and at the end
of the meal, she'd look out over the sea of
formica
tabletops with a dreamy satiety.

There was definitely no
formica
in evidence at the steak house Phil had picked. I
hadn't known a place like this even existed in San Francisco. Dark wood
paneling, mahogany booths upholstered in black leather, plain white
tablecloths, TVs (on mute) tucked discreetly into every corner showing sports,
no admission of sunlight, not a feminine touch in the house, and an older,
moneyed, predominantly male clientele that looked like they might have been the
masterminds behind Enron—it was like we'd been transported to Texas. Our waiter
even had a faint twang, though I suspected it might have
been affected to increase his tips. San Francisco
reasserted itself only in that there were no stogies blazing anywhere, by force
of law.

Phil was doing his best to seem
right at home (as if he were some captain of industry instead of just a
small-business owner), while my mother looked around with the kind of
enchantment that clearly formed the backbone of their relationship. Charlie was
sharing her enthusiasm, Lil seemed unusually subdued, Ray head-to-toe amiable,
and I was just reeling from the bludgeoning masculinity of the place.
My
mother's getting engaged in an old boys' club. And I'm here at the closest
thing to a family dinner, with someone other than Jon.

Ray laid down his menu and found
his way into Phil's monologue on the great steak houses of the world. "So
you're a traveler, Phil?" he asked.

Phil looked unsure how to answer
the question, as if Ray might be putting him on. "I've been around,"
he said, somehow managing to sound both cautious and slightly challenging.

"What about you,
Barbara?" Ray turned to my mother with a friendly smile.

"Would you believe that this
trip with Phil"—my mother patted Phil's arm—"is my first time really
seeing the coast? When I visit Eve, I always fly or drive the quick way inland.
I can't believe I've waited so long. It just takes your breath away." She
smiled at Ray, then quickly turned her attention back to Phil.

"Pretty spectacular," Ray
agreed. "What about you, Charlie? Do you always take the quick way?"

Charlie laughed. "Oh, no. I
take the long way around every time."

"Good man." Ray grinned
at Charlie. "So let me get this straight. Charlie and Eve, you both grew up
down in Orange County, so you've been Californians all your lives?"
Charlie nodded. "And Barbara, what about you?"

"I'm from Kansas
originally."

"So you must know your
steaks," Ray said.

I glanced at Phil, whose grasp
around his glass of bourbon seemed particularly tight. He hadn't decided how to
proceed with another alpha male at the table. Charlie and I had been yielding
the floor to him all weekend. Until then, I hadn't realized that Ray even was
an alpha male. But there he was, directing the conversation, drawing Lil into
it, asking where she'd grown up. I felt safe beside him, knowing that
everything was in hand. I didn't have to worry about how we'd all get along;
Ray would see that we did. I'd missed being taken care of in that way, being
part of a couple. The waxing and waning, the give and take,
I'm tired, you
take the load for a while.

I wasn't sure Phil would do that
for my mom, but I hoped. She'd been carrying the load herself for so long. No
one had ever proposed to her—not even after finding out she was pregnant—and I
liked the idea of someone telling her, I
choose you.
I didn't know what
would happen afterward, if they'd even go through with the marriage, but that
moment would mean something regardless. At least once in her life, every woman should
feel chosen.

Charlie was whispering in Lil's
ear. Maybe he was telling her about the proposal. Lil nodded and forced a
smile. The disparity in their affections was painfully clear.

I was momentarily distracted from
my concern by the waiter's arrival. Charlie knew Phil was paying, and was
living it up by ordering a twenty-two-ounce Kansas City strip steak. Phil
smiled approvingly and said he was ordering the same thing, in honor of my
mother. I got the salmon, expecting Phil to protest; he didn't comment, just
gave me a smile slightly laced with pity.

After we'd ordered, and Phil had
finished his drink, he seemed to return to his usual form. He told stories
about the tough climate for American cars, about the tough climate for America
in general, and even though I could feel Ray bristle next to me, he maintained
a genial expression.

I was surprised when a few minutes
later, he took my hand. It seemed so proprietary, right there in front of my
mother and brother. We hadn't even kissed, but it felt like some sort of
announcement. I got a little jolt as his fingertips lightly caressed my
knuckles, and on a purely physiological level, my body knew it was owed a kiss.
But then I thought of Jon in my bedroom the other night, of the man he was
trying to become, and what I wanted most was to get out of there.

"Excuse me," I said to
the table, standing up.

"Excuse me, too," Lil
said, to my surprise. "Women in pairs. You know how it is, guys."
Once we were away from the table, she took my arm and said, "Let's go outside.
I need a smoke."

It was a chilly night, and I wished
I'd worn panty hose, much as I ordinarily hated them. Still, I was grateful to
have a minute alone with her.

"How did you know I needed
this?" I asked, rubbing my bare arms for warmth as she pulled a pack of
cigarettes from her purse.

"You?" she said.
"Honey, I needed it more."

I had a sinking feeling as I waited
for her to continue.

"Your brother's a doll, but
he's driving me fucking nuts." She lit up a cigarette and puffed at it
with urgency.

"How?" I tried to keep
the defensive tone out of my voice.

"He's trying to take things
too far. I mean, what am I doing at dinner with your mother? Please. I'm not
his girlfriend."

"I guess he wants you to
be." There was no guessing about it.

"I was clear from the start.
These things have a shell life."

"Always?"

She looked at me; then her eyes
flicked back to the street. "Look, it would take a lot for me to
reconsider once I decide what a guy's good for." I bristled and she went
on. "I don't mean it like that. Charlie's great. But the odds are, if we
keep going like this, he's going to fall in love with me. And I'm not going to
fall in love with him."

She was trying to sound resolute,
but I heard something underneath. A certain catch in her voice.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because he's obvious. He's
young, and I know everything he's going to say and do before he does. And I'm starting
to get that heinous impulse to be his mother. You know, to tell him how much
potential he's got, to try to help him figure out what's good for him and how
to get it. I don't want to go there." She sucked on her cigarette.

"So, is it that you're not
able to fall in love with him because he's obvious, or is it that you don't
want to fall in love with him?"

"I don't want to, so I won't."
She turned away, exhaled in the other direction. "I'm going to end things.
Tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. Soon."

"You're going to break his
heart." My baby brother finally puts himself in a position to really care
about someone, and what does it get him? What does it get any of us?

"This isn't my fault."
She took one final drag, then stamped out the cigarette on the concrete with
more force than seemed necessary.

"I'm not saying it's your
fault. But is it possible this could really work? That Charlie could get his
shit together and the two of you could fall in love?" I thought of how
Charlie was with Jacob, and what it would be like if he, Lil, and Luke actually
became a family and he lived here for good. Was it really so implausible?

From Lil's face, the answer to that
was yes.

I could barely look at Charlie when
we reseated ourselves at the table. Ray leaned toward me and immediately asked
if I was okay.

I shook my head to say
Not now,
and
he nodded. Then he said to the table, "So, have you guys heard the one
about the schnauzer who walks into a bar?"

Everyone said they hadn't, and Ray
proceeded to tell a bad joke with such obvious relish that we had to laugh
Well, everyone else laughed. I just couldn't bear sitting, there, watching
Charlie lavish attention on Lil, knowing he was about to get hit by a freight
train. There was no warning him, though. Warnings should have come sooner.

But I had warned him. Lil had
warned him. Somehow he'd believed that he'd overcome her resistance and make
her love him. Maybe it was his hope, his utterly foolish faith—is there any
other kind? — that was killing me as I sat there.

I did my best to participate in the
conversation, and Ray made it as easy for me as he could, like a boat towing a
dinghy. I could tell they all liked him, even Phil. As the dinner plates were
being cleared away, I leaned over and said in Ray's ear, "I think Phil's
going to propose to my mother soon. Leave gaps for him, okay?"

Ray turned to me with the complete
delight that I wanted to feel, that I liked to think I would have fell in the
absence of Charlie's impending devastation. He squeezed my shoulder and
whispered, "That's good news. They're a good match."

"Really? You think so?" I
whispered back.

"She likes to adore people, he
needs to be adored."

"That's so cynical."

He shook his head. "No,
because he's prepared to earn it. Trust me, it's going to work."

I smiled at him and took his hand.

Charlie was in the middle of a
story about his days as a mechanic, imitating the accents of some of his
Hispanic I coworkers. It wasn't his most politically correct moment, I and I
could tell Lil wasn't enjoying it. Phil was laughing heartily, and my mother
was taking her cue from him.

"That's just what they sound
like," Phil said. "Exactly!"

"He's always been a good
mimic," my mother said.

"When he was a little
kid," I interjected, wanting to | move away from that particular
impression, "he did the best Kermit."

"And you were Miss
Piggy," Charlie said. "She was a dynamite Miss Piggy."

Ray looked from Charlie to me.
"There's no way the two of you are getting out of here without doing
those."

I felt my cheeks getting pink.
"I don't know if I remember the lines."

"You can just say
anything." Ray smiled encouragingly.

"Yeah, just say
anything." As out of sorts as Lil was, even she couldn't resist.

Charlie — forever the ham—was
rubbing his hands together in a pantomime of fiendish delight. "Hmm, which
bit should we do?" He appeared to consider. "I've got it! It's got to
be Together Again'!"