Too Good to Be True - Kristan Higgins [115]
“Well, I do have a record, and I think we should just get it out in the open.”
“Okay, listen. First of all, you’ve never been to one of my mother’s shows. They’re weird. My dad will be tense as it is, Mom will be fluttering all over the place…Secondly, my grandmother is deaf as a stone, so I’d have to yell, and it’s a public place and all that. It’s just not the time, Cal.”
I’d told my parents and Natalie that I was dating the boy next door. I hadn’t told them anything else.
My parents were concerned, thinking I had dumped a perfectly good workaholic doctor for a carpenter. That was bad enough…wait till they found out about his nineteen months behind bars. Not that there were bars at his prison, but such a distinction was going to be lost on the Emerson family, whose line could be traced back to the Mayflower.
“I’m actually surprised you haven’t told them yet,” Cal said.
I glanced over at him. His jaw was tight. “Listen, bub. Don’t worry. I’m not trying to hide anything. I just want them to know you and like you a little bit first. If I walk in and say, ‘Hi, this is my boyfriend who was recently released from prison,’ they’ll have kittens. If they see what a great guy you are first, it won’t be so bad.”
“When will you tell them?”
“Soon,” I bit out. “Cal. Please. I have a lot on my mind. School’s ending, I still haven’t heard about the chairmanship, one sister’s getting married, the other’s ready to jump out of her skin…Can we just let my folks meet you without dumping your prison record on them? Please? Let me have one major crisis at a time? I promise I’ll tell them soon. Just not tonight.”
“It feels dishonest,” he said.
“It’s not! It’s just…parceling out information, okay? We don’t have to go around introducing you as Callahan O’Shea, ex-con. Do we?”
He didn’t answer for a minute. “Fine, Grace. Have it your way. But it doesn’t feel right.”
I took his hand. “Thanks.” After a minute, he squeezed back.
“YOU’RE DATING THE HELP? You threw over that nice doctor for the help?” Mémé’s expression was that of a woman who’d just bitten into a lizard. Actually, of a lizard biting into a lizard. She wheeled a little closer, hitting a pedestal and causing Into the Light (supposedly a birth canal, but actually more resembling the Holland Tunnel) to wobble precariously. I steadied it, then looked down at my disapproving grandmother.
“Mémé, please stop calling Callahan the help, okay? You’re not in Victorian England anymore,” I started. “And as I said—” here I took a breath, weary with the lie “—Wyatt, though a very nice man, just wasn’t a good fit. Okay? Okay. Let’s move on.”
Margaret, lurking nearby, raised an eyebrow. I yearned for more wine and ignored her and Mémé, who was once again labeling the Irish as beggars and thieves.
Chimera Art Gallery was littered with body parts. Apparently, Mom wasn’t the only one who was doing anatomy these days, and she was quite irritable that another artist was also featured (joints…ball-and-socket, gliding and cartilaginous, not nearly as popular as Mom’s more, ah, intimate items, most of which looked like they belonged in a sex shop). I dragged my eyes off Yearning in Green (use your imagination) and sidled over to Callahan, who was talking to my father.
“So! You’re a carpenter!” Dad boomed in the hearty voice he used on blue-collar workers, a little loud and with an occasional grammatical lapse to show that he, too, was just an average joe.
“Dad, you hired Cal to replace my windows, remember? So you already know he’s a carpenter.”
“Restoration specialist?” Dad suggested hopefully.
“Not really, no,” Callahan answered evenly, resisting Dad’s efforts to glam him up. “I wouldn’t say a specialist in anything, though. Just basic carpentry.”
“He does beautiful work,” I added. Cal gave me a veiled look.
“What I wouldn’t give to trade in my law books for a hammer!” Dad trumpeted. I snorted—in my memory, at least, it had always been Mom who did the needed household repairs; Dad couldn’t even hang a picture.