Zack moves me out of the way as politely as possible.
“Isn’t she your mother? You’re acting like there’s a missile headed towards the house.”
“The missile has already entered through the front door and picked up on the fact that Padraic has been hiding something from her. Somebody snitched.”
“Snitched? Why is this a secret. We’re both in our late thirties. Can’t your brother marry who he wants?”
“You would think so.”
Apparently, this isn’t the case. The skirt suit Zack picks out for me looks like something Hillary Clinton would wear. No shade to her, but my style is halfway between Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama. I love dressing like an aunty, but dressing like a Caucasian grandma? I don’t know about that.
Zack doesn’t watch me change until I need his help getting the zipper up on the back of this Chanel suit. He pulls the zipper all the way up the length of my back. The suit feels like a prison. I turn around, and I seriously could not feel less sexy.
“Even when I’m a grandma, I will dress sexier than this.”
Lots of black women I know are sexy well into their eighties. It has nothing to do with injections or surgeries, either. You take care of yourself and have thatje ne sais quois…You can be sexy forever-ever. This suit kills the entire concept of sex.
“You lookperfect.”
“I look like a weird combination of a man and several balloons.”
“You are crazy. You would look hot wearing a freaking potato sack, okay?” Zack says. “But that doesn’t even matter because my mother will rip you apart.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah. She’s a bitch. We don’t have much time, so I can’t prepare you but… I need you to go upstairs to Padraic’s office and survive for about ten minutes. I’ll come up with a plan to get you out of there by then.”
“Are you joking?”
“Ma’am?” Zack says, folding his arms. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
He’s wearing a pink seersucker suit. I don’t know how Zack wants me to answer that question.
Chapter Fifteen
Padraic
“What are you doing here?”
My mother smells like she poured out a bottle of Chanel No. 5 on her driver’s seat and brined herself like a Thanksgiving turkey on the way. Her lips bulge out with large holes along the tops where she gets those silly injections. I think she’s glaring at me, but her eyebrows haven’t moved since the 2008 financial crash when she switched to her budget Botox specialist.
I’m surprised I didn’t hear her squeaking up the stairs. Oh, I can hear her now though. I like to think she looks more like Zack than me, but she doesn’t even look like herself anymore. Needless to say, we aren’t close. I was raised by a large-breasted nanny from St. Kitts followed by an even larger-breasted nanny from Grenada.
Those women did far more for me than Alison Tyler ever did.
“How about a hug?” she says, standing in the doorway, popping her hips and thrusting her chest forward.
I sometimes wish that my father married for love. My mother was a famous super model for three years before she gotmarried, had kids, resumed her pill addiction where she could live happily ever after on my father’s money.
“I’m busy.”
My mother’s heels click annoyingly across my office floor. “You’re not busy. You’re hiding a wife and I want to meet her.Now.”
She leans over and my eyes squeeze shut inadvertently as her strong perfume causes stinging.
“I’d rather not facilitate that. My wife doesn’t deserve to be clawed to shreds by the local vulture,” I respond to her calmly. I don’t want to meet my mother’s desperate need for conflict.
“If that’s an insult, I won’t acknowledge it.”