Aftermath of Dreaming(2)
Particularly at Wisteria, a restaurant I had never been to before, just driven past it on Robertson Boulevard while always experiencing that dreadful wanting to slow and stare and somehow suddenly be one of the glorious people eating outside there, so I loved that Michael picked it for brunch, but considering its high prices in relation to his modest salary, I was shocked. Michael is the programming director of a local NPR radio station, but not the local NPR station, the one whose shows really are better than commercial radio, which is probably why it’s so popular—the cachet of having your radio at the far left of the dial without having to listen to any weird-views-and-strange-music stuff. Michael works at one of those, but secretly wishes it was the big one.
Michael was nowhere in sight when I arrived at Wisteria a few minutes past our agreed-upon time. As I waited by the ma?tre d’ stand at the entrance to the patio, the California sun seemed to intensify, but without adding extra heat, only shimmer, so that everyone glowed luminously. Even the brunettes looked blond. Though I doubted my mane of dark curls did as I hurried behind the ma?tre d’ through a tight array of tables, faltering a bit on the patio’s uneven brick floor. I wondered if it was purposely designed that way to reveal who was used to it and who was not. I reached the (decent, not great) table without fully tripping and sank into the refuge of the chair. All the women at the other tables had drinks. Red and full and tall with straws shooting out of them like stamens, their bee-stung lips sucking the nectar down. It made me want straight gin, but at brunch that’s a bit of a statement.
“May I have an iced tea, please?” I asked a waiter, or actually a busboy I realized when he gave me an aggrieved look and walked away.
Michael had not materialized. The other diners’ conversations lapped toward me, leaving a small gulf of quiet where my table sat. I wanted him here to fill it with me. With him. With an us that once-was and how-it’d-been, but now would be made radiant by the glittering sun and the exclusivity of this locale we’d be in.
I looked around for Michael. He still had not arrived. My gaze stopped at the far corner of the patio—the prime banquette, colonized by a family. A tiredly handsome man, not even trying to smile, just focusing on his food and the champagne he kept downing and that was then immediately replenished; an energetically conversing woman wearing a stunningly elegant straw hat with nonchalance—on anyone else it would have been too much; the oldest child, the daughter, silent in the security of her exquisite blossoming—the sunlight that landed on her surely never wanted to leave, so happy it was with that similarly golden home; and the son. The son who allowed them to be done—no third child after two daughters here—and who appeared as unaware of what he had saved his family from as he was, for now, of all the power that held. As I watched this family in their attuned nonengagement, the conversation from the couple at the table next to me invaded my ears. It was like watching a silent film with the sound from another movie piped in.
“Yvette.”
I heard my name spoken by Michael before I saw him. He sounded calm, which always amazed me when we were together, this calm voice Michael has, unperturbed by daily life as if emanating from an ancient realm—and his looks are that of a Mediterranean god, the you-want-to-start-civilizations-with-this-man kind so they sort of match—yet his body is in constant action. I feel movement with Michael whether he is still or not. It sometimes used to make me think I might get left behind.
I half stood up and leaned forward to receive the kiss he gave me on the lips, a restaurant kiss, a kiss that hasn’t decided yet if it will become something more or not.
“Michael, hi.” I hoped I sounded wonderful in an ultra-me kind of way. Really present and happy to be there, but able to leave at any second without a regret in sight. I hoped the elocution of his name and short syllable of “hi” held all that.
Immediately, the heretofore nonexistent waiter rushed to our table, as if automatically summoned by the presence of a man.
“We’re ready, Yvette, aren’t we?” Before the waiter could offer his salutation and the recitation of the specials, Michael had forged ahead.
“Yeah, I’ll have the grilled vegetable salad.”
Michael looked at me like I was a small child whose favorite doll had been snatched away, then said to the waiter, “What’s your salmon today?”
“Grilled with a peppercorn crust, served on—”
“No.” The word deflated the waiter. “She can’t eat pepper. Let’s do poached salmon for her, I’ll have crab cakes, and bring the grilled vegetable salad for the table, and two iced teas.”
The waiter turned away, clearly pleased to have the order so easily. Michael took one of my hands and, smiling at me, said, “You love salmon.”
This morning as I am telling my best friend about yesterday’s Michael-brunch, it is at this point in the story that I get into trouble.
“Oh, good Lord.” Reggie’s voice carries out of the telephone, filling my living room. “He ordered you a piece of cold fish and you memorized it. This brunch has become mythic.”
“It has not.”
I am sitting on my couch—the couch from my momma’s house, the home I grew up in, that I slipcovered with a pretty but sturdy dusty blue linen so I can flop down on it and not worry about the cream satin damask underneath—talking to Reggie on the phone while I try to make my way through a bowl of oatmeal, the heart-healthy food. We’ve been talking during breakfast on our phones in our homes for a few years now.