Sara has the coolest stuff

Faith Losing It

I call my mother on Friday and mention that I am having a few friends over for New Year’s Eve and that I plan to cook a big dinner, so I ask to borrow a folding table and a chair or two just to make sure I have enough room. I tell her that I’m getting a Peapod grocery delivery between 9 and 11 on Saturday morning, so I’ll definitely be home for that and probably afterwards. She says she’ll talk to my dad (he’s the driver in the family) and she’ll call me on Saturday.

This guy I’ve begun seeing stays over on Friday night. Ah yes. I really like this boy. This man. He is so sweet to me. Plus, the sex is amazing. A-maz-ing. We make love all night long. In the morning, Peapod shows up a little past 9:00 a.m. I find some pajamas and let the nice delivery man in. The boy and I put the food away then go back to the bedroom for round two. Around noon, in the midst of the afterglow, our naked bodies, sweaty and tangled together, our hearts still beating away, we hear this terrible noise that jars us from our bliss. It is the buzzer to my apartment. Someone is at the front door. The buzzer is going crazy. Whoever is down there is buzzing in a panic - the doorbell version of banging your fist against the door. I scramble for my pajamas. I’m in sixteen year old mode. Fuck! It’s my parents. I just know it. They’re coming to bring the table for New Year’s. Why didn’t they call? They always call. They are the complete opposite of spontaneous, my parents. They call me to tell me they are leaving the house and they call me to tell me they’re on Route 1 and they call me to tell me they are on Storrow Drive. You get the picture. Fuck! I can’t find my pajamas. The boy gets up because I’ve gotten up and says, bewildered, “What should I do?” I look at him, tall and broad shouldered, naked with such a look of concern for me, fucking adorable, and I chuckle. A fleeting thought occurs to me to tell him to hurry and hide in the closet, but I don’t know if he’ll get my sense of humor at the moment. It brings me back to reality just a bit. “Nothing,” I say, “It’s OK.” I grab a towel and wrap it around me.

I go to the intercom in my apartment, approaching the crazy buzzing noise with trepidation and push the Talk button.

“Hello?”

I hear a garbled voice.

“Who is this?”

“It’s your mother,” says Faith in a strained voice.

“Mom? What are you doing here?”

“Let me in.”

“Hold on. I‘m not dressed.”

“Let me in.” She buzzes again.

“WAIT a sec!” I yell impatiently into the intercom.

I scramble back into the bedroom and find my pajamas on the floor and throw them on.

Instead of buzzing her in, I open my apartment door and look down the half flight of stairs to the glassed entryway. She looks up at me, all bundled up as usual, ridiculously so, with a big black wool coat, sturdy ankle boots, and a thick red scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders like a babushka. Her eyeglasses poking out, her dark features frowning.

She looks like she should be waiting in a bread line or something.

To add to that image, she gives me this crazy gesture, throwing her arms up in a way that can only say “what the fuck?” She looks very upset. Angry and worried. I take a deep breath wondering what’s this all about, head down the stairs and open the door. I stand in the doorway, holding the door with my hip , and trying to cover myself a little with my arms as I’m only wearing a tiny tank top and pajama pants.

“What are you doing here?” I look past her and see no Dad and no table and chairs, so I assume he is idling outside.

“I’ve been calling you all morning. I left five messages. We were very worried. You said you’d be home.”

“What? My phone didn’t ring.” Really, it didn’t. I was beginning to wonder why not when she showed up, but it was only noon, so I figured I’d call them once I managed to disentangle myself from the boy for a few minutes. My Florida cell phone has more issues. Sometimes it delays voice mails. This time, it didn’t even indicate a call even though I had a full signal. Later, I had to shut the phone off and turn it back on and when I did, it told me I had 5 voice mails.

“Well, I called. We were very, very worried, Rebecca. You said you would be home. You said you had a Peapod delivery between 9 and 11.”

Ugh. I was too damn specific. Vague, Rebecca. Remember to be vague. She grills me about my schedule whenever we are on the phone. “And then tomorrow you’re working? And you’re coming over on Saturday? Dad will pick you up. Got any plans for Sunday?” It’s just her way of small talk, but it drives me crazy and she remembers everything. One time she called me and I told her I was in the Newark airport because I was jetting back and forth that day for work and she freaked out a little bit that I didn’t mention it to her. See, my life is foreign to them. When my parents travel it is a production. Usually they go to Europe once a year, often with some of my mother’s students or with a group of adults, so there is mega-planning involved a year out. They need the planning. They need schedules and itineraries. Flying to Jersey City for the day and not letting them know is a bit too “willy-nilly” for their comfort level.

“Peapod came at 9 and I went back to bed. What’s going on, mom? Where are the table and chairs?”

“We didn’t bring them,” she says to me as if that would be obvious.

“You didn’t bring the table and chairs?”

“No.”

“Why? Then why are you here?”

“Because you didn’t answer your phone and we were very, very worried Rebecca, so we just drove down here.”

“What?”

“We got in the car and came here to see if you were OK. We couldn’t imagine why you wouldn’t answer the phone.”

“Are you serious?” I’m beginning to crack up.

“Yes.” She’s beginning to look slightly sheepish.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. We don’t have the table.”

“No table?”

“No.”

“No chairs?”

“No chairs.”

“And you drove all the way down to Boston to buzz my apartment to make sure I wasn’t dead because I didn’t answer the phone and Peapod was coming between nine and eleven?”

“Yes.”

“But it‘s only noon.”

“I know. You said you‘d be home between nine and eleven.”

“Which means you hopped in the car at 11:30.”

“Where are you going with this, Rebecca?”

“Forget it. Are you coming back with the table?”

“Well, it’s awfully out of our way and we have stuff to do. Can’t you just do buffet style? Kerry and April are like family. They won’t care. Do buffet style.”

I just look at her incredulously for a minute. She blinks at me like this is a totally normal thing for her to say. Like this whole conversation and her appearing at my door would be expected.

“OK, Mom, I really can’t deal with this now,” I say giggling hysterically. I have been giggling since I realized she really didn’t bring the table. I knew she wanted to say, “Well, Rebecca, we thought you were being raped and murdered in the big city or you were passed out in your apartment from a gas leak or something and we jumped in the car and flew down here to save you. Do you really think we would pause to load the car up with a table and a few chairs before we took off to save our oldest daughter from peril?” but of course, she didn’t say that, because THAT would have been ridiculous.

“Go home, mom. I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Give me a hug,” she says, giving me a look.

I know her look. She doesn’t want to hug me. She wants to smell me. My mother has the olfactory senses of a hound. I used to get the sniff test as a teenager, to see if I were smoking or drinking. She’s not even subtle about it. She’s get you in her clutches in the ruse of a good night kiss and then you’d hear this giant sniff.

I think she thinks I’m on drugs or something because I’m cracking up like a crazy person. The whole scenario is so ridiculous. My naked scramble. My crazy parents. No table. Fucking hilarious. Of course, she only knows the half of it, so now she thinks I’m insane or stoned or something. I manage to get away without a big sniff/hug - I knew I had his scent all over me - but then she gives me another look, a darker curious, raised eyebrow look, and I wonder if she’s figured out that I have a man in my bed. I just raise my eyebrow back and run up the stairs.

I get back upstairs and the boy is standing there, fully clothed and presentable. He’s so sweet. I just want to chew on him.

I served chicken parmesan buffet style that night, but I had an excellent story to tell, so I didn’t mind.

Kerry brought these pastries to New Year's