The first time my mother and Joe met was May 1994, at my college graduation. Before the ceremony I told Joe to go with my parents while I headed backstage, and his face puckered. What else was he supposed to do? I wondered. He couldn’t sit with my before my name was called. Afterwards he told me my mother wouldn’t speak to him, except to ask, “What kind of car do you drive?”
I was never sure why my mother never approved of Joe. While my father was more easy-going, and liked whatever my brother and I liked, my mother had a picture in her mind. Joe should have been handsomer and Chinese. He should have been a full-fledged lawyer, not already 27 and only applying to law school. He should have wooed her at my graduation, trying to charm her with a joke, a gentle tease, instead of sensing her hostility and shutting down. He should have been taller.
The summer after we began dating, she asked me to stop seeing him. I was living at home in Princeton, trying to save money while I commuted to my job at the publishing house. She had heard me crying after a fight, a misunderstanding really, about whether or not Joe would be driving out to New Jersey that weekend.
“Don’t date him anymore,” my mother pleaded, appearing in my doorway. She was upset rather than angry, which surprised me.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her, sniffling.
This infuriated her. “What do you mean ‘don’t worry about it’?” she asked. She was my mother; worrying was what she did. “Stop seeing him,” she went on. “Please.”
After that I decided it would be easier to lie, as I had been doing with my parents since I was eight and brought home my first C. My mother scolded me for what felt like hours, after which I did my best to hide all bad grades, or to tell only my father and beg him not to say anything. Sometimes he complied.
Now I told my mother that although Joe and I had been dating, we were no longer. “We’re just friends,” I said. Lies were easier, and it wouldn’t by the only one I’d tell about Joe.
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