The Mother-in-Law(6)
That was the kind of person my mother was.
The only time I saw Mum dress in black—without so much as a headband or wiglet or adornment—was when she attended a conference or dinner with Dad. Dad is the polar opposite of Mum—conservative, serious, gentle. The only time Mum reined in her personality, in fact, was for Dad. When Dad decided to switch tenures midway through his academic career—something tricky and likely to undermine his career and our livelihood—she supported him without question. “Dad’s job is to look after us, our job is to look after him.”
Dad never recovered after she died. Apparently statistics said that most men remarry within three years of a previous relationship ending, but twenty years on, Dad is still happily single. Your mother was my life partner, he always says, and a life partner is for life.
Dad hired a housekeeper after Mum died, to cook and clean and shop for us. Maria was probably fifty, but with her black hair flecked with gray that was rolled into a coil she may as well have been a hundred. She wore skirts and pantyhose and low-heeled court shoes, and floral aprons she sewed herself. Her own children were grown and the grandchildren hadn’t showed up yet. She came from twelve noon until six P.M. every day. I don’t know what Maria’s official role was insofar as I was concerned, but she was always there when I got home from school and it seemed like it was the best part of her day. It was the best part of my day too. She’d empty my bag and rinse out my lunchboxes and chop up fruit and cheese on a plate for my afternoon tea—things Mum wouldn’t have done in a blind fit. With hindsight, some may have felt smothered by Maria.
I simply felt mothered.
Once, when I had the flu, Maria came for the whole day. She pottered around, checking on me periodically, bringing me water or tea or a cool cloth for my forehead. A couple of times, when I was dozing and heard her enter the room, I’d let out a little moan, just to hear Maria fussing. She’d kiss my forehead and bring me water. She even fed me soup with a spoon.
It was, hand on heart, one of the best days of my life.
Maria left when I turned eighteen. She’d had her first grandchild by then, as well as an aging dog with glaucoma, and besides, I was nearly grown so there wasn’t much for her to do anymore. After that, Dad got a regular cleaner, and started doing his grocery shopping on his way home from work. Maria kept in touch with birthday gifts and Christmas cards, but eventually her life got filled up with her own family. And that’s when I realized. I needed my own family. A husband, some children, an old blind dog. Most importantly, I needed a Maria. Someone to share recipes, to give wisdom, and to drown me in waves of maternal love. Someone who wouldn’t leave and go back to her own family because I was her family.
I didn’t have a mother anymore. But one day, perhaps, I’d have a mother-in-law.
After dinner, Tom tells us to go hang out in the “den,” which is a room with soaring cathedral ceilings and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and masses of leather. It reminds me of a gentlemen’s club. It has an enormous TV that rises up out of a buffet, as well as an actual bar, loaded with spirits. Ollie has been called into the kitchen to help with coffee and dessert (which I assume means they want to debrief about me) so I am kicking it in the gentlemen’s club with Nettie and Patrick.
“So,” Patrick says, from the bar. He is making us some sort of cocktail, which I don’t need because I’ve already had two glasses of wine, but he seems so happy messing about with all the spirits that I don’t have the heart to tell him. “What do you think of Diana?”
“Patrick,” Nettie warns.
“What?” A smile curls at the corners of his mouth. “It isn’t a trick question.”
I scramble pathetically for something to say but honestly, there isn’t much. Diana spent most of dinner intermittently asking if anyone wanted any more vegetables. She deflected any questions I asked her, and apart from her little chuckle about her first meeting with Tom, she remained frustratingly distant all evening. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for Tom and Nettie and Patrick, it wouldn’t have felt like a social function at all. All I know is that Diana is nothing like I was hoping.
“Well . . . I think she . . . is . . .” I roll several words around in my mouth—nice, interesting, kind—but none of them feel right and I don’t want to be insincere. I am, after all, not just here to impress the parents. If things work out between Ollie and me, I’ll be spending alternate Christmases with Nettie and Patrick for the rest of my life . . . so it is important to be real. Problem is, it is too early to be really real. Meeting the family, I realize, requires you to be a politician. You need to know where to throw your support at what time to yield maximum results. I decide to do as my mother always told me and find something true to say.
“I think she is a wonderful cook.”
Patrick laughs a little too heartily. Nettie looks daggers at him.
“Oh come on, Nets.” Patrick gives her a poke in the ribs. “Listen, she could be worse. At least we have Tom, right?”
It’s cold comfort. I’d had such a distilled picture of what I wanted in a potential mother-in-law—no father-in-law, not even Tom, could take its place. Patrick, on the other hand, seems to have accepted his frosty mother-in-law without too much concern, despite the fact that she clearly isn’t his cup of tea either.
“Well,” I say after a few minutes, when Ollie has still not showed his face and I get the feeling Nettie wants a moment alone with Patrick. “I might go see how dessert is coming along.”