Chapter Six
If I lived my life on Elliot Standard Time, it was because it was learned. My mother operated on her own version I affectionately referred to as Sonja’s Schedule, which meant she’d arrive at an appointment anywhere between “fashionably late” and “I’ll get there when I get there.”
The café around the corner from my apartment was relatively empty, most of the rush-hour crowd already long tucked away behind their office cubicles. Only a few remained, likely students and remote employees, hunched over their laptops and sipping away on steamy lattes and cappuccinos.
Navigating my way in a stupor, I wove through the tables and displays and arrived at the counter with the automatic response of a thousand caffeine-deprived mornings.
My mind was still spinning with questions about Leo: where he came from and why he’d even shown up at all. I assumed it had something to do with the love spell, but that didn’t make waking up next to him this morning any less surreal. If anything it made it more so.
“Oof, rough morning? I’m guessing you’ll need a double today.” Zadie had already started moving to grab a large cup and scribble my name on its side.
I held up three fingers.
“I gotcha.”
Clasping my hands together in prayerlike gratitude, I dipped my head and said, “Bless you.”
“Meeting your mom today?” she asked over the sound of the whistling pressure valve of the espresso machine, plumes of steam billowing from it like a locomotive.
I looked at my phone for the time. “Eventually. Or at least that was the plan.”
Zadie chuckled as she wiped the handle on the milk frother with a cloth. “You can grab a table, I’ll have Jenna bring the coffee over to you when it’s ready.”
I settled in at a small, out-of-the-way high top with a view to the street and watched for one of Mom’s crazy caftans or a brightly colored, crochet poncho drifting up the sidewalk.
Finally, about thirty minutes after we were supposed to meet, she breezed in, her hair a mess of platinum curls on top of her head in a lopsided bun and a bright rosy tint to her cheeks.
“Oh, honey, I can’t even tell you what a great morning I’ve had.
My therapy session with Dr. Lydel was next-level enlightening.
Like someone turned on a light in a room I didn’t even know was dark.
We started out by talking about the recurring dream I have.
You know the one where I’m stuck on that cruise ship that never docks, and somehow we ended up healing my inner child.
I cried, I laughed, I forgave my mother. What could be better?”
What could be better?!
Maybe hopping in a cab or on the subway so that I didn’t waste the last half hour waiting on her?
Maybe having some consideration for someone else’s time?
Maybe acknowledging with an apology, or I’d even settle for a half-hearted hand gesture that showed she felt the tiniest bit guilty for assuming, as usual, the world would simply adjust to her very lax schedule.
And therapy? Since when has she been in therapy? She used to say it was for “people with too much money and not enough imagination.” At least that’s what she’d said to me when I casually mentioned I was considering going to see someone, which, of course, I never did based on her judgmental stance.
Mom was continuing to ramble on and barely came up for air when Jenna came by with two menus. She glanced over at Sonja and said, “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Yes, hi, one hibiscus iced tea, but can you please confirm that the petals weren’t exposed to any negative energy during transport? I can taste stress.”
Jenna looked dumbfounded, as if she wouldn’t even know who to ask about the energy exposure of their tea’s hibiscus petals. And to be fair, who would?!
Mom peeked out from behind the menu she was now studying, her bejeweled readers perched at the end of her nose with the pastel beaded chains draped around her neck. “El, what’s that you’re drinking?”
“A latte with three shots of espresso.”
“Oh, sweetie, don’t you know what caffeine does to your sleep cycle?
” She shook her head and sighed. “It must be why you look so exhausted. You know what, instead of the hibiscus, I think I’ll have a green tea matcha latte with oat milk, but only if it’s fair trade.
You have no idea how vicious the underbelly of the oat-milk production has gotten. Just awful.”
“Do you ladies know what you’d like to eat?”
“Hmm . . .” Mom continued to examine the menu. “Are your eggs caged?”
“Caged?”
“As in, do they come from hens kept in tiny metal cages their whole lives, or are they free range, wandering around and happy? Their emotional state greatly affects the overall taste, but more importantly, happy eggs have fewer free radicals.”
Jenna glanced at me, almost as if to verify that Mom wasn’t kidding, and when I shrugged, she eyed the kitchen. “I can check with the kitchen, if you’d like?”
Mom waved a hand. “That’s okay. I’ll just have the dry rye toast.”
Jenna nodded, tapping the order into her tablet before turning to me.
“Three-egg omelet with cheddar and bacon and a side of wheat toast. Thanks so much,” I said, handing back over the menu.
“How’s the semester going, Mom?” I quickly added, hoping to steer the conversation away from a full-on debate about my breakfast selection and whether my chakras could withstand the negative energy of a wheat shaft that had died stressed and unfulfilled.
She reached into her bag and opened her paper planner up on the table. “Great so far. A very engaged group. That reminds me, when do you think you can come and present to them?”
Mom was a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies professor at Barnard College, and my radio show had proved to be the perfect counterpoint to her unit on how romance had been shaped by historical narratives, literature, and pop culture.
Mom liked bringing in “real-world perspectives,” which mostly meant letting her students interrogate me about my opinions while she played moderator.
“Just email me some dates and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Speaking of dates, what are you doing the week of March twelfth?”
“The whole week? Um . . . I’m not sure. Work, I guess. And probably some other stuff. Why?” I took another sip of my latte and readied myself for whatever obscure request I was certain was coming next.
She flipped through the pages of her planner until she reached the week in question and then looked up at me with big, excited eyes. “Well, Keith and I have decided on Belize. What do you think?”
I narrowed my stare and waited for a beat, not quite following. “For spring break?”
Mom laughed and slapped my arm like she thought I’d been making a joke. “No, silly. The wedding. I mean, yes, it is my spring break, but it also happens to be a good time for Keith to step away from work. But I need you to be there. Please say you can come.”
“Mom! What are you even talking about? I’ve never even met this guy, and you’ve only been dating for like what, four months?”
“Elliot Rose West, you lower your voice. And it’s been four and a half. We met on Halloween, remember?”
I don’t know why I was surprised by her news.
History clearly illustrated that I shouldn’t have been.
If she went through with it (always a big if), Keith would be Husband Number Four.
Well, Three-and-a-Half, if you didn’t count the quickie Vegas wedding, a drive-through ceremony that was annulled less than forty-eight hours later to what’s-his-face.
For as averse as I was to love, Mom, fully in the other camp, was addicted.
Or to the idea of it, anyway. Always chasing that cosmically aligned happily ever after with relentless optimism, only to end up in her divorce attorney’s office a few months later when reality didn’t match the fairy tale.
I mean, wasn’t it telling that she had her divorce attorney’s number saved as one of her Favorites in her contacts? !
Dad, her first “Prince Charming,” had turned out to be a lying, cheating frog. After a whirlwind romance during their grad-school days and an equally impetuous wedding, he’d walked out on her while she was eight months pregnant with me.
Dumbstruck, I stumbled through my thoughts until I could gather enough words to form a retort.
“Oh, so sorry, you’ve known Keith four and a half months, excuuuuse me.
Then by all means, don’t walk, run down the aisle.
Clearly, I’m the one being unreasonable here for thinking an engagement should last longer than a seasonal Starbucks drink! ”
Mom shook her head, pursed her lips, and tsked. “You know, I would have thought Leo might have softened you a bit, but it seems to me you’re as cynical as ever.”
At the use of Leo’s name, my brain scrambled as the threads of my life twisted together into a tangled knot.
How did she know him? How well did she know him?
It felt like too much to try to find out, my brain already reeling, so instead I bit back, “Don’t bring him into this. You don’t know anything about it!”
“Honey.” She reached across the table to clasp my hands in hers. “It seems like you’re getting very worked up. Take a deep breath with me, relax your jaw a bit, and tighten your pelvic floor. Close your eyes, and let’s just mindfully breathe together for a moment, shall we?”
I yanked my hands back. “Can we please leave my pelvic floor out of this?! And I don’t want to breathe, Mom!
Just for once, I want you to be reasonable.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, and here we are .
. . again. You, jumping into yet another marriage with another guy who’s going to, no doubt, break your heart. ”
“No, El, Keith is different. Like how Leo’s different from Matty.”
Matty.
Just his name alone was enough to make my blood run cold and my hackles go right up.
In the throes of my anger and frustration, I wanted to hit the pause button and ask her how exactly Leo was “different from Matty.” But at this point, did it even matter?
I’d closed that door years ago. Closed it, locked it, and tossed the key where I’d never have to find it again.
Luckily, Jenna suddenly appeared with our food, giving us both the perfect excuse to drop the topic altogether. So for the next half hour, Mom and I ate and made strained conversation, both of us careful not to step on another minefield and set off an explosion that would ruin brunch entirely.
After clearing our plates, Jenna dropped the bill on the table, and Mom and I both reached for it.
“I’m the mom,” she said, which was a bit ironic, considering the number of times I’d had to pull her out of bed after yet another heartbreak, another failed relationship.
How many times I’d had to get myself dressed and out the door to catch the bus for school alone because she’d been busy wallowing in a destruction of her own making.
“Yes, but I’m the one signing a big book deal in the next few weeks, not to mention the thing with Sirius,” I teased, raising an eyebrow.
She nodded, held her hands up in retreat, and let me claim the check. After Jenna returned my credit card, Mom and I both stood to put on our coats.
Mom pulled me in for a surprisingly tight hug. “I really do hope you and Leo can come to the wedding. I can feel it in my bones. This one will be different.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“The invitation’s in the mail,” was the last thing I heard before she wrapped a thick crocheted scarf around her neck, grabbed her tote, and bustled out into the biting February air.
After Mom left, I took a few more sips of my coffee, my mind racing between her latest dive headfirst into matrimonial chaos and the far more pressing issue: Leo, who was, in all likelihood, still in my apartment.
What if Leo had never actually been there at all? What if I hallucinated the whole thing? What would that mean? Sleep deprivation? Stress-induced delusion? Brain tumor?!
I wasn’t ready to find out. Instead, like the well-practiced emotional escape artist I was, I gulped down the last of my politically incorrect espresso and was revived with a burst of caffeine and a ton of new ammunition for tomorrow’s show script.
Thanks to Mom, I would deliver a blistering takedown of whirlwind romances, list the many, many dangers of impulsive life-altering decisions, and make a very strong case for why love spells should come with a surgeon general’s warning.