When the Smoke Clears

One of my good friends is leaving soon for a 2-year deployment to Korea. I’ll miss his lunchtime banter, his incessant questions and stories that meander with no discernible purpose. That’s just him. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t hang around him. Heck… watch what happens here…

He and his wife are insisting I make plans for a visit next summer. This pleases my mother to no end.

For the last year she has been pushing a new solution to my marital deficit: she thinks I should look into getting a Korean bride.

“You know Bill… from down in the Caymans… he did that… 10 years ago. They are still together and she is just wonderful and treats him really well.”

“I still don’t think it’s quite for me.”

“One of your cousins did it too. Still married. Still happy.”

I sighed, “Most of those ‘cousins’ are people I have never met and didn’t even know I had any relation to.”

“You aren’t getting any younger,” she pointed out unnecessarily. “And at least I HAVE managed to get someone to marry me.”

When your mom zings you, there’s not much you can do. What’s great is that I know she isn’t trying to put me down, there is nothing vicious behind such a statement. She puts a smile on my face and we laugh.

But this time I could say something. I brought up her wonderful string of boyfriends and my special skill with them. I moved from my mother’s place to live with my dad when I was 12. When I’d visit, I became used to seeing different people, sometimes the same people, but upon meeting them, I could tell how long they would last to within a month before she split up with the guy.

“Two and a half years,” I said one time after we had gone out shopping with her beau de jour one summer. Twenty-nine months later, they were over.

The best one, though, was while I was in college and she was still doubting my skill. She was living in the Caymans and I flew down to hang out for a few days. At the airport, she greeted me with a huge grin, a little too huge. Next to her stood a tall, gangly man who looked as if he could be in the background of an old Western movie.

He drawled out a nice, “Wayelllll if it ain’t just a perfect child copy of this fine woman? Definitely your son.”

I plastered on my practiced polite face and shook hands and gave my mother the quick glance that indicated we needed to talk. I know I was pretty skinny and short back then, but had her new boyfriend just insinuated I was a trans-gendered knockoff?

Rather than drive back to the north side of the island hungry, we ate at the airport restaurant/bar which wasn’t too bad. Conversation was polite as I tried my damndest not let my smirk show. At one point the gentleman said, “well, if you two will excuse me, I’m gonna run on to the restroom. I know y’all’ll wanna spend some time catching up. This is a very special woman you got here for a momma.”

I nodded agreement at him as my mom looked up at him smiling and watching him walk away. When he was far enough away, while still hanging on to her smile, eyes wider, insistent, she swung her head around and leaned right into me.

“He fixes things.”

“Did I say anything?”

“I’m waiting for it.”

“Six Weeks.”

“Oh no. He’s a good man. He’s very nice to me.”

I nodded, smirking. “Six weeks.”

“Oh you are such a little bastard.”

“And what does that say about you?”

“Seriously, he fixes things. Hell, I never know when you’re coming around to reset the clocks and do stuff.” Mom is always thrown off by Daylight Savings Time because she has lots of clocks but doesn’t know how to change the time.

“I doubt he’ll even make it the full six weeks.”

“You’re just being ridiculous.” She took a big swig of wine.

“Drinking won’t make it any better, especially when you know I’m right. What’s he doing special?”

“What are you talking about? We haven’t done… ”

Quickly stopping her, “mom… there are some subjects that are out of bounds for us and I don’t want to know specifics on. No… what big project around the house do you have him on?”

You could see the smile creep up higher at the edges. She knew she was gotten. “He stared building these really beautiful bookshelves and you know how many books I have.” Do I ever. I get the obsession from her and these were just what she had picked up since moving to the island, and since there was no TV, she was reading even more.

“You can’t date someone for furniture.”

“Oh you have no idea… besides… it’s more than that.”

Five and a half weeks later I received the don’t say I told you so call. I only mildly chuckled into the phone. I will admit, the half of the shelving unit he finished did look really good.

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