Before I dated Tina, I assumed everyone hated their family. Isn’t that the reason there’re all those holiday movies? Those family-members-are-people-too-even-if-they-ruined-your-self-esteem-or-diddled-you-in-first-grade-or-can’t-help-remarking-on-how-you-have-or-have-not-put-on-weight films that end with the fuzzy feeling that it is good to gather in one place and eat two days' worth of calories in an hour alongside people who you haven’t spoken to or wanted to speak to in 364 days?
Well, those movies aren’t about Tina, who apparently has always loved her family and always had a family who loved her. I found this out the first semester we were dating — Fall 2017 — when she invited me home for Christmas and actually sounded excited. Of course, a family like Tina’s is the kind to get excited about. You know she didn’t pay one dollar for tuition or room or board? Her dad would make sure she had extra money on her meal card so she could have every meal at the cafeteria and go to the cafe anytime she wanted a snack to power through her late-night studying. I can’t remember how many times I showed up, and she’d already ordered me chicken tenders—crispy breading over fragrant, juicy meat, with a side of honey mustard.
You know, every exam week, her mom sent her a care package? Hand packed. And not just shitty snacks, either. Not Dollar Tree chocolates or half-air packs of Lays like other kids got. Tina’s mom’s care packages had rolls of salami in them, vacuum-sealed sleeves of salty-sweet prosciutto, Havarti cheese Tina’s dad smoked himself—do you know how long it takes to smoke a two-pound block of cheese? Yeah, me neither. The box always included some kind of homemade dessert and a loaf of sourdough bread you could smell through the cardboard, with flowers or leaves or something sentimental like that carved into the crust.
After Tina invited me to Christmas, I asked what her parents knew, and she said, “I guess they don’t know I’m into women, it’s never come up before, but I don’t think they’ll care,” and she didn’t look worried at all, no trace of that line between her eyes that she’d get while puzzling over differential equations and later she leaned over and kissed me and looked in my eyes and sighed like she did when she was feeling in love and squeezed my hand and said “My parents are going to adore you.”
How the fuck was I supposed to deal with that kind of well-adjusted person? I should have known then. You know, I probably did know, a little, without wanting to admit it even to myself. That was definitely the first time I realized we were doomed.
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