Widowish: A Memoir(57)
One of the girls rushed to answer it, thinking it was another friend arriving, but it was Marcos. Her mouth dropped open.
“Um,” she called to Sophie. “Why is Marcos here?”
“Hello, young lady,” Marcos said to Sophie’s friend, all smiles.
Sophie came running out and saw Marcos in the doorway.
“Hey, Sophie, how are you?”
Sophie quickly turned to look at me. I steadied myself for her response. She could have started crying or yelling or acting mortified. But she did none of those things. She turned to her friend and said, “Oh, he and my mom are dating.”
The friend’s eyes got wide. She shared a look with her mother, who was in the kitchen, and got teary-eyed. She mouthed to me, So happy for you!
Sophie ran to the door. “Hi, Marcos,” she said. “Come in.”
“I’m not staying long,” he said. “Just wanted to say hi.”
The next few minutes played out like an episode of Wild Kingdom, where one species (the teenage girls) crowds around to observe a lone member of another species (Marcos). The young girls were in a group whispering and giggling and pointing to Marcos, while he stood there taking it. The girls then broke apart and, thankfully, went back to getting ready.
By now, Marcos had joined me in the kitchen.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and acknowledged the other moms. He knew all of them, who behind his back were nodding their approval and giving me the thumbs-up.
Every so often, one brave girl would poke her head out and say, “Hi, Marcos!”
After a few minutes, I went back to the living room to check on things and pulled Sophie aside.
“You OK with all of this, Smoosh?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said. “Can I borrow your mascara?”
“Mascara?” I said, feigning shock.
“Please?” Sophie asked, smiling.
I gave her a quick kiss and watched as she ran back to her friends, business as usual.
TWENTY
Love
Oh, I think that’s just wonderful!” Hal said over brunch. He and Rita were taking me out for my birthday. Which meant we were approaching the first-year anniversary of Joel’s passing.
I loved celebrating my birthday. In our family, birthdays are like national holidays. So when Hal called to ask if there was something special I’d like to do, I quickly and happily said yes and made a brunch reservation for Hal, Rita, and myself at a trendy new restaurant nearby. We were toasting another trip around the sun for me, but we had Joel on our minds. It was comforting being with Hal because we both, miraculously, were surviving a life without Joel.
Losing Joel brought us closer together. We bonded during the countless hours we spent in the hospital, and we had been through this excruciating loss together. We respected each other and the pain, suffering, and, ultimately, survival that we had experienced. We were war buddies. Running mates.
Once we had our champagne flutes in hand and put in our orders for salmon benedict and chicken-sausage scrambles, I said, “So I want you both to know that I’m seeing someone.”
Rita’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s terrific! I’m so happy to hear that.”
Hal looked stunned at first, but it was a happy stunned. He smiled, looked over at Rita, then raised his glass to me. “Oh, I think that’s just wonderful!” We clinked our glasses, and I cried. Not the ugly, tears-pouring-down-my-face crying that I was so accustomed to, but a soft, mist-of-tears kind of cry because I was so happy that they were happy. I had a feeling they would be. They loved me. They knew how hard it was for me to act as if I had a life without Joel. But they saw me doing it. They saw how I was parenting for two, on my own, and I knew they were relieved when they heard that I had a respite from it all.
“So tell us,” Hal said. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
I told them about Marcos. How he used to teach Sophie guitar and was also a working musician with gigs all over town. How he was a do-gooder in the community and also had a teenage son. When I got to the part about him and Joel knowing each other, Hal’s whole face lit up.
“That’s great!” he said. “Isn’t that something?”
“When can we meet him?” Rita asked, excited.
The conversation continued. There was no judgment. No criticism.
If anyone was watching us from across the room, they’d observe the two of them, a couple, sitting on one side of the booth, while I sat alone, across from them, an empty seat next to me. It looked like someone was missing. But Joel was with us. We all felt it.
When I called to invite Joel’s mother, Nancy, to a pub near her house to hear a friend of mine play guitar one night, she immediately said yes. Nancy was always open to a new experience and meeting new people.
“I just want to let you know ahead of time, the person who’ll be performing is a man I’ve been seeing.”
“I figured,” she said, laughing. “Why else would you be inviting me? Otherwise, it would just be about the food.”
When Nancy showed up, Marcos had already started performing, so she sat with me and we watched him.
“He’s so handsome!” she said. “I love his nose.”
This made me laugh. Nancy was always one who marched to her own rhythm. I appreciated that she didn’t balk or wince or take any issue whatsoever that Marcos and I were a couple. When he took a break and came over to our table, Nancy stood up and hugged him.