“Mamá!” I called out as I entered my parents’ condo, lugging several heavy grocery bags.
“In here, mija.”
I followed her voice into the living room, where she was standing amidst plastic-covered furniture and paint-splattered drop cloths. “You’re late,” she admonished without even turning towards me. “I expected you an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry. I got held up at the fashion show, then I had to go to two different stores to find your cook—”
“What do you think of this color?” she interrupted me, obviously not that interested in my excuse.
“Uh, well.” I looked over at the freshly painted wall my mother was staring at. “It’s green.”
“Yes, but it’s not the warm, mossy green I wanted. This,” she gestured disparagingly at the wall, “looks olive. I might as well be living in an Army barracks. That decorator your father hired is inepto! I told her I needed a color that wouldn’t look too dark when the terrace blinds were closed, but did she listen? No! So, now, I have to go to the paint store myself and pick out green swatches that don’t have this hideous brown undertone. But I can’t do that until my face is better, which means a delay of at least a week!”
“Your face doesn’t look too bad now.” From my position behind her, I could only see a little bit of Mamá’s profile, but the purple marks around her eyes and along her jawline appeared to have faded to a less-frightening shade of blue. “If you wore sunglasses and put some foundation and powder on over the bruises . . .”
“Are you loca?” she tossed off the question as she stalked past me in her silk lounging pajamas, which were the same tangerine color as the polish on her acrylic nails. “I can’t leave this condo until my face is completely healed. The minute I step out that door, I’ll run into somebody I know, and they’ll see all this swelling and discoloration and jump to the conclusion that I’ve had work done.”
Which she had, but I guess that that was beside the point.
From the doorway of the kitchen she ordered, “Bring those bags in here before my raspberry sorbet melts. I hope you remembered to get the fat-free kind.”
“Of course,” I replied as I trailed her into the other room. “I got everything on your list: Pirouette cookies, skim milk, pink grapefruit, the latest issue of Architectural Digest, Tide with Downy, French roast coffee beans, paper towels, eggs, a loaf of pumpernickel, spicy mustard, and . . .,” I paused to set the bags on the granite countertop, “a bottle of your favorite Chardonnay from the liquor store. You know, you shouldn’t be drinking alcohol if you’re still taking prescription medi—”
“Why are you wearing so much makeup?” Mamá wondered, evidently just having noticed my professionally painted face, which I hadn’t had an opportunity to wash clean. “And why,” she took my chin in her hand and forced me to look at her, “are your eyes all red and puffy like you’ve been crying?”
“This is stage makeup,” I replied, then ducked my head and began to unpack the perishable items that belonged in the refrigerator. “Two of Sara’s models didn’t show up, so I had to help out. Izzy did, too.”
“You modeled swimsuits?”
“Shocking, I know,” I handed her the carton of eggs, “but it was actually kind of liberating.”
She eyed me skeptically. “So liberating that you cried about it?”
“The crying came later, after the show. I had a discussion with someone that got a little emotional.” I opened the cabinet to my left and placed the bag of coffee beans on its bottom shelf.
Rather than put the eggs in the fridge like she was supposed to, Mamá set them back down on the counter. “And who is this mysterious ‘someone’ who brought my Pilar to tears?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Fine!” She threw her hands up in the air. “I try to be a good mother. I try to give you support. And what thanks do I get? You shut me out. You won’t confide in me, you won’t share, you just—”
“Alright, alright.” I surrendered because I just couldn’t deal with one of her pout parties after the day I’d had. “I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like it.”
She leaned in closer; her dark eyes glittering with anticipation. “Tell me anyway.”
“I think I’m going to need one of these first.” I ripped open the plastic lid of the Pirouette canister and pulled out one of the Chocolate Hazelnut-flavored wafer sticks.
I ate half of it before admitting, “I think I’m in love with Ford.”
My mother frowned as best she could with her face being stretched to its limits. “You’re in love with a car?”
“No! Dr. Jonathan Fordham, the psychiatrist who works in my building.”
“The married psychiatrist? Ay!” She brought her hands up to her unnaturally tight cheeks. “I knew this would happen! You waited too long to find a husband. All of the good men are gone, and now, instead of being a wife, you have to settle for being a mistress.”
“Mamá—”
“Poor Pilar.” She gave me a condescending pat on the shoulder. “You must have been so desperate, so lonely . . . who would have thought that your life would come to this? I had such high hopes for you, such dreams, such plans!”
She sighed regretfully before continuing, “But don’t worry, I understand and I forgive, just promise me that you won’t have any children out of wedlock. There’s never been a bastardo in our family. It would be a terrible scandal. We’d all be disgraced, and your father would die of shame.”
“Are you through?” I raised a brow inquiringly.
“Eh, I suppose.”
“Good because Ford isn’t married.”
“But you said—”
“I know and I was wrong. All this time, I thought he was married because he wore a wedding ring and had a young son, but I found out this afternoon that he’s a widower.”
My mother perked up. “So, he’s available?”
“Yes.” I took another cookie out of the tin and started to nibble on it.
“And he’s interested?”
“Seems to be.”
“Oh, mija!” Mamá hugged me so tightly that the Pirouette I was holding got crushed between us. “¡Felicidades!”
“No! No ¡Felicidades!” I pushed myself away from her.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I glanced down at my hand, which was now filled with crumbled up cookie and creme-filling, “ewwww.”
I grabbed the new roll of Bounty off the counter and worked on ripping off its plastic wrap with one hand.
“Give that to me.” Mamá grabbed the paper towels impatiently. “And explain to me why you’re not happy about this doctor, who you think you might be in love with, being single.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“Make it simple.” She handed me a towel.
That was easier said than done.
“Okay . . . on the one hand, Ford not being married is a good thing,” I said as I wiped the cookie debris from my palm and fingers. “I don’t have to suppress my feelings for him anymore and I don’t have to be racked with guilt because of them. But now that I know the truth, there’s a whole new set of issues. I mean, he’s been lying to me for months. Alright, technically, he didn’t lie, but he never disabused me of the notion that he was married. So, that still counts as dishonesty as far as I’m concerned. And even though I sort of understand why he did what he did, I’m still left with all of these icky feelings.”
“Such as?”
I grimaced. “I don’t know. It’s hard to label all of the emotions. I guess I feel stupid, manipulated, embarrassed—”
“Why embarrassed?”
“Because I told him everything about myself, private, personal things I’ve never told anyone else. Stuff about our family, my relationships with other men, my interactions with patients, my finances.”
“And you wouldn’t have shared all of that with him if he’d been your boyfriend?” Mamá asked.
“Eventually, when I was sure that all of the craziness in my life wouldn’t scare him off.”
“It looks like this Ford doesn’t scare off so easy. He knows you, along with all of your problems and flaws, and he still wants to be with you.”
“God knows why.” I really couldn’t fathom it. All of my stories about my high-maintenance mother and long-suffering father should have sent him running for the hills long ago.
“Maybe he found your honesty refreshing? Maybe he liked that you trusted him with your secrets?”
“If he liked it so much, he should have reciprocated. I’ve been letting it all hang out since the day we met, and he’s given me nothing in return.”
“He listened, didn’t he? And he tried to help when he could? Actions speak louder than words with some men, mija.”
“Ford has done a lot for me,” I conceded. “That’s a big part of the reason why I developed feelings for him. I thought that he was this wonderful, selfless guy who was always there for me because it was his nature to be a Good Samaritan.”
“But now you question his motives?”
“Of course, I do! Ford’s already admitted that he tried to influence how I treated a patient because he was jealous of the man.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a man showing a little jealousy,” my mother informed me. “You can’t have passion without the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head once in a while.”
“Victor was jealous 24/7, and all it showed was that he had a guilty conscience and a flair for the dramatic. At least, he was upfront about being possessive. Ford was sneaky.”
“Why are you even comparing the two men?” Mamá queried. “You said you never loved Victor.”
“I didn’t, but Victor seems to be the place where I went off track with men. So, I keep coming back to him. Why do men lie to me? And why do I fall for it every time? Am I too willing to accept people at face value? Am I empathetic to the point of being self-destructive? Or am I just hopelessly dense? And why, for the love of God, don’t I ever learn from my mistakes? How many times can I be blindsided by a man before I do the smart thing and just give up on them altogether?”
“And do what? Join a nunnery?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. You’ve said yourself that black and white are good colors on me.”
My mother lifted her eyes upward and spoke to the ceiling, “Ay, Dios, don’t listen to her. She’s overwrought. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“You shouldn’t joke about things like that,” she reprimanded me. “God might take you seriously. I’ll tell you what your problem is. You think too much. You always have. I don’t know how I ever ended up with a daughter who has such a big brain.”
She was right. I did analyze things to death. Maybe if I’d spent less time pondering the big questions in life and more time just living it, I’d be . . . my sister, Isidora, who, despite being experienced in the ways of the world and quite cynical as a result, had still been taken for a ride, in a hotwired Ferrari no less, by a duplicitous male. So, maybe being foolish about men was a family curse? A curse that Ana seemed to have escaped since her husband, Ray, was the very model of masculine perfection: hard-working, intelligent, loyal, caring. He wasn’t great-looking, but what did that matter? Quite a bit, apparently, since all the men I’d been attracted to lately were gorgeous. Victor with his dark, smoldering looks, Derek with his shaggy, blond hair and ripped body, Ford with his heart-melting smile and dreamy blue eyes.
“I need to find myself a good, solid, homely guy who’ll never run around on me or be dishonest.”
Mamá snorted. “Don’t kid yourself. Ugly men can be just as faithless and unreliable as the handsome ones. Did I tell you that your cousin Sancha’s husband is cheating on her?”
I gasped with surprise. “No!”
“Si,” my mother nodded knowingly, “with her sister.”
“Which one?” It had to be Raphaela. She’d always been a tramp. Sophomore year, at our high school Valentine’s Day party, she’d actually pulled my boyfriend, Tommy, out of my arms in the middle of a slow dance and French-kissed him. I still hadn’t forgiven her for that. Him either.
“Nita. Sancha caught them in the act when she came home from her electrolysis appointment early yesterday. It was quite a scene; the wailing and cursing could be heard from three blocks away. There’s talk of a divorce,” Mamáwhispered the word as if it was dirty.
“Damn, they haven’t even been married a year.” I actually felt sorry for my cousin. She might have been smug, hateful, and dumb as a post, but no one deserved that kind of betrayal. “I guess all men are worthless, even rat-faced Diego.”
“Is your father worthless?”
“No,” I grudgingly admitted.
“What about Raymond?”
“He’s a saint.”
“He has to be to put up with your sister and those little diablos of theirs.”
“So, that’s two decent men on the entire planet.”
“Maybe not. Maybe you’ve found another one in this psychiatrist? You’ll never know unless you give him a chance.”
“I can’t believe you’re encouraging me to pursue a relationship with Ford.” Where was the laundry list of objections she usually raised when I was interested in a man she hadn’t hand-picked for me?
“A widower with a little boy is better than no man at all. You need to look at the big picture, mija. So, Ford misled you. I’m sure he feels badly about it. The important thing is he’s a doctor, and we could use one of those in the family. A psychiatrist can prescribe drugs, can’t he? I hope so because Ana’s boys could really use some of that Ritalin.”
“He may be a doctor, but he’s not Latino. Don’t you want me to be with a man who has the same cultural background?”
She waved a hand dismissively.
“Your abuelo Alvarez fell in love with a gringa and look how well that turned out: Thirty-seven years of marriage, four healthy babies, a dozen grandchildren, and two plots side-by-side at Our Lady of Perpetual Faith Cemetery. May they rest in peace.” She made the sign of the cross.
“Ford’s 9 years older than me.”
“Your father’s 12 years older than me. And you’ve always said that women are more emotionally mature than men, so an age difference should be conducive to compatibility.”
Since when did my mother use words like “conducive” and “compatibility?” She went to bat for Ford, and suddenly, she was Merriam-Webster’s.
“He’s not Catholic. I don’t even know what his religious affiliation is. He’s never mentioned going to church. He may be an atheist.”
“Then, you can convert him.”
I groaned. It was hopeless. Jonathan Fordham, MD was a big catch in the eyes of the Great Latina Husband Hunter and now that she had him in her crosshairs, she wasn’t going to let him get away no matter what I said to dissuade her.
“You’re getting way ahead of yourself. Ford and I might not even have a future together. We haven’t even gone out on a date yet.”
“So, what are you waiting for? Time is precious, Pilar. You’re turning 30 in less than—”
“Five months. Yes, I know, Mamá. I have a calendar, thank you. And even if I’m still single when November 24th rolls around, rest assured that I won’t be magically transported to Spinster Island, where others of my kind have been banished to live out the rest of their days in shame and isolation.”
“You could live on Happily Married Couples Island if you’d stop being so difficult and . . .,” my mother picked up her cordless phone and shoved it into my hand, “call Ford before he decides you’re too much trouble and starts looking for someone else.”
“I’m not calling him,” I stubbornly refused, putting the phone down and reaching for another cookie. “We agreed to spend some time apart so that I could think things over.”
“And where has thinking gotten you so far?”
“It’s gotten me a lot further than following my heart ever has.”
“You’re afraid,” my mother realized.
“With good reason. I’ve made a lot of mistakes lately. I keep misjudging people and I don’t want to be hurt or disappointed anymore.”
“Ah, mija, there are no guarantees in life. Sometimes, you just have to take the risk and hope for the best.” And with that sage advice, she took the wafer stick out of my hand.
“Hey!” I objected.
“Ah-ah-ah,” she put the cookie back in the tin canister and sealed it shut, “you can eat as many sweets as you want when you have a devoted husband at home who’s willing to love you no matter how wide your hips are. Until then, show a little self-control.”