“I expected a gentle decline, if nothing else. Or he could send the First Lady. But would it kill the man to stop by for twenty minutes?”
I’m not sure which is more remarkable: that these sorts of conversations don’t shock me, or that Marie actually holds out hope that the president might just pop in for the wedding.
“Where are you going?” Jason asks pleasantly, stepping into the house via the sliding patio door. His hair is half on end and half flat. There’s a giant smear of grease on his right cheek, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. His face is sprinkled with streaks of cotton.
Oh. Wait. That’s not cotton. I guess his beard is mostly white, which is weird, because his hair is such a rich shade of auburn.
Marie turns an uncharacteristic shade of pink. She’s embarrassed. I didn’t think Marie was capable of embarrassment, much like the Queen isn’t capable of smiling without looking like she’s constipated.
“Um, we’re going to a mystery shop,” she says in a breathy voice.
Carol gives her the side-eye. “This mystery shop is one of Mom’s favorites.”
“A sex toy shop?” Jason asks, as if he were asking about a garden supply store or an insurance agent evaluation. The level of casual discourse we have these days about anal beads and dildos is disturbing, especially since I can’t talk about tampons with my own mother without needing smelling salts.
“No. Even better,” Carol says in a voice filled with amusement. “A department store shop.”
Jason frowns. He’s picking up on the subtext. “What’s so special about that?” he asks Marie, who is avoiding eye contact.
“Nothing! It’s just a shop,” she murmurs, pretending to paw through her purse.
Carol seems to enjoy tormenting her mom. “This is a men’s clothing experience.” She looks at me. “From top to bottom.”
My quizzical look must match Jason’s, because Carol bursts into laughter.
“It’s porn for women,” she says, as if that explains everything.
It doesn’t.
“Shopping for men’s clothing is porn for women?” Jason asks in an incredulous tone.
“Have you seen the men’s underwear display lately?” Marie bursts out. “All these models. David Gandy. David Beckham. All wearing underwear and nothing more and their pictures are on the posters and on every single package. It’s like they went and got Minions except instead of a crowd of little yellow beings staring at you, it’s thirty or forty pictures of hot men in underwear all asking you to touch them.”
“Pick up their package,” Carol murmurs. Marie elbows her in the ribs as Carol giggles silently.
Jason just blinks, over and over.
“Hey, don’t judge. You have your Victoria’s Secret catalog obsession,” Marie says in a threatening tone.
He throws his hands in the air, one of which is clutching a wrench. “I don’t judge, honey!”
“Then why the stare?”
“I was just thinking that you should stop teaching yoga classes and do this mystery shopping thing full time. It suits you better.” And with that, he walks over, drops the wrench, and bends her backwards, giving her the kind of kiss you see in old movie posters, the kind that curls a woman’s toes and makes her body melt.
I turn away.
Now I’m embarrassed.
“Get a room,” Carol mutters, clearly used to this. But I’m not. I’ve never seen my father kiss my mother. I don’t even have a memory of it. Not one, single mental image of my mom and dad touching. Ever.
Now that I know the full story about what happened with my dad, I find myself even more interested in watching men who are about his age. I’ve always struggled with the concept of a father. So many of the men in my life who represent dads are wildly different. James McCormick terrifies me. Jason is a cuddly teddy bear, but I keep my distance with him because, well, I’m not one of his daughters. He reserves a kind of overflowing love for all of them that stands out in stark contrast to what I don’t have.
I keep him at arm’s length because it’s too painful to think about sometimes.
I’ve told everyone the story my mom poured out after the baseball game, and Marie’s been more pleasant to her. Not just because Mom pulled strings to get the bagpipers from Carnegie Mellon, but because, as Marie put it, “Oh, lord, those hours of pure despair. That would shred anyone to the bone. I understand why she’s a hovermother now.”
Yeah. I guess I do, too.
“We’re going to stare at pictures of mostly naked men on underwear packages,” Carol says pleasantly, all dimples and blue eyes and blonde hair. “What’s your work day look like?”
“I am dating a man named Eagle,” I declare.
“Eagle?” Jason has pried his lips off Marie and is now looking through receipts on the table with the air of a man who needs a barf bag. “You’re dating a man named—sweet Jesus, Marie, you bought $3,100 worth of tartan ribbons?”
Marie bustles over to the table and physically blocks Jason’s access to the folders by shoving her ample boobage right in his line of vision.
“Don’t worry, Jason. It’s all covered.”
“We have a seventeen-thousand dollar budget and you’ve spent a fifth of it on ribbons?”
Shannon closes her eyes in resignation. The moment of truth has arrived. Turns out I’m not the only one hiding the truth from someone.
“Uh, Dad? Our budget is bigger than that.”