The Better Half(14)
“How am I supposed to distract myself when Leo sends me photos like this?” I hold up my phone so Roan can see my new home screen image, a picture of Leo on a white-sand beach in Singapore.
“If you ask me, Leo’s totally selfish leaving you AND leaving me during my engagement season. He was my first pick for my Mudchella turned bubble team, then you two. A man who can bike up and over the San Gabriel Mountains is welcome to roll in the mud with me anytime.” I know Roan and his fiancé, Tate, boldly asked Leo, whom they have only met two times, to officiate their wedding. Roan wants three beautiful men front and center for his ceremony, but he claims to want someone in the legal profession to make the marriage legit. When Leo told Roan that his specialty was labor, not family law, and that he was going to Singapore to open a satellite office, we got to witness Roan’s first full-blown gridal panic attack.
Leo’s everything I forgot to shop for when I picked Graham out for husband material at twenty-six years old. He’s kind, he appears curious about me and my work, and he seems to roll with whatever is thrown his way. I promised Roan I wouldn’t allow my novice long-distance relationship skills to ruin his nuptials. Here’s hoping.
“The next few months you get five conversations about missing Leo.” Roan holds up his newly moisturized hand, fingers outstretched. “The rest of our conversations are all about my wedding. And we can talk admissions, too, from time to time. Me, school, you,” Roan says, pointing in turn as if wielding a wand. “That’ll be our weekly meeting agenda. So back to me. The three of us are going to look beyond gorgeous under the chalupa. People are going to swoon. The banker, the dream maker, and the legal anchor.”
“Chalupa?” Marisol mouths to me and shakes her head while Roan cackles at his own Mother Goose rhyme. She points to herself, then to me. I point back to her and vigorously nod my head yes; the Latina should clarify Mexican culture to the Irish marrying a Jew. This Jamaican is out.
“It’s called a chuppah, not a chalupa, you lapsed Catholic. That’s what you’ll be standing under when you marry your Jewish bean counter from Jersey. You didn’t learn this before you packed up your fabulous single-in-San-Francisco life and moved here to settle down? A chalupa is what you eat at the summer street fair in Santa Ana,” Marisol explains with a hint of really? in her voice. “You know, that one day a year when rosary-wielding devout grandmas are okay selling overpriced Mexican food smothered in queso to men roaming their neighborhood hand in hand,” Marisol offers for added context. “Abuela’s rationalizing of course, not mine.”
Roan tips his chin in full understanding. As director of admissions, the gatekeeper of diversity and inclusion at Royal-Hawkins, the fact that Roan has mixed up the two cultural traditions should be unnerving, but it’s not. Whenever Roan shatters his cover of cultural competency, he simply chalks it up to being an equal opportunist. Jewricans, Mexipeans, Blaurvians—Roan loves them all. And he’s made love to them all, as he takes every opportunity to brag. That’s why Marisol and I are waiting to buy our dresses for the wedding until forty-eight hours before go time.
“Whatever it’s called, we’re going to slay. Everyone’s going to be so jealous. I can’t wait.”
“Building your wedding ceremony based on best angles and a jealous audience, that touches me deeply.” I tap my heart with my index and middle finger. “I’ll remember to bring tissues for the Hallmark moment.”
“Everyone personalizes their wedding in their own special way.” Roan raises his glass for a snarky salud.
“Gotta down and dash.” Marisol finishes her last sip. “If I don’t hit the grocery store before I get home, my family will be eating meat-lover’s pizza for the fourth night in a row. A vegetable has not passed a Garcia mouth in days. My thirteen-year-old is growing chest hair, and the can of Glade in the bathroom is empty. Why I didn’t hire a nanny who can cook is beyond me. A decade in I can’t fire Spanny, though. The boys are too attached, and she irons Jaime’s boxers. They have a little thing.” Roan raises his eyebrows at Marisol.
“It’s okay,” Marisol assures, waving off Roan’s concern, “she’s inching close to sixty and is as wide as she is tall. And even if they were having an affair, I’d have to turn the other cheek. I can’t parent without her,” Marisol admits, knowing her family train doesn’t run without Super Nanny as the engine.
“Can I get a ride, Sol? Roan drove me here. My car’s getting a massive tune-up so I can drive it for two more years and then pass it on to Xandra. She needs something to drive when she’s home from boarding school.”
“You’re a head of school now, why are you still driving around in that duct-taped jalopy?” Marisol questions. “You’re making bank, it’s time to start treating yourself.”
“I was planning to cheat on fashion with new furniture and a new car this year, but the financial aid office at Pemberley School got hip to my new salary bracket. Higher salary, no financial aid package. Between that, the nonrefundable custom-made sectional I had already ordered, and my dad staying with me since August and showing no signs of leaving, I gotta keep the jalopy in fighting shape.” Since Mom died and Clive moved to London for a two-year stint for work but fell in love and stayed for a Somali PhD student at Oxford, I think my father has been lonely in Queens. Each visit to Pasadena has become longer and longer to the point now that I only buy him one-way tickets.