Since my mouth was full, I couldn’t do more than smile and nod, which was convenient, because I wasn’t sure how I would have responded otherwise. Colorful was not the word I had hoped Peter’s mother would use to describe either me or my friends. As adjectives went, it wasn’t quite as bad as idiosyncratic, but it was still closer to wacky or peculiar than I would have liked.
“And it must have been nice for you to meet Peter’s college friends, too,” Susan added. “I was worried it would be awkward to have Caro there, but Peter didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Why would it have been awkward?” I asked, spearing a dumpling with my chopsticks and preparing to dip it in the dish of Hoisin sauce. Caro struck me as one of the least awkward people I’d ever met-she’d been all smiles and congeniality the previous evening. Good social skills were probably a prerequisite for a successful career in PR. Needless to say, I would have been hopeless in that line of work.
“Oh, I know she and Peter ended everything on a friendly note, but after all that time together, to then attend his engagement party-well, it just seemed like it could be awkward.”
“All that time?” I asked.
“All what time?” asked Peter, sliding into his seat.
“All that time you were seeing Caro, honey. I mean, you two started dating freshman year and then you were together off and on until last summer-why, that’s longer than a lot of marriages. She was practically a member of the family. I was just telling Rachel how glad I was it wasn’t awkward for her to be at the party last night.”
The dumpling slipped from my chopsticks and splashed into the Hoisin sauce. Drops of liquid splattered the tablecloth, my sleeve, and, improbably, Charles’ glasses. Wordlessly, he removed them and wiped the lenses with his napkin before returning them to his face and picking up his own chopsticks again.
I might not have had Caro’s social skills, but I was pretty good at math. And by my calculations, Peter had dated someone else for nearly half his life. Which would have been fine.
If, that is, he had ever mentioned it to me before.
“Rachel, try one of the spring rolls,” urged Susan. “These are Caro’s favorite.”
The rest of the meal passed in a blur. I temporarily forgot about Hilary and Iggie, Leo, Biggie, memory sticks, security cameras, the Lincoln Memorial and Petite Fleur. All of the insecurities I thought I’d safely vanquished were back in residence, and apparently they’d used their hibernation period to multiply.
Peter had made the occasional oblique reference to an ex-girlfriend, but I’d never asked for specifics, much less statistics about the duration of his average relationship. I didn’t want concrete names or anecdotes to feed my neuroses, nor did I want to invite any questions about my own gory romantic past. Still, it seemed as if he could have told me he’d been all but married to someone, and that that someone had been Caro Vail.
Meanwhile, I’d been so proud of my normal relationship and of the progress I’d made in proving to Peter’s normal family what a normal daughter-in-law I would be. But now I knew I’d only been deluding myself. Charles was a man of exceedingly few words, but what words he did use were thoughtfully chosen-he hadn’t pulled idiosyncratic out of a hat. And I could now see Susan’s shopping expedition for what it was: a pathetically desperate attempt to make me over into the sort of woman she’d want as a daughter-in-law, one who had opinions about stemware, looked fetching in pink and couldn’t wait to have children she could take on nature-intensive Saturday-morning outings and deprive of sugar cereals.
And knowing that woman already existed, that for all intents and purposes she’d already been a member of Peter’s family, just made the obvious question all the more glaring: what was Peter doing with me? For fifteen years he’d made a choice to be with Caro-a woman who probably would name her own dog Spot, given the chance-and fifteen years couldn’t be written off as a mistake. Fifteen days or fifteen weeks, definitely. Even fifteen months. But fifteen years?
It was conceivable that after his decade and a half with Caro, Peter had needed a relationship vacation, an idyll of sorts with her polar opposite. And, if the ring on my finger was anything to go by, he’d managed to convince himself I was more than that. But now I had to wonder all over again whether I was anything more than a passing fancy, a temporary blip of insanity that he’d shake his head over once he came to his senses and returned to his normal life.
While these unsettling thoughts were racing through my head, Peter didn’t seem to have noticed anything was amiss. In fact, his behavior pretty much fit the dictionary definition of oblivious as we progressed from appetizers to entrées and then passed around the plate of fortune cookies that arrived with the check. I broke open my cookie, hoping for some sort of prophetic intervention, or at least something that could be interpreted as releasing me from my promise to forgo caffeine.
But the message was all too clearly meant for me: it was completely blank. I didn’t even have any lucky numbers. Just a clean strip of white paper.
I almost put my head down on the table and wept.
“What do you kids have on tap for tomorrow?” I heard Charles ask as we prepared to leave, but the words could barely penetrate my fog of miserable confusion.
“Rachel hasn’t spent much time in San Francisco,” said Peter. “And since we’re both taking a vacation day, I thought we could do some sightseeing.”
He really was oblivious. We didn’t have time for sightseeing. Had he completely forgotten about finding Hilary? But, I thought to myself, if he could forget to tell me about dating another woman for fifteen years, forgetting about our rescue mission would hardly be a challenge.
“Did you have anywhere special in mind?” asked Susan.
“Just the usual. You know, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz, that sort of thing,” Peter said. “Maybe even take a ride on a cable car if Rachel doesn’t think it’s too much of a cliché.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” said Susan. Of course, she hadn’t had the Rice-a-Roni jingle stuck in her head all day. She turned to me. “You might want to go to SF MoMA, too. I know that it can’t compare to MoMA in New York, dear, but they usually have some interesting exhibits. And if the weather cooperates, you can take a picnic to the park across the street. You know, where the Martin Luther King memorial is.”
I perked up, and not just because picnics and soda were inextricably linked in my mind. I could sense Peter perking up in the same way next to me.
“The Martin Luther King memorial?” he asked.
“In the Yerba Buena Gardens. You know, right next to the Moscone Center. You must have been there before,” said Susan.
“As in the ‘I Have a Dream’ Martin Luther King?” I asked. “That Martin Luther King?”
“Actually, Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Charles, pushing his chair back and helping Susan up from her seat.
“It would be a nice stop on your itinerary for tomorrow,” suggested Susan.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Peter asked me as his parents led the way out of the restaurant.
“I’m thinking a lot of things right now,” I told him, somehow managing to keep my tone even. “But one of them is that we might want to start our sightseeing tonight.”