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if she’d consider opening up her own psychic hotline: Mrs.
Bartlett gazes into the past, present, and future! Her eyes see
all—and she is incredibly disappointed in you!

    “I go on plenty of dates,”
I said instead, going for a reasonable, middle-of-the-road,
we’re-all-adults-here-so-let-me-just-bring-up-some-facts voice.
“I went on a date with Josh from Accounting just last month.”
    “One date.” Her voice was
flatter than the entire state of Kansas.
    I resisted the urge to swig my entire
glass of white wine like a medieval warrior, and daintily sipped from
it instead. “Well, he spent the entire evening talking about
his golf game and how women have ruined his life, so you know, I took
that as a clue to leave him alone to enjoy the rest of his life with
his true soul mate, himself.”
    My mother’s lips thinned in
disapproval so great it could probably have been seen from space.
“Did you even think about taking up golf? It helps to have
common interests.”
    “The sport I have hated with a
burning passion since I was fourteen?” I said, sweet as cotton
candy. “Gosh, no, I can’t believe I didn’t think of
that. How could I have been so foolish?”
    Mom’s lips compressed into yet a
thinner line. Pretty soon they were going to vanish entirely. “I
know you think I’m being unreasonable, dear, but men have very
high-pressure lives. It’s on us ladies to accommodate them and
smooth away their cares, in exchange for the security they provide
us. And if you don’t start reevaluating your standards, before
you know it—”
    And here it came, the deep dark scary
fairy tale of The Little Girl Who Went Into the Woods and Met the Big
Bad Spinsterhood. From here on out, I could tune out the lecture; it
would only be the same one I’d heard a thousand times before: I
wasn’t getting any younger. There were lots of attractive
partners out there. Men are basically superheroes and gods and yet
somehow also dumb as a box of rocks, hence the need to ensnare them
with your womanly wiles, i.e. make-up, pie-baking, and giggling at
every dumbass thing they say.
    Paige squeezed my hand under the table,
her face still tilted towards Mom, brightly attentive. Poor Paige. I
was the rebellious one, so she always had to be the good one to keep
from breaking Mom’s heart. Paige with her straight As and her
bright pink prom dresses and her part-time job as a receptionist.
Sure, she made room for her party-planning hobby on the side, which I
knew she loved, but I also knew she’d always wanted to be an
artist. But she’d given up on that dream a long time ago.
Instead she was Perfect Paige with her long list of Mom-approved
boyfriends, whose faces she looked up into and smiled and smiled and
smiled, and sometimes I didn’t think she even saw their
individual faces anymore.
    Mom was gathering full steam now, like
a locomotive about to make the leap over a broken canyon bridge.
She’d be huffing and puffing if she didn’t think it would
sound less than genteel. I might be tuning her out, but I could still
read her body language like a picture book: this was going to be a
long one. Settle back into your chairs, ladies and gentlemen, and
the flight attendants will be along shortly to offer you a
complimentary beverage during this in-flight movie.
    I only tuned back into the conversation
when she mentioned Paige’s name: “And then that old art
professor of Paige’s shows up at her work, of all places, and
tries to get Paige to enter some of her old paintings in a show,
really, I’d be open to it if it was some of her nice watercolor
landscapes, but no one wants to see that horrid modernist stuff she
got into while she was in college.” She shuddered dramatically,
as if Paige’s interest in modernist painting were a
particularly mangled dead mouse that had been dropped at her feet.
    Paige looked down at the napkin in her
lap, blushing in shame. And I couldn’t let that stand.
    “Uh, obviously people want to see
it