How to Love an American Man (9 page)

“And your doctor friend?” Grandma asks, raising her eyebrows cautiously. “Any word from him?”

I promptly occupy my mouth by munching on a shrimp. I smile with my eyes, gesturing charmingly—
Just one sec, Grandma, it's not polite to speak with my mouth full
—acting as though one baby shrimp had transformed into the size they serve on luxury cruises. I'm debating how to answer my dear grandmother. I'd been hoping the divisive topic of world-class surgeon wanna-been romances wouldn't play any part in Grandpa's birthday. Cans of tomato sauce, absolutely; even cans of pipe tobacco—sure. But this can of worms . . . do we
really
need to open it?

Looks like we do, as Grandma's gaze has turned from inquisitive to hopeful.
Ugh . . .
can opener, please?

I fill her in on the latest: two or three weeks ago, just before Tucker left for school, Chris's calls had grown strangely common. While I was usually legitimately too far from my phone to hear it ringing, one day it got me in trouble while Tucker and I were taking a break from packing moving boxes into his car to relax at the beach. Our swimsuits dripped wet while we snacked on subs and put a dent in a six-pack. When my phone rang I picked it up and jumped, then sent the call straight to voice mail.

“Who was that?” Tucker asked through a bite of ham and cheese.

“My mom.”

“You suck at lying.” He wiped his mouth with his arm. “Was it that doctor?”

“Tucker.”

“He's still calling!”

“Only sometimes. He asked me to have lunch next week.”

“What!”
he squawks, alarming two toddlers who are dancing on the ruins of a nearby sand castle.

“Tucker, stop,” I hiss under my breath. “It won't happen. I honestly never even catch his calls.”

“But if you did, would you go out with him?”

“Tucker, of course not! I'm in a relationship.”

“Well, I would hope not. Geez, before I met you I didn't think I had a prayer. That's all I heard about from those ladies at our moms' office, that ‘handsome, rich surgeon' you were dating.” He speaks the words with giant burden. “When's the last time you talked to him?”

“In the middle of July, right before his birthday—”

Tucker opens his mouth to object.

“Tucker, you and I weren't even hanging out yet. Anyway, he'd sent me an e-mail saying that for a birthday present he'd gotten himself eight stitches in his finger trying to fix the fan of some laser machine at his office. Then two days after he sent the e-mail he called, and I picked up. What, Tucker? I felt bad! His injury sounded graphic.” I weakly throw a piece of my bun at the water for the fish to eat, remembering how Chris said that he could actually see the bone in his index finger. “The poor guy doesn't have any family around here.” The thought saddens me so much that I can't take another bite of my sandwich. “He's all alone.”

“Well,” Tucker brushes sand off my knee, “the next time he calls or e-mails, you'll tell him you're seeing someone else?”

“Sure. I'll tell him.”

“And that it's serious?”

“Yes, Tucker.”

“Okay. Promise?”

“
Yes,
Tucker.”

When I listened to Chris's voice mail later that day, he said he was riding around the lake and wanted to stop by my house to say hello; that he'd finally felt up to trying his bicycle using only nine fingers . . . such moxie. Explaining to my boyfriend why this handsome doctor with a three-thousand-dollar eighteen-speed wanted to just “drop by” would have been both unnecessary
and
futile, so I was relieved that I hadn't been home with Tucker—but surprisingly, sort of disappointed that I hadn't been home at all. For half a second I wondered how Chris's scent mixed with a clean sweat would have affected me.

The following Monday, I was preparing some questions about marital faithfulness for dinner with Grandma and realized I'd been procrastinating in my promise to Tucker. But seriously, I think, is this really necessary? Will Chris take me for presumptuous to think that just
perhaps
he'd wanted to be more than just friends? I pace around my brother's room and then sit down to craft the following e-mail—carefully:

Grandma is sorting out the logistics of the story now that she's up to speed on the whole ordeal. “So you
had
made lunch plans with him, but hadn't told Tucker.”

“Well, yes. Knowing Chris's schedule, I figured that the lunch had as good a chance of not happening as it had of happening, so I figured I'd let sleeping dogs lie until it was really time to tell Tucker.”

“And how did the lunch go?”

“Actually it was . . . dinner.”

Grandma's eyes light up. She sits back and folds her arms, waiting for me to continue.

“He'd put in a really long day, patients and meetings and no lunch. So he told me he was totally understanding of my relationship situation—I think he actually used the words ‘tenfour'—but said it was urgent that he sees me.”

Grandma leans back in and purrs in an uncharacteristic manner that's reminiscent of Blanche Deveraux on
The Golden Girls
:
“Do
go
on
.
”

Chris asked me to meet him at Peking on the boulevard, and I found his correct
pay-king
pronunciation of the Chinese restaurant's name even stranger than our town's hillbilly pronunciation, which makes it sound like a place one would go to worship the ruler of all urine. Anyway, I'd honored his request for me to bring something to write with, wondering what in the world all this could be about. Was he fleeing town and needed help devising a getaway? Did he feel an autobiography coming on and was in need of a convincing ghostwriter?

He climbed out of his Mercedes when I pulled into the spot next to him. He waited for me to walk over to him, and I noted that his greeting felt a little like embracing a cold fish—had he taken my e-mail personally? But when I pulled away from the hug and looked into his face, his eyes were the same vivid hue as his scrubs. Both his face and his outfit made my knees go woozy, reminding me that I was under the influence of someone powerful. Maybe I shouldn't have found it so thrilling, but I did.

When we sat down at the private corner table he requested, he greeted the only other occupied table—clearly a patient and his wife, who looked me over shamelessly. Chris ordered a fish and vegetable dish with brown rice and no sauce; I too decided to go light with the spicy vegetable soup. “So I need to tell you why I've brought you here,” he said as he folded the cloth napkin onto his lap.

“Okay.”

“I've actually had a project in the works for some months. There's a hospital in Southeast Asia that has commissioned me to start a cosmetic surgery division there . . .”

I took this as my cue to begin transcribing. My hand raced hastily across my notebook page, catching his key phrases and musings verbatim. But in my head I was trying to push down the sadness I was feeling: Chris was telling me that he's leaving.

“A
MBITIOUS THING , ISN'T HE
,” Grandma cuts me off.

Ambitious?
How about selfish?
I bite my tongue against it. But who drops a bomb the way he did?

“Let me guess,” she continues. “He wants you to help him prepare.”

My eyes go blank, my mouth mute. How did she know that?

“You're a smart girl,” she says, rising from her chair to put on water for the pasta. “Any man in his right mind would want you in his corner.”

Was I really in Chris's corner? I couldn't decide. In the last week the two of us had begun working consecutive late nights together in the quiet of his office. We were compiling an extensive presentation for him to drum up business overseas, and it required a lot of research on my part about the cosmetic tourism industry. I was also managing the development of some marketing materials, and he loved the design I chose for his business cards and Web site so much that he told me he just wanted me to take liberty over all the aesthetic decisions.

When his staff stepped in to check out with him in the evenings, they scanned me up and down, questioning the nature of my presence there. Of course he couldn't tout to them his plans to move his practice overseas, possibly making their jobs obsolete . . . and his silence made me all the bigger mystery. “Ann,” was all he might say as he filled out one last patient script, “you met Krissy earlier this week, right?” I'd smile innocuously, telling Ann it was nice to see her again.

“I don't remember you,” she would reply. “Unless you were the one wearing wacky glasses on Monday.”

“Yes, yes, that was me!” I'd respond, overlooking her insult at my reading glasses to prove with my friendliness that I posed absolutely no threat to her boss-crush.
I tried dating him already—go ahead, you take a stab!

After Chris wished a good-night to all of his staff, he'd close the door to his office and lie down on the carpet. In free association he'd spill his exhaustion, his frustration, the fact that he'd just cried with a patient who said she needed Botox because she feels she's aged three decades in the six months since her daughter was diagnosed with cancer. He'd always turn off the harsh fluorescent lights over our heads, and working by the lamplight would give his office a hushed, trusting ambience. At such moments I'd find myself bubbling to tell him things about my day too, but I would always reconsider, thinking it best to maintain the professional boundaries. Mostly, though, I didn't want to interrupt him from opening up to me.

I don't tell Grandma all this. I don't tell her that when we're not working by jazz music we're working by classical; that I like the rawness of his scent after he's been busy all day; that one afternoon I took a break from loading presentation files into my car to walk down to the pond in front of his office to peer at the ducks, letting the breeze whip through my hair and my dress . . . and at that very second Chris knocked on the window from the inside, placed his fingers on the glass and slowly smiled at me. He'd caught me in this one feminine, beautiful moment, and he saw it. He saw
me
.

I end my details for Grandma after I list the projects we're working on, finding an excuse to step away from the stickier details by adding salt to the boiling water on the stove. I can't have the involvement of anyone else's emotions—especially fragile Grandma's—fueling my own confusion about Chris.

My mom and aunts arrive and take my attention from the matter completely, lining the kitchen counter with salad and Italian bread and pie. “Oooh, it's coconut cream!” I peer into the box. “Grandpa's favorite . . . mine too, actually.” I open the cardboard and we all hover over the perfect mound of fluffy meringue.

“Gloria, no tears,” my aunt says. “We agreed no cake, but nobody said anything about pie.”

The guys each arrive separately, one by one from the office. Grandma lights up more and more as each attendant enters her feast. With all our commotion, we have successfully distracted her from the reason we're all here. I think of Tom Hanks in
A League of Their Own
:

“There's no crying on birthdays!”

It takes both my mom and me to transfer four pounds of spaghetti from the strainer to Grandma's colossal pasta bowl, when my dad finally makes his entrance. “Looks like a party in here, Mom!” he says.

“Well, it is a party, Billy!” Grandma calls from the kitchen. “You drinking red or white?”

The twelve of us take places around Grandma's dining room table, the guys loosening their ties to relax. We pass bowls and bread baskets and wine bottles until Grandma—is she tipsy?—calls for grace. We bow our heads, and after the amen, we raise our glasses. “To the birthday boy,” Uncle Phil says, and we murmur our hear-hears.

Dinner is further cheered by the news that our company got a nice order today, putting an end to a near year-long business drought. Inconspicuously, I look up at the ceiling, past Grand-ma's chandelier:
You're still taking care of everything, aren't you.