The Girl in the Glass

by Susan Meissner

  The waitress smiled, nodded, and walked away.

  “Your mother tells me you’re an editor with a publishing house in La Jolla,” Devon said.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right. Crowne and Castillo. They publish travel books.”

  “She’s quite a wordsmith,” my mother said. “They made her an editor after only four years. I’m so proud of her.”

  “You probably have the more interesting job, then,” Devon said politely. “I suppose you get to travel a lot?”

  A common misconception. You don’t need to go to Morocco to line edit a book about sightseeing in Marrakesh. “Um. Not as much as I’d like, actually.”

  My mother patted my hand. “I, for one, am glad she doesn’t have to travel to all the places her authors write about. The world is so uncertain. Every time you turn around, it seems another nation is at war. I don’t think it’s very safe to travel these days. Look, here’s the wine.”

  As the waitress poured, I chanced a peek at Devon. He was looking over the rims of his glasses at my mother, a thoughtful look on his face. He had probably just figured out my mother hadn’t told me that she had set this up. It was a rather awkward position in which to put a nice man, I thought. Asking him to dinner to meet me and then not telling him that I would have no idea he’d be there.

  The waitress walked away, and my mother raised her glass. “To good food and great company!”

  Devon smiled at her, a bit uneasily, and raised his glass.

  In spite of my frustration with my mother, I felt bad for him. He was clearly sensing the tension in the situation. And he seemed a nice enough guy. She should’ve told him. She should’ve told us both.

  But, then, of course, I probably wouldn’t have come.

  “To surprises,” I whispered, wondering if he would hear me, hoping he would. A smile, small but genuine this time, cracked across his face.

  “What was that, Meg?” my mother asked.

  “To Fridays,” I said.

  “Oh yes. Most definitely. It’s only April, and the kids at school are already restless for summer.”

  We sipped from our glasses and then in unison placed them on the table.

  A weighty silence followed.

  Devon cleared his throat. “So, I suppose your company has published books on all kinds of places?”

  I hesitated, wondering what else I could reply to a question like that except yes.

  “That was a dumb thing to say,” he said quickly. “Of course you’ve published books on all kinds of places.”

  My mother laughed easily. “I said the same thing when she got the job!”

  Devon turned back to me. “Okay, how about what’s the one place you’ve published a book about that you want to visit more than any other?”

  The moment he asked this, I felt a tingling kinship with him, tiny and subtle. He had detected there was a place that called to me, a place that reminded me of home and family and safety, even though I had never been there. He did not know all this, of course, but he sensed there had to be a place …

  Florence was on my lips, a breath away from being said when my mother interrupted.

  “Oh, that’s easy!” my mother said, smiling. “I know the answer to that.”

  The tingling sensation stilled. Devon blinked, waited.

  “Florence,” I said. It fell off my lips somewhat flat.

  Devon nodded. “Beautiful place.”

  “You’ve been?” I couldn’t keep a trace of envy out of my voice. I’ve met plenty of people who’ve been to Florence but never on a first date. Or a first date–like evening.

  He nodded. “I hope you get to go sometime. You’ll love it.”

  But I already do, I wanted to say.

  “She’s always wanted to go there, ever since she was little,” my mother said. “She had a grandmother who was born and raised there. She had pictures of Florence all over her walls.”

  “Oh well, then, you must be sure to go.” Devon’s voice was soft but urgent, as if he understood my longing.

  I felt for the stem of my wineglass and tried to pull my gaze away from him. The waitress appeared at our table and asked if we needed more time with the menus, and I nearly thanked her for the well-timed intrusion. Except that we hadn’t even opened the menus.

  “A few more minutes would be great,” Devon said, the take-charge tone of his voice surprising me a little.

  The waitress left and awkward silence fell across us again.

  Devon folded his arms on the table and cocked his head. “Look, I don’t think we started off very well here, Meg. I am sorry about that. Maybe we should back up a little?”

  “What do you mean back up?” My mother looked from him to me. “You two only just met!”

  Devon’s gentleness and honesty calmed me at once. “It’s not your fault,” I said to him. “And it’s not you, Devon. Really it’s not. You seem like a very nice person. It’s me.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not his fault?” my mother said. “What is not his fault? I’m the one who set this dinner up.”

  Devon turned to look at my mother. His smile was kind. “I think maybe you should’ve told Meg I’d be here.”

  He laughed lightly and so did I. A laugh that was not a laugh. And yet felt nice.

  Then, to my thundering surprise, Devon reached out his hand to cover hers. He stroked it tenderly and rubbed her thumb.

  The room seemed to squeeze in around me. My eyes couldn’t leave those two hands on the table. My mother’s and Devon’s. My mother hadn’t brought me to the Melting Pot to set me up with a polite, eligible pharmacist. She had invited me to meet the man she was dating. A much younger man.

  My mother, the epitome of safety, convention, and temperance, was dating a man closer to my age than hers.

  It took everything in me not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Of me, warming up to what I thought were kind advances. I choked back a chortle.

  “I think I need to use the rest room. Excuse me.” I exited the booth as Devon half-stood. As I headed to the rest room, I could hear my mother close behind me.

  When we were behind the closed door, I braced my hands on the granite counter.

  “What was I thinking?” I exclaimed to myself, but not to myself, aware that a woman washing her hands at the sink looked at me wide eyed.

  “What do you mean?” My mother’s face in the mirror above me was wrapped in confusion.

  “He’s your date!”

  The bewilderment on her face deepened. “I wanted you to meet him. Why is that so odd?”

  “He’s your date,” I said again, incredulous. “And he’s my age!”

  My mother’s face blossomed a pale crimson.

  The woman washing her hands tiptoed past us with a barely audible “Excuse me.” The door closed silently behind her.

  “You … you thought I brought him for you to meet?”

  “How old is he? Thirty-seven? Thirty-six?”

  Her flush on her cheeks deepened to scarlet. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s forty-three. He can’t help it if he looks younger than that.”

  Devon’s real age set me off balance mentally, but only for a second.

  “And you are fifty-six.”

  She took a step toward me. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he doesn’t seem to mind that. And for Pete’s sake, Meg, we are just dating. It’s not like I’ve run off to Vegas and eloped with a twenty-year-old.”

  Just dating.

  She’s was just dating a man I thought she was fixing me up with. A kind soul who had, in mere minutes of meeting me, coaxed Florence out of me. A man only thirteen years older than me, thirteen years younger than her.

  “We met at a children’s health conference in February and became friends. We didn’t plan to date. We just started seeing each other and realized we liked each other’s company. We like a lot of the same things. And he knows what it’s like to have your spouse leave you for someone else. He’s been divorced for five years
, if you must know.”

  “You’ve been dating him since February? And you never said anything?”

  “This is exactly why I waited to tell you. You’ve never encouraged me to date anyone. All these years, you’ve never asked me if I might want to date again and actually have a life beyond the school and you.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you saying I don’t want you to be happy?”

  “That is not what I am saying. It’s just you’ve never … You’ve always made it seem like no one but your dad was good enough for me, even though he left me and married someone else.”

  “That’s not true!” I had no idea what she was talking about. “And he didn’t leave you; you left him!”

  She swallowed. Blinked several times. We had, the two of us, opened something black and ugly. Still.

  “He had an affair.” She said each word calmly but with effort.

  “But he was sorry. He wanted to make it up to you. You wouldn’t let him. You left him.”

  “You’re not married. You don’t know what it’s like. He was sleeping with another woman. That is not something a person can just be sorry about. And it’s not something you can just forget.”

  Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes, and I felt wetness in my own eyes. “You can if you want to bad enough.”

  For a few seconds we just stood there, each flicking glimmers of tears away. I knew I was being unfair to her. But she had gotten what she wanted after my father hurt her and I hadn’t.

  “This is why you never gave me permission to date, isn’t it?” she said. “Because you blame me for what happened.”

  Caution had kept her single. Not me. “You don’t need my permission to date,” I answered.

  “But that’s exactly what you’re demanding! Permission!”

  I stared at her, wordless.

  “You never let me feel like I could date again, that I deserved to date again. And for a very long time, I didn’t think I did either. That’s why I waited to tell you about Devon. And why I picked a public place and told you nothing before you got here. But you’re right about one thing. I don’t need your permission to date. I’m going back to the table.”

  She turned, swung open the door, and left.

  I stood there for several minutes waiting for the tumbling thoughts in my head to settle. I couldn’t make sense of anything she had said, and I knew that wouldn’t change by standing there in the ladies’ room at the Melting Pot. I needed to go back to the table, collect my things, and offer a suitable excuse to bow out. I needed to be home in the quiet of the cottage to deal with this.

  I took several deep breaths and walked back to our booth. The menus lay on the table unopened. My mother had refilled her wineglass. Devon’s expression was kind but pensive. I didn’t like the lingering wave of attraction that I felt for him. I reached for my purse.

  “I am so terribly sorry to do this, but I won’t be able to stay for dinner. I’m not feeling very well. Devon, it was a pleasure to meet you. I do mean that. Please stay and enjoy the fondue.”

  Devon stood and shook my hand. The sheen of concern on his face was nearly paternal. I looked away from him. “Sorry, Mom. Really. Call me tomorrow?”

  She nodded and raised her glass to her mouth.

  “Can I walk you out?” Devon asked.

  “Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  He touched my elbow. I wavered a bit. “I am really sorry about this,” he said.

  “Don’t be,” I said quickly.

  “Perhaps another time?” Devon asked.

  My mother looked up and waited for me to answer.

  “Of course. Another time.”

  I waved good-bye to my mother, and she blew me a kiss, though her eyes betrayed the hurt she still felt.

  I walked away from the booth, passing table after table of patrons happily plunging tiny skewers into sizzling, steaming pots.

  When my father was young, did he lie awake and wonder what it might be like to feel his mother’s hand pressed to his cheek? Did he ever envision how his life would have been different had his father lived? Did he know that if he’d been groomed to be an Orsini duke, as he should have been by his father instead of being left to untangle life’s hardest lessons on his own, he might’ve been a different man? I’ve heard that my father frequented brothels, spent money as though it had no value, and was addicted to having the latest fashion or convenience, whatever it may be. Had he the guidance and discipline of an attentive father, would he have still led an unsatisfied life?

  In my lessons I was given the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments, but I wanted to paint. I wanted to see what it was like to create beauty out of nothing. I hadn’t the skill of the masters; I knew this. And my tutor was not inclined that I should take up the brush—painting was messy work. But he provided me canvases and colors, nonetheless, and an instructor named Benito who needed the money. For my first work, I painted a picture of how I imagined my father as a child. I painted him standing at his mother’s knee, leaning slightly toward her. Her arm is around him, and his papa stands close behind. The three of them are so close the fabrics of their clothes touch. Nurse told me it was quite good for it being my first.

  It was not a very good painting. The older I grew, the more I saw the painting’s flaws. I thankfully became more adept at form and depth, and my first works were put away, as they should have been, replaced by better pieces, including a self-portrait that my instructor said was the best he’d seen from me as an artist.

  But I still remember the peculiar joy that was mine as I gave my father his mama and his papa—an imagined moment, caught in oils, of a satisfied life.

  6

  A few months before my father met Allison, he took me and Nonna to Disneyland. I was nine. My mother had suffered a miscarriage very early into a surprise pregnancy and needed a day with none of us in it. The loss of that much-wanted child would take my mother to an emotional place my father didn’t understand, which begins to explain—though doesn’t excuse—why he ended up having an affair. She thought a new baby would fill the holes in their marriage. He didn’t know how to handle her grief.

  But I didn’t know any of that on that day. All I knew was my dad was taking me to Disneyland and my mom couldn’t go because she had been to the doctor’s a few days before and wasn’t feeling well.

  Dad took me out of school on a sunny Friday—the most amazing thing a parent can do when you’re nine. We went on all the big rides, twice. The Matterhorn, three times. It was the most magical day of my life up to that point. Maybe it still is.

  I still remember sitting in a giant, pastel-pink teacup and holding on to the disc in the middle as Dad and I spun and laughed. On the other side of the ride, the world was a kaleidoscope of rushing colors, sounds, and smells: the calliope from the nearby carousel, the aroma of hot popcorn, and Nonna’s blurred image under the shade of the Alice in Wonderland ride as she watched us. I was amazed that the world could seem like it was spinning far too fast with the colors of everything familiar slamming together, but it was perfectly fine if you were with your father and you were both laughing. After our tummies recovered, we ate Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes for dinner. We didn’t leave the park until the announcement came over the loudspeakers that the park was closing for the night and guests needed to be making their way to the exits.

  On the way home I leaned my head against the car door window in the backseat and closed my eyes, reliving every fabulous moment of the day in my head so that I could tell my mother about it when I got home. Nonna and my father naturally assumed I was asleep. They began to talk about me as if I weren’t there, saying things I understood perfectly, like “Meg sure had a good time” and “Wasn’t Meg cute talking to Cinderella?” and “Meg sure can put food away.” But then they started talking about things I didn’t get at all. Not at first.

  My father asked Nonna if she’d given any more thought to his idea. Nonna seemed to hesitate before replying that Therese and Bianca
didn’t think it was a good plan. I didn’t know what idea they were talking about. But I knew who Therese and Bianca were. They are my aunts; my dad’s older sisters.

  “Why did you have to bring them into it?” Dad seemed angry. He kept his voice low, but I could hear the frustration in it. “They don’t have anything to do with this. This is between you and me.”

  Again my nonna waited a second before answering. “You asked me to take out a mortgage on my house—the only thing I have left to leave you children—so it does have something to do with them. You know it does.”

  “But it isn’t going to change anything for you, Ma. I will pay the bill every month. It will be just like it is now. Like the house is paid for. You won’t have to pay a thing extra.”

  This time my nonna did not hesitate. “I admire your optimism, Nick. You know I do. I know you think this idea will work and that nothing stands between you and success. But the world is an uncertain place. And you have had other ideas that never really—”

  “But this concept is completely different!” Childlike longing hung in my father’s voice. It so surprised me that I opened my eyes. I didn’t understand at the time what my father was asking for—the word mortgage meant nothing to me—but I knew it was something Nonna could give him and my aunts didn’t think it was a good idea for him to have it.

  “Yes, this idea is different. But the odds are just the same,” Nonna said.

  “Is that what Therese and Bianca told you? Did they tell you that?”

  “They did not have to. I can see the risk, Nicky. And you haven’t paid back the ten thousand you borrowed two years ago. That concerns them.”

  My father swerved the car a little. “You told them about that?”

  “I didn’t tell them. They asked. I am not going to lie to my children.”

  I heard a swear word fall off my father’s lips. “They asked? They asked if I owed you money?”

  “They asked if this was the first time you had asked me for money. I couldn’t tell them it was.”

  My father swore again, and my grandmother shushed him. My magical day was ending, and I couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t. I wasn’t sitting in a pink teacup and laughing. I was in the backseat of my father’s aging Volvo listening to adults argue about money. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard my father have a conversation with Nonna about money. Nor was it the first time I’d heard him talk that way about his sisters. My aunts had always come across to me as kind of bossy with their immense brown eyes, pointy eyebrows, and stern mouths. I thought my dad didn’t care much for his sisters because they were always trying to tell him what to do. That night on the way home from Disneyland, I wondered if maybe the aunts had a reason for being mad at my dad all the time. And it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that Nonna loved Therese and Bianca like she loved my father. The aunts weren’t annoyed with Nonna or their husbands or their own children. Or even with me. But they were with him. Almost all the time.