Marcus followed me into the kitchen, where I went off on my family. "How could they go on and on about this wedding after what I just went through? Can you believe how insensitive they're all being? I wanted to tell them about us getting married. Now it just doesn't feel right. Probably because I don't even have a ring," I said. I shouldn't have shifted the blame to Marcus like that, but I couldn't help it. Casting the blame net wide is just my natural instinct when I'm upset.
Marcus just looked at me, and then said, "Can I get another beer?"
I opened the refrigerator with such force that a bottle of Heinz ketchup flew from the side shelf onto the floor.
"Everything all right in there?" my mother asked from the living room.
"Just dandy!" I said, as Marcus replaced the ketchup and grabbed another beer.
I took a deep breath, and we returned to the living room, where my mother and Lauren were talking about the guest list.
"Two hundred seems just about right," Lauren said.
"I think you're going to realize that two hundred is the bare minimum. It adds up fast. If your parents invite twenty couples, and we invite twenty couples, that's eighty guests right there," my mother said.
"True," Lauren said. "And I'm going to want to invite a lot of people from Good Haven."
"Well, that should cut down on the liquor bill," Marcus joked.
Lauren shook her head and tittered. "You'd be surprised how much they can put away. Every year at the Christmas party, they get lousy drunk."
"Sounds like a wild and crazy time," I said.
"Do they ever… you know… hook up?" Marcus asked. His first substantive contribution to the conversation was about geriatric sex. Lovely.
Lauren giggled and then launched into a story about Walter and Myrtle and their recent escapades in Myrtle's room. After she exhausted the nursing-home romance tales, my mother finally turned to my boyfriend and said, "So, Marcus. Tell us a little about yourself."
"What would you like to know?" he asked. Dex would have posed the same question, but with a completely different tone.
"Anything. Everything. We want to get to know you."
"Well. I'm from Montana. I went to Georgetown. Now I work at a pointless marketing job. That's about it."
My mom raised her eyebrows and recrossed her ankles. "Marketing? How interesting."
"Not really," Marcus said. "But it pays the bills. Barely."
"I've never been to Montana," Jeremy remarked.
"Neither have I," Lauren said.
"Have you ever been out of the state?" I muttered under my breath. Then, before she could tell us about her childhood trip to the Grand Canyon, I said, "So what's for dinner?"
"Lasagna. Mom and I made it together," Lauren said.
"You and Mom, huh?"
Lauren was unfazed. "Yeah! And you'll be my sister! Like the sister I never had! It's just too, too wonderful."
"Uh-huh," I said.
"So Marcus, do you have brothers and sisters?" my mother asked.
"Yeah," he said. "One brother."
"Older or younger?"
"Four years older."
"How nice."
Marcus gave her a stiff smile, took another sip of beer. I suddenly remembered how much I wanted to kiss him the night of Rachel's birthday as I watched him drinking a beer at the bar. Where had those feelings gone?
The cocktail hour mercifully ended, and the six of us made our way into my mom's Ethan Allen dining room. Her china cabinet was polished to a high gloss and filled with her Lenox china and crystal.
"Take your seats, everyone. Marcus, you may sit there." She pointed at Dexter's old chair. I saw a pained look flash in my mother's eyes. She missed Dex. Then another look crossed her face—one of determination.
But despite her efforts, dinner was painful. There were stilted questions from my parents and terse answers coupled with more beer-guzzling from Marcus. Then he made the comment that will go down in history.
It started with Jeremy talking about one of his patients, an older man who had just left his wife for a much younger woman. Thirty-one years his junior.
"What a shame," Lauren clucked.
"Shocking," my mother added.
Even my father, whom I sometimes suspected of committing his own indiscretions, shook his head with apparent disgust.
But for some reason, Marcus couldn't just get on board and disapprove along with the rest of the group. Or simply say nothing at all, which he had mastered up until that point. Instead he chose to open his mouth and say, "Thirty-one years, huh? Guess that means that my second wife hasn't even been born yet."
My father and Jeremy exchanged glances, wearing identical raised-brow expressions. My mother deflated as she stroked the stem of her wine glass. Lauren laughed nervously and said, "That's really funny, Marcus. Good one!"
Marcus smiled halfheartedly, realizing that his joke had not gone over.
Suddenly, I was in no mood to salvage the night or my new boyfriend's image. I stood and carried my dishes into the kitchen, my posture ramrod erect. I heard my mother excuse herself and click after me in her heels.
"Sweetheart, he was only trying to be funny," my mother said under her breath when we were alone in the kitchen. "Or perhaps he's just nervous, meeting your parents for the first time. Your father can be intimidating."
But I could tell that she didn't believe her words. She thought Marcus was crass, subpar, nowhere close to Dexter's caliber.