Unmarried? Not a spinster, just a ‘Late Bloomer'
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We chose what we had been told was the best restaurant in Prague. It was actually a large apartment, which had been divided into several intimate, formal dining rooms, each with only a few tables.
When Miguel arrived, he looked even more handsome than I’d remembered. He was wearing a slim, navy wool, single-button suit with a rich blue V-neck sweater underneath. He was so continental, and I was so local. He was the Riviera. I was the East River. This was the early nineties, when granny boots and T shirts worn under loose apron dresses were big. I had worn this, my favorite outfit, specially for the occasion. I also had on earrings, big hoops. I rarely wore earrings, because I thought they made me look like a gypsy, and true to my fear, I now felt as if I should be banging a tambourine and pickpocketing tourists in a crowded marketplace.
“You two look very beautiful,” he said.
I imagined kissing him. Standing under one of the dramatic arches we’d seen that day, on a cobblestone street in my long apron and granny boots. I’d press that gorgeous Argentinean face into mine. He’d whisper something in my ear like “I couldn’t wait for dinner to be over. I couldn’t wait to be alone with you.” I just had to be careful not to drink too much since I was very nervous.
“Joyce, your necklace is so unusual,” Miguel said.
My mother was wearing a thin red sweater and a heavy silver necklace that my brother, sister, and I thought looked like an enlarged, diseased organ.
“I got this from a sculptor in Tel Aviv,” she said. “He usually does large installations using scrap metal from cans. My children hate this necklace, don’t you?”
“We call it ‘The Liver,’ ” I said, smiling at Miguel. I kept smiling, then smiled some more, but he didn’t look at me. Instead, he stared at my mother.
“Oh, no. It’s very artistic,” Miguel said. “Besides, calling it ‘The Liver’ is actually a compliment because of all that the liver does.”
“I didn’t do so well in biology,” I said. “Our biology teacher turned out to be making extra money doing porn and he got fired midyear.”
“That’s nice.” He turned to my mother. “The liver is our filter. It keeps us alive. It’s the most important organ in the body,” Miguel said, moving so close to my mother that his face was inches from hers. “Next to the heart.” He held out his hand. “Joyce, may I touch it?”
“Why, of course,” my mother said.
I watched as he lifted the heavy, pear-shaped bulb in the center of her chest. “Fantastic,” he said, staring not at the necklace but deep into my mother’s eyes, the way I imagined he had looked at me when I offered him the tissue at the cemetery, the brief moment I’d been replaying in my head all day. This was before I began imagining how he would spend his next vacation visiting me in Los Angeles.
I pictured us spending the entire time holed up in my dark, slightly depressing apartment. When we could manage to tear ourselves away from each other, I’d take him to one of those parties that feel so quintessentially L.A., the kind where you’re waiting for the keg and realize John Stamos and Dave Grohl are standing behind you. Then, at the end of the evening, I’d wave good-bye to my friends, all successful screenwriters, and think that, despite my being a total failure with a career in the crapper, at least I had a hot Argentinean boyfriend who might one day love me.
When the waiter came, Miguel was still holding on to my mother’s necklace as if it were glued to his fingers. “Joyce. It’s clear you have a very stylish eye,” Miguel said.
The waiter, a thin man with a bold black mustache that carpeted his lip, stood at the table holding two bottles of wine, waiting for my mother to notice him. I kicked my mother’s foot under the table, trying to tell her that the waiter had been standing there, but Miguel looked at me and frowned. “That’s my foot,” he said, releasing her necklace.
“Mom, that one looks good,” I said, pointing to the more expensive of the two.
Taking my suggestion, my mother looked up at the waiter. “We’ll take that one.”
“Excellent choice, Joyce,” Miguel said. “Clearly, you know wine.”
“I know I like it,” my mother said. “But I’d hardly call myself an expert. I’ve been an expat, when I lived in England after the war, but never an expert.”
Miguel laughed. An expansive, rollicking belly laugh. I wasn’t even convinced he understood what she’d said. “Joyce, you’re very funny,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Does everyone tell her how funny she is?”
“Not really,” I said. I downed my glass of wine and filled another one.
“Lying will get you everywhere,” my mother said. “But Amy’s the funny one. Miguel, guess what Amy does. Actually, sweetheart, you tell him. It’s very exciting.”
“Mom, no, really.” I waved my hand back and forth along my throat, pantomiming for her to cut what she was saying.
Miguel kept his eyes fixed on my mother as he reluctantly turned toward me. “What do you do?” he asked.
“I just graduated from film school,” I said. “I wrote a screenplay, which didn’t get bought. End of story.”
I stared at my empty glass, waiting for Miguel to pour me another one, as he was doing for my mother.
“Oh, come on now,” my mother said. “It was much more exciting than that. Tell him what the film was about.”
“It’s about a woman who goes back in time to meet herself as a teenager,” I said, as if my words were on a forced death march. “She’s very unhappy as an adult, so she tries to prevent herself from growing up to be such an unhappy person. Etc. Etc.”
He didn’t say anything at first; it seemed as if he were ruminating about the cleverness of my script. But then he looked not at me, but somewhere off in the distance. “Why have Hollywood movies become so mindless?” he asked. “I don’t mean yours,” he finally added, which made it absolutely clear that he did. “Are people so desperate for money?”
“Well, it is Hollywood,” I said, feeling rather desperate myself. I reached across the table for the bottle of wine that was now in front of him. “I just wanted to make people laugh. This was my first script.”
“And is that a reason to do it?” he said. “The world needs ‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘The Battle of Algiers.’ Not another mindless comedy.”
Before I could defend myself and mention that I was a huge fan of both of those movies, having seen each several times, Miguel turned to my mother. “Joyce, what do you do?”
She sat up very straight, and I knew what was coming. “I’m a career volunteer,” she said. “Which means that”
“I understand,” he interrupted. “You work for a charity. How excellent. Tell me all about that. I’m terribly interested because I was thinking for a time that I wanted to go into the Peace Corps. To devote my life to public service. And my parents approved. My father spent a short time working in Africa with Dr. Schweitzer.”
“But they had to settle for a doctor?” my mother said, proud of her joke.
He laughed keenly. “Yes, sad, isn’t it? No, no, I thought, and my father agreed, with a medical degree I’d be more help in an AIDS ward.” He smiled perfunctorily at me, as if to say, “See, not everybody is so desperate to make money.” Then he turned back to my mother. “I just see so many people doing such self-indulgent things with their lives.”
My glass was empty now and so was the bottle. I had no choice but to steal my mother’s wine.
“Miguel, when Amy was in high school she raised money for Oxfam,” my mother said. “She was always very involved.”
Miguel pointed dramatically in her direction. “That’s because you’re such a wonderful mother. You’ve impressed upon your children how important it is to think of others.” Then he turned to me. “Do you volunteer now? You probably want to get away from yourself sometimes.”
This was about the time I finished eating my pork neck in dill sauce and began eating the rest of my mother’s goulash.
“Last month I painted Christmas decorations at a home for juvenile delinquents,” I said, spearing several cubes of slick meat and shoving them into my mouth. “I painted snowflakes with a kid who robbed a Seven-Eleven.”
“Well, that’s something,” he said. “Joyce, does everyone tell you that you look very young? It’s amazing.”
“I think you were out in the sun too long,” she said. “But that’s lovely of you to say.”
“Are you two done?” I said.
Miguel looked at me, and I pointed to the waiter standing to my left.
“He wants to take our plates,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” my mother said.
“Thank you,” Miguel added.
“Miguel, I’ve been so good all day,” my mother said. “But I just can’t contain myself. Do you have a girlfriend?”
Miguel became very bashful and stared at his lap, and as he did, I mouthed to my mother, “Cut it out.” She batted her hand at me, as if to say, “Oh, shush.” This reminded me of the time I told my mother I’d met a witty, mildly famous Hollywood producer at a party and immediately developed an insatiable crush on him, and she said, “Call him up and ask him out for a Coke!” Just that feeling of “Mom, what planet are you on?” The Argentinean Jewish doctor didn’t like me. Better to forfeit the fight and go home with as little blood as possible.
“Joyce, I’m very available,” he said, smiling at her. “Tell me, where is your husband? Are you married?”
“My father had to stay in New York and work,” I said. “We called him before we came to dinner. He said he misses us. A lot. He really misses us. He’s insanely jealous.”
“Well, he’s a very lucky man, Joyce,” Miguel said. “You have a very special quality. In addition to being very beautiful, you seem like someone I’ve known a very long time. I imagine you’ve led a very interesting life.”
As my mother told him about her years in postwar England, when she met Anna Freud and ate lentil soup with Alec Guinness, I ate her entire portion of apple strudel and then the generous platter of crepes drizzled in heavy chocolate and cream that was meant to serve three. And then I ordered a plate of fluffy peach dumplings.
“Tomorrow we’re going to visit the Kafka sights,” my mother said. “I’m salivating. I love Kafka.”
Miguel got a dreamy look on his face. “He’s my favorite writer,” he said. “What are your favorite works?”
I interrupted. “Which is the Kafka story that describes the torturing and killing of prisoners?” I looked at Miguel. “The one that’s very brutal with the instrument they called the ‘apparatus’?”
“‘In the Penal Colony’!” my mother said, brightly. “Oh, I love that story too. But I still think ‘Metamorphosis’ is my favorite.”
“Me too,” Miguel said. “Excellent taste, Joyce.”
My mother blushed and then looked over at me. “Oh, sweetheart, you look like you’re about to plotz. Let’s get you to sleep.”
And there it was. There would be no midnight walk. No kissing under any arches, just wrecking balls at six A.M.
As we left the restaurant, Miguel said, “I hope to see you tomorrow,” adding clumsily, “both of you.”
My mother smiled as she waved good-bye.
“He’s in love with you,” I said.
“Oh, please. That’s ridiculous. That’s just the wine talking.”
“Yours or mine?” I said. “And I’m not spending the day with him tomorrow.”
“Fine. We’ll leave the hotel before he calls. Besides, you know those Latins. They’re like Italians. They’re all crazy about their mothers, and I’m sure he just wanted me to fill in. It’s actually very insulting if you ask me.”
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