Six
JONATHAN IS A jazz aficionado.
This is what my mother tells me over breakfast. Latin jazz, soul jazz, jazz fusion—you name it, he knows it. Jazz is the reason he became a music teacher. My mom recounts a story he told her last night, about the first time he heard Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (whoever that is) play the saxophone.
“He cried,” she tells me, one hand patting her chest. “He was twelve years old and he was so moved by the music, he actually wept.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Can you imagine?”
Yes, actually, I can. I can imagine him getting shoved into a locker by the junior-high football team.
“Syrup?” my mom says.
I nod, take the bottle.
It’s waffles this morning. Waffles that feature an assortment of dried fruit—apricots, raisins, dates—which give them an oddly diseased appearance.
Jonathan is a Samaritan.
This is the next thing she tells me. One weekend a month he volunteers at North Haven Hospital, doing art projects with terminally ill kids. Friendship bracelets, decoupage, quilts. . . .
My mother goes on and on, and I don’t want to burst her heart-shaped bubble, but it sounds to me like Jonathan is trying awfully hard to impress her. Ridiculously hard. Obscenely hard.
“What’s next?” I ask. “Leaping tall buildings in a single bound?”
“Well, he was a high-jumper in college.”
“I was kidding.”
“I know.” My mom laughs, delighted. “I know! He sounds too good to be true, right?”
I shoot her a look that says, Exaggeration of the century much?—which she either ignores or doesn’t catch.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” is what she says now, sounding every inch the enamored schoolgirl. She even looks the part: blue eyes shining, cheeks abloom.
OK. I should be happy to see my mother happy. And I am. I am. It’s just, one minute she’s busting out the old Paul Tucci yearbook, and the next—
“So, I invited him for dinner.”
“What?” I put down my fork. “When?”
“Tonight.”
“But it’s Sunday.”
“And?”
“And the Weiss-Longos are coming. It’s our turn to host.”
“I’m sure the Weiss-Longos won’t mind if Jonathan joins us,” she says.
“No, it’s just . . . you just met the guy, like three weeks ago. Don’t you think it’s a little soon to be—”
“What? Excited about someone?” My mom puts down her fork, frowns. “It’s not like this happens to me every day, Josie. It doesn’t. I’ve had—what—six dates in sixteen years?”
I can see the hurt in her face, and I feel horrible. I tell her that Jonathan seems like a good guy, and I want her to be happy.
“Thank you,” she says. “He is a good guy. A really decent, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person.”
“Yes,” I say.
It doesn’t take a genius to read between my mother’s lines: Jonathan is the antithesis of Paul Tucci.Good. Decent. Not a heartbreaker.
“You deserve it,” I say.
She nods. Then she says, “I think I’ll make steak. What guy doesn’t like steak, right? And some kind of potato?”
“Sure,” I say.
“OK. Steak it is.”
Her face has smoothed out again. She’s back to normal. For a second I consider telling her about last night—about Matt Rigby and the kiss, and Liv—but she’s already whipping out the cookbooks. She’s starting a shopping list: Filet mignon. Flowers. Wine.
I go upstairs with a pit in my stomach, and I don’t even know why it’s there, but I’m actually glad the café opening is today, so I can focus my mind on that instead of on my mother’s new boyfriend.
Fiorello’s looks amazing. Funky art and plush couches, glass-topped tables, ferns. Some little elf has been working overtime, unloading FedEx boxes. And the smell. Bob doesn’t do anything half-assed; he hired two gourmet bakers for the opening. The air smells sugary and yeasty, and the display cases—the ones that used to hold ice cream—are now full of pastries.
“You need a taste tester,” I tell Bob. I reach for the sliding glass door. “You know, just to make sure . . .”
“No sampling!” He swats my hand away.
“Fine.” I shrug. “Poison the customers. See if I care.”
Bob’s brow crinkles.
“Kidding,” I say. “I’m kidding.”
“I’m sorry.” He grabs a towel and begins buffing the already-shiny countertops. “We open in forty-two minutes. I’m nervous.”
Nervous, obsessive, manic . . .
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Everything will be fine.”
By Elmherst standards, this place is rocking. Wherever Bob posted those flyers, they worked. There must be twenty customers in here.
“We need more of those little tube-y things,” I tell Meg, the college student who usually works the shifts I can’t. Bob scheduled everyone to work today, which is making the space behind the counter feel even tighter than normal.
“Cannoli.” Meg hands me a tray of tube-y things. “God. These people are like vultures with the free samples.”
Bob winds his way through the crowd with a platter of biscotti and mini coffees. His cheeks are flushed pink, and the fringe of hair around his bald spot is frizzing out from the humidity.
“These biscotti are to die for,” a woman says, reaching out for Bob’s arm with her long, manicured fingertips. Bob ducks his head to the side, loving the compliment—also, clearly, trying to avoid the transfer of germs.
“We need more steamed milk.” Drake, the kid with the zits who works Friday nights, shoves a pitcher in my face.
“Bob didn’t show you how to do it?”
Drake rolls his eyes. “He doesn’t like my foam. He says it’s too flat.”
“Here,” I say. “Take the register. I’ll steam.”
I sashay past Drake and past the baker who’s sliding a tray of cookies out of the oven. They’re the almond variety, rich and buttery, with little nut slivers on top. Breathing in, I feel a burst of spit fill my mouth, reminding me that I’m famished. I never did finish my waffle this morning. I was too distracted by the Jonathan discussion to eat.
Jazzy Jonathan.
Coming for dinner.
Tonight.
Ach.
OK, I’m not going to focus on that. I’m going to focus on milk-steaming. And bean-grinding. And assembling beautiful, fluffy, cinnamon-dappled cappuccinos for the masses—
“Excuse me, young lady?”
I turn. “Yes?”
The man is silver-haired, with square shoulders and a wide, ruddy face. He smiles at me and I suddenly realize who he is and give a little jump. Naturally, the pitcher of scalding milk in my hand jumps, too. And sloshes onto the front of my shirt. And soaks through to my bare skin.
“Oh, shit!” I announce, trying to pull the fabric of my shirt away from my scalding chest. “Hot! Hot shit!”
Paul Tucci’s father’s eyes widen, and he points to the sink behind me. “Water! Cold water!”
In moments like these, you don’t think about decorum. You don’t think at all. You just spring across the floor like a jungle cat and stick your entire torso under the faucet, letting the cold water run, and run, and run.
“Oh . . . my . . .” Liv is laughing so hard she’s gasping for breath. “God! . . . Hot! . . .” Tears are literally streaming down her face. “Hot shit!”
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you so much for laughing at my humiliation. Really. I feel so much better now.”
“I’m . . . sorry. . . . It’s just . . . you burned . . . your . . .” A fresh fit of giggles erupts and Liv collapses face-first on the bed.
“That’s right, Olivia,” I say. “I burned my boobs. Hilarious! Keep it up.”
We are in my room. Everyone else is downstairs, mingling and drinking wine. Preparing to eat my mother’s steak. Already I can tell how this night will go: about as well as the rest of my day. It would be nice to have a best friend who appreciated the gravity of the situation.
“You know,” I say, “for someone who dates college guys, you’re awfully immature.”
Suddenly, amazingly, Liv rolls over and sits up. “Guy. Singular. And I wouldn’t call it ‘dating.’ More like . . .”
“What?”
“Hanging out. Hooking up. You know.”
I do know. You can’t be friends with Liv and not know exactly where she stands on the subject of sex: i.e., it’s a magnificent thing. One time last year, she got into a half-hour-long morality debate with Wendy Geruntino in the middle of the cafeteria. Wendy’s logic consisted of, God wants us to stay pure for marriage, and Liv’s argument was, Hey, God made us sexual creatures. If he wanted teenagers to wait that long, he would have made puberty start at twenty-five.
And don’t even get Liv started on the double standard. She’ll give you an earful: If a guy wants to have sex, he’s a stud, right? If a girl wants to have sex, she’s a slut, a ho, a trollop. How warped is that?
“Well,” I say now. “I hope you’re using protection.”
“Of course,” she says firmly. “I’m a safety girl. . . . But we weren’t talking about me.”
“Actually, we were.”
“No, we weren’t.”
“Well, I’d rather talk about you.”
“We can talk about me after you tell me the rest of the story.”
“There is no rest of the story.”
“So, what—you just stayed there, cooling off your boobs in the sink, and that’s it? You didn’t talk to him at all?”
“Nope.”
Liv shakes her head.
“Well, what was I supposed to do?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Josie. Offer him a pastry? Crack a joke? Something to get the ball rolling?”
“And what ball might that be?”
Liv heaves a sigh.
“What?” I say.
“Josie, they live fifteen miles away from you. We have the address to prove it. And I don’t care what you call them, they are your grandparents. Don’t you even want to try to get to know them?”
No, I think. I already had grandparents. Maybe they never lived in a mansion or went to some Ivy League college, but at least they were there for me.
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are that this is happening?” Liv says. “There are people who try for years to find family members. Decades, even. Dr. Steve had this show once, and this girl—”
“Please,” I say. “Not Dr. Steve.”
“I’m just saying, if I were you—”
“But you’re not.”
“But if I were—”
“But you’re not, Liv, OK? You’re not me!” I realize I’m yelling and lower my voice. “Just . . . you don’t know how I feel about this. . . . I don’t know how I feel about this. OK?”
Liv grimaces. “OK. Sorry.”
“It’s OK.” I sit down on the bed next to her. “My mom would wig, if she knew.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Liv raises her eyebrows, but I don’t elaborate.
Because there is my mother’s voice, calling from downstairs.
The steak is ready.
Here’s what a fly on the wall would think: Gosh, what a lovely dinner party. Lovely food, lovely conversation, lovely people, everyone getting along, no painful or awkward moments. Overall, a solid B-plus evening.
Here’s what I am thinking: Is it bedtime yet? I’m sitting at the table, watching my mom and Jonathan make goo-goo eyes at each other, and all I want to do is evaporate from the dining room.
Which makes me feel like a jerk. A horrible daughter. Because the fact of the matter is, Jonathan is a nice guy. Perfectly nice! Nice-looking, nice manners. When Wyatt mentions he’s a Red Sox fan, Jonathan says the nicest possible thing: “I’ve got season tickets. Name your game, and they’re yours.” But seeing Jonathan reach out and take my mother’s hand between bites of apple pie makes me want to poke him with a fork.
I’m sorry, but it’s true.
It takes every ounce of restraint in my body not to yell across the table, You just met!
Later, lying in bed, I feel like crap. I tell myself that tomorrow I will try harder: give Jonathan a chance, for my mom’s sake.
And while I’m at it, I should probably tell her about seeing Paul Tucci’s dad and the whole moved-back thing. Maybe she’ll say, “Ah, well, how nice for them.” Better yet, “The Tuccis are ancient history, Josie. I’ve moved on. I’ve got Jonathan now.”
I don’t think that’s what she’ll say, but who knows? I should at least give her the information. Then she can do what she wants with it.
