It was the more expensive cut. He rightly assumed that’s why I didn’t order it. And that made me nervous. Could he see right through me? Was I that obviously broke?
I actually had a great deal of experience dining in fine restaurants. There came a point in all my mother’s relationships, and possible relationships, when I had to be introduced. On the drive to some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles she would coach me.
“Don’t order the most expensive thing on the menu, he’ll think we’re gold diggers. And don’t order the cheapest thing on the menu, we’ll look like we have no self-confidence. Order something in the middle. And order something exotic. A pieceof unusual fish or something with a foreign name. It makes you seem more interesting.”
I always ordered a medium-priced steak. Since she didn’t exactly cook, it was exotic to me. Sometimes her dates did everything they could to impress me and sometimes they seemed very annoyed I was there at all. Not unlike my own dating life.
The waiter went away, and we were uncomfortably alone. I tried the popcorn perch. It was yummy. Since I was already thinking of my mother, I wondered what she would do in this situation. She was good at conversation, especially with men. She knew how to keep the chit-chat going. I tried to emulate that with varying degrees of success.
If it was just me, my mother talked mainly about herself. If there was a man around, she talked about him. She flattered his looks, his taste, his value to the world, his humor, his intelligence—and his generosity. That very few of the men she dated had any of these qualities in abundance never seemed to matter. They all believed her.
I was warming up to say something about what a good doctor Edward was, when he said, “I really admire you. Most guys your age would not be caught dead in a small Michigan town taking care of their grandmother.”
“Oh, well…” I fumbled.
He smiled at me. “You need to learn to take compliments. I suspect you’re going to have a life full of them.”
Wow, he’d missed the boat on that one. I was great at taking compliments, about my pretty eyes and my perky little ass and my snarky quips… I’d just never gotten one for taking care of my grandmother.
Really? That was worth a compliment?
“You should tell me more about yourself,” I suggested.
So, Edward told me some things about his growing up in a small town on the other side of Michigan. Honestly, it wasn’t that interesting. What I really wanted to know was what it was like to be as pretty as he was. Being good-looking has gotten me lots of things I wanted. Edward was devastatingly handsome. People must trip over themselves giving him things.
Oh crap, he asked me a question and I completely didn’t hear it. I’d been lost in the perfect symmetry of his face, the dark blue his eyes had turned in the dim light of the restaurant, the squareness of his chin, his glowing skin, a pulsing vein in his neck which made me wish I was a vampire.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I asked about your childhood.”
“Boring really.”
But was it? I remembered a dozen apartments—one of which my mother owned, at least for a while; seven different neighborhoods; and five grammar schools. I did well in school. It was a sort of revenge on my mother who hated school and encouraged me to hate it as well.
“You could be a little more specific,” he suggested.
Then I realized I couldn’t tell him the truth. That I’d been dragged through my mother’s many failed relationships, that we’d moved suddenly and often, that I’d been bullied in good schools and bad. No, that wasn’t going to work. One thing I’d learned over drinks in West Hollywood was that guys didn’t want to hear about your tough childhood. It frightened them, even if it wasn’t your fault.
“Well, my mother was a single mom. She worked really hard to keep a roof over our head.”
Kind of true.
“She always put me first.”
Not true at all.
He gave me a dubious smile. He wasn’t buying this. And that meant I probably wouldn’t be living happily ever after with the most beautiful doctor in the world. Ah, well.
“Where is your mother?”
“California.”
“She didn’t come out when your grandmother had her stroke?”
“Um, well, she’s married now.”
Lie!
