Page 7 of The Weekend Crashers
“I know you are. I’m just concerned that getting married right now would derail that.”
“Why would it?” he says.
“Because I know my daughter, and she loves with her whole heart. She’ll be torn between you and work, and you will always come first. There’s certainly a time for that. But that time is not now.” She pauses, looking into his big brown eyes to see if any of this is sinking in. It’s tough to tell. So she keeps going. “Clearly, something has her stressed out. Look what happened last night. She’s never fainted before in her life! So if you want what’s best for her, you’ll give her some space to be selfish for a little while. Let her make her own money, and have a career she can look back on when she’s older and say,Yeah—I did that. And then, when you do get married, she won’t have any regrets.”
Ethan looks stricken. “Okay. Well, you’ve given me something to think about.”
Maggie smiles at him, resisting the urge to pat him on the shoulder. He looks very young himself in the moment. She knows she’s given good advice. That’s all she can do.
Maggie walks the rest of the way to the restaurant alone.
Her date takes her to an expensive French restaurant. Allan is ten years older, a lawyer with a tan that suggests he has a second home somewhere warm. He reminds her of one of her mother’s favorite old movie stars, George Hamilton.
She doesn’t want to think of her mother, Birdie Hodges, who is relentlessly vocal in her disapproval of Maggie’s single status. According to Birdie, Maggie is willfully making life unnecessarily difficult by failing to find a man to take care of her. This is Maggie’s second unforgivable mistake in life. The first, of course, was getting pregnant at age twenty.
Maggie met Piper’s father backstage at a fashion show. It was her second year at Parsons and she had an internship with a major designer. Maggie’s job was to assist the assistants. Onenight, in the flurry of backstage activity, she ended up working with a male model from Iceland. Kris was sweet and self-deprecating and she went home with him that night. It was six weeks before she realized she was pregnant. And, that being the dark ages before iPhones and social media, she had no way to get in touch with him. And even if she did, it would be pointless. He was in his early twenties, based in Europe, traveling the world as a model. She was on her own.
But a decade later, after some online sleuthing, she did find him: He owned a furniture design company in his hometown of Höfn. They messaged briefly on an app. He was married, with no kids, and no interest in Piper.
Her last serious relationship ended when Piper was twelve. Daniel was an architect she’d met at a friend’s birthday dinner. They dated happily for a few years, but when she kept declining his invitations to move into his apartment, they reached an impasse. She said she’d consider it once Piper was off to college, but he said he couldn’t “put his life on hold.” And that was the end of her romantic life, essentially. She didn’t do the whole online dating thing. The construct was so flawed. How could a true love match ever come from it? So she’d accepted that she’d missed the boat on romance. Her own mother had told her as much: “You always overreach and then you wonder why nothing works out.” She liked to add, “If you don’t watch out, you’ll spend the rest of your life alone.”
Maggie didn’t bother explaining that she’d never be alone as long as she had Piper. Birdie would never understand how fulfilling a mother-daughter relationship could be because they themselves didn’t have one. Once she got over the initial shock and logistical worries of being pregnant at twenty, Maggie stopped viewing it as a mistake. It was a second chance at a good mother-daughter relationship, just reversed. The dayshe gave birth to Piper was the day she stopped aching for her own mother’s love.
Maggie listens to Allan the lawyer talk about his home in Palm Beach (She knew it!) while she sips her glass of wine.
“I feel like I’m doing all the talking,” he says after a while. “What about you? Where are you from?”
“Outside of Philadelphia,” she says.
“The Main Line?”
She nods. The wealthy suburb was made famous by the Katharine Hepburn filmThe Philadelphia Story.
“You don’t look like a Main Line girl,” he says.
She resists the urge to say,Well, because I’m not a girl, I’m a woman.Instead, she tells him, “I moved to New York for college.”
“Me too. Columbia, class of 1993.”
She smiles politely and offers, “I was at Parsons.” She omits the part about dropping out before getting her degree. She’s not ashamed of it; she just doesn’t see the point in expending the energy to explain it. She already knows she won’t be seeing this man again.
The bottom line is that she doesn’t have any interest in sharing her life with a man. She’s tried, it hasn’t worked, and she’s moved on. She has everything she needs: A good job. Friends. Knitting. And most importantly, she has her daughter.
Before they’ve ordered food, Piper texts,Ru around?
Maggie excuses herself for the ladies’ room. She takes the wide staircase leading to the bathrooms on the second floor. Upstairs, she stands outside the bathroom and texts back,I’m around. What’s up?
She doesn’t mention she’s on a date. Piper would be horrified to know she’d interrupted.
Can you meet at the diner? Need to talk.
Maggie doesn’t have to ask what diner. She and Piper have a shorthand for everything.See u in 15, Maggie writes.
She has until she reaches the bottom of the staircase to think of an excuse to tell her date.
Gracie Mews diner has occupied the corner of East 81st Street and First Avenue for decades. The portions are huge and the prices are outrageous, but it’s the dining equivalent of a warm cozy blanket. The place has had the same staff for as long as she can remember, and when she asks for her usual, LEO (lox, eggs, onion) omelet—her server comments:
“Breakfast for dinner.”
