“I’ve decided to start dating,” she said, stiffening her back so that her posture was perfectly straight and her head was held queen level high. She raised her eyes from her lap and looked at me pointedly before giving Ari a similar glance. “I’m getting older and I don’t want to spend my golden years alone.”
A snort escaped from Ari’s tiny freckled nose. “Golden years?” she asked. “What are you going to be, a golden girl?”
Mom blushed and I giggled. Thank God Ari seems so nonchalant, I thought to myself. Over the years, when I had imagined Mom starting to date, the only negative I had ever pictured was Ari’s reaction. She had never known what it was like to have a man around; it had always just been the three of us. I thought for sure she’d feel threatened by the idea, but here she was, nose crinkled and eyes as bright as always, making jokes about The Golden Girls.
To buy myself some time while I thought up what to say, I jammed a huge bite of spaghetti into my mouth and chewed very slowly. I wasn’t exactly sure how to approach the conversation. I was theoretically happy about Mom dating as it had started to become pretty depressing to witness how her Saturday nights were spent, but who knows what kind of guy she’d bring home. Would she even be bringing these guys home or would she the type of single mom dater to keep the men completely separate from us kids until they were walking down the aisle? I swallowed.
“When you say you are going to start dating,” I began, treading carefully into these strange waters, “do you mean you are like . . . open for dating business, or have you found a specific guy that you plan on seeing?”
A coy smile spread across Mom’s face and an unfamiliar redness once again rose up into the bloom of her cheeks. She looked so young that I smiled at how shy she was about all this love stuff. It hit me that it’s been so long for her, it probably didn't feel that different than it felt for me. It’s like me and my mom were both new to navigating the world of romance. I didn't know if that was funny or mortifying.
“There is someone at work that I have been eyeballing,” she said and for a second I thought I was going to die at her use of the word “eyeballing.” Determined to be mature about the whole thing, I instead took a small sip of my water and nodded my encouragement I glance dover at Ari who was listening with wide eyes as she continued to glob ranch onto her tomatoes.
“What’s he like?” I asked.
She pursed her lips and took a pause as she thought about the best way to describe her potential beau. During dinner, I learned that his name was Michael, he was forty-two, he liked really sweet coffee drinks and had been bringing Mom one at least once a week for several months, and he had a son who was in second grade. When I leaned in and asked what he looked like, wiggling my eyes a little, mom surprised me by laughing.
“He’s a little bit bald and kind of short,” she said with a shrug. “Do you know, I barely think about it? Whenever I think about him, I just think about how he always tells dad jokes when he brings me files and how many times a day he makes me smile at really stupid stuff.”
I covered her hand with my own and felt my eyes well up with tears. Seriously, I am like a seventy-year-old with my emotions sometimes. Commercials have been known to make me cry, especially dog commercials. “He sounds awesome, Mom,” I said.
That night, I was so happy for Mom that I cleared the table without being asked and loaded the dishwasher without so much as a sigh.
When I finally trudged up the stairs, Ari was waiting for me on my bed. She was shoeless this time and her socks had kittens and tacos on them. Who comes up with this stuff? What do kittens have to do with tacos?
“Scoot over,” I said as I gently nudged Ari’s skinny ribs with my pointy elbow. I settled into next to her and as we both silently stared at the plaster ceiling, the minutes slipped away. I was starting to get impatient. “What’s up, Kid?”
Ari sighed a deep sigh and I knew this was going to be about Mom. I knew her smiling silence at the dinner table was too good to be true. When she didn’t answer right away, I nudged her again and I knew whatever was on her mind was serious because instead of squaking at me to cut it out, she just rubbed the sore spot on her torso without another word about it.
“Do you think Mom’s going to get remarried?” she asked, her voice quiet.
I didn’t want to lie to her, but I was afraid admitting that I had no idea what to think might make things worse. The truth was I was happy for Mom because she’d been alone too long, but that hadn’t stopped her news from jarring me a bit. She’d never even mentioned dating before, but then again, I hadn’t ever asked her about it, either. I guess her single status had been the status quo for so long that I’d taken it for granted and now it was hard to even envision her making that kind of commitment.
“I don’t remember Dad,” Ari whispered.
I sat up on my elbows and looked down at her. Her eyes were scrunched closed like this confession was hard on her, so I knew I had to tread lightly.
“Ari, he calls sometimes. You talked to him a few months ago. What do you mean you don’t remember him?”
She opened her eyes and looked at me and while she wasn’t crying, she was forcing her eyelids to open wide and I got the sense that she was struggling to hold the tears back. “Yeah, but I haven’t seen him. I don’t remember how he smells or whether he wears suits to work. I don’t know if he has a beard. I don’t remember him,” she said, and my heart broke for her.
I rolled onto my side and pulled her close, cuddling her like I used to when we were both younger. She snorted against my shirt and I felt dampness, so I knew she’d lost the battle against the tears. There was nothing I could say to explain things to her in a way that would make sense; I had no idea why Dad left. One day he was this good dad and the next, he was gone. Literally gone: Dad moved out in the middle of the night and called Mom three days later to explain. I never found out what he told her in that call, but it must have been pretty intense because the door to her bedroom was not only closed, but locked, which was pretty much the opposite of Mom’s standard open door policy. They had talked for over an hour, and when Mom finally came out to tend a sobbing Ari, her face was puffy from crying.
It sucked when he left. When I say he was a good dad before he vanished, I don’t just mean that he was an okay guy who was around, I mean he was the kind of dad that the other kids kind of envied me for having. Like when I was sick once and was being bratty because I couldn’t do anything and I wanted to go outside, he made me all these weird little puppets out of clothespins. I still don’t even know where he got the clothespin; it’s not like we hung our laundry out to dry. We had a dryer. He found them somewhere, though, because he had drawn faces on the circular tops with sharpie and tied ribbon around the parts that were supposed to be their bodies. They weren’t pretty or anything. This was way before Pinterest and he wouldn’t have used it, anyway. They were just these ugly, smiling sticks, but he took the time to pop up with them and he acted out stories with me for hours. He was that kind of dad. He was that kind of dad for me, but had been no kind of dad to Ari.
I looked down at her and realized she’d cried herself to sleep in my bed and I got so angry I wanted to hunt Dad down and demand answers. How does that even happen? How can you be Mr. Incredible for years for one kid, kiss your wife’s pregnant belly and get all excited for the next, and then just literally run away from home like a kid having a tantrum?