She waved me off. “That’s all right. I suppose that one’s on me for having unrealistic expectations. After all, I’m not here to see the couch. I’m here to see you. And also maybe the go-go dancers.”
“By here to see me, you mean judge me, right? Just to clarify, I’m not hip to the mom lingo. Not that I would ever be a mother. Or if I were, I’d be the booze-soaked kind who drank wine out of boxes at the kid’s lacrosse games.” I frowned. “How the hell do I know what lacrosse is? I’ve never even seen lacrosse before. And now you’re judging me.”
She grinned. “Maybe. But if you’re anything like Darren’s been describing for years, then I don’t think you have too much to worry about. In fact, you’re probably even better than he described. One of those you have to see it to believe it.”
“Mom,” Darren growled.
“Aww,” I said, rather pleased at the turn of events. “That’s so adorab—did you say years?”
“Oh no,” Darren said, tugging on my arm. “Look at the time. We don’t want to be late. We should leave now.” He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me toward the door.
The nine times I’d done yoga in my life paid off, and I was able to bend and twist out of his grasp with only the barest of twinges to my back. I landed the dismount (though, why there was a dismount, I had no idea), and turned back to Sherry. “Years?” I repeated in such a way to portray my incredulity and also to encourage her to tell me everything.
“Years,” she agreed. “It was always Sandy this, Helena that with him. For a while there, I was a little concerned at how creepy it was getting. I was waiting for the day that I’d get a call from the police because he’d kidnapped you and put you in a hole in his basement.”
“Mom,” Darren said, sounding wounded. “Why the hell would you even say—”
“You wanted to kidnap me and put me in your hole?” I demanded. Then, “Wait. That didn’t come out like I wanted it to.”
He buried his face in his hands.
“I told him it was about time he grew a pair and asked you out,” Sherry said. “Because either he needed to nut up or shut up.”
Nut up or shut up, I mouthed rather aggressively at Darren, who responded with another of his dying moose sounds.
“And apparently he did and here you are,” Sherry said. “I never would have thought he had it in him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh really. Is that what he told you happened? Because if he did, then he didn’t nut up at all. Maybe nutted up with his lies.”
“I knew he was lying,” Sherry crowed. “I’ve told him to get over himself for years and just ask you out already. But he was always like, ‘Mom, you don’t understand.’” Her voice had dropped in an approximation of her son and it was glorious. “Sandy’s not like everyone else. He’s too perfect. You just don’t get it. God. Just let me sit here and stew in my man pain.’” She rolled her eyes fondly. “Always the drama queen, that one. One time, when he was nine—maybe ten?—he came home from school crying that his life was over because the girl he liked in his class told him she thought his nose was too big. I told him he’d just have to grow into it. And look! He did. Mostly. And now he has a boyfriend. It’s like all his dreams came true.”
“Oh my god,” Darren moaned from behind me. By the tone of his voice, I thought it was possible he was dying. “This can’t be happening.”
“This is seriously the greatest day of my life,” I said rather breathlessly. Because even though I knew maybe things weren’t quite the way they’d been when we’d started, I didn’t know it’d apparently been years that he’d been—“He was pining over me!”
“Pretty much,” Sherry said. “Trust me when I say I pretty much know every detail of your routines at the club. Excruciating detail. Especially when you apparently did this backward crabwalk thing? According to Darren, it was amazing to watch, but I think that was just a euphemism for things no mother should ever hear from her son. Sexual things.”
“Maybe we should just—” Darren tried (and failed miserably).
“I asked him out,” I said, because it was sort of true. And also sort of not, but still. Mostly true.
“Did you? Because see, that makes more sense.” She looked over my shoulder at her son and said, “I knew you couldn’t do it, but like any good mother, I kept my mouth shut. Even though you lied.” She looked back at me. “How did it happen?”
; I was enjoying this far more than I probably should have. “Well, once upon a time, there was the most beautiful of drag queens—”
“Oh Jesus,” Darren snapped as he came up beside me, his face redder than I’d ever seen it before. He wouldn’t even look at me, the poor man, though I suppose if all my secrets were being revealed, I’d feel the same. “We are not listening to that story again. Yes, fine. He asked me out, I said yes because I had nothing better to do—”
“Ahem,” I said. “Oh, sorry. I just had something in my throat.”
“I said yes because it looked like Sandy was going to cry if I said—”
“Ahem. Gosh. I am so sorry. The pollen today is really quite bad. In the fall, even. Who would have thought? Damn you, global warning. Argh.”
“Because he kept pushing—”
“A-hem.”