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Bridget nodded.
“Well, nice to meet you, Gilda,” the woman who was her grandmother called after her.
“The restaurant was really fabulous. I thought we’d just go to a neighborhood place, but he’d made a reservation at Josephine. Can you believe that? I was worried I was underdressed, but he said I looked perfect. Those were his exact words. ‘You look perfect.’ Can you believe that? I spent the longest time trying to figure out what to order so I wouldn’t end up with béarnaise sauce down the front of my blouse or salad in my teeth.”
Christina laughed so heartily it was as though no one had ever soldiered through that predicament before her.
Carmen looked down at her whole-wheat toaster waffle. The four middle squares contained full pools of syrup and the rest of it lay dry. The things her mother was saying were things Carmen should have been saying. She couldn’t help noting the irony with a certain amount of sourness. Carmen wasn’t saying them because her mother was saying them and saying them and saying them and not shutting up.
Christina widened her eyes dramatically. “Carmen, I wish you could have tasted the dessert. It was to die for. It was called tarte tatin.”
The overeager French accent with the uptilting snap of Puerto Rican just under the surface made Carmen unable to be as mad at her mother as she wanted to be.
“Yum,” Carmen said dully.
“He was so sweet. Such a gentleman. He opened the car door for me. When was the last time that happened?” Christina looked at her like she really wanted an answer.
Carmen shrugged. “Never?”
“He graduated from Stanford University. Did I say that already?”
Carmen nodded. Christina looked so pathetically proud, Carmen couldn’t help thinking shamefully about her own pride the night before when she’d said her dad went to Williams.
Carefully Carmen tipped the syrup bottle, attempting to fill each individual square of her waffle with its own small puddle. “What’s his name again?”
“David.” Christina seemed to enjoy the taste of it even more than tarte tatin.
“How old did you say he was?”
Christina depuffed a little. “He’s thirty-four. That’s only four years’ difference, though.”
“More like five,” Carmen said. It was a mean thing to say masquerading as a true thing to say. Her mother was turning thirty-nine in less than a month. “But he does sound really nice,” Carmen added to make up for it.
That was all her mother needed. “He is. He really is.” And she proceeded to rattle on about just how nice he was straight through two additional waffles. About how he had brought her coffee a few times at the office and helped her when her computer froze.
“He’s a third-year associate,” Christina blabbed informatively, as if Carmen would care at all. “He didn’t go to law school right after college. He worked for a newspaper in Memphis. I think that’s what makes him so interesting.” Christina said the word like it had only ever deserved to be used this one time.
Carmen poured herself a glass of milk. She hadn’t had a glass of milk since she was about thirteen. She wondered, with a scientific sort of curiosity, how long her mother would keep talking if she herself didn’t say anything at all?
“He’s always been so friendly and helpful, but I never imagined he would want to take me out on a date. Never!” Christina took the opportunity to circle the small room a few times. Her church shoes clack clacked on the peach linoleum.
“I know it’s probably not a good idea to date somebody from the office, but on the other hand, we don’t work in the same department or even on the same floor.” She waved her arm, grandly allowing the concept of an office romance before she’d even finished disallowing it.
“I mean, last night, watching you go, I felt so old and lonely thinking about how it would be with you gone next year. And then this! The timing is straight from God, I think.”
Carmen made herself not mention that God had a lot of better things to think about.
“I shouldn’t leap ahead. What if it goes nowhere? What if he isn’t looking for a real relationship? What if he’s in a different place than me?”
First off, Carmen hated when her mother used the word place like some great metaphysician. And second, since when was her mother looking for a relationship?
She hadn’t gone out with a guy since Carmen was in fourth grade.
Not answering didn’t do the job. Even going to the bathroom didn’t stem her mother’s flow of words. Carmen wondered whether actually leaving the apartment would make her mother stop talking.
At last Carmen consulted the clock. It was never on her side. For the first time in Carmen-Christina history it said they were not late for church. “We oughta get going,” Carmen suggested anyway.
Her mother nodded and followed her companionably from the kitchen, talking all the while. She didn’t take a break until they pulled into the church parking lot.
“Tell me, nena,” Christina asked as she dropped her keys into her purse and steered Carmen into church. “How was your evening?”
Lenny,
I know you’re just a few blocks away and I’ll be shoving the Pants into your arms in about five (okay, ten) minutes when I pick you up (okay, late) for work. But it made me a little sad not to be writing a letter from a faraway place, and then I thought, well, hey, just because we can e-mail and call and see each other all we want this summer doesn’t meant I can’t write a letter from a near place, does it? That’s not exactly a felony, is it?
So, Lenny, I know it’s not like last summer. You don’t miss me, because you saw me several times yesterday and then I blabbed you into a near coma last night. But even though you are about to see me and possibly yell at me for being late (again), I can still take this opportunity to tell you that you are the best, greatest, awesomest Lenny ever and I love you a lot. So go crazy in these Pants, chickadee.
Carmen Electrifying
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
—Winston Churchill
Lena didn’t go crazy in the Pants. The first day she left them at home in her room on top of the pile of letters from Kostos. The second day she wore them to work, got reprimanded by Mrs. Duffers, and had to take them off before lunchtime. She left them on the chair in the back of the store, where a customer saw them and tried to buy them.
Her heart was still pounding from the horror of that experience when Effie strode in. It was closing time, and Lena hadn’t finished cleaning out the fitting rooms.
“So guess who called today?” Effie demanded.
“Who?” Lena hated Effie’s guessing games, especially when she was tired.
“Guess.” Effie followed her back to the fitting rooms.
“No!”
Effie looked sour. “Fine. Fine.” She cast her eyes upward for patience. “Grandma. I talked to her.”
“You did?” Lena stopped picking up clothes. “How is she? How’s Bapi?”
“They’re great. They had a big anniversary party in the old restaurant last month. The whole town was there.”
