Matchmaking for Beginners(25)
My father is sure that I need to find another job, but he is patient and willing to help me. He says I need something with security! Health benefits! A pension! He talks to Rand Carson, my old boss at the Crab & Clam House when I was a teenager (I was chief clam girl, I’ll have you know)—and when I make a face and tell my dad, “Not the fried clams again!” he says I am in line for a much more senior position: dining room manager. I can boss the clam kids around while somebody else pays my health insurance premiums.
My mother has another life in mind for me altogether, as her sidekick. She declares happily that we are “joined at the hip” as we make the rounds of her social life and errands: to the pool, to the store, to the library, to the gym, to lunch with her friends, and then we do the whole circuit all over again the next day. I am the prodigal daughter, welcomed back into the neighborhood, complimented for how I’ve grown up, for my nice smile. And it’s true; I smile brightly at all the people my mother knows, which is nearly everyone in town. The neighbors who are outside watering their lawns need to run over just to get a look at me, as does Rita, the cashier at the Winn-Dixie, and Drena, who has styled my mother’s hair since forever at the Do or Dye Salon on Hyde Park Avenue. They all look at me with slightly pitying expressions on their faces. So they know the whole story. Of course they do, but they understand.
And then there’s my sister, who lives only a half mile from my parents, in a new subdivision that features the kind of dream house that two full-time professional incomes can provide. She is just about to begin her maternity leave when I arrive, and she is the perfect example of how a perfect person can make a perfect life. I know, I know: I am using the word perfect too many times, and no life is perfect, but when I am with Brian and Natalie in their cozy house, with her cozy big belly, and the furniture all overstuffed and comfortable, and the walls painted muted shades of gray and beige with white trim, and the windows all clean and everything looking peaceful and restful, I think that this—this!—is what everybody had been hoping would magically fall into my lap, too. I, myself, did not see it, frankly; given a house like this, I’d be painting the walls real colors, colors from the red family or the turquoise family, and hanging modern art on the walls.
One morning I’m having breakfast with my father out on the patio, just us, when he asks me what I see myself doing in my life, so I tell him the truth.
“Well, I have a lot of plans actually. I’m really into that idea of baking cupcakes with little sayings in them—like fortune cookies, you know, but with cupcakes. And also I’d like to write love letters for people who can’t think of the right words. Oh! And I also would love to make costumes. Maybe do a stop-action film with figurines in costumes. I could write the scripts. Or, say, I could be happy, um, working in a bookstore because I could help people find the novels they need to read for whatever is bothering them.”
He folds his newspaper and smiles at me. “We should try to narrow this down and see how any of it could be monetized,” he says. “When you’re thinking of what to do with your life, whatever your occupation is, it would help to think money.”
“Also, you’re going to think this sounds crazy,” I tell him, “but it’s possible that I could turn out to be a matchmaker. I mean, I’ve had a few successes at it, so it’s something maybe I could pursue.”
He gets up and ruffles my hair on his way to leave for work. “Ducky, I’m gonna say it again. You’re a fascinating human, but that’s not what life’s about. You gotta make some money.”
It is not lost on me that this—Natalie and Brian’s dream house—this is the reward for going to school and really applying yourself to a skill that people want and will pay for. You get to meet a nice person, and so what that he is maybe not the most zany, creative, handsome person you ever met, a guy who wants to play guitar all night long and write you love songs, and then cook omelets at three in the morning, like the guy I married by mistake—but he is instead that other kind of man: a provider, an ethical, strong, good man with an eye to the future. Your future.
Ah, you see how it is with me. You see how Noah creeps in. He has set up shop in my head with his goofy love songs and his Ray-Ban sunglasses and a storehouse of memories, like the way he’d claim he had a special delivery for me of one thousand smooches and then he’d kiss my whole body, up and down, every inch of me. Both of us laughing until—well, until we couldn’t anymore.
There is no point in thinking about this, however. I’m in my real life now. Back where I started from, and where I will pick up the pieces.
My room, still painted pink, smells like being a kid again. The light still slants in through the pink cotton curtains just the same as it always did, a slant that is so familiar it may actually be installed in my DNA—along with the sound of the hinges of my bedroom door, chiming like a musical note, and the flat-yellow hall light shining up into the attic.
Late at night, after my parents have gone to bed, I find my way to the family room, the lived-in, comfortable space, where you don’t have to pretend about anything. There’s the same worn-out rag rug, the chipped bookshelves, and an old brown corduroy couch that hugs you when you sit down, like it’s so very glad to see you.
Welcome home, Marnie, the couch says to me, and I sink farther into its soft cushions and let myself fall under its spell of safety and familiarity.