“Next time,” she said, finishing the last of the pistachio, “I’m bringing you. You can make faces at him from across the table.”
My mother doesn’t date often. After the divorce, she said she was “recalibrating,” which is a very mom way of saying she’d rather read a mystery novel in a bathrobe than suffer small talk with a stranger. But her friend Carol insisted. “You’re a catch, Linda. A whole marlin.” mother's bad date
She winked. And just like that, Gary the ergonomic-chair salesman became a ghost—a cautionary tale, a footnote, a tiny, ridiculous speed bump on the long, strange road of my mother’s recalibration. “Next time,” she said, finishing the last of