“Mom, we'll be there soon. Okay?” I say into the phone.
“Okay, Sweetie. I put the good Avon wine decanter on the table. Do they drink white or red?”
Safeway Chablis or Vinegar Chianti. Hmm.
“I'm not sure, Mom. I doubt that they're drinkers, so don't worry about it or do anything special. I'm sure soda will be fine. They're from the South. Maybe they like tea.”
There's this evil streak within me, where I can't wait to show off my parents. Not because I'm embarrassed by their complete lack of society rules, but because I'm proud of them. My parents, while they may lack in ritzy manners, are good solid people. Salt of the earth, as they say. My mother would give you the apron off her back. My father would build a patio for you for free and think nothing of it. I think Dr. and Mrs. Novak could use a lesson in the art of decency. And they're about to get it, Stockingdalestyle.
I walk out into the living room. “Well, my mother says come ahead. She's looking forward to it.”
“It simply isn't done, Dear.” Mrs. Novak gathers up her purse. “I feel quite common for disrupting your mother's party.”
Clearly, she doesn't feel common enough to not come.
Kay follows me out the door, obviously hoping I don't ruin anything else about her special day as I go. Martha Stewart never had a roommate like me. There's a bouquet of dead black roses on the porch and a card addressed to me.
Gingerly, I bend down, open the card, and it reads: “Ciao, Bella, take good care of Hans. You seem to have taken good care of me. Sophia.”
I crumple the card and shove it into my sweatshirt pocket. “What a sense of humor.” I try to laugh it off, but I know all too well that my advice sent someone back to her country of origin. Guilt prickles down my spine, and the evil vision of black roses is doing nothing for my peace of mind.
Kevin comes up behind me and puts his arm around me. His parents start down the walk. “You all right? I'm sorry.”
“I'm fine.”
“My mother doesn't fool you, does she?”
The corner of my mouth lifts. “She doesn't
bother
me if that's what you mean.”
Those roses on the other hand . . . now that's a little creepy.
“That's how I knew you were special, Ashley. I knew the very first day you met them in San Francisco.”
He jumps down the steps, and turns back toward me with a smile that makes me wonder if I don't have things all wrong. Kevin opens the door for his mother and me and slides into the driver's seat.
“I cannot believe you bought a domestic car, Kevin.” Mrs. Novak is acting as though sitting in the vehicle might somehow infect her, and next thing you know, she'll be shopping at Wal-Mart.
Kevin turns around and winks at me. “A resident can't be too careful with finances, you know.”
It dawns on me now that Kevin is not the man he was a year ago. He never talks about Mensa, he's traded in the Porsche, and he puts more time into ministry than the combined total of engineers at Kay's house for dinner. Maybe Brea is right. Maybe instead of Mensa I belong in the “special” class when it comes to romance.
W
e pull up to my parents' small bungalow. I instantly notice that it is not surrounded with the luxury of a manicured lawn, or, in certain parts, with any lawn at all. I see Mrs. Novak's eyes widen. Dr. Novak is talking patents with me, and Kevin is simply following my sporadic directions while his mother offers up a litany about golf swings.
Kevin parks on the street, behind my brother's 1984 Jeep Cherokee and in front of my Aunt Babe's Cadillac Seville. And suddenly, this really doesn't seem like a good idea. Mrs. Novak sits, ankles crossed, and waits for Kevin to open her door like she's Princess Di. Rather than appear to be equally high-maintenance, I clamber out of the car, only a little disappointed that I didn't get to see some chivalry in action. I charge up the walk, hoping to run interference, but my mother opens the door before I reach the porch.
“Ashley!” Mother cries out, as though I've just spent the last three years on a foreign mission trip. “Oh Sweetheart, it's so good to see you! And this must be . . .” She moves toward Kevin and kisses his cheek. In her mind, she's bowing at his feet.
Thank you. Thank you for dating our daughter! Where do we send the dowry?
“His name is Kevin, Mom. Kevin Novak.”
She looks at me expectantly.
“Dr.
Kevin Novak,” I clarify before my mother needs the heart paddles.
Now my brother Dave is in the doorway. Smiling. And my stomach plummets. Dave enjoys the oddest things in life, and I can picture him making up a fake disease for himself just to check Kevin's credentials. Anything that offers Dave a little humor gives him the utmost satisfaction. Hence, I don't usually bring guys home unless I'm either trying to get rid of them or am quite serious. At the moment, Kevin doesn't fall into either of those categories.
“Ashley!” Dave hops down the steps, taking them two at a time. He comes by my ear, whispering. “Not too bad. What's he got? Six months left to live or something?”
I clear my throat and make the proper introductions, trying my best to ignore my brother, who, by his very nature, relishes my misery.
My Great Aunt Babe comes out of the house, smoking her trade-mark ultrathin cigarette with her pinkie in the air, and just watches the whole exchange as though she's invisible. “I'll meet everyone when I've had my smoke,” she rasps.
Dad's gardening skills give the impression that the house is a dump, but my mother is the world's most sanitized house cleaner in all of Palo Alto. She makes Kay look slovenly. And me? Well, she makes me look like the reincarnation of my father.
Mrs. Novak walks into the house, what little there is of it, and tries to find a proper place to sit. My mother takes her coat and welcomes her into the kitchen with the ladies. I'm sure entertaining in the kitchen is something the “help” normally does, but Mrs. Novak seems all right with it. Maybe to prove that, on this special day, she's thankful for servants.
My dad and Dr. Novak find their rightful place in front of the television with Dave. Immediately they are absorbed in football and start talking plays and injuries. Dr. Novak seems to have some disgusting tales about putting bones back in place, and my dad is listening with eager, shining eyes. When I hear his “snapping bone” impression, I have to move on into the kitchen with the domestics.
I turn around at the doorway. “Do you want anything to drink, Dr. Novak?” Kevin and his father look up. “Either of you Dr. Novaks?”
“A soda would be great, Ashley.” Kevin looks up at me warmly, as though there isn't a place on earth he'd rather be, and I think,
Oh, honey, I'd get you a soda every day of my life.
I feel guilty of course, since it wasn't but earlier in the week that I was dumped like yesterday's trash. I can only imagine that my romantic meter is way off kilter. Like a pound puppy lacking attention, I don't want to go wagging my tail at every pair of Nikes that walk my way. Even if they are Cole Haan's like the enigmatic Greg Wilson from high school.
“Kevin,” his mother says from the kitchen doorway, “call the restaurant and let them know we won't be coming.”
Won't be coming!
I run into the kitchen without taking Kevin's dad's order and notice that my Aunt Babe has finished her cigarette, and she, Mrs. Novak, and my mother are sitting around the kitchen table dishing. Mrs. Novak seems perfectly at ease and there's not a word about golf. Everyone, in my opinion, appears a bit too comfortable.
“So I said to my husband, let's go see Kevin, and so here we are.” Mrs. Novak laughs, while my mother mashes potatoes across from the native Atlantan's couture jacket.
“Oh, Ashley, I'm so grateful you brought these wonderful people here. The Novaks are staying for dinner. Can you set them some places at the table? Mei Ling will be here a bit later.”
“Where is Mei Ling?” I ask my mother, just now noticing that my sister-in-law is absent.
“She wasn't feeling well, poor dear.”
Poor dear indeed
. I feel a little stomach cramp coming on myself. Mei Ling did the time, though, living for six months with my parents because her husband was “saving” for a rental deposit, so I see that she deserves to be late. She probably deserves a month at a spa, but Mei Ling isn't me. She has the patience of Job.
I'm standing in the doorway a bit torn. Do I leave my mother alone with Mrs. Novak, terrified that she'll tell her those stories from my youth, like the time I was dancing with a skirt on my head pretending I was Madonna? Or about knocking myself out on the podium during my valedictory speech?
“Ashley, go set the table,” my mother says again.
“I just need to get the Novak men some drinks.” I go to the fridge and rummage around extensively, waiting to hear anything of interest.
My mother and Mrs. Novak are back to discussing parentingâthe universal discussion of mothers everywhere. And they sound like they're comparing résumés: law school, medical school, valedictorian, college honors, and parenting two different personalities.
Kevin apparently has a sister. From the sound of what's
not
said about her, I can only assume that she and my brother Dave have something in common: namely, they're not really the résumé material a mother hopes for, but wonderful people
.
Presently, I'm moving the yams and the cranberry sauce back and forth in the fridge, anticipating more information. I mean, how long did it take me to learn Seth had a commitment issue? By the time I knew, I'd been put in the classification of pathetic. Spying might be something I should add to my résumé.
Mrs. Novak takes a sip of her Folgers, my mother's house blend for thirty years. “This is such wonderful coffee. We can't get coffee like that in Atlanta. Let me tell you, Mary, I'm so glad to meet you and your husband. I was a bit worried when Kevin started spouting all that religious stuff that Ashley here would be a bit of an odd duck.”
Oh, I'm an odd duck all right.
I pull my head out of the fridge and look at Kevin's mother. She smiles.
“You're not an odd duck at all, Dear.”
Oh, trust me on this one.
You know what they say, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . .
“We hadn't even heard about Kevin, Elaine!” my mother bellows.
Elaine? Kevin's mother has a first name, go figure.
“Ashley never tells us a thing. We thought she was nearly engaged to another man, then boom, here's this doctor appearing on Thanksgiving. But Kevin seems like a nice boy. That last guy of hers, Seth, was the pocket-protector type, and bald. My grandchildren would have been bald in their twenties. Young women just never think long-term.”
Mom, I am standing right here.”
And bald men? Bring 'em on
.
“I know, Honey. I just never did like that Seth character.”
Since, um, five minutes ago?
“Ashley, what are you doing in that refrigerator? Go get the men their drinks and set the table.”
“Kevin is the epitome of a southern gentleman,” Elaine says. “He was just born that way, full of affection and concern for others. When he was only a small child, the first thing he would do is bypass the nanny and come say good morning to me. When he became a doctor, I thought,
Oh, how wonderful! He's following in his father's footsteps.
But he's nothing like his father. His father is like most surgeons, very straightforward, very hard-thinking. Kevin was never like that. He was always warm, and I wondered how he'd manage as a doctor. I guess he's found religion for that now.”
I watch my mother listen with intensity to Kevin's mother, and suddenly realize that I never had anything to be worried about. Mary Stockingdale is the epitome of manners and hospitality. Oh sure, it may not be what Mrs. Novak is used to, but my mother could hold her own with Queen Elizabeth.
I'm the one with the issues and I worry about my mother. I laugh out loud, and the two mothers look at me.
“I'll just go set the table now.”
Everyone looks so cozy as I walk into the living room. The guys are all laughing, eating dip and waiting patiently for their sodas. Kevin grabs for my hand as he takes his soda, and I have an epiphany.
Affectionâ
that's what was missing! I was so busy searching for a commitment that I never bothered to notice that Seth possessed not an ounce of affection for me, or possibly for anyone. When Rhett acted like a puppy, or got in the way, Seth's answer was to take it back to the pound. And when our relationship got out of control, or as I like to say, in the double Jeopardy phase, Seth threw the playing pieces off the board and stalked away.
Kevin offers affection so readily that it makes me wonder. Maybe Hans and Seth have more in common than I want to admit. Maybe they both suffer from hardness of heart. Maybe I didn't want to face that because I was waiting for commitment, but I needed to face it as a practical woman in search of a godly husband. I so hate learning these lessons. I'm an A student in the classroom, but once I leave the hallowed halls of the academy and get into relationships, the word
flunk
takes on a whole new meaning.
Kevin is still holding my wrist. His smile starts with a simple grin, then spreads to his eyes and soon, his entire expression. While Seth could hide everything, Kevin is so transparent in his emotions that I have to admit he scares the daylights out of me. Dysfunctional and robotic I understand. After all, the Reasons are my people. But open and genuine? That is not my expertise.
“Ashley?” Kevin puts his drink down, takes my hand in his, and leads me to the porch.
“Kevin, I'm sorry I'm taking too long with your drink. I'm not my mother when it comes to hospitality.” I'm just talking, trying to avoid my inner turmoil.