Page 28 of The Christmas Mittens
The play started, and I had to sit on my hands beside a man who was phenomenal in bed but quite secretive out of the sheets. The play wasn’t all that long, a little over an hour, and Gilda was amazing throughout. I may be biased, but she did a great job as did all the kids. Nigel had done wonders whipping them into shape. When the final curtain fell, the cast, Mrs. Coleman, the music teacher—yes, we still had a music teacher, but for how long no one knew—and Nigel all took bows. Anders and I rose to applaud the thespians. After the lights came up, the cast disappeared behind the curtain, and I craned my neck to find the mafiosos, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Anders was tense, smiling as was required, something that he seemed quite at ease with when talking to and shaking the hands of people he didn’t know. I, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck. I was sure those two gorillas were going to do something terribly mob worthy. What that might be, I didn’t know. I’d seen my share of mobster films and viewed plenty of second-rate hoods in detective shows. They always shot first and asked questions later. Or busted kneecaps after shaking some poor schmoe down. Were they here to give Anders a roughing up? Did he owe some big daddy gangster a wad of cash? Was he going to get plugged by a couple of wise-guy hoodlums?
Why do you sound like James Cagney?
Not a clue. Right, drop the ’40s dick talk. This was serious. The crush of parents leaving the auditorium carried us out with them. The kids were waiting in the foyer. Gilda ran to me for a hug. I embraced her tightly, eyes scanning the vestibule for the twin behemoths. Thankfully, they were nowhere to be seen. I breathed a little lighter.
“You were amazing,” I told her, dropping a kiss to her hair and passing the bouquet to her. She beamed up at me and then at Anders.
“Yes, you did a wonderful job. You have a very pretty voice as well,” he added, bowing to kiss her hand, which made her face beet red. Several of the young girls around us sighed dreamily. “Congratulations on a stellar performance. Della wished to come, but I told her she had to stay back. Perhaps you could come out and visit her over the weekend?”
Gilda hit me with the begging look that never failed. “Can we, Dad, please?” she asked, hugging her flowers to her chest. How could I say no? Besides, Anders had said we would talk. And I planned to hold him to that. Call me overprotective, but if I were going to be spending time with him, I needed to know what kind of dark trouble he was in. My baby girl was my world. If something happened to her…
“Sure, after you get done helping Franny clean tomorrow morning,” I replied while looking over her head at Anders. He nodded once, his dark eyes serious. We then had to stop and talk to a hundred people, or so it seemed, before we could get Gilda outside and into my car. Anders insisted that the star sit in front, so she did, and her mouth ran the entire ride out to the campsite. I gave Anders a weak little smile before he climbed out of the back seat. He waved brightly at us before sliding into his van to greet a bouncing min pin. Once the sliding door was closed, I backed out, crunchy snow under my tires, and began following the winding lane to the main road.
We’d no sooner hit the plowed road when Gilda looked up from her phone. She then placed it face down on her thigh.
“Are you and Anders dating?” she asked rather nonchalantly given the importance of such a question. My brain kind of went sideways for a second as I stared down the road, tiny flakesdancing in my high beams. When I said nothing, she sighed long and hard. “I know you like him, Dad. It’s kind of obvious.”
“I’m not sure that I’m obvious,” I parried poorly.
“Dad, you like stare at him like he’s a beef burrito with extra beans.”
I did love a good beef burrito. “I’m sure that I don’t. He’s just a new friend.”
“Right, okay,” she huffed, obviously upset with my deflections. “I think he’s fun and I love his dog and he’s super polite. He looks at you just like you look at him.”
“He looks at me like I’m a beef burrito with extra beans?” I asked just to try to joke my way out of this conversation that I was not ready to even have with myself, let alone my daughter.
“Yeah, he does. And it’s fine, Dad.” I threw her a fast glance and returned my sight to the road. You had to be vigilant here in the hills. Deer leaped out in front of cars all the time. “I mean…if you like him. Dating a man. That’s so fine with me. All my friends would be fine with it too.”
Ah, but would their parents?
Who cares?
Okay, just be quiet me. Let me catch my breath here. And Gilda would care because the parents might not allow her friends to hang out with her if they were homophobic.
“Thanks, baby.” I didn’t know how to proceed, so I reverted back to Katie’s way of handling tough questions. Honesty. “Anders and I are…well, we’re not officially dating, but we are having lunches together.”
“I knew it. Iknewyou were skipping eating your sandwiches for a reason. Cool. I like this a lot, Dad, really. I know you’ve missed Mom forever, but you can’t live with a memory, right? Because I’ll go away to college for drama or maybe marine biology, and I want you to have someone to be old with.”
Marine biology? What the dickens? Where did that come from? And how sweet was she to worry over her decrepit dad being lonely when she was gone?
“I would like to have someone to be old with too, sugar plum. I’m not sure Anders is that person, but he might be?” I shrugged. “I think we have a lot to discuss before we get serious about anything, but I am very fond of him. I worry that it might be too quick.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing a person and knowing you’re going to marry that person. Like I call Hoon my husband and Kim P. Jai my wife. I fell for them both the first time I saw them in a video.”
Singers in boy and girl K-pop bands were easy to crush on. The possibility of marrying one of them was slim. Meeting a man and falling for them in a week? Ugh, I didn’t know. Nothing. I knew nothing.
“I’m not sure what will happen with Anders and me, but I’m very glad I can talk to you about our new friendship.” I gave her knee a pat. “And hey, you can talk to me about Timmy too, just saying.”
“Yeah, I know.” She lifted the bouquet to her nose. “Thanks,” she mumbled into the flowers.
“Want to talk about the play now?” I asked.
“Please, oh my God, yes!”
That made me laugh. Neither of us was comfortable discussing our feelings. Maybe she was more like me than I realized.
