Pug Hill - Alison Pace [101]
“Look, Betsy, look at the seagull!” my mother shouts out, as if this has all been scripted long before I even got here, and I’ve always been destined to play some supporting character, the token surly, belligerent teenager. I am about to reconsider my plan. But one look at Mrs. Gerard, perching forward now on her seat, ready to pounce, makes me certain she is by far the worse of two evils. I feel the boat slowing down as we motor slowly into a cove. I brace myself. I get ready to make my move.
“Are you dating anyone new?”
I kid you not, the entire sentence is out, thrown at me like a lightning bolt, the second the engine is cut.
“Oh, you know, not really,” I say, “but I’m sure something will pop up soon.” I try to say this breezily, in what I hope is a nonchalant tone, in what I hope is a tone that says, “This is so not an important topic, and really, it’s rather boring, so let’s move on to something else, or better yet, let’s not talk at all, let’s just be quiet and listen to the water splashing against the side of the boat because that’s such a nice sound.”
“You girls today, you think it’s all a race,” she says to me. Mrs. Gerard, she does this, she sets you up so that she can say these things, these things she must think are wise and sagely along the lines of my not being ready. I would very much like to explain to Mrs. Gerard that I don’t think it is a race, and that if, indeed, I did think of it as a race, it’s a race I lost, a really long time ago. But what I want, so much more than to point out to Mrs. Gerard that her wise and sagely advice is as unwise and un-sagely as it is unwelcome, is to not have a conversation about dating. So I smile, and stand up, believing foolishly in my mind that there is actually an escape.
“Maybe,” she says next, “you just don’t know what you want?” and I am torn. I am torn between explaining something that I don’t know if I even have the language for, and just walking away, figuratively and literally, heading to the front of the boat and away from her. I opt for the front of the boat. I look in that direction, and realize sadly that the path is blocked. Literally, it’s blocked; Mr. Gerard and Dad have inexplicably gotten out some giant pile of rope and set it between them. It seems they are now engrossed in discussing it, as engrossed as Mom seems to be up there. “Betsy, yes, yes, that’s another motorboat.”
“No, I know what I want,” I say. I sit back down, because the boat is rocking now and the rocking is making me dizzy.
“What do you want?”
Oh, for crying out loud!
“What?” I say for no other reason than to stall for time. I look over in the direction of Mom, of Betsy, to see if maybe they’re going to step up, at any moment, and save the day. Mom is now just gazing adoringly at Betsy; Betsy is sitting with her tongue out, blissfully tired from all the wind.
“That’s quite a big pile of rope,” I hear Mr. Gerard say, and I think, Yeah, it is. I watch a seagull that is diving headfirst into the water, and the way he does it, I wonder if there might be something wrong with him.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Gerard says again, even though we both know I heard her the first time. Part of me wants to tell her that I’ve stopped believing in my ability to answer questions as big as that. She smiles at me again and I’m not sure it’s a smile anymore, I’m really starting to think it’s a sneer. And I know what she thinks my answer will be. I know she thinks it will be a way-too-long list, far too specific to ever be met. I know she’s expecting me to get all worked up in a dither, and say something really fast, something along the lines of,
“I want someone who would pick me up at the airport when I haven’t asked and I’m not expecting it, someone who would just surprise me, waiting right there at the gate, if he could get to it what with all the extra security these days, and I’d like it even more if he had to take a taxi to La Guardia or Kennedy or Newark to pick me up because he lives in Manhattan and might not have a car. Though, I think it would be nice if he had a car,