Matchmaking for Beginners

“Well,” she says. “Pregnancy is sociologically and scientifically the most interesting thing I’ve ever done. When you think about what’s really going on in here! Like, did you know that a woman gets fifty percent more blood supply when she’s pregnant? Fifty percent!”

“Astonishing,” my mother says, rolling her eyes. “Maybe you should sit down and rest. Take a load off.” She looks at me. “Please don’t get her started on all this. She starts in with talking about mucous plugs and breast engorgement and I don’t know what all else. Gametes—was that what you were talking about last week? Gametes?”

“That was at the beginning I told you about gametes,” Natalie says cheerfully. “Now we’re at mucous plugs and breast engorgement.”

My mother throws up her hands. “Not in my kitchen! We will not talk like that before dinner!”

Natalie says, “It’s life, Mom. Biology.”

“Biology, shmiology. Not everybody wants to hear about this stuff. It’s like you think you invented having children!”

“Wait, I thought you did invent having children,” I say to Natalie. “Wasn’t that one of your accomplishments? And I, for one, thank you for it.”

“Now I have both of you ganging up on me,” says my mother, but she’s smiling. She starts cutting up iceberg lettuce and plunking it into a bowl with carrots and celery. (Noah’s face rises up in front of me, and he says, “Not even red leaf lettuce? Not even romaine?”)

The men, of course, have headed outside with a platter of hamburgers and their beers. I watch them out by the grill, my father listening to Brian, and then laughing as they clink their beer bottles together.

“Hey, I’d like to chop up some vegetables to roast,” I say, and my mom says, “No need for that. We’ve got salad and that’s enough.”

“But I like roasted vegetables,” I tell her.

Natalie winks at me. She goes to the refrigerator and gets out cauliflower and broccoli and peppers, and hands me a cutting board and knife, all the while telling me about the birth plan that she and Brian have figured out: no epidurals, no fetal monitors, no bright lights. Also, there will be soft alto flute music, and a doula and a midwife. Brian will cut the umbilical cord, which they will then bury. The staff is to speak only in whispers.

My mother puts her knife down. “Well, I think you just want to make sure to do what they tell you. Although that’s all a good idea in theory, please don’t overlook the possibility of a good epidural if someone comes around offering one.”

“I’m not having an epidural,” says Natalie.

“It’s not good, being rigid about these things,” Mom says. “If parenthood teaches you anything, it’s how to be flexible. When you’re a parent, you have no control. None. Might as well start getting used to that now, missy.”

Natalie turns to me, smiling her high-wattage fake smile. “So! New subject time. How does it feel, being back here?”

“Fine,” I say, too quickly.

“Just fine?” my mother says. “Haven’t we been having fun? My God, we’ve done everything!”

“No! I mean, yes, we’re having fun. It’s been wonderful!”

Natalie gives me her dazzling this-is-just-meant-for-you smile. Like she knows all about my mixed feelings as I trot along after our mother like I’m a little kid again.

“Do you have olive oil?” I ask.

“No, we don’t have olive oil. Use corn oil. It’s fine,” my mother says. “And we do not need those vegetables. I told you there’s a salad.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just run out and grab some at the store,” I say.

“The store!” says my mother. “Oh for God’s sake! Honestly! You kids with your olive oil! Corn oil is fine. You’ve been eating it your whole life.”

“I know, it’s just that it doesn’t have the same taste for the marinade . . .”

Natalie, elbowing me in the side and hiding a smile, pretends to duck for cover, and sure enough my mother explodes: “For heaven’s sake, what is it with this generation? All of you! There are only certain foods that can pass your delicate systems? Can’t have American cheese—lord, no! Or canned vegetables! Or bread! Good ole ordinary Wonder Bread! A person could die from bread to hear you tell it! And now corn oil—innocent little corn oil—has to be replaced by the eighteen-dollars-a-bottle olive oil.”

I look over at Natalie, who narrows her eyes at me and cocks one eyebrow.

See? her eyes say. See what you’ve been missing?

Brian comes in to get another beer, looks at my mom and grins at me, and goes back outside.

“Well,” says my mother to me with a big sigh. “Give me the vegetables. I’m going to boil them and put some margarine and salt on them. They’ll be just fine.”

“Mom, let Marnie make the vegetables the way she wants them, why don’t you?” says Natalie. “You know I’m not going to eat any margarine. It’s bad for the baby.”

“I am not going to listen to this!” my mother says. “Margarine is not bad for babies!”

“Mom, will you please just stop? I read a bunch of nutrition blogs, and I know what I’m talking about. So, Marnie, do you ever hear from Noah? Where is he, anyway?” Natalie asks.

My mother takes in a sharp breath and shakes her head. “Oh, so here we go. For heaven’s sake, we are not going to talk about him! I just want tonight to be pleasant. Here we are, all together for the first time in such a long, long time, and I want us all to have a good time. Discuss fun things. Not Noah!”

“Fun things like margarine?” Natalie says, and then she walks over and takes my mother’s drink out of her hand and starts massaging her neck. “Ah yes,” she says. “Here’s the place, isn’t it? Oh yeah, I can feel the knot. This is the Noah Knot. I’m getting it.”

My mother closes her eyes and tilts her head back and forth, and Natalie keeps working away at the spot. I take a sip of my wine so that I won’t say anything—because, really? My mother has a Noah Knot?

My mom opens her eyes and says to me, “Honey, let’s not drink too much now, before we have dinner. You and I didn’t have much lunch today, remember.”

“I’m not—”

My dad comes to the sliding glass door right then to say that the hamburgers are done, and my mother flaps her hands the way she does when events are happening too fast for her, and she starts gathering up the paper plates and the plastic utensils. I reach for the salad bowl, but she says I’m the guest of honor and shouldn’t have to do any work, so I tell her that’s ridiculous, carrying a salad bowl isn’t work, and also I don’t need to be the guest of honor.

“Oh, you!” she says. “We’re just trying to take care of you, sweetie. I just want to make you feel at home here again. And oh my goodness, you two got me so distracted I forgot about boiling your vegetables.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll just put them on the grill.”

“Can we just have the salad, please? Will you humor me on this for God’s sake!” says my mom as she marches out the door. Natalie gives me her what-are-you-gonna-do face.

Outside, the heat hits me like a furnace. The late afternoon sun is still beaming right down on us, and the air is thick with humidity, like something you could roll around in. Brian adjusts the patio umbrella so that my mother will be in the shade while she eats, and my sister sets out the citronella candles while my dad lights the no-bug torches. It’s like a dance they all perform, everyone knowing their roles.

“Sit here by me,” says Natalie, and she pats my arm. And Brian hands me the hamburger platter saying I should get first dibs. My father grins at me across the table, holds up his glass like he’s going to give a toast.

He stands up, looking formal and overcome by emotion. I feel a little pulse of alarm as he clears his throat. “To our sweet little Marnie, the survivor! I just want to say, Ducky, you’ve been hit with some hard blows, but I knew you were going to be all right the moment you opened that door to your apartment in Burlingame, and I saw you were baking. Baking! Isn’t that what we said, Millie? This girl is going to take care of herself. She just needed to be back among family and old friends!”

There’s the clink of glasses as they toast, and then we pass around all the food—the salad and the overcooked hamburgers (my father has a fear of medium rare that rivals what people feel about circus clowns and rattlesnakes)—and for a moment we’re all busy with our plates, and I wonder what would happen if I were to suddenly burst into tears.