Page 115 of The Plus One Pact

"Books? Or… magazines?" she asks.

Romeo mines zipping his lips.

She laughs.

Again, Amara shakes her head. This time, she powers through. "That can be the answer if you want. But at least listen to the question before you dive into the gutter. What is your idea of a perfect marriage?"

Oh, just that little thing.

Great.

Really great.

I swallow another sip of my gin and tonic. Let the cool liquid warm my throat and cheeks.

She should know better, really. She should know there's no such thing as a perfect marriage. She's been married before!

I fold my hands in my lap and adopt my therapist face. The one that says I'm listening; I'm attentive; I'm not judging anything you say as unusual or outrageous.

I try to avoid it in social situations. People find it off-putting. As they should. It's a professional mask designed to remind clients of the unequal nature of our relationship, where they are free to come and go as they please, and I am there to help without any emotional investment in their lives.

It doesn't really turn out that way, of course. Not exactly. Of course, I cared about my clients and wanted them to do well. Now, I care about my listeners, and I want the best for them.

I have to keep that to myself, for the most part. It's okay to share a little I want good things for you, as long as I'm vague about what those things are.

Otherwise, people start to mold themselves to fit what I want, and it just doesn't work. There's a lot of power in the relationship. A strange sort.

I never got used to that imbalance. That’s one reason I prefer what I do now—I don’t have to train myself not to overinvest emotionally in someone I help over the long term. Even though it's in my nature to keep to the sidelines, to hide behind a poker face, to intellectualize the emotions of others.

Amara takes her turn first. "Marriage is not just for men and women. It's wonderful we've extended the right to all sorts of relationships, but, for me, that part is important. I am a woman, and I want a man who appreciates my femininity. A man who provides and leaves room for me to tend to the house, the family, the garden. I know it's old fashioned, but it's how I've always wanted things. To cook dinner for my husband, to let him choose where we go on vacation, to help him with his work problems. It is not that I am subservient to him, in any way. Rather that we take different roles, equally important roles, ones that compliment each other." She looks to me and Cynthia. "I know that isn't right for many younger women. I know you want to be equal. But you don't have to be the same to be equal. You don't have to split finances down the middle to share fifty-fifty. And, yes, I know, more than any of you, how risky this is for women. How it puts you in a position to lose everything if your husband decides to take it away. But it doesn't have to be that way. I always trusted Carlos, but we still had everything in writing."

"What are you talking about, Mama?" Daniel asks. "You and Dad didn't have any money? What was in writing?"

"We knew where we stood," she says. "The accounts. The savings. Your college funds. And when your great-aunt passed and this became ours, we talked about it, what it meant for us. For you. We both had the same goal: to give you two the best lives possible. But we didn't always agree on what that meant."

"What sort of stuff did you not agree on?" Cynthia asks.

"Carlos was like Daniel," she says. "He wanted to be an American. United States American." She waves off Daniel before he can object. "He wanted the big house, the fast car, the expensive college. He knew image mattered. He knew people would look at Danny and Rome and see the color of their skin and know they were from south of the border. We were both immigrants, but it was a different experience, because of our countries, because he was a man and I was a woman, because of a million things."

"And you wanted them to stay down to Earth?" Cynthia asks.

She nods. "To remember what matters. Family. Small moments. Small pleasures. Love and art and food and music. And, yes, boys, sex, too."

"That's what she meant by little things," Romeo jests.

"She was talking about your stamina, yes," Daniel returns.

Cynthia laughs.

I do too.

Amara shakes her head. "I worried they would care too much about image and status. Maybe you do, sometimes. But you are both good boys, even if you make some mistakes." She looks to the painting of her and her late husband. "Carlos and I didn't have much money, most of the time, but we always knew how to share with each other. I would make the home and he would make the money. Some people don't see that as equal, but it felt equal to me. It freed me to my art, and he never resented that."

"As long as you kept the place nice," Daniel says.

She returns something in Italian.

"It's true, Mama," Romeo says. "Dad was fussy about it sometimes. Rude, even."