On Turpentine Lane(22)

I didn’t panic, exactly. But what would bring so many next of kin to an ex-fiancée’s door in the manner of military chaplains? “Is he okay?” I asked.

“He’s great!” said Rebecca.

My mother motioned You first to the callers, so she could mouth Sorry . . . behind their ample backs.

With only a couch in the parlor, I made myself busy borrowing kitchen chairs. Stuart’s mothers took seats on the sofa. Rebecca was patting the middle cushion with increased energy until I had no choice but to settle between them. “Iona and I are here to say we’re inconsolable that you broke the engagement,” she began.

“Anyone want tea?” asked my mother.

“What kind do you have?” asked Rebecca.

“Nothing special,” I said.

“Decaffeinated?”

“Are you here to talk Faith into taking Stuart back?” my father asked.

I said, “You’re welcome to stay for tea, but I am not going to marry Stuart.”

“Do you actually approve of this walk across the country, as if he has something to say?” my father asked. “Like it means something; like it counts for something?”

“He’s forty-one years old,” said Rebecca. “He doesn’t need our approval. We don’t even have to get it in order to accept it.”

“That’s just the point,” I said. “He’s forty-one years old! He should’ve done this when he was twenty-one! He shouldn’t be living his life on Facebook.”

“Does he even have health insurance?” my father asked.

“We wouldn’t know,” one of them sniffed.

I said I happened to know he did not.

Rebecca said, “Do you have to be engaged in order to live together? Couldn’t you just be companions?”

“Roommates,” said Iona. “Twin souls.”

I said, “We do not share souls, not even close. And why would I want a freeloading roommate?”

Even my father inhaled sharply at such unaccustomed rudeness.

But there was no sharp intake of breath from the unoffendable Rebecca. “I can tell you why. Because he’s good company! He’s smart. He’s got a big heart. He’s handsome. He believes in people—”

“What does that mean—‘believes in people’?” my father asked.

I said, “Please don’t explain. I’ve heard it a million times. I can recite it by heart.”

“Who but a lost soul walks across the country?” my mother grumbled. “A lost soul with no job and no money in the bank.”

I asked Rebecca if Stuart had sent them here as relationship missionaries.

“Would that be so terrible?” asked Iona.

“Are either of you Facebook friends with him?” I asked.

The two women exchanged questioning glances before saying, “No.”

“Well, you should be. Then you’d understand what put the final nail in the coffin—his arm around every woman between here and Illinois.”

“Hyperbole aside,” said his mother, “even if he is meeting a lot of women en route, he thinks of you as his anchor.”

“Anchor?” my mother said. “Or meal ticket?”

“I resent that,” said Rebecca.

“We both do,” said Iona.

“You know what’s missing?” my father asked. “And what may have been missing all along? I haven’t heard anyone mention love.”

If a subtitle had materialized beneath either of their ruddy perplexed faces, it would have read: Did you just hear what I heard? Did a male of the species just speak rather eloquently of love?



My parents stayed after the Stuart apologists left to explain that Rebecca and Iona had simply shown up at their door, trying to enlist the sympathies of Stuart’s once-future in-laws. When your father has spent most of his working life insuring people’s houses, he is in the habit of looking, metaphorically speaking, under the rug. It turned out that their visit wasn’t just to chaperone Rebecca and Iona, but had its own purpose. Wally the inspector had told my brother about the cradle in my attic, and Joel had casually reported its existence to my mother.

“I think it’s a sign,” she said.

“Nancy—,” my father warned.

“Of what?”

“Of a baby! One that will be born while you’re living here!”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Ma.”

“You could do it. We’re a modern family. We’d help. And you don’t need to be married to have a baby anymore. There’s no stigma. It’s even fashionable.”

“I’m aware of that. But I’m in no position to have a baby.”

“And you’re romanticizing a cradle that’s probably been consumed by termites,” said my father.

“Were there termites in Wally’s report?” my mother asked. “Because that’s something an inspector looks for.”

I said no, but—

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” my mother asked, with a happy nudge.

“I don’t know what—”

“Plan B: eBay! It could be a hundred years old, a valuable antique . . . Henry?”

“Henry what?” he asked.