“He’s your ‘boyfriend’ for ten minutes.” She puts air quotes around the word and it makes something in my head snap. “How important can it be? He can celebrate with you on your actual birthday.”
“He’s been my boyfriend for almost five months, and we love each other, and I don’t think it’s okay for you to expect me to not have him with me at such an important event. I’ve been very respectful of your past with him—I haven’t talked to you about him at all, or been gooey and glowy with you—but really, I would think that maybe we could all just be adults about this.”
She laughs derisively. “Adults? Since when are you an adult, Eloise, really? You ran away from home to wander about Europe like you were on some never-ending gap year, had a boyfriend who was more a daddy figure, came back and hunkered down with your mommy and your auntie and your little baking pal Marcy, and essentially spend your life as a glorified au pair who cooks and a part-time fag hag! Good God, even this stupid bet! You needed to find a hobby and you picked up coloring, for chrissakes. You’re just an overgrown child, Eloise, always will be. You haven’t grown up at all since high school. Damn, the six-year-old fictional character you were named for is more of an adult than you.”
A strange calmness comes over me. It’s like the anger gets into my blood and slows my heart and, despite the gut impulse to just run away, I hear Mrs. O’Connor’s words ringing in my head. I can be anything because I am everything. And what I need to be right now is my own best defender.
“I hope it feels better to have gotten all that out, because clearly, it has been festering. You done, or is there anything else you want to bring up? Maybe go at me for spilling the Coke on your pink cashmere sweater back in the day?”
“Whatever. You don’t want to have a serious look at yourself, brush it off. Maybe I just won’t come to the party at all. After all, it isn’t like I’m not going to win the bet.”
“I know that you hate that I’m having a successful relationship with the man you lost, but seriously, I thought we were past this.”
“Lost? I never lost him, I kicked him to the fucking curb. Because I deserved better.”
“Yeah, how’s that working out for you? Oh, right, you haven’t had a serious relationship since your divorce, and even a professional matchmaker hasn’t been able to find someone who wants to be with you. Maybe it just really pisses you off that I’m in love and you’re not. After all, you’ve always felt so above Teresa and me, the queen bee. But here we are and we have happy lives and loving partners and all you have is, um, well, what do you have, Lynne? Oh, yeah, money. With an opportunity for more money. Jesus, Lynne, you are so self-centered you don’t even like your own dog.”
Lynne’s eyes are shiny with angry tears, and she opens her mouth and then closes it again.
I whistle and Simca comes running, and I snap on her collar. “You take a long hard look at who you are, Lynne Lewiston, and decide if she is the person you actually want to be. Because my life was fine when you were just a fond and distant memory. And if I met you tomorrow, I wouldn’t be exactly keen to know you. You want to apologize to me for being a hateful, conceited, superior mean girl, you give me a call and we can talk like rational adults. Because it seems to me that the need to lash out and poke at what you perceive as my soft spots, just because you don’t get what you want all the time, is about the most childlike behavior I can imagine.”
Before she can say a thing, Simca and I leave the park. I just manage to make it into my car before the tears come.
? ? ?
I wait till the coq au vin is simmering away, the crème caramel is chilling in the fridge, and we are settled with a glass of wine in her living room before gearing up to tell Teresa what happened with Lynne this afternoon. I knew that if I told her right away, she would throw the cooking lesson out the window to just debrief, and I needed the soothing action of the cooking to calm me down enough to discuss it with her rationally. Because whatever is going on between Lynne and me, I don’t want to use it to drive a wedge between the two of them. So I know I have to be able to share the story as calmly as possible and with little editorializing.
Besides, I want Teresa to have a shot at winning this bet, so teaching her this classical French dinner menu helps keep her on track. It’s dead simple for a great home cook like Teresa, and it will have some familiar flavors to not scare the family: the rich chicken stew cooked with red wine, bacon, mushrooms, and onions isn’t that far off from a chicken Marsala. Served over buttered egg noodles—getting a pasta in—with a bright salad of butter lettuce in a basic Dijon vinaigrette, and a perfect custard for dessert.
“Okay, that smells delish, my friend. I think my horde might actually love it. Thanks for the lesson. Salute.”
“You’re a natural. And I’m super proud of how much you have really embraced this whole thing. I love being able to have food adventures with you. Cheers.”
“So, you wanna tell me what you have been wanting to tell me since you got here?”
Damn. “Lynne called you.”
“You’re darn tooting she called me. I’ve never heard her so upset. What the hell happened?”
I tell Teresa how it went down and what was said, to the best of my ability. She listens, nods, sips her wine, and doesn’t say anything till I’ve finished.
“I am so, so sorry that you guys went through that. That is some awful nasty stuff to hear and to say, so that is a massive bucket of suck for both of you.”
“But?”
“But what sucks most is that both of you are sort of right.”
This stops me in my tracks. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that both of you are so touchy and angry, and said what you said because there are small elements on both sides of this where you are right.”
“So you think I’m not an adult?”
“I didn’t say that. I will say, wouldn’t you have to admit that when she unleashed that nasty litany of crap at you, some of it stung because some of it wasn’t entirely wrong? You did take off and hide; you did keep your personal and professional lives small and contained; you did not stand up to be strong and move ahead with big goals. You completely checked out of having a romantic life. Now, I don’t mean that makes you somehow childlike; I don’t think it does. But the facts are not entirely untrue, even if the accusation of what it means may be.”
I think back at what she accused me of, and while I don’t think she was right in the exaggerated way she portrayed it, a lot of what she said about my life isn’t entirely off base. “Maybe,” I say grudgingly.