Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [72]
—I was afraid you were going to take me up on one of those scary activity dates, he says.
—I was waiting until you got to apple caramelizing.
—I’m not very good at that, but I can show you something about napkin folding.
I laugh and say, —Prove it.
He tries to make a swan out of a napkin but keeps making a small tugboat instead, and when he starts anew he knocks the soy sauce over. He quickly rights the container and we both throw our napkins over the soaked spot in the tablecloth, and our busboy comes over and remakes the table linens and we start again.
—I don’t think anyone has ever made me this nervous in my entire life. I’ve always been a little clumsy but this is nuts, he says.
—Why do I make you nervous?
—I like you. Which is, apparently, turning me into a complete idiot.
The food arrives just then. The waitress fills and rolls the pancakes and serves the other dishes in a way that makes you want to meditate on the food and not just wolf it. Once she’s poured our tea, I look at Uber. I mean I really look, instead of veering off. I want him to see that I have every intention of staring right into his eye until he gets something or I get something that we’ve both been circling around.
—You know I’ve been . . . learning how to be an ideal Glad wife. And I can’t blame all of that on Allison. When I was little, I really wanted to know how to act at a ceremonial dinner and how to maintain the swords if my father needed help. And I could sit here and recite every single rule and bylaw. For a while I was so particular about the way I dressed that if Allison slipped up and bought me a pair of bargain sandals with fourteen straps instead of fifteen, I wouldn’t wear them.
—I sensed that about you, he says, stuffing a forkful of fried rice in his mouth. —I mean that you would know everything there is to know.
—Not everything, but I wanted to learn, that’s the thing. Then I started to change and my mother began to push the idea of that Wives College on me and I looked at this introductory video and I saw how shallow the women were, because everything, every last little thing, was about their future husbands. I mean, I already knew this, but seeing so many women like that, all talking the same . . . They didn’t have anything else going, they didn’t want anything for themselves, for the planet. Then Allison began to have these complete panic attacks thinking she was going to lose Tommy and end up alone again. Maybe she knew.
Here it’s difficult to look at Uber, and I don’t even try. I just stare into my water glass.
—And suddenly, or not so suddenly, this thing she built, this whole life, was starting to kill her. And ever since Tommy died, I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to make sure Thad never has to see another fight. And how I really think I want to write about it, not be in it anymore. The problem is if I’m no longer part of if it, then my family suffers. God, I’m sorry. I usually don’t talk this much.
Uber pushes his chow mein into his eggplant.
—So you’re saying you’d make a lousy Glad wife?
—That’s what I’m saying.
—Good. Because I don’t want to be with someone who could pass Wife 101. My mother was her own woman. Always. They had their fights, but in the end, I think my father liked having a real partner. And then when he got Alzheimer’s, it was a good thing that she’s so resourceful. She used to read a ton. We had a big library like yours. She had first editions of Faulkner, Wharton, Steinbeck . . . I think that’s how she made the whole thing bearable. I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her.
I express my anger again that Caesar’s used his parents that way.
—Caesar’s told them they were surprising me with this special day in my honor. It wasn’t until after they arrived and a rep talked with them in the car on the way over to the stadium that they learned