My mom shrugs and takes a small sip of her hot jasmine tea, brushing off my blind date from hell as a small bout of miscommunication. “He seemed nice.”
“How did you meet him?” my sister chimes in, spreading her attention between our conversation, lunch, and Avery perched on her lap. She feeds Avery a small spoonful of egg drop soup to keep her occupied and waits for my mom’s reply.
“Remember Martin? Dad’s coworker? It’s his nephew.” She pauses a minute, considering her answer. “Or it might have been his friend’s nephew.”
“You never met him in person?”
“No,” my mom says, her unbothered composure the epitome of nonchalance. She snaps her chopsticks together, her mind clearly on the food in front of her rather than her daughter’s cast aside relationship status.
“So, in other words, you had no way to vouch for him,” Jade comments in my defense.
“Mom, I thought you met him,” I accuse now that we’re taking a deep dive into the blame game. Maybe with Jade by my side, I can explain to my mom how setting me up with random men is actually destructive to my dating life. Even refute her incessant need to find me a husband without feeling guilty for giving her an earful.
“I didn’t have a chance to. You know how busy I am. I can’t go around meeting every man I want to set you up with,” she adds to her argument. “Plus, I know Martin. He’s very nice. He wouldn’t set you up with just anyone.”
“Except he did,” Trevor states matter-of-factly. Though Jade tosses her husband a look of muted surprise, most likely not wanting him to add to the fuel when it comes to the fire of his mother-in-law and her overbearing tendencies, I appreciate his intent. It feels a little more hopeful of a battle when it’s three against one. Even if my mom’s caustic shame game, her own pivot of finger-pointing to cynically blame herself, feels like an unfair battle.
My mom shrugs again. It’s her go-to gesture when she’s the one at fault, shifting the blame to innocence or ignorance. “Well, at least you got out there. And I won’t get involved in setting you dates for you next time if you don’t think I can vouch for them.”
“Yes,” I answer with a strain of desperation in my voice. “Please, Mom. No more setups.” I played with the idea of not cutting off all potential dates set up by my mom, whether driven by guilt or hope of the one odd phenomenon I might actually meet a unicorn of a husband, I’m not too sure. But Jade jumps in, arguing the chances of that happening are slim to none and the more likely scenario would be more Harolds.
My mom sighs. A melodramatic sound that’s meant to gain our attention while diverting the blame back to me. “I’m just worried about you,” she says, a stab of genuine concern in herwords. “After Frankie and the divorce, I think you’re having a lot of trouble getting back into the game.”
“‘The game?’”
“You know, the single life. Or whatever it is you kids call it.” Oh god. Has she been perusing Urban Dictionary again? I swear, if she asks me what a bukkake is one more time, I’m going to lose my shit.
“Mom, I assure you, there is no ‘game’ I want to be involved in. I will meet someone on my terms, and it will happen when it happens.” Hopefully.
“You aren’t getting any younger, Grace.”
I look at my sister, my eyes flat and vacant. A reactive tic we both developed in our teen years when Mom said something completely inappropriate and out of left field. I roll my eyes in Jade’s direction, out of my mom’s line of sight, before sarcastically saying, “Thanks, Mom.”
“I don’t want to sugarcoat it,” she adds. “You left Frankie because you suddenly wanted kids, and he didn’t, and now, with you pushing forty, that may not even happen. What the hell was the point of the divorce then?”
“It was more than that,” I weakly argue.
My words sound as watered down as they feel. Thankfully, Jade butts in. “Mom, Frankie was an asshole.”
“But at least she was married,” my mom adds. “And he had that nice condo she got in the divorce. He had a good job, and Grace had a very comfortable life.” Great. Now they’re talking about me like I’m not even here.
“She was married to someone who told her getting pregnant was going to make her fat and lazy.”
I cringe at the memory at the same time my mom waves a dismissive hand in my sister’s direction. A memory I had almost forgotten about. I knew Frankie didn’t bode well for the idea of becoming a dad, but I thought maybe he’d change his mindonce he imagined me with a round belly and a pregnancy glow. Or at the very least, appease my silly little dream of becoming a mother. But that was my mistake.
While there really was more that drove my ex-husband and I apart, the ultimate deciding factor was the fact that I wanted kids, and he didn’t. I thought we had crossed our t’s and dotted our i’s when we got married. We decided early on we didn’t want kids. We both enjoyed the freedom of being childless. Weekend trips to Vegas, New York, if we were feeling especially bold, without having to figure out childcare arrangements. It made our relationship daring and exciting. But as our marriage outgrew the terrible twos, I felt like I was missing something. Something that tugged at my ovaries and caused them to skip a beat every time I saw a floral dress sized for chubby infants or miniature sneakers with disproportionately wide soles. But Frankie didn’t seem to agree. He thought those frilly dresses were overpriced and unseemly. He didn’t see the point of putting shoes on a baby who couldn’t even stand on their own two feet. So I let the dream die, along with my marriage.
“Mom,” Jade continues. “We’ll let Grace find her own dates from now on. She’s a grown woman, and she can handle this on her own.”
Another shrug, this one filled with a downcast look of defeat.
“But thank you, Mom,” I tell her, leaning into her in an attempt to soothe away any ill feelings she may think I’m expressing to her. The last thing I want is a two-week silent treatment followed by an unannounced visit with fresh fruit and pastries, her form of an olive branch. “I appreciate your help.”
She finally drops the topic. The events from two nights ago now swiped off our table surrounded by bamboo steamers holding fresh xiao long bao and shao mai. The conversation veers into how Avery is adjusting to her new nanny now that Jade is going back to work after her extended maternity leave.Trevor fills us all in on Avery’s new adorable habit of screaming bloody murder when either one of them leave the room, and my mom fills us in on my parents’ plans for their anniversary party in two months. Reception-style dinner, dance floor, open bar. The whole nine.
My attention wavers in and out, glad to have gotten that conversation with my mom over with. I have no qualms about leaving my blind date in the dust. In fact, I’d be happy to erase it completely from my memory, but the rest of that night remains clear as day in my preoccupied mind.
I haven’t talked to Andrew thanks to the inconveniently forgotten fact that I don’t have his number. I don’t know if he got home okay. Or if he noticed the hickey on his collarbone I got a peek of when he skulked out of my bedroom in his underwear. I tried to forget the whole night. Put it past me like I did my blind date. But every time I made some measly attempt to distract myself, I caught glimpses of Andrew. His hands on my bare skin, our bodies moving in tandem as if we’ve been doing this for years. The flashbacks are confusing the hell out of me. They feel good, really good. And I wish they only felt good, but then reality washes them clean of all the good and what’s left behind is a hard, concrete slab of regret.
