“There she is! Princess Summer Sunshine!” My dad comes down the stairs and grabs me in a bear hug, then leads me, in his lumbering way, in a dance around the living room.
We half waltz, half polka through the living and dining rooms and into the kitchen. Where I stop.
“It’s really, um . . .”
“Clean!” my mom says, smiling.
“Yeah. Clean,” I say, gobsmacked. For my whole life, between my parents’ crazy work schedules and the endless stream of students from far-flung places, the kitchen was occasionally tidy, rarely organized, and never truly deep-down clean. My parents laugh at my shock, and it occurs to me that they seem to be in particularly good moods. Even their physical affection, which on any normal day is just shy of pornographic, seems somehow full of love instead of lust; there’s an electricity between them that seems palpable and full of joy. I squint at them. Something is up.
“Let’s sit,” my mom says, gesturing to the worn white laminate table that is in the dining section of the kitchen in a large, curved bay window. The oval table, shiny white when they got it, is now matte with years of use and abuse, the edges chipped, chunks of laminate veneer missing. I used to love hiding in the half-moon nooks in the base when I was small. The table is set with Mexican woven place mats that look like little serapes, and the plates my dad made when he took a pottery class over at Lillstreet Art Center. In the center of the table is a classic deli platter of lox and tuna salad with all the fixings, bagels, and cream cheeses. And on a trivet, a noodle kugel, a casserole of egg noodles suspended in a light sweet custard, with a crunchy topping of crushed cornflakes mixed with cinnamon and brown sugar. It was always my favorite thing my mom ever made.
“All your favorites.” My mom beams at me.
“And mine too. Let’s eat!” my dad says, swatting my mom on her ample tush.
We make our plates; I grab a plain bagel and top one half with tuna salad and dill pickle, and the other with chive cream cheese and cucumber. I also help myself to a large corner chunk of kugel, for maximum crispy edges, and some coleslaw. Clearly someone went all the way out to Kaufman’s on Dempster in Skokie; I can tell by the bagels. A slight crunch on the outside gives way to perfect dense chewiness.
“Okay,” I say, after a large mouthful of kugel. “What’s up? What’s wrong? Is someone sick or something?”
My dad laughs, and my mom looks startled.
“Why would you think something is wrong?” my mom asks.
“Because both of you have clearly taken today off from work, which is unheard of, and the house looks really good, and you’ve brought in my favorite brunch stuff and made a homemade kugel, which you never do except for the holidays, so clearly something is going on, and this feels a lot like softening a blow. So I’m just asking what the blow is.”
She shakes her head at me and takes a bite of tuna fish salad.
“Not a blow, honey; just a change,” my dad says. My mom reaches over and squeezes his hand. I brace myself.
If my dad wants to be a woman, then he should be who he is, and I will support the crap out of him, and call him Roberta or something. Some things would make sense—the devotion to his ponytail, that year they came back from Scotland with a kilt that he wore endlessly on the weekends.
“A really positive change,” my mom says. She is clearly also being great about this, which doesn’t surprise me. If ever there was a woman to stay with her partner post-transition, it is my mom. And it won’t be so bad; after all, my best friends are both lesbians. If my parents become lesbians, so what? As long as everyone is happy and healthy, love is love.
“Well, whatever it is, I support you both unconditionally.” I try to fill my voice with love and calm.
“We appreciate that so much, sweetheart, because it will be a huge shift for us all,” my dad says, his voice full of kindness, as I scan his face for signs of hormone treatments having softened his features. Looks pretty much the same to me.
“We’re selling the house,” my mom says.
Wait, what? “You’re selling the house? That’s it?”
“What else would you prefer?” my dad asks. I decide this is not the time to tell him I was picturing him in a tasteful wrap dress.
“I’m just surprised; you guys love this house. Why are you selling?”
“We’ll always love the house, honey, but it is a lot of house for the two of us,” my mom says. I can see that; it is three stories, over 4,500 square feet, full of bedrooms that have been mostly empty since they stopped taking exchange students about six years ago after one of them was discovered to be running a streaming-video porn site from her bedroom.
“And we always thought that our retirement project would be to do a systems overhaul, but at this point we’d have to move out for the better part of a year to do it, and there is something about heading back into construction mode that is just beyond our ability at this stage of our lives,” my dad says.
“So when we were approached by a developer,” my mom says, “we had to really listen to his proposal.”
Which apparently was beyond substantial. Between the house itself and the fact that it sits on a lot that is effectively more than three and a half lots wide and in the heart of Lincoln Park, the developer offered my folks $5 million. Cash. No contingencies, as is, covering all closing costs, with a flexible closing date that gives them up to eight months to find a new place and move.
I almost choke on my tuna salad.
“Seriously?”
My dad nods. “Seriously.”
“My god, that is amazing.” I knew the place would be worth a ton, particularly because of the land, but I had no idea it’d sell for that much, especially since the market isn’t fully recovered yet. But apparently, in Lincoln Park, what they are sitting on is a gold mine of insane proportions.
“It’s enough that we can buy something scaled properly for the two of us, easier to manage and maintain, and it’ll go a long way towards bolstering our retirement savings, giving us some extra to travel with, maybe even think about a little place out west to spend the winters when we are ready,” my mom says, and I can see that they are both really excited about the prospect of moving on.
“Well, then congratulations are in order!” I wish that I were fully openheartedly happy for them. It is an amazing financial opportunity and will change their lives and future for the better. I know that over the years, they have often reduced the amount they put away for retirement to support a cause they believed in, or dipped into savings to be able to pay bills while providing services for free to those who needed them. But taking the money and running seems so antithetical to who they are and how they have always behaved that I can’t really wrap my head around it. Additionally, knowing that my finances are such a mess, and that my own foray into real estate left me no better off than if I had never owned my own place, adds a layer of bitterness. Especially since I would never ask them to share their windfall with me. If they knew how in debt I was, let alone the reason? Their disappointment would be oppressive and debilitating. They may not have always approved of the focus of my career path, but they have always been supportive of me and proud of me. If they knew about my abusive co-dependent relationship with Visa and MasterCard? I’d never get over the shame. In one moment it occurs to me that it is sort of horrid that I was fully prepared to embrace my dad’s wanting to be a woman, but am struggling with the idea of my parents’ wanting to have money for their third act.
My dad jumps up, runs to the fridge, and grabs a bottle of champagne. I get a peek at the label. Krug. Apparently, for all their simple, frugal tastes, you throw a bunch of money at them, and they go all Robin Leach in a hot minute.
“To a new adventure,” my dad says.
“To the end of an era,” my mom says.
“To the two of you,” I say. Whatever my own bullshit is, I love them both and I am very
happy for what this change will mean for them. And if the new reality means I occasionally get to sip Krug on their dime, how bad could it be?
Bubbles looks wonderful in a simple navy blue dress, the top showing off her still-lovely collarbone, which is accented with a necklace of sparkly green peridots. The diamond drop earrings my grandfather bought her when my dad was born add a touch of glamour. In the last few years she has given up her trademark stilettos for more manageable kitten heels, but she’s lost none of her sass; tonight’s shoes have a super-pointy toe and are in a jaunty leopard-print patent. Her silver hair is up in a chignon, courtesy of an afternoon salon appointment. She takes from the closet her prized possession, an embroidered moss-green velvet cocoon coat that had been her mother’s, from the 1920s or so, with ermine cuffs and collar. It is the perfect thing for a chilly spring evening, and she looks simply gorgeous and elegant, and could have stepped right out of one of our movies.
“You are a vision.” I come over to kiss her soft cheek. “If Nick Charles is at the opera tonight, then Nora has some serious competition.”
“Pish,” she says, blushing prettily. “I’m just an old lady all tarted up.”
“Well, don’t let Mrs. Barkley see her husband flirting with you; people will talk.”
“The Barkleys hate opera as much as you do, darling.”
“I can never keep track.”
“Nor should you. Us ancients are terribly boring. Something smells good in here. Spicy.”
“Lamb shawarma.” I figured that Amelia would appreciate something of a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean feast filled with things Brian would hate.
“Yum. I almost hate to leave.”
“I made plenty for leftovers; we can have it for lunch tomorrow.”
“Not if you burn it,” she says, sniffing the air, and I run for the kitchen, shouting at her to have a lovely evening, and grab the pot of freekeh that is boiling over on the stove. I turn down the flame and return the pot to the burner. After my lunch shock with Mom and Dad, who asked that I not share their news with Bubbles just yet, I headed for the stores up on Devon and loaded up on goodies for this evening. As soon as I got home, I took a hot bath, followed by a nap. I let the news of the day wash over me and made a conscious decision to just be happy for my folks. Or at least to pretend that I’m happy for them until I’m actually happy for them.
The doorbell rings promptly at six thirty. Amelia, as per my instructions, has arrived in comfy couch clothes, and is carrying a six-pack of beer. I’ve got the dinner laid out buffet-style on the coffee table in the den, and Auntie Mame queued up on the DVD player. I figured I’d better start her off with something fun and fluffy and in color, and see how she takes to it, before springing black-and-white on her. We load up our plates, making sandwiches with the tender, well-spiced pink lamb drizzled with both creamy, nutty tahini sauce and a spicy green sauce, with feta, fresh tomatoes, and parsley on top. On the side are scoops of the freekeh and lentil pilaf, and cucumber yogurt salad and olives.
“I’m madly in love with you, you know?” Amelia sneaks Snatch his umpteenth piece of lamb and makes smooching noises at him.
“You can have him for a very low price.”
“Don’t I wish! Brian is allergic. Or I would take you home. Yes, I would! And maybe change your name a little bit.” She grins at me.
“I know. Isn’t it awful?”
“It’s kind of hilarious.” Amelia leans back on the couch, and Snatch launches himself into the air, landing on her tiny lap with a mighty oomph.
“Snatch!”
But Amelia is unfazed, holding his head in her hands and snorting at him in a perfect imitation of his piggy little language, and receiving his slurpy kisses without revealing a hint of being grossed out.
“I could leave the two of you alone for a bit if you like?”
She swats at me and then holds her face next to his face. “Don’t be jealous of our love.”
I see Snatch do a very particular sort of wiggle. Good lord. “I’m not going to be jealous of anything. Especially in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
“Holy crap!” Amelia says, clapping her hand over her nose and mouth as a funky meaty stench rises around us.
“Yeah. Lamb makes him farty, by the way. Still want to take him home?”
Amelia makes an exaggerated gagging noise and pushes the dog back off the couch.
By the time Auntie Mame outruns the fox at the hunt, we are stuffed to the gills. Amelia laughs throughout the movie, exclaiming at the transformations of Mame’s Beekman Place apartment, and the fabulous costumes. After the movie is over, Amelia helps me get all the leftovers into containers in the fridge, and we head to the Nook with mugs of tea and our desserts.
“I have a present for you, and I don’t want you to be mad,” Amelia says, crunching into a pastry and dropping honey-sweetened crumbs and bits of pistachio down the front of her U of C sweatshirt.
“As long as it isn’t a check, I’m not mad,” I say. “I generally love presents.”
She runs to the front room and grabs her tiny laptop out of her bag, then asks for the Wi-Fi password. “HildyJohnson1940,” I tell her. She types rapidly and then hands me the computer. There is a website up on her screen.
Welcome to WeddingGirl.com! All of your nuptial questions answered and problems solved.
I scroll through the website, which is cute, full of images of details from weddings, samples of questions from brides and grooms, and a large button that says Ask Wedding Girl. When I click the button, there is a form to fill out, with a drop-down list of possible topics for questions, like Food, Etiquette, Décor, Handling Family, and Disasters. And at the bottom, a clear message:
Free advice is worth what you pay for it. All initial questions for Wedding Girl are $4.99, with up to three follow-up questions at $1.99 each.
“It’s a cute site, good idea. One of yours?”
“It’s yours.” Amelia smiles at me.
“Mine?” I’m not getting it.
“If you say so, it’s ready to launch; all I have to do is push a button. I made it for you. You won’t take money from a friend, but I thought maybe you would take it from strangers. Your advice is so great, and your ideas are so cool. I know you don’t want a wedding-planning business, but I thought, for some extra income, why not just an email consulting business? I’ve set it up for PayPal, so they can pay however they want, and the money goes straight into an account for you—some easy income to help pay down your debt. And you can do the whole thing anonymously!”
“Wait, I don’t get it. I’m Wedding Girl?”
“Exactly. I set up the code so you should come up fairly high on Google searches, and I hacked your Pinterest wedding boards, copied them completely, and used your pins to populate a Wedding Girl Pinterest. And I’ve got both a Facebook page and a Twitter account all set up for you as well. You can promote as much or as little as you want, but I think you could get enough questions a month to start making a dent in your credit card balances.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I really don’t. The site is adorable, and the idea is genius, but the thought of promoting myself as a wedding guru? That seems farcical.
“I know what you are thinking, but it isn’t a relationship counseling site; it is a wedding site. Questions just like all the ones I’ve been asking you that you’ve been answering so perfectly. And there is a button on your end for if you ever just don’t want to answer something; you can decline the question, and it sends an email saying that they have ‘stumped the Wedding Girl,’ that the team doesn’t have an answer and their payment was not charged.”
“And you really think I could make money this way? Enough to matter?”
“I know you can. I’ve got some ways to drive traffic that are built into the launch, and I think once you answer a few questions, you are going to get some great social media t
raction. And again, it says on the site that Wedding Girl can decline to answer any question due to time constraints or content incompatibility, and that no unanswered question will be charged. So if the traffic gets to be more than you want to handle, you can just decline a bunch of stuff.”
“And what if they don’t like my answers?”
“No money-back guarantees; if they don’t like the answer, too bad.”
I have to admit, the thought of some extra income, income that I can earn in my ample spare time, in my sweatpants? That is appealing. “What do I have to do?”
“Just say yes!”
“Okay, yes. But you have to show me how it works.”
“Yay! Okay, couldn’t be simpler. Watch.” Amelia hits some buttons and then asks me to go grab my laptop. By the time I get back downstairs and log in to my email, there is a message from WeddingGirl.com. I open it and read a question: Dear Wedding Girl, are you ready to be Dear Abby to the engaged people of the world? Below are two buttons: Accept and Decline. I press Accept, and a box pops up with a form for me to answer the email. I type, Ready as I’ll ever be, and hit Send. I hear a ping on Amelia’s computer and realize that she sent me the email through the site and I answered.
“That’s really it?”
“That’s it. At the moment it is set up to forward to your personal account, but I think we should set up a separate Gmail account for it to forward to. But that is how it works: It sends you an email with the content of the question, and you hit ‘accept’ to answer and get your money, or ‘decline’ to send the auto-decline response and no payment is processed. When they get your email response, it looks like this.” She shows me her computer, and the email has the Wedding Girl logo, my brief response, and buttons on the bottom: Follow-Up Question on This Topic $1.99, New Question $3.99, and Feedback Reply FREE. “So if you answered the original question but it brings something else up on that same topic, they can follow up with you for a smaller charge; or they can ask something on a new topic for a discounted price; or they can send you a little thank-you for no charge.”
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