Underworld

Jason announced on Valentine’s Day that he was getting married, though Megan wasn't listening. She was preoccupied with the thought that she hadn’t gotten a Valentine’s gift for Jim. Perhaps she could send Jason out to buy a DVD so it would be here when Jim got home from work. Then Jason told her about his fiancee. Everybody announced these things on Valentine’s Day. It was so corny, like chick-lit writers appearing on Martha Stewart. Jason declared, I’m getting married.

Sh. Wait. I’m watching this. She knew she was being rude. It’s Jane Green and Jennifer Weiner. I especially like Jane Green. But Weiner is so aggressive Green barely gets to say anything.

Don’t you want to hear about April?

Sh. Megan knew that was very mean but she felt her blood pressure going up. She had to control her reaction. She had to be a cool mom. So she pretended to care about chick-lit and said, I love Jemima M.

Is that a chick-lit book? April reads those books.

Sh. it’s almost over.

Megan listened to the novelists say they wrote “faction,” not fiction, and that their books were fact turned into fiction.

I would never have known that, she said with a straight face.

You’re going to love April. She’s a cop. What could be more feminist?

Megan was cool about it. She sipped her Coke, real Coke, not Diet, because you only live once, and she didn’t particularly want to get cancer from whatever was in Diet Coke. It was a bit stunning to learn that Jason was marrying a policewoman after his upbringing. What could she say? She remembered the time she had been cuffed by a policewoman at an antiwar demonstration. She could hardly call that cop a feminist and still remembered the vicious way the cop had knocked her down and hauled her into the back seat of a black-and-white. The handcuffs had hurt like hell. She’d screamed, Help!, but no one had been able to help her. The cops were everywhere.

When do I get to meet her?

Tomorrow? We’re going out tonight. We got a package deal: first the casino and then he hotel.

I don’t want to hear it. She would never take a package deal, ever. She would never go to a casino, take a cruise, do any of those other old-people things. Jason was, what, 26?

She popped open the box of candy Jim had given her and Jason ate several chocolate-covered caramels, which he identified by the swirl on top. He and Jim had the same tastes: football, nachos, chocolate-covered caramels. The two were somehow all-American guys who watched the Superbowl on TV while she watched them in amazement. Jason had never been a sports guy. He had been a post-hippie environmentalist kid who smoked dope with his parents and printed out the chapbooks of poetry he wrote on his computer. The poetry wasn’t too bad. He had a journalism degree and an MFA. Now he was stuck working on a newspaper.

Megan couldn’t believe Jason was going to marry a cop. She had hoped he would marry Rose’s alternative newspaper friend, Ashley. That had been Megan and Rose’s plot. Jason was going to drive Megan to Snowden on the weekend so she could comfort Rose while she was falling apart. Jason and Ashley would meet and perhaps they’d fall for each other. He could save Ashley’s newspaper from failing.

Now he said he wanted to marry a policewoman.

Megan pretended everything was all right but she was fed up. She knew all mothers hated their daughters-in-law. All mothers schemed against them. it was like a Roman empire thing, an American empire thing. She had been through it herself long ago when her mother-in-law had wanted to kill her in society. She had told everybody that Megan had been arrested. She hadn’t told them that it had been for marching against the war. Megan’s mother-in-law’s friends had assumed she was some kind of whore because Megan had worn very sexy clothes in those days. Megan looked at the pictures and couldn’t believe it.

No wonder her bottled-up mother-in-law had hated her.

Megan counted on hating April. it wouldn’t matter much. It was wisest not to mention it. If she broke them up, Jason would just end up hating Megan.

When Jim got home, she was delighted. He was the perfect boyfriend.

What a day. What a day, he kept muttering. But we’ll still go out for dinner.

What about “What a day?” What happened?

No, no, you don’t want to know.

Megan put on a dress. It was too tight. She was so fat! She tried on another dress, a loose dress she could get away with, and put on a necklace, a ridiculous beady necklace that a niece had given her, probably made for her. Did she have any earrings? She couldn’t find them. There were still holes in her ears.

Should she put on makeup?

She looked in the mirror. A fat woman in makeup. Hm. Which was worse? A fat woman with or without makeup? Everybody wore eyeliner. Megan had never cared for the look. It made her look like a raccoon.

In the end she went without makeup.

You look great, Jim said. Jim looked good: not lank and Abraham Lincolnish, like her son Jason. He was wearing jeans.

Megan laughed. She wondered why she was wearing a dress if he was wearing jeans. They were going to their favorite African restaurant. The restaurant was in an alley. Why were hip Philadelphians dining in an alley? Because the food was good.

She idly told him that Jason was getting married.

He’s old enough.

But he’s only 26 and he’s marrying a policewoman.

Jim laughed. That might not be a bad thing. They know a lot. They know the underworld.

Do I want a daughter-in-law who knows the underworld?

Why not?

They ate their food, drank their wine, and did not discuss the marriage. They were too old.