Paige squeezed my hand under the table, her face still tilted towards Mom, brightly attentive. Poor Paige. I was the rebellious one, so she always had to be the good one to keep from breaking Mom’s heart. Paige with her straight As and her bright pink prom dresses and her part-time job as a receptionist. Sure, she made room for her party-planning hobby on the side, which I knew she loved, but I also knew she’d always wanted to be an artist. But she’d given up on that dream a long time ago. Instead she was Perfect Paige with her long list of Mom-approved boyfriends, whose faces she looked up into and smiled and smiled and smiled, and sometimes I didn’t think she even saw their individual faces anymore.
Mom was gathering full steam now, like a locomotive about to make the leap over a broken canyon bridge. She’d be huffing and puffing if she didn’t think it would sound less than genteel. I might be tuning her out, but I could still read her body language like a picture book: this was going to be a long one. Settle back into your chairs, ladies and gentlemen, and the flight attendants will be along shortly to offer you a complimentary beverage during this in-flight movie.
I only tuned back into the conversation when she mentioned Paige’s name: “And then that old art professor of Paige’s shows up at her work, of all places, and tries to get Paige to enter some of her old paintings in a show, really, I’d be open to it if it was some of her nice watercolor landscapes, but no one wants to see that horrid modernist stuff she got into while she was in college.” She shuddered dramatically, as if Paige’s interest in modernist painting were a particularly mangled dead mouse that had been dropped at her feet.
Paige looked down at the napkin in her lap, blushing in shame. And I couldn’t let that stand.
“Uh, obviously people want to see it if her professor is still pursuing it after, what, four years since she took a class,” I said.
My mom shivered delicately. “Yes, well, certainly not our kind of people. Imagine what that would do to Paige’s prospects for a husband!”
Paige was still looking at her lap, ashen-faced, as if she had done something terrible like set fire to a school, rather than just having some talent in a field other than husband-finding. I took pity on her and decided to try to draw my mom’s fire.
“Well, that’s too bad. Oh, hey, that reminds me of this ad we’re putting out for the Grace-and-Harmony personals site—”
I didn’t even get to the part about how I’d helmed the ad about the gender preference options that my mom would have found really offensive before she interrupted.
“Darling, please don’t bring up online personals at the dinner table, they’re unspeakably crass.” She raised her eyebrow at me. “I certainly hope you haven’t had to sink to that level. I will not have you consorting with that—that—” she pulled out the strongest insult she was capable of—“riff-raff.”
Great, first I wasn’t meeting enough men, now, I was trying to meet them the wrong way. “I’m too busy at work to maintain an online profile,” I said, which was technically true, since I hadn’t logged on in months. What can I say, if I wanted constant dick pics I’d sign up for a porn subscription. “We’re actually doing a project with local roots right now, the Knox bourbon—”
“Why, that company’s not an hour’s drive from here!” my mother said, her voice suddenly strangely delighted. She leaned forward, eyes bright. “Tell me, will you be commuting a great deal?”
“Er, yeah…” I said slowly, still trying to work out why she’d switched gears from furious to gleeful.
“And it’s a long-term project?” she asked, her eyes sparkling like those of a mad scientist gathering together all the ingredients needed for a dastardly plan.
“A few months…” I allowed, hesitantly.
“Wonderful!” She clapped her hands and stood, practically sprinting to retrieve the dessert, strawberry shortcakes smothered in whipped cream and dusted with pink sugar, from the sideboard. “This calls for a celebration!”
Wow. My mom had never been so supportive before. What was happening? Was she really so glad that I’d be around more? It seemed more likely that I had just stumbled into an alternate universe where I had a mother who was actually happy for my successes, but…well…could it be that I had just misunderstood my mother’s motivations? Was she just…lonely?
“This opportunity will be perfect!” my mother was enthusing, her cheeks glowing as she distributed the shortcakes. She clasped my shoulder. “It’s not too late for you, my darling. So many opportunities! I’ll start calling around this evening, see if any of my friends know about any nice local boys who are still single.”
My heart dropped, and I could feel my face falling as well. So that was it. Just another match-making scheme, since I would never be a complete person in her eyes unless I was hanging off the arm of a moderately successful man.
“Mom—”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot.” She rolled her eyes fondly at me, magnanimous in the glow of her planning. “Nice local men.”
So now I was not only going to have to prove myself while working on my first big assignment—I was going to have to do it while fending off all the sons and nephews of Mom’s chapter of the Queen Bee Society Quilters and Ladies’ Social Club.
Yeah, that’s an actual organization that she’s not even remotely ashamed to belong to.
Paige shot me another sympathetic look as my mother chattered on, but she had been too cowed by the previous put-down—not to mention a lifetime of being under my mother’s thumb—to try to divert the conversation.
“Oh, there are so many suitable candidates!” my mother prattled on in a rapturous ecstasy of match-making. There was no way I was getting her off this now; I’d have about as much luck trying to stop an army tank with a piece of tissue paper.
So now I just had to revitalize a failing company, show my boss I was more capable than the Douchebros, keep from falling into Hunter’s arms again, and dodge the ‘suitable boys’ my mother was going to be flinging at me like wedding rice.
When I’d said I liked challenges in my job interview, I hadn’t been thinking of anything like this.
FIVE
The birds sounded wrong.