“Did you invite Kevin to your mother’s?”
“I’m just going to tell him he can come if he wants once we’re done.” I shrug. “I don’t want him to think I’m making any kind of move. I’m very leery of his attention, especially when I met this sweet little nurse the other day, who seemed enamored of him.” I crinkle my face. “Actually, she was a complete shrew, but I imagine Kevin needs a strong woman to put up with his mother.”
“You’re hopeless, Ashley. Just because a guy resembles Bill Gates, it does not make him good husband material. Sheesh, talk about judging someone by their looks. I honestly think you’re prejudiced against good-looking men.”
I laugh out loud. “I’m so not prejudiced against good-looking men. But come on, a doctor and a lawyer? That’s not exactly a match made in heaven.” I sigh. “Kevin’s under this delusion that I’d be a fun date.”
“And you’re refusing to check that out. Why?”
I shake my hands. “I’m not into that whole Mensa thing, the country club thing, the handsome-like-Hugh-Jackman thing. We’re from different worlds and that never works.” I puff out my chest. “I’m going to find myself a nice, middle-class guy and work from there. Move up in baby steps, you know, maybe a little more hair than Seth. Not a full, luscious crop like Kevin’s.” But thinking about his warm brown locks gets my fingers itching. I’d love to know what it felt like to run my fingers through. No, no, no. Don’t go there. So not healthy.
“Are you saying you’re looking for ugly? Because I can get you ugly. I have the nicest guy that works for me, but he’s hairy like a gorilla. It sticks out of the back of the golf shirts he wears every day and covers the back of his arms. You interested?”
“Okay, ick. I don’t want to talk about this. I’m just not interested in Kevin that way, and you can’t force that feeling if it isn’t there.” Instantly I remember that stolen kiss in the parking lot. I know too well that the possibility is there, but I don’t want to explore it anymore than I want to explore the Taj Mahal.
The doorbell rings, and Rhett barks.
“That’s gotta be Kevin now. Stay out of it, okay? I’m begging you.”
Kay shrugs. “No skin off my nose. But you wouldn’t know a good man if he brought you flowers and introduced you to fine dining. Isn’t that what Kevin did?” Kay winks, takes off for the kitchen, and calls back out at me. “If you want to meet Bigfoot, let me know. I imagine he’s free.”
I open the door and Kevin is standing there with huge yellow sun-flowers. I have a picture of a hairy Neanderthal engineer in my head. “Hi, Kevin,” I say through my giggles. “The flowers are gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous like you.” It sounds cheesy, but not the way he says it. Kevin is just suave, like there’s a soap opera writer behind him, feeding him the words. Taking his jacket, I twist him around and study his arms, which sport the perfect amount of hair. Enough to be manly, not enough to resemble my local primate.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, let me get my coat.” I put on my new Ralph Lauren navy peacoat, and maybe I do a little spin to get into it waiting for the forthcoming compliment.
“Is that new? It’s beautiful.”
I smile. “Got it on sale. Do you like it? Just my part to support the troops. Isn’t it patriotic?”
He breathes deeply, then speaks. “It’s a little fancy for the food kitchen. I wouldn’t want you to get it dirty.”
I sigh audibly. Duh. Like the food kitchen is fashion week in New York. “Right. You’re right.” I put the peacoat back on its hanger and get out my balled-up Lilly Pulitzer sweater. It doesn’t match what I’m wearing, but what do I care? “Let’s go.”
His eyebrows lift, and I think he’s about to point out my lack of color coordination, but he quickly sizes up my response and says nothing. Then his beeper goes off just as he opens the door. He looks at the phone, then at me. “Can you wait just a second?”
“Go for it.” I plop back on the couch and sniff deeply to get the turkey aroma and to try to get into this day. Maybe matching clothes would help. I go to the closet and get out a red cardigan I bought at Bon-Macy’s when I traveled to Seattle for work. It has seen better days, and I would have given it to Goodwill long ago if I didn’t love it so much. There are those pieces that just define an era and make you feel good when you wear them.
The doorbell chimes again, and I open the door to Seth’s leech, I mean, roommate, Sam. “Hi, Ashley, you staying?” He’s carrying a pint of mashed potatoes from Boston Market. Now I remember who did that the last time.
“I’m going to serve at the Food Kitchen. Want to come?”
Rhett gets so excited by Sam’s presence, he whizzes all over the entryway. Sam laughs like a little boy in a movie’s obligatory burp scene. “Nah, I don’t want to come.” He says through his laughter.
I shove a rag and some Pine Sol into his hands. “Good, then you have time to clean up.” I walk onto the porch into the crisp fall air and breathe the heady scent of sycamores. Reset. Lord, I need a reset. Tell me what to do with my life. I need more than a map. I need GPS like Kay has in her Lexus. Tell me where to turn!
The door opens and Kevin appears. “You ready, Ashley?”
“Don’t you need to go to the hospital?”
“No, I just needed to consult with someone on duty. Let’s go. We’re going to have such a great day.”
He leads me down the pathway, which Kay has lit with little turkey luminaries.
I look up the street. “Where’s your Porsche?”
“I got rid of it. I felt like a jerk driving into the hospital. There’s all these sick children, and I’m driving a sports car. It’s like a bad joke. I worried I’d run into one of their parents in the lot.”
I swallow my obvious response, like that I drive an Audi convertible, but maybe I am heartless. Kevin looks at me as if he reads my mind and lifts my chin.
“Because I make my money curing sick children, Ashley, not because I’m suddenly pious. I know you love your car, and it wasn’t any kind of judgment.”
I’m so transparent.
Sam comes out onto the porch and shouts at me to the sidewalk. “Ashley,” he says, holding up the phone. “Seth’s on the line. From India.”
I look at Kevin and his smile disintegrates. I’m having a rotten holiday. No reason to ruin his, too. “Tell him I left already.”
I take Kevin’s arm and we walk to his new Dodge Stratus. He opens the door for me and kisses me on the cheek as I get in. “I can’t wait to serve beside you.”
Something about that comment feels so intimate that it makes me tingle. I shake it off and look straight ahead as we drive. Mensa. Mensa. Mensa, I remind myself. Different kind of freak altogether. And the country club set?
I’d like to say that I’m so into serving at the food kitchen that I don’t think about Seth and his phone call, but I do. I wonder why he called. What, if anything, he had to say about India. I wonder if he’s seen Arin, and secretly, I hope he hates life without Thai food and Mexican cuisine. I plop a pile of mashed potatoes on a child’s plate, and he smiles up at me from his five-year-old height. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen next to Seth’s.
“Thank you for the potatoes. They’re my favorite!” He smiles and it lights up the room. “You’re very pretty.” He looks up at his mother for approval.
“You’re going to have to watch out for this one,” I say to his mother and she nods back to me.
Kevin leans over to the boy. “You have a good eye.”
The little boy bobs his head up and down. Kevin drops the end of his spoon into the stuffing and gazes at me like I’m the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie. He opens his mouth to speak, but says nothing. The action leaves me breathless, like the time I macked this poor man in a San Francisco parking garage. I focus on the mashed potatoes in front of me.
“So . . . Ashley, where should we go so you can show off that new peacoat?”
“I have dinner at my mother
’s. You know it’s Thanksgiving, right?”
“Are you inviting me?”
I nod. He notices the line is getting backed up and goes back to putting stuffing next to the turkey. I watch him momentarily, and decide he won’t last an hour at my parents’ house. With Dave there? Maybe ten minutes. All those country club manners he learned in Atlanta are useless against the Stockingdale clan.
24
As we get into Kevin’s new car, we smell a bit rancid from all the cleanup work. Kind of a mixture of poultry innards and Ajax. “Do you think we should stop by home and clean up?” Which is a nice way of saying, you smell like turkey guts soaked in sweat and I’m having trouble inhaling.
“That’d be good. I don’t want to meet your parents like this.” Kevin looks down at his physique, and I admit the sight stops me cold. Is it hot in here?
I love Kevin’s optimism. He doesn’t want to meet my parents wearing Thanksgiving dinner, but will my dad even bother to zip his pants up for Kevin? That’s the question of the day. Football and unencumbered eating go together like a Big Mac and Diet Coke.
Kevin drops me at home and says he’ll be back in thirty minutes. I rush into the house, wave at all the Reasons, but hurry out of the living room. Currently, there’s only one bathroom and someone’s in it. Rhett comes bounding in the house to meet me and starts licking off the remnants of my morning. Rhett is followed by Kay, who comes down the hallway obviously miffed at my presence.
“What are you doing here?” Kay asks, a tray of puff pastry in one hand.
“I want to get cleaned up. Look at me. I’m filthy.”
“We’ve got only one bathroom for the guests. Go to your mom’s house.”
“I can’t go to my mom’s. Kevin’s picking me up in a half an hour.”
“Well, do your best without a shower. Please. I’ve got twelve engineers here drinking apple cider and eggnog. Do you mind?”
The door opens to the bathroom, and poor Steve Welby comes out with a guilty grin. “Sorry.”
“Ashley, please,” Kay says again.
“Fine. Come on, Rhett.” I grab my makeup bag and head to my room. I pull back the Sheridan quilt, take out some makeup remover with a cotton ball, and start the process. My hair is stringy from the steam in the serving trays, and I try to fluff it up with gel, but now my pasty face looks like it’s crowned with a full mop of straight brown clumped-together straw. Well, I wanted to get into the Thanksgiving spirit. What better way than to look like a scarecrow?
I yank a brush through my hair and decide a ponytail is my best option. Grabbing a tortoise-shell barrette, I clip it up, and make the straight work for me. Oh yeah, now I got that ’80s punk thing going on where it sticks out around the clip. Enough with the hair. Next.
I start to apply foundation and it’s sticking to the still-wet makeup remover, so I have these streaks of pinkish-brown lines making me look like I have some kind of rare disease. Let’s hope Kevin doesn’t diagnose me. I go for the makeup remover again, and grab my blow-dryer and flip it on, letting the soothing heat breeze over my skin. There. My skin is officially dry.
I grab for the moisturizer (my mistake last time) and pat it on evenly and thoroughly and once again invite the desert breeze of the hair dryer to blow across my skin.
Layering. It’s all about layering. Smooth layer of foundation this time, don’t look like I’m developing leprosy. Now I go for the blush, and it’s one of those new crème versions that’s supposed to go on evenly, but I look a bit like my Great Aunt Babe. A pink splotch of rouge without reference points on the cheekbones. I try to rub it in, and it’s better, but I still look like a Bratz doll without the dramatic eyes. Those are next.
I take out a brown eyeliner and try to hold my hand steady, but I’m just too nervous that I won’t finish on time. “Forget it!” I brush on some mascara and call it a day, just as the doorbell rings.
“Clothes. Ack, I forgot clothes!” I slither out of my turkey jeans, and pull on an autumn-yellow Juicy hoodie and pants. It sounds too casual, but in velour and the fall color, it’s perfect for an afternoon at my parents’. Quite couture and all, but I still smell like poultry.
I take a deep breath and see that Kay is greeting Kevin at the door, and I panic as I see his society parents standing behind him. I look down at my sweatpants, feel my pixie stick hairstyle, and start to hyperventilate. I am about to head back into the bedroom when Kevin sees me.
“Ashley, are you ready to go? Guess who showed up at my house?” He smiles at me, and my mongrel dog goes straight for the mother’s nylons. I run after the dog, but he wants those pantyhose, and knocks over a table with a silver bowl of nuts on his way. All of them fly onto the hardwood floors in a torrent of hail-like bullets.
Mrs. Novak is horrified. Her first instinct is to run, which of course Rhett sees as an invitation to play tag, so he takes off after her.
“Ashley!” Kay yells at me and then bends over to start cleaning up the nuts.
I jump over the table and take off down the street. “Rhett! Rhett! Stop right now!”
Mrs. Novak is running, and she’s pretty spry for an older woman. She’s at the corner before Rhett even slows. He turns around, disappointed that the chase wasn’t nearly as fun as he’d planned. His lowered head implies that he’s sorry, and I take his face in my hands.
“What are you doing? No running!” I’m like one of those in-effective parents who’s screaming at her child, “Stop hitting Mommy!” I grab a hold of Rhett’s collar and drag him into the backyard. “Kevin! Tell your Mom it’s okay to come back now. Rhett’s put away.”
Mrs. Novak is smoothing her St. John jacket, trying to walk back up the street with dignity. Oh, how I feel for her. I remember what it was like when I thought I had dignity. No one really has dignity; it’s all an elaborate façade for the sake of others, and you just have to see how long you can go before the others figure it out. I bet Mrs. Novak generally makes it last beyond the first five minutes. But then, she hasn’t spent much time around me.
I’m thinking Mrs. Novak knows now why I’m not a member of the IQ elite. My false image has dissipated into oblivion like a drop of water on the skillet. I walk back up to the porch and hold my hand out to greet Dr. Novak senior.
“Dr. Novak, I’m so sorry about the dog. What brings you into town?”
“We played in a charity golf tournament in Palm Springs. Thought we’d fly up and see what our son was up to.” He pats Kevin on the back with vigor. Mrs. Novak squares her shoulders and walks up the steps to the porch. “Well, it seems dog training school might be in order.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Novak. Rhett has a thing for nylons. It’s like he has radar when he sees them.”
Kevin’s mother rolls her eyes and says, “A good obedience school would train that right out of him.”
“Absolutely,” I say. So how did Seth turn out so warped with his kindhearted parents, and how did Kevin get to be normal? Genetics are a funny thing. “Kevin, are you and your parents going out for dinner now? Because I’ll just drive to my parents’ alone.”
“We were hoping we could take you by your parents, say hello, and that you’d have dinner with us afterwards.” Oh yeah, sign me up for that invitation.
I smile, albeit condescendingly. “That’s sweet, but it’s been nearly a month since I’ve seen my parents and they only live across town. Besides, no one makes stuffing quite like my mother, and I want to see how Mei Ling, my sister-in-law, is progressing.”
All righty then. Good to see you all. Don’t let the door hit you in the rear on the way out.
I start to back up into the house, but Kevin stops me. His eyes are pleading as though he’s looking forward to an afternoon with his parents about as much as I am. “We’re going to eat at the Acorn. I know it’s one of your favorites.”
But of course, we’ve never discussed my meal preferences. Kevin is searching here, and I throw him a bone. “Will you have time to make your reservation if you drop me off
?”
“We’re Novaks, dear,” the missus reminds me. “They’ll hold us a table.” Mrs. Novak throws her head back and laughs. I’m swearing I’ve seen her on a soap opera before (great plastic surgery notwithstanding). “Now darling, we’d really love to meet your family. Clearly for you to have made general counsel at your corporation by now must have made them quite proud.”
“It’s just . . . my mom will want to feed you. She can’t stand someone coming to her house and not eating. It gives her physical pain, I think.” I smile at Kevin, and he warmly winks at me. “She’ll be quite offended if you just come in and run off, so maybe it’s best if—”
“Mom, I think it’s best if we just head to the restaurant. It’s a family day at Ashley’s. We’ve got no right to barge in.”
“No, no, you wouldn’t be barging in,” I say, even though, yeah, they would. “Let me just call my mother so she knows what’s happening. She’d love to have you.” I dial the too-familiar number. “Mom? It’s me, Ashley. You know how I wanted to bring a friend?”
“Yes, dear. We’re waiting supper for you. Are you coming soon?”
“Can I bring three friends?”
“They’re not friends of Seth’s are they?” So I guess Seth has been officially crossed off my mother’s Christmas list.
“No, Mom. I’m sorta seeing this doctor, and his parents are in town from Atlanta.” I have to cover the phone from the squeal. “Mom, it’s nothing serious. Just a friend that I served Thanksgiving with at the food kitchen with today.” A man that makes me look like yesterday’s lettuce.
“Oh dear, I look awful!” There’s a muffled sound like my mother is fighting with the phone. “David, your sister is bringing a man home. Get this place cleaned up.”
“Ashley found a guy? It’s not the dog, is it?” Dave yells.
If there is any thought that I might be the right one for their son, and if Rhett hasn’t taken care of any lingering doubts, my family is about to do the rest. I look toward Kevin, and he really does make me feel like a princess. It’s a pity that his parents are straight from the inner sanctum of the country club on the lake of fire.
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