memorial day weekend, part I
The house is a dark blue color, and I like it. The canoe, a tired forest green color, leans against the garage, waiting for its pick-up. His father emerges from the home in the Sunday morning light, his wife soon after. Introductions are made, and I shake hands with these people, my boyfriend’s father and step-mother. “Come inside,” the woman says to me. “I think we’re pretty much useless out here.”
We leave the men to the manner of attaching the canoe to the car’s roof rack, and she offers me tea in the kitchen. “You don’t drink coffee, do you?” I wonder how she knows this about me, as it’s stated as more of a fact than a question; roses are red. Water is wet. Lorraine prefers tea to coffee.
I ask what kind of tea she has, and she seems befuddled. She opens up a cupboard built into the wall, rummaging through an old canister and naming off half a dozen boxes of tea names. I mention green tea – my usual standby. “I don’t have any green,” she almost seems to quip, as though the realization were an insult. I see a box of a kind of chai, and mention that chai is also good. She goes over the collection a couple of times before noticing the chai box. I don’t point it out to her, sensing that she’d become defensive, and so I wait for her to realize it is there.
She offers me honey, buzzing around the kitchen island like some sort of queen bea. I am in her roost (or, more appropriately, her hive), and she lets me know it – not in any aggressive way, but the message is there. Soon I am stirring honey with an oversized spoon with my settling tea as she pulls out ingredients for the breakfast she is planning on making. She talks all the while – any silence would be an uncomfortable silence, and she resists it.
“Now, he’s not my kid, so I don’t have to be proper,” she starts, pausing for dramatic effect. In this space of time I wonder what she is about to ask, this woman I’ve heard so much about but whom I’ve only known for a mere ten minutes. What topic is she headed for, with that strange grin? She’s playing the part of an old friend, as though we’d been gushing about boys, and now she wants to know more about mine. I prepare myself for the worst.
“How did you meet?”
Oh. That’s all? A fairly tame question in my book. Bullet dodged.
I say that we met online, on “one of those dating sites.” She seems to feign interest, either so appalled by this that she has no comment, or simply bored by the very idea of clicking through a menu of profiles in search of a suitor. No, I don’t imagine she would do that sort of thing. With her blond hair pulled back into a casual ponytail, and clothes I imagine she’d do her morning jog in, this Sunday morning encounter is as relaxed as she’d probably like any stranger to see her. For a split second I wonder what kind of dating profile she would have made, had she gone that route. It would feature a professional headshot, to be sure – not hard to believe she’d have plenty in stock. She would set her standards right up front, no holds barred, with either nothing or everything to hide.
A frittata is on the menu for this morning. I watch intently as she takes some black handled scissors and snips a bunch of scallions into the stove pan. I like the sound they make as they fall from their stems into little green circle. There are worse ways to meet your demise.
Next she adds some fresh spinach, asking me if what she’s put into the pan looks like enough. I try and gauge what the “right” answer is here – if I say it looks like a good amount, I am saying she did a good job, but if I believe more should be added, it might help me seem more health-conscious.
I tell her it all looks just fine.
