“Well, if the doctor said so,” Nana said. “I know I always do what my doctor says. They do go to medical school for, like, sixteen years.”
“So then Paul took me back to his house and kept me there and took care of me.”
“I should hope so,” Mom said. “He did hit you with his car.”
“It’s like I’m not even here,” I said into my hands.
“So he saved my life and I saved his, and I sort of figured we belonged to each other,” Vince said, smiling fondly at me as if I hadn’t said a single thing.
“You weren’t dying,” I told him.
“You thought I was. Otherwise, your tongue probably wouldn’t have been in my mouth.”
“You put your tongue in my mouth.”
He shrugged. “Does it matter who did what where? What matters is that I got you.”
“Aww,” Nana said.
“It was meant to be,” Mom said, eyes brimming.
“That’s pretty swell,” Dad said gruffly. “So Paul didn’t tell you how me and his mom met? That’s surprising, given the similarities.”
“Who wants pie?” I asked loudly. “Seems like a perfect time for pie! I couldn’t imagine an even better time to have everyone except for Vince go into the kitchen, where we will not be raising our voices in any way, shape, or form. Just a normal family discussion about pie.”
“Pie can wait,” Mom said absently.
“Similarities?” Vince asked.
“I have an announcement to make,” I said desperately. “I have decided to become a Wiccan and you should now all call me Heaven Moonstorm.”
No one even blinked. I put my face in my hands and waited for it to be over.
“A little over thirty-fi
ve years ago,” Dad said as he reached out and grabbed Mom’s hand, “I was seated at a restaurant in what used to be downtown Tucson. I was there with some buddies from school. I was a freshman at the U of A then.”
“A very handsome one,” Mom said, smiling at him, as she always did when he reached this part.
From there, I’m sure you can figure out the rest. It’s actually deceptively simple yet decisively beautiful. It’s also so completely unrealistic and illogical that it doesn’t seem like real life, like something that would really work.
Dad’s eating with friends and inhales something wrong and starts to choke. Mom just happens to be passing by at the time and stops him from choking by performing this new trick she’d heard about on the news, the Heimlich maneuver. Dad lives, all is well. They smile at each other, instantly enamored. But then Mom has to go, she can’t be late, and he doesn’t get her name. She’s a student, he knows, just the same as he, but he doesn’t know where to start looking. No one seems to know her name.
The next day, he’s walking through a parking lot when she backs her old Volkswagen out of a parking space and up and over his foot, breaking three of his toes. She’s hysterical, apologizing profusely, but he doesn’t really hear it because even before he learns her name, he knows that he’s in love with her completely and fully in a way he never thought possible. He’s not a stupid man, nor is he a foolish one. He doesn’t have the propensity to daydream about things that could never happen. He’s rational. He’s solid. He’s sound.
But all of that goes out the window when he says, “What’s your name?”
“Matilda,” she says through her tears. “But everyone calls me Matty.”
“Well, Matty,” he says with a grimace. “I’d appreciate a ride to the hospital, if you don’t mind. And I also think I might just be in love with you.”
She’s shocked right out of her tears and laughs such a bright sound that my father’s heart is shredded.
A week later, they were married.
“Didn’t your parents freak out?” Vince asked when my dad finished.
He shrugged. “A bit. They thought we were high.”