1.
After about twelve years together, I finally agreed to visit my husband Will's family down south-- the ones on his mother's side, the Syrians. Like with most things involving his mother, I hadn't been warned she'd be coming too. That was part of my reluctance, but by the time I found out, it was too late to back out without causing offense.
His two sisters couldn't come, so it was just the three of us. They were older than Will, and had pretty much moved on with life by the time he was born. He was the last chance for a son to carry on the family name -- or at least, that's what Dolores expected.
She'd never cared for me, not from the first. Maybe if I'd been cautioned about some of her ways -- and, to put it most kindly, antiquated views -- I could have done a better job. But Will never gave me a clue. He just smiled the whole time, and even afterwards when I asked what the hell that was, he just kept smiling like it was the most normal thing in the world
That was his solution to ninety-nine percent of our problems: just smile.
Sometimes I didn't know how we'd make it.
I wasn't always the easiest person to like, but I could turn it on. I worked as the deputy director for a legal aid organization for immigrants and refugees. Most of my job was talking with major donors and partners, and sometimes unruffling feathers. That took some skill. But somehow none of my tricks worked on Dolores. If anything, every attempt seemed to inflame her.
I thought that as a first-generation American she'd value my work. Instead, the things she said about immigrants just appalled me.
I'd never figure out how such a hard case had such a sweet son as Will. Maybe it was his father showing up in him -- a descendant of a Mayflower family -- which you'd think would make him the more uptight of the two. But for the brief time I knew him before he passed, he was mild and gentle as milk. His wife was more WASP than the WASP.
Will wasn't without his moments. He had a temper, though it showed only rarely. He'd kicked a trash can so hard once it was nearly useless from being bent. Another time, he even took a swing at our cat, but missed. I told him if he did that again, I'd do the same to something he cared about, and he never did. I learned he'd gotten in a lot of trouble for fighting -- actual physical fights -- with other little kids.
Sometimes I thought I needed to get out, that I was wasting my one and only life, and wasting his too. He'd never communicate the way I wanted. I'd always have to live with uncertainty. At other times I thought he was the most handsome and kind man in the world and I didn't deserve him. I'd ask him at those times why he even liked me, and he'd say he just did. As if that told me anything.
All the back and forth of feelings, between adoration and exhaustion. I wondered if that was what marriage was.
2.
We landed in Atlanta and went to Will's Aunt Ruth's house in Decatur. I was shocked at how unlike her sister Dolores she was -- just a tiny, gnome-like thing with a shock of puffy white hair, like a cotton boll. I asked, politely, what I should call her and she said, "Oh, well, Aunt Ruth! That's what everyone else does!"
Like Dolores, she was a widow. She'd only had one son -- couldn't have more. Her house was tiny, but the yard was a lot and a half, and over time she'd turned it into a kind of wildlife habitat. There were trees she'd planted before I was born that now formed canopies, home to birds and squirrels; tiny flowers and huge shrubs of every kind. Gurgling water features and rocky spots dotted the landscape, and a little swing hung under a tree in the dappled shade. Every morning she'd refill her feeders, and spend her afternoons tending to the green growing things.
Unlike Dolores, who was always dressed and groomed impeccably--even I had to admit--Aunt Ruth's style was pure happenstance. Her pants and flowery shirts looked like she'd pulled them on at random, and she wore stubby, boyish sneakers to amble around her garden. Her home was full of mismatched pieces, and there were half-finished projects everywhere: puzzles she meant to get back to, needlepoint barely begun.
Aunt Ruth set us up in a room in the basement that had been her husband's study. He'd been a history professor at Emory, and there were still stacks of his books and papers in the room and on his desk, as if he'd meant to get back to them all but never had the chance. She set up an air mattress for us -- apologized for it -- but there were only two real beds.
As we settled in, I saw something scurry against the wall near our mattress and went after it. It was the biggest bug I'd ever seen -- a cockroach several times the size of any I'd encountered.
"Will! WILL!" I called, blocking its way with some handy books, cornering it, then adding a final book on top to trap it.
"There's no way I'm sleeping with that in this room."
I devised a plan to get rid of it.
I went upstairs, thinking Ruth and Dolores would be in their own beds, to get a glass in which to capture it. But Ruth caught me, asking what I needed.
"Oh, I was just looking for a glass," I mumbled.
"Are you thirsty?" Ruth asked. "There's cold water in the fridge."
I realized, after the fact, I could have just taken the water, drunk it, and then used the glass for my own purposes. But I didn't have my wits about me.
"Well, no," I mumbled, "there's a... kind of bug downstairs. I was going to catch it and put it outside."
"A BUG?" Aunt Ruth exclaimed. She grabbed her old kitchen broom -- almost as tall as she was -- and we went downstairs.
She took one look at the insect and told Will to lift one of the books that was trapping it. When he did, she jabbed the broom at the bug, hard--harder than I'd have guessed she had in her. She kept at it until it was beaten senseless, then turned the broom around and jabbed at it with the handle until it crunched.
"That's what you do with a bug in the South," Ruth announced, wrapping an arm around me and giggling like a girl.
Will just smiled, not saying a word. Another thing I hadn't been prepared for.
3.
The next morning, coffee, eggs, donuts, pita, and hummus were laid out. Aunt Ruth had a favorite Middle Eastern place for her pita and other goods. She, Dolores, and their brothers had all been born in the US -- more American than American -- but there were certain foods they held onto. Good pita was one, even if it was just store-bought, and kibbeh was another.
"It's a ground meat and bulgur wheat thing," Will explained. "Syria's national dish."
Honestly, it was easy to forget Will was Syrian at all -- with his pale, creamy complexion, his Mayflower family name, and that suburban upbringing. His mother was lighter-skinned than her sister, and his father was blond, so I guess that's how that happens.
I mentioned it offhandedly to Aunt Ruth -- that sometimes I forgot Will was Syrian. She said that when he was born, his hair was so dark and curly the Black nurse at the hospital said he looked more like one of hers.
Dolores tightened her face as the story was told, but eased up a bit. "She said you could really tell by the fingernails," she added. "But I don't know."
For the family reunion the next day, there'd be kibbeh, mujaddara, hummus, baba ganoush, and mountains of tabbouleh. Also on the menu: deviled eggs, potato salad, ham, and sliced tomatoes. Will said he'd make biscuits, and Dolores wanted to make her green pea salad.
Aunt Ruth put us to work, prepping the house -- bringing up folding chairs from the basement, cleaning the carpeting. Honestly, I never knew there could be so much to do just for having family over. My own parents split when I was young and neither was suited to parenting. I grew up on the fly, shuffled between family members, never knowing how long I'd be with one, or why one day or night I'd be moved to another.
Maybe that was part of what Dolores didn't like about me. She'd made a prize of a son: smart, kind, hardworking, and, to be honest, pretty gorgeous. She ought to have gotten a pretty, demure daughter-in-law out of it -- one to domineer and train up in her image. Instead, she had me: a tall, lanky man, with divorced, lower-class parents, at turns too clever, too sarcastic, and sometimes too easily hurt for my own good.
Given my start, I thought I'd done well, professionally and personally. When I became deputy director, Will bought me a cowboy-style deputy badge to mark the occasion. I was often happy, liked at work, and could navigate moneyed donors with surprising ease. But I never met Dolores's standards. Sometimes I thought she could see right through me, to the darker seams twined in my pride and accomplishment.
I liked the look of Will working -- not for the sake of the work, but because he was so capable. He was always so fit, and I liked to see the play of muscle in his arms and back. When he got sweaty and stripped off his t-shirt, tucking it into the rear of his shorts, the swell of his chest and the taut line of his belly drew my attention.
When his mother and aunt weren't looking, I took chances to grope him, winking when he turned at me in surprise. He had reason; we hadn't been very physical for a while.
"That's what you get for going shirtless," I whispered, leaning in.
That night in bed, the memory of his glistening body lingered. I could barely keep my hands off him.
I loved his dark, curly hair and the way barely visible veins traced under his skin like marble. When he got sweaty -- or had a little to drink -- arrow-shaped patches of red would appear on his jaw. But I had another priority.
"Tell me again who's coming to the reunion," I asked him. "And especially, tell me who the influencers are."
I took his glasses off and put them on -- shocked, as always, at how strong they were. I didn't know how he could see anything without them.
"The influencers?" Will laughed.
"Who are the ones I have to make a good impression on?"
"I don't know," Will said. "Just be yourself. Everyone will love you."
Ugh. As if my experience with his mother hadn't taught me that being myself with this family was the exact wrong thing to do.
Instead, I planned the get-together like a work event with VIPs, prying details from Will about who the gossips were, who held sway, who would be sweet as pie to your face and stab you in the back as soon as you turned away. For God's sake, it was Atlanta. They specialized in coded language and passive-aggressive manners.
In the end, I had my list. And for all my faults, when it was time to show up -- even into a pool full of sharks -- I didn't back down.
4.
