THE BRO-MAGNET (26 page)

I take a colander and toss it in the sink and toss the pre-cooked shrimp into that. I can’t serve the shrimp with this green sauce directly on it – it’s probably lethal – but I can’t just serve the shrimp plain over rice. What can I tell Helen? “Ooh, look, I made you pre-cooked shrimp with rice?” Maybe if I just pour the stuff in the blender over the shrimp but then drain the sauce away through the colander, the shrimp will pick up an interesting flavor without being toxic?

So I do that but as I’m looking at it in the colander with the sauce covering it now starting to drain, I realize this is no good either. If anything, the smell is getting worse. I open the window over the sink, tighten the dishrag on my nose and mouth, and turn on the cold water in the sink to wash the sauce off. Maybe this will –

“What’s going on in here?” Helen says, walking into the kitchen. Immediately, she’s struck by the onion cloud, causing her to take a step back. But she’s a kind woman and after the initial olfactory assault, she forces herself to step toward me. “Can I help somehow?”

“I’m just trying to salvage dinner,” I say. “But it looks like that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Helen says. Before I can stop her, she reaches into the colander, grabs a shrimp and pops it into her mouth. Immediately, both hands go to her mouth as though she’s too polite and she’s stopping herself from spitting the shrimp in my face.

“Is it that bad?” I ask.

Her eyes, peeking out over hands that make her look like a veiled woman, have pity in them as she nods yes.

“Here, let me see,” I say, figuring I can’t let her suffer this alone, whatever this is. I grab a rinsed shrimp, pop it bravely into my mouth, and…

“Oh my God!” I say after forcing myself to swallow. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my life!”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Helen says.

“Oh no, it was, it really was.” I hand her my dishrag so she can protect her own nose and mouth. I deserve to suffer after this.

“What was that supposed to be anyway?”

“It’s this special recipe.” I hand her the recipe. “Well, maybe not so special. Aunt Alfresca gave it to me. She says anyone can cook, that if you can read you can cook.”

Helen’s looking at the recipe. “It looks fine. What did you put in that blender? Two scallions shouldn’t have done all this.”

“Two scallions? But it says green onions.”

“Scallions are green onions.”

“Oh. Oh!”

“John, what did you buy instead of scallions?”

“I couldn’t decide which was right – a leek with all those long leaves attached or a big white onion that was showing some green on the edges, like maybe it wasn’t wholly ripe yet – so I went with one of each.”

“You do realize that two green onions, aka scallions, would be substantially smaller in size than that?”

“I do now.”

“And then you did what the recipe says to do with those two smaller green onions?”

“Yes, I put the large white onion and the leek with all those long green leaves into the blender and hit puree.”

She’s out of questions to ask.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wanted it to be special but I guess Aunt Alfresca’s theory is wrong. I can read but I can’t cook.”

“When you look at it one way, this is pretty funny.”

“Well, maybe if we were two people hearing about this as opposed to two people who are standing here in the middle of it.”

“You were trying to impress me.”

You don’t know the half of it, I think. 

“That’s incredibly sweet.”

Wait a second here. Is this onion-cloud incident working in my favor and earning me points?

“Yeah, well…” I’m not sure what to do with a woman who appreciates my charms. “Why don’t I throw open a few more windows, order up a pizza and then while we’re waiting for it to arrive, we can go for a walk, give the air in here a chance to clear?”

* * *

As we walk along the sidewalks of the condo in the orange-purple light of the dying day, I have one hand holding Helen’s hand while with the other I hold Fluffy’s leash.

“I’ve never seen anyone take a cat for a walk like this before,” she says.

“People told me it couldn’t be done,” I say. “But I figured, what’s the point in having a pet if you can’t take it for a walk?”

“Was it difficult to get the cat not to mind the leash?”

“Nah. Well, maybe at first. But he likes it now. You can tell.”

“How?”

“He’s not hissing at me. Anytime a creature doesn’t hiss at me, I figure we’re doing OK. Who knows? Maybe it’s love.”

Helen doesn’t say anything to this.

We just walk and for once I don’t feel as though I need to fill the silence with talk, with
chatter
. She’s here and she’s her. I’m here and I’m me – well, at least the modified version of me I am when I’m with her. And Fluffy’s, well…yeah. But it’s good; wonderful, in fact. It’s not ten-on-the-Richter scale excitement of the heart-pounding sort, like when your team wins the World Series or something; not that I have any recent memories of what that feels like. The Mets haven’t won in twenty-four years. I wasn’t even in double digits back then. And it’s not all-through-your-major-arteries nerves, if there is such a thing, like that first night when I took her to the Barn Opera. This is just, I guess the word for it would be
companionable
. And right now companionable feels incredibly
nice
.

I don’t want the perfect silence to end, but the pizza guy should be here soon and I did promise Helen dinner. If I’m lucky, someday I’ll get another chance at this perfect silence.

* * *

Back home, the smell from the onion cloud has not dissipated one iota. Well, OK, maybe one iota, but certainly not two. And yet Helen doesn’t seem to mind and suddenly I don’t mind either. The pizza guy knocks pretty much the instant we’re back inside. I pay him, take the box, and as I close the door on him and turn, Helen takes the box from me and places it on the table by the door – thank you, Pier 1 Imports. And then she’s up on her toes, kissing me, and I’m leaning down, kissing her, and her lips are soft, still tasting of that Malbec, and I’m thinking I could get used to the taste of that wine, and then I’m not thinking at all, not worried about doing things wrong, not worried about doing things right, not worried about what I might get out of this or who I’ll be afterward, who I’ll be if it ever disappears on me.

For the first time since I’ve met her, articles of clothing are dropping like flies, and everything’s fast and slow at the same time, Michael Buble’s still singing, Fluffy’s purring, there’s an onion smell over everything, thank God someone’s got a condom, throw pillows are working out to my advantage, and what we’re doing is no longer physical activity performed by isolated body parts. It’s
adjectives
. Amazing. Gentle. Exhilarating. Beautiful. Lovely. Exquisite. Cataclysmic. Heartfelt. Zingy.

Finally, in the end, with the onion smell still persistently there, it is a
noun
. It is the true onset of something I’ve never felt before for a woman, not in a romantic way, never like this.

And that thing I’m feeling, that
noun
, I’m pretty sure it goes by the name
love
.

Things progress with Helen for several weeks without a hitch and before I know it, we’re in the middle of summer, it’s July, it’s time for the All-Star Game, only instead of watching with Sam and Big John and some of my other friends like I always do, Sam’s going to a cookout with Lily, the third two-minute date she had on the night she went Lesbian Speed-Dating; after they each had thirty-seven other two-minute dates they looked around until they found one another again and have mostly been happily seeing each other ever since. As for me, I’m also going to a cookout.

At Helen’s parents’ house.

Where I’m to meet her parents for the first time plus her extended family.

Please allow me to convert to Judaism right now so that I can authentically say,
Oy vey
.

* * *

At least the weather’s nice, I think, as I park on the street outside the house at the address Helen gave me. I’d park in the drive but it’s packed with SUVs.

I’m barely out of the truck, checking my khaki shorts for creases, when Helen comes running over. Instead of looking like the woman in her thirties that she is, when she runs like that, hair gathered back into a ponytail, she looks like she could be sixteen.

“Ready to meet everybody?” she says, grabbing my hand.

“Hang on,” I say, reaching my free hand into the truck and producing a bouquet of wildflowers.

“For me?” she says.

“For your mom,” I say.

She smiles wide. “Nice touch.”

Thank you, Alice.

* * *

Every person’s life comes with its own cast of characters, like a movie or a book. God knows I’ve got a real cast of characters in mine.

Helen’s cast, I learn, as she leads me around from person to person at the cookout, consists of the following:

Frank and Marlene Troy, the parents. Frank gives me a salute with a spatula from his position behind the barbecue grill. He’s an imposing figure in his late sixties, tall enough to have played basketball in high school and still in really good shape. He does not seem to mind that he’s wearing an apron that says “Kiss the cook.” I neglect to kiss him, contenting myself with a firm handshake.

It was Aunt Alfresca who taught me the importance of a good grip. “Don’t shake limply,” she’d say. “No one wants to shake a baccala nor can you trust a man who shakes like that.” A baccala is a salted cod and it’s easy to understand why no one would want to shake one. I don’t even know why anyone would want to eat one!

Marlene, happy to receive the flowers, looks like if you took a picture of Helen’s face and used some kind of computer imaging to project what it will look like thirty some-odd years into the future. Not that I’ve met many of my girlfriends’ mothers – in fact, the last time was so far in the past, I can’t even remember it right now – but when you do it can be eerie, leaving you with the horrifying thought, “Oh my God, is this what I’ve got to look forward to?” But meeting Marlene isn’t like that. Instead, it makes me feel: I hope I’m still around Helen in thirty-plus years, still there to see as each beautiful line etches into her face, still there to make her laugh at some stupid thing I said or smile over a bouquet of flowers so those lines crinkle. 

I’d been dreading meeting Helen’s brothers – five brothers to navigate at once! – but I’m glad that’s next because it’s keeping me from going totally sappy and getting tears in my eyes, which is what looking at Helen’s mother and longing for the future’s got me doing.

The brothers. Those five brothers.

I don’t know why I’m so nervous about this. This should be the easiest part of the day. I mean, we are talking about me here, and I am not unaware of how groups of guys normally react to me. But of course I know why I’m so nervous. I’m so nervous because this is Helen’s brothers we’re talking about.

This time it actually matters.

Even though it can be intimidating to meet a whole group of people all at once, usually it’s fairly straightforward. The people you’re supposed to meet line up or they stand around you in a circle like they’re the Colosseum and you’re the Christian slave about to be eaten by lions. With the Troy family, it’s not that easy. It’s not easy because the brothers are all playing tag football on the lawn with various nieces and nephews, meaning Helen points each out to me, yells the brother’s name across the lawn, something like, “Hey, X! This is John!” Then whichever brother it is yells, “Hey, John! Good to know you!” back and returns to playing.

In descending order, the brothers are: Frankie, the oldest in his mid-forties, followed by Sammy, Dougie, Jerry and the youngest, just a year older than Helen, Johnny.

“Good thing you go by John,” Johnny calls to me. “Otherwise things could get confusing around here.”

I wonder what Sam and Big John would have to say about all those names. With the Troy family, the whole E-sound thing is like a rampant epidemic.

The kids all have various names but none of them registers and neither do the names of the four wives I meet milling around the sidelines. Apparently Frankie’s the only one without kids and who’s never been married, although he is engaged, as Helen explains, introducing me to his intended, Mary Agnes.

“Catch!” Frankie calls, hurling a spiral at me.

Without thinking about what I’m doing, I catch it easily – “Nice catch,” Helen says, eyeing me closely – and toss it back before I can stop myself, a perfect spiral.

“Nice throw,” Frankie says. “Wanna get in on the game?”

Now Helen’s really studying me closely.

I would like nothing more than to get in on that game. It’s been years since I had an opportunity like this and it would feel so good, the ball in my hands, the summer air kissing my face as I run toward the end zone. It’s my definition of home. This place, being with these people – despite the nerves I felt earlier, already this feels like home too. But…

“No, thanks,” I say. “I don’t really play. That catch and that throw – it was just beginner’s luck.”

Frankie’s looking at me like he’s not entirely buying it and I will admit: that was some nice catch and throw I just made. But in the end he just shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

“Can I get you a beer?” Marlene offers, making her way over to us.

I look around the lawn, see that except for the kids, everyone who’s drinking alcohol is drinking beer. Man, a beer would be perfect on a day like today. I’m about to say yes when I stop myself, look at Helen. “You drinking beer?” I ask, struggling to keep the hopeful note out of my voice.

“God no.” She shakes her head, clearly horrified at the notion. “I’m drinking Prosecco. It’s an Italian wine. White. Sparkling. It’s perfect in the summer.”

“My daughter the lawyer.” Marlene rolls her eyes. “If not for her I could have gotten away with just buying beer and soda today.”

“Prosecco sounds great,” I say. “The perfect summer drink.”

* * *