Chapter 15
Omar takes a piece of crusty bread and soaks up the last bit of sauce on his plate. My mother is beaming. She puts her hand to her mouth and whispers to Omar, ‘Raisins. That’s my secret. I puree them and add them into the sauce. It makes everything sweeter. Sam thinks he hates raisins.’
‘No, Sam actually hates raisins,’ I say in a loud stage whisper. In grade school, Ben Barton tricked me into eating a fly hidden in a handful of granola by telling me it was a raisin. A combination of youthful gullibility and hunger worked against me. I have been vehemently anti-raisin ever since.
‘You’ve been eating them for years and you don’t even know it,’ she says. I tear off a piece of bread and copy what Omar just did. The sauce is spicy with just a touch of sweetness to balance it out. My mother makes amazing stuffed peppers even if she sneaks raisins into them.
Omar announces: ‘I have to run to a fitting at Vanata. The model is only available in the evenings.’
‘I can’t wait for your own show this spring,’ Mom says. ‘I wear the skirt you made me all the time. I get so many compliments on it. That color is like a pistachio sundae.’ She thanks him for the skirt at least once a week and Omar always smiles politely and takes the compliments like a champ. She slowly turns her gaze toward me. ‘There’s so much passion in your designs. Following your dream like that is something anyone would admire.’ By anyone my mother does not mean anyone. She means a specific someone. She means me.
Omar grabs his jacket from a hook next to the door. ‘Do you want me to stay and referee?’ he asks with great sincerity.
‘Yes,’ I say quickly.
‘No,’ my mother says a second later. ‘We’ve already come to a mutual understanding. Haven’t we son?’ Her tone echoes years of asking me if I have washed my hands before dinner.
‘Yes, Mom,’ I say but my eyes reach out to Omar for help. She will be so much better behaved if he’s here, but that’s not a reason to make him miss his appointment. ‘Bye, Omar,’ I say. I got myself into this mess. Omar closes the door behind him as he leaves. My mom insists on clearing the table but I insist on her sitting in the living room while I wash the dishes. Eventually, she surrenders, and I go into the kitchen alone.
I’m standing at the sink rinsing the plates and trying to gather my strength for dealing with what is about to come. I need to stay focused on the fact that if I put up with her being my ‘dating coach’ for the next few months, I’ll then be able to live my life without her constant judgment. She won’t be able to say a word as I walk into my cousin’s wedding with Paul on my arm.
I turn off the water and look back at her in the living room carefully flipping through her notebook. She looked so excited when she walked in the door tonight holding a casserole covered in foil – very Jane Fonda on her first day of work in 9 to 5. I think between her job downstairs at Plant Daddy and her obsession with finding me a boyfriend, she hasn’t had time to think about all the sadness from last year. I go back to finishing the dishes and remind myself to stay focused on the fact this whole situation is good for both of us no matter how hard she pushes my buttons.
I’m drying the last dish when I hear my mother talking to someone. I assume she’s on her phone, but when I look in the living room, I see she isn’t. She’s talking at my phone . Her back is to me.
‘Ways to meet men. Hair conditioners. Skin moisturizers. Clothes that fit properly. Tight clothes. Ideas for writers. Hot men. Sexy men. Single men.’ She is reading from a piece of paper in her notebook. ‘Yes. Good,’ she says to herself and then goes back to her list. ‘Single men. Single men. Single men.’ She keeps repeating the phrase like she’s chanting. She stops suddenly. ‘Oh, wait. Gay men. Gay hot single men. Very hot. Very single. Very men.’
‘Mom!’ I interrupt and she spins toward me.
‘Oh, you finished the dishes. I was just getting started helping you.’
‘Who are you talking to?’
‘The robot,’ she says like it’s our neighbor in New Jersey. ‘You know, in your phone. If you say things you want around your phone all the ads and stuff will change. Remember Mrs Geisler? She lives down the corner with that hairless cat. She told me she was talking to her husband about a new dishwasher and the next day all over her computer there were these ads for dishwashers. Boom. Just like that. The robot knows. It listens.’
‘Mom, please don’t corrupt my phone with your ideas of what you think I’m looking for.’ I dry my hands with the towel I carried in and put it on the table.
‘Sam, that’s why I’m here – to listen to you.’ She opens her multi-tabbed notebook. I sit on the couch and take a deep breath like I’m about to get a painful injection from my nurse practitioner. ‘First I want you to know that I’m open to your ideas.’
‘Uh huh,’ I say. I don’t argue with her. I don’t tell her that I have already found a guy who I want to be with and that we’re moving in together at the end of the year. I don’t tell her that Paul is finally leaving his husband. She’d never believe it. To be honest, it’s hard for me to believe too. But his text and phone calls this past week have been so thoughtful. He really does miss me.
‘Tell me, what kind of guy are you looking for?’
This could be a trick question but this whole thing is counterespionage so I use the opportunity to describe Paul. ‘I see myself with someone definitely older. Someone who is serious, practical, and straightforward. Someone who is well-organized.’
My mom waves her pencil at me. ‘Sam, you’re describing a candidate for Congress, not someone who’s going to sweep you off your feet and become the love of your life.’ She puts her pencil down. ‘Now I want you to close your eyes. Think about the man of your dreams and tell me what you see,’ she instructs.
My eyes remain open. ‘How someone looks isn’t that important to me.’
‘Son, I know it’s considered cool to say looks don’t matter but come on. When I first saw your father outside the library, my heart went boom, boom, boom,’ she says, patting her chest. ‘He was so handsome. Dark wavy hair and beautiful eyes. Just like you.’
‘Did you know right away you’d get married?’ I ask. I’ve asked this a hundred times but I love hearing about how they met and when they dated.
‘No, not right away. At least that’s what I always told him, but you know, I had this voice in my head that there was something special about this boy. That’s the little voice I want you to hear and I want your heart to go boom, boom, boom.’ She repeats patting her chest.
I get up from the couch and look out the window facing the street. For a brief second I think about a moment when my eyes locked with Finn when he was speaking at the event yesterday and how it made something stir inside me. But that was just some kind of physical response. He’s hot but he’s not the kind of guy I want to be with for the long term. If you’re way into someone’s looks, it makes things unbalanced. I wipe the thought of Finn from my brain and continue describing a masqueraded Paul as I turn back to my mom.
‘I’m looking for a professional person with a very stable job. They should have experience in their career and be competent at it.’ I am about to say a lawyer, but I figure that’s too on the nose, and she may catch on, so I change it up a bit to throw her off the scent. ‘An accountant,’ I say and she writes it down. She’s been taking notes the whole time. For the next few minutes, I continue describing Paul as best I can with some red herrings.
‘Let me get this right,’ she says and then re-reads her notes aloud to me. Surprisingly, she has done an excellent job of listening. She has written down almost precisely what I have described.
‘Yes. That’s it,’ I say. ‘That’s exactly what I’m looking for.’ Maybe this is going to be easier than I thought.
‘Great,’ she says and then puts down her notebook. She grabs the top of the page she has just been writing on and with a single motion rips it out. She crumples the paper into a ball, gets up, and throws it into the wastepaper basket.
‘What are you doing? You just wrote down everything I’m looking for and now you just threw it away. I thought you said you wanted to find out what I wanted.’
‘I said I would listen to what you wanted and I did that, didn’t I? I even took notes. I listened to every word.’ She’s shocked that I would be so incredulous.
‘But you threw them out.’ I consider pulling the paper from the trash and smoothing out the wrinkles on the counter.
‘Sam, I love you, but this is another raisin situation.’ She has her notebook open, ready to move on.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You think you know what you like but you don’t really. That’s why I’m here. To help you with what you don’t know you don’t know about yourself.’
‘What is it that you know that I don’t know, I know, about myself?’ I ask.
‘You think you know what you don’t know but how could you know what you don’t know?’ she asks. I shake my head trying to erase the word ‘know’ from my brain. ‘I’ve got a great guy for you.’ She taps her finger on the top of her notebook.
I go to the couch to sit down. I knew we were heading toward actually having to go on dates with the men my mother selected but the reality of it is making me nauseous. It’s one thing to have to deal with her endless rules and suggestions but another to see it all materialize in flesh and blood.
‘I think his name is Kevin or Denim or something like that.’ She thumbs through some pages.
‘He’s great for me but you’re not sure of his name,’ I say.
‘Don’t be so hung up on labels.’
‘It’s not a label. I’m asking about his name. I think I should know that before I go out on a date with him.’ The thought of being out on a date that my mother has set me up on makes another wave of nausea pass through me. This is becoming too real.
‘You need someone with passion.’ She puts her notebook to the side and looks at me. ‘That’s the first rule and an important one. This guy is very passionate about everything he does.’
‘You’re not sure about his name but you are sure that he has passion? How did you meet this Denim-Kevin person?’ I ask wondering if there is a way I can cut off her supply of single gay men.
‘I haven’t met him.’ She casually touches her soft curls.
‘You want me to go out with a stranger?’
‘He’s not a stranger. Edwina met him. You know Edwina, she lives in that house with the red shutters. I think red was the wrong choice but she’s a good person despite her flawed color choices. She bought a leather change purse from him a few weeks ago at some kind of fair and she told me all about him. I told her my rule about dating someone with passion and she suggested him.’
‘Mom…’ I do not want to go on a date with a leather crafter her neighbor met at a fair but if I want to get what I want, I have to just go along with this for a little while. She has been taking this very seriously and it has certainly been a distraction for her, like I was hoping.
‘Do you know anything about him?’ I ask.
‘Of course. He’s twenty-seven and—’
‘Twenty-seven? I am not dating some kid.’ I specifically tried to emphasize to her that I’m never interested in guys younger than I am. We never hit off. I need someone older and more mature like Paul. No wait. Not someone like Paul. I need Paul. I want Paul, but I can’t tell her that.
‘You are so uptight. So what? He’s a little younger. What’s the big deal? Age doesn’t matter. That’s a rule. I mean, unless you’re both born on the same day at the same time, one is going to be younger than the other. It’s a mathematical fact. You want to argue numbers with me?’
Her logic is almost making sense which means she’s wearing down my defenses. ‘You are not sure of his name but you know his age. Anything else?’
‘I told you he makes stuff and Edwina said he was very passionate about it.’ She grabs her notebook and takes a second to look over her notes. ‘He also does something with some kind of wine. Maybe he’s one of those wine people, whatever they’re called.’
‘He’s a sommelier?’ I ask. That sounds impressive. I don’t know a great deal about wine so maybe the evening won’t be a total loss. I could learn something beyond the difference that the red is darker than the white, which is the cornerstone of what I know now. ‘Do you have a picture or anything?’
‘I thought you said looks weren’t important to you?’ She removes her reading glasses and gives me a look that says Gotcha.
‘Fine, Mom. Set me up with the twenty-seven-year-old passionate crafter wine person. Maybe next week,’ I say hoping I can gather my courage before then.
‘Tomorrow,’ she says.
‘What’s that now?’ I wished I had just taken a sip of water so I could do a spit take.
‘He’s meeting you at eight, tomorrow night. So, I’ll be here around seven.’
‘Mom, I’m not going to be ready to go out with some rando by tomorrow.’
‘I know that. That’s why I’m coming over to help you.’ She smiles from ear to ear.
‘I mean mentally. I need to warm up to the idea.’
‘Well then you should have given me more time to do what I need to do.’ Her smile shifts from joy to determination. ‘It’s already the middle of September and I only have until your cousin’s wedding in December. I need to maximize my time.’
‘Fine, tomorrow.’ I sigh. The sooner I get started the sooner this comes to an end. ‘But I do not need your help getting ready for a date. I know what I’m doing.’
She slowly looks me over, her eyes judging each inch. ‘No, son, you don’t.’ She grabs her notebook and thumbs through it until she stops at a tab she has labeled ‘Contract’. ‘The rules clearly state that I am in charge of everything. I’ll be here tomorrow at seven o’clock on the dot.’
I’m trapped. I wonder what Matthew Davidson would say if he knew the price I’m paying for the stupid crush I had on him in eighth grade.