going to blow it now. “I do the best I can. You know how private I am.” We’ve had this conversation before, so we both know what to expect from it.
“But this is important. You’re in love. You’ve found someone you want to spend your life with. You didn’t want to tell me before now?”
I feel guilty. Of course I do. Both for the lie I’m telling her and for the slight hurt in her expression. “I did want to tell you. But I was worried about...”
“Jinxing it?”
“Something like that. I’m sorry.”
We’re having lunch at a little sandwich shop near my mom’s small two-bedroom apartment in Charleston, West Virginia. It’s where my mom has lived since my father walked out on her, and it’s where I grew up. I tried to buy her a house last year when all the money came in, but she wouldn’t accept it. She’s getting married next month, and then she’ll move in to her new husband’s large house just outside the city.
It will be the first time she’s moved in twenty-nine years.
Now she reaches over the table to pat my hand. “It’s okay. I understand why you wanted to keep quiet about it. I just hope you know you don’t have to.”
“I do know. And I’m not sure you’re one to talk. I didn’t know you were dating Pop until you announced your engagement.”
Her fiancé is known by all the world as Pop. He’s a cantankerous man in his sixties whom my mother met through their church. I really have no idea what she sees in him. He always wears jeans and corduroy jackets, and he boasts an over-the-top handlebar mustache he’s obviously proud of. But he does own a successful regional restaurant chain named Pop’s Home Cooking that has made him a rich man.
Whatever the reason, my mom obviously loves him, and she’s more thrilled about marrying him than I’ve ever seen her in my whole life. I’m not going to spoil this for her, which is why I’ve gone to great lengths to arrange a husband for myself.
Pop has three granddaughters around my age. The first time I met them, I was afraid they’d be spoiled and shallow and we’d have nothing in common, but I was pleasantly surprised. They were all smart and friendly and genuinely welcoming to me. But it soon became clear to me that Pop was old-fashioned and domineering and had a habit of pressuring the women in his life to find husbands.
Not that they said as much. But they tried to subtly warn me what to expect. As soon as I realized what they were implying, I had an immediate vision of what might happen in the future. Pop would try to pressure me. I’d resist because I’ve spent my life going my own way and not caring about who doesn’t like it. So I’d rebel. Pop would get mad. And my poor mother would be caught in the middle.
The thing is, I know she would take my side. She always has and she always will. And that would lead to problems in her relationship. It might even destroy it.
She’s worked so hard for so many years without anyone in the world to rely on for help except me. Now that she finally has someone and has the promise of a happy, easy life, I’m not going to take that away from her or let anything spoil her future.
So I said the first thing that came into my mind in that conversation with Pop’s granddaughters. I told them I was already engaged, so Pop wouldn’t be an issue.
They were all so relieved. I could see it in their faces.
Trapped in the lie and with no way to get out of it without ruining my mother’s happiness, I decided the easiest thing would be to just go with it.
No, of course I didn’t have a fiancé. Or a boyfriend. Or any guy in my life except my business partner, Steve, whom I’d never dream of putting in that awkward position. But I’d found a date for my middle school dance by using my own ingenuity and resources, and I could do the same thing now.
So that’s how I got here, lying to my mother about being engaged as we eat chicken salad sandwiches and drink sweet tea.
“I know you didn’t know about Pop,” my mom says, glancing down shyly at her mostly finished plate of food. “It all happened so quickly. I didn’t... trust it.”