My mother was visiting again, same dorm room, same year. I was skilled at forgetting her last cyclone so that I could have her come back, keep the luxury of her interest. There would be nice restaurants and presents and cash. I had picked her up from the airport. At a stoplight she noticed a vacant lot and a rug seller hanging rugs on the chain-link fence. She made me pull in. “That dorm room of yours,” she said. She got out of the car, waving to the salesman. “You’re Armenian, aren’t you?” She picked the most expensive rug to make his day and had him hoist it into the trunk.
“I don’t want a rug.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It needs to be vacuumed all the time. The dorm doesn’t have a vacuum.”
“Then we’ll buy you a vacuum.”
She had just met a new man, Wissam. He was a Palestinian businessman and a real suitor, quite a bit older than she was. They had met on the beach in Barbados. He had a house there. “He’s a recovering addict, too,” she said. “We get it.” His money relaxed her in a way that was actually nice to be around. She’d lost an edge of anxiety.
That night, as the rug shed pale tufts into the air, we sat around with my boyfriend, Jason, and Martin, this boy I knew from high school in Connecticut. My mother was aware—but Jason was not—that I had slept with Martin that summer when he visited New York. In the morning, after he’d left, my mother had asked how he was in bed, and we’d examined every detail.
But now he’d phoned my dorm—he was college touring—and wanted to come by and say hello, and I didn’t want Jason to know about the sex, secrets my reflex. I was watching my mother for treachery. Coke produced a certain venomous laugh in her, intensified the British in her voice. Her mood had started to veer off course. She seemed eager to move on to the next installment.
“We need champagne!” she said. “Don’t we? Martin, take me to get some champers!” He grinned, chosen, went and stood by the door. “Darling, give me the keys,” she said, and plunged her hand into my bag. “We’ll be just a minute.”
They left, her clanging voice audible from the common room until the fire door banged shut. Then Jason and I had mad-dash sex to celebrate the relief of her departure. It was fun to clean up fast and toss the pillows back in place and pretend we’d never moved, and we prepared for the champagne and their return. In a long while the phone rang. Martin sounded tentative.
I said, “What’s taking you guys so long?”
He said, “We’re at your mother’s hotel.” She made a din in the background, calling instruction and giggling. He said, “We’re, uh, we’re fucking, and we can’t come back just yet!”
My hand went cold. I threw the receiver back in its cradle. “Fuck it,” I said. “We’re not waiting for them. Let’s go. Let’s go!” I screamed.
“What is it? What?” Jason said.
“No,” I said. Her laugh played in my ear, her drunken distortion, my lover strung between us and doing what she told him. I’d heard her shout, “She’ll just have to wait for us!” I forced us out of the room, locked the door, and we left.
Years later I met Martin again, our lives in Paris coinciding, and we fell in love a little for a grown-up affair. He sent roses. He heated milk for café au lait in the mornings while I remained in bed feeling the gorgeous ignition of sex. But while we lingered over the red wine or tidied up his apartment in gestures of small domesticity, my mother was a shadow leaning low and long at our feet, and finally I asked him what happened.
“She wanted to get champagne,” he said.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. Martin’s body was so fine under my hands. We made love instead.