Mennonite in a Little Black Dress Page 19

  "THANK YOU! RAISINS ARE A HEALTHY SNACK!"

  "Well," said Mrs. Friesen, "I have a grandson who went to college. He might do for you. He's a real steady young man. He has a good job and all. He's twenty-seven. How old did you say you are?"

  "I'M FORTY-FOUR."

  "Ain't that a shame," she said. "He'd probably think you're too old for him. But you look real pretty."

  I rose to leave, brushing some of the cat hair from my skirt. "PLEASE SAY HELLO TO CICI FOR ME. AND THANK YOU FOR THE RAISINS!"

  "Well, I'll tell my grandson about you," she said matter-of-factly at the door. With her foot she prevented the thin white cat from egress. "But I expect he'll think you're too old. I'll tell him you have a real nice shape."

  "I'D APPRECIATE THAT!"

  Walking home, I congratulated myself on having escaped with no more Cats That Dropped Bombshells. That was a pretty good day's work for a sabbatical, all things considered. Plus I had made good progress on the pants I was sewing. And the raisins. There were always the raisins. Score.

  The next morning I was topstitching belt loops, frowning through my reading glasses. Nothing makes you feel middle-aged like needing a new prescription for reading glasses. This I was prepared to discuss with my friend Eva, whose call I was expecting, and who had recently been itemizing her own catalog of veins, age spots, and lower-back problems. Making self-deprecating comments about the body is a chick thing, pure and simple. It makes us feel terrific.

  The phone rang. "Rhoda?" It was a man's voice I didn't know. But my heart stopped for a second; the timbre was a little like Nick's, low and engaging.

  "Yes?"

  "This is Soren Friesen. I'm Emmaline Friesen's grandson-"

  "Oh, heavens," I exclaimed. "This is taking filial duty above and beyond!"

  There was a merry twinkle in his voice. "I hear you have a real nice shape."

  "And I hear you have a real nice job. Do you always let your oma set you up?"

  "She's the Yentl of our tribe," said Soren. "Actually, I already knew who you were. I've read your book. We know people in common." He mentioned the name of a writer at a well-respected MFA program in New England. This sparked a real conversation; it turned out that Soren had studied with my friend and had earned an MFA in screenwriting. After we'd chatted a while, Soren said, "How long are you in town? You wanna grab coffee sometime?"

  "Soren," I said, "I know I have a real nice shape and all, but I'm forty-four, and that's just plain weird."

  "I don't think it's weird to be forty-four and to have a real nice shape," he said earnestly. "I think it shows a positive self-image and good dietary habits. You probably eat a lot of fiber."

  I chuckled. "What I mean is, it would be weird to be forty-four and go out with someone who is twenty-seven."

  "Yes," he said, "but you're failing to take into consideration the fact that I have a real nice job. Oma advised me to mention that right away. C'mon," he urged. "It's only coffee. It doesn't have to be a real date. If it'll make you feel better, we can talk shop the entire time."

  "Hm," I said, waffling. "I'll meet you for coffee on one condition."

  "Name it."

  "That you neither admire nor discuss The Cat That Dropped a Bombshell."

  "But that bombshell has a real nice shape!" he protested.

  It's strange to consider what makes a man sexy, is it not? I'm always surprised when women diddle around with things like chest hair or cologne or what kind of car a man drives. I have one girlfriend who looks for a guy with a nice tight butt. This mystifies me. If a man I like has a butt like an empty hammock, so be it. If his butt spreads like wurst on a cracker, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. If his butt has hair on it, and maybe a big mole, and also a smattering of pimples, I focus on his pleasantly scratchy chin instead. Perhaps an alert reader might suggest that the flawed buttock is suspiciously easy for me to champion, given the fact that Nick's butt was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, especially in its last public incarnation on Gay.com. Yet I insist that a butt is not where it's at.

  In my opinion, sexiness comes down to three things: chemistry, sense of humor, and treatment of waitstaff at restaurants. If the sparks don't fly from the beginning, they never will. If he doesn't get your sense of humor from the first conversation, you'll always secretly be looking for someone who does. And if a guy can't see restaurant servers as real people, with needs and dreams and crappy jobs, then I don't want to be with him, even if he just won the Pulitzer Prize.

  With my exceptionally generous criteria for defining sexiness, you'd think that there would be a good chance that Soren Friesen could make the cut. Let's face it, my standards were pretty low. The unsexy characteristics that usually attend Mennonite men would theoretically not be barriers to me. By my own confessed standard, I would have no problem dating a man with beefy pink skin, or chins that skipped like rocks on a pond-one, two, three, kerplunk. I could even fall for a guy whose wallet contained an expired ten-dollar coupon for a bad chain steakhouse, at which the server would refuse to honor the coupon because it was a good six years out of date.

  However, Lola and I had long observed a special Mennonite exemption clause. We had never met a datable Mennonite man. There were Mennonites who passed as good-looking, funny, kind, and sexy to the outside world. I had met some of these men. I had encountered Mennonites who wore good cologne and cashmere jackets. I personally had known Mennonites who could tell a Bacon from a de Kooning. But Lola and I sensed that a nameless shuddersome surprise coiled like a snake in the grass. Why did the idea of dating a Mennonite give us the willies? We couldn't say, exactly. But Mennonite men seemed too familiar. It wasn't just that they gave us a brotherly vibe; it was that they actively grossed us out in some curious, elemental way.

  So my expectations were very low as I drove to the coffeehouse to meet the twenty-seven-year-old grandson of the granny who handed out bombshell books like candy. Soren was sitting at a small table, reading the New York Times Book Review. I knew it was he the moment I saw him, even though there were one or two other solitary thirtyish men about. Soren had the straight sandy hair of our people, and a ruddy goatee to match. He looked cheerful and attractive as he stood to greet me. He was tall. And I liked his glasses.

  We shook hands. "Nice shape," he said.

  "Don't think I won't drop a bombshell on your ass," I warned. "I can't believe I'm on a blind date with a Mennonite seventeen years younger than I am."

  He had sunrise eyes, the kind that smile in a little fan of laugh lines.

  "So which is worse," he said, "the fact that I'm Mennonite, or the fact that I'm seventeen years younger than you?"

  I sat down, considering. "Honestly? The Mennonite thing is harder."

  I watched him as he went to get my coffee. He had an international vibe, except that he obviously spent time in a gym. He didn't look Mennonite.

  "You ever date a Mennonite?" I asked.

  "In college. Maybe you know her. Sheri Wiebe Penner. She and her husband go to your parents' church."

  "Sheri Wiebe?" I asked. "I babysat her! She used to give me the stinkeye for making her go to bed at eight o'clock. She had two monotone brothers who sang in the Mennonite Children's Choir."

  Soren nodded. "I sang in that choir too." He sang a snippet of a song from a 1970s children's musical based on the Old Testament story "Daniel in the Lions' Den."

  It isn't HOT in the furnace, man!

  (repeat)

  Man, this furnace is cool, cool, cooooool, yeahhhh!

  I knew the lyrics and joined in on the last part. Soren licked his finger and made the "Muy caliente" gesture-"Tsssss!"

  We both laughed reminiscently, as if those had been good times indeed.

  "Is that where you met Sheri Wiebe? In the Mennonite Children's Choir?"

  "No, Sheri and I go way back. We had playdates when we were babies. I grew up on the same block as the Wiebes and the Petcurs. Sheri and I went to different high schools and t
hen met up again in college. We dated for a year when I was at Goshen."

  I nodded. I had always liked Sheri Wiebe. "Once when I was babysitting, Sheri made a witches' brew out of bark, dog poop, and a carton of eggs."

  "Doesn't everybody?" Soren asked. "So why are you so set against Mennonites?"

  "I'm not set against them. I love them. I just don't know if I want to date them."

  Under the table Soren shifted, and his leg brushed against mine.

  "You prefer-?"

  "I prefer atheists who ditch me for a guy they met on Gay.com."

  He put down his coffee. "You wanna go for a ride?" he asked. "I've got a bike. And an extra helmet."

  I looked down at my peep-toe flats, at the skirt of my sundress. They were wholly inappropriate for motorcycle wear. "Okay."

  "Leave your bag in the trunk of your car."

  "But what if we get in an accident and we're unconscious and they don't know who we are?"

  "Babe"-he grinned-"that's what dental records are for."

  Mennonite men usually drove like conservative dads, but Soren swooped and sped. On the back of the bike I relaxed against him, my skirt puffy and restless, like something with a mind of its own, despite my best efforts to tuck it in and down. I rode with one arm hooked loosely around his stomach, the other resting lightly on the tank between his legs. When he'd take a turn at a sharp angle, my grip would tighten on his stomach, and I'd feel his abs tense and gather. His torso was all hard rangy muscle. At intersections, he straightened his back briefly, leaning against me, resting his hands on my upper thighs as if by prior invitation. The day was warm, and we were starting to sweat. As we hit the open stretch before the foothills on the outskirts of town, Soren took the bike up to a hundred miles per hour. I clamped both my arms around his waist, clung like a limpet, and knew somehow that we would get where we needed to go.

  THIRTEEN

  The Therapeutic Value

  of Lavender

  I was squeezing in one last evening with my friend Eva. I had known Eva Wiebe-Martens since we were little girls. Back when our fathers were both teaching at the same seminary, I had been better friends with Eva's older sister, who was my age exactly. Then over the years I had fallen out of touch with both sisters. They had been content to remain in the Mennonite heartland, while I had been on fire to leave. On this return to my parents' community, I'd been pleased to run into Eva once more, and even more delighted to find that she was busily living my life-my other life, the life I would have chosen had I not rejected the faith of my fathers.

  Eva had graduated seminary, earned a Ph.D. in theology, and had stepped up to chair the local Mennonite university's religion department. In fact, it had been she who had replaced my father when he had retired. Eva was married to a man she'd met while studying at seminary, and she had two kids, Matea and Hazel. It was funny that even as I was having a little fantasy about Eva's life, she was keenly interested in mine. She said that long ago, if she had followed her heart's interest as an undergraduate, she would have chosen the path of literature, art, and travel.

  So we had renewed our friendship-that is, we had gotten to know each other as adults over my months in California, and an intimacy had sprung up between us. Every Thursday night we met for jazz and drinks at a downtown bar, and we poured out our souls to each other even when we weren't talking. There was something deliciously simpatico about this woman. I loved her deep well of calm, which seemed to proceed from a deeply Buddhist sense that we live the lives we choose to lead.

  Eva was going through a rough patch. Her father, also a minister and a leader in the church, had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The effect of his disease on a traditional Mennonite family had been far-reaching. I won't say much about that, because that is Eva's story to tell, not mine, but some of the illness-management details were heartbreaking. For instance, how do two Mennonite daughters intercede for a father who can't remember his own improvident financial decisions, and assist a mother who is incapable and unwilling to take the helm? Throughout her father's slow decline, Eva's grief had thrown out tendrils, clambering up her walls. Her father's situation had now reached the point at which there were new losses every day. And it was in spite of this grief-maybe because of it-that I saw the tranquillity blooming in her like a hundred years' hush. She always reminded me of Sleeping Beauty, eyes either about to open or shut.

  Eva was the only one among my friends who wasn't slightly horrified that I was dating a man seventeen years younger. Poor Lola was practically apoplectic in Italy, but more because Soren was Mennonite. "Are you INSANE? Run before he ties your apron to the bedpost and makes you listen to a sermon on the importance of nasty procreative sex! And can you say MOMMY ISSUES?"

  In the wake of incoming advice on Soren and on related matters of the heart, I had plenty of time to appreciate true friendship, and to feel grateful for rich, sustaining, tell-it-like-it-is relationships with women such as Lola and Eva. I had never been forced to make do with what sometimes passed for friendship among women. What if my closest female friendships were the kind I often observed at my college, where I acted as faculty adviser to a sorority of young women?

  Although I had never participated in sorority culture when I was in college, I saw no reason why I should oppose it as a professor, especially since I had had no actual experience with sororities. My stereotype of them as the refuge for attractive but intellectually unimaginative young women was based strictly on hearsay. The trope of the sorority, which often figured in the quintessentially American bildungsroman, was altogether alien to my upbringing. Mennonites did not consider the Greek system an option for their virginal daughters; the sorority as a nurturing institution simply didn't exist on the Mennonite horizon. Mennonites would have neither approved nor understood any network that promoted social lubricities such as datability, popularity, or unquestioning institutional loyalty. That last quality would have seemed too much like mindless nationalism, and Mennonites, with their pledge to peacemaking, felt uneasy about promising loyalty for the sheer sake of loyalty. While they believed in loving and serving one's country, they reserved the right to question any institution capable of legislating war. Or lingerie parties.

  Academics like to talk trash about Greek life. We roll our eyes and one-up each other's stories at cocktail parties, which makes us about as immature as the sororities and fraternities we're criticizing. Academics frequently observe that the Greek system is hopelessly anti-intellectual. Fair or not, we see it as a social organization, a dating network for women and an old boys' club for men. Many Greek institutions do enforce minimum grade-point averages, but these grades often promote hoop jumping rather than learning. We've all seen Greek men and women demonstrate anxiety about grades; what we'd prefer to see is Greek men and women demonstrating real intellectual inquiry.

  Fresh out of grad school, I agreed to be faculty adviser to a sorority whose members were commonly referred to as "the Campus Hotties" or, variously, "the Ones in Deep Doo-Doo for Trashing Four Hotel Rooms Again." I was not surprised when these young women turned out to be a troupe of impossibly pretty coeds who color-coordinated their outfits on important occasions.

  One twelve-degree evening in February, when there was eight inches of snow under a layer of slippery drizzle, my sorority gals celebrated their fellowship by donning denim minis, pink tights, and stilettos. As their faculty adviser, I had been formally summoned to an event titled the Passing of the Brick, which would take place at 11:00 p.m. on a Friday. The Passing of the Brick was a tearful candle-lit ceremony at which the sisters declared undying love for one another as they passed a lace-wrapped brick from sister to sister around a Circle of Solidarity. I gave the brick a poke with my index finger as it passed, but I could discern nothing unusual in its shape or texture, except that it was dressed up in a little lace ruff, like Anne Boleyn. When it was a sister's turn to hold the brick, she solemnly received it into her arms and shared an upbeat message of trust and hope. Invariably t
he message went like this, with much sniffling and apology for smudged mascara: "You girls will be watching my back forever! Thanks, ladies!"

  Would the heartfelt protestations of eternal friendship last longer than ten minutes after graduation? These women seemed to be figuring friendship solely in terms of what it could do for them. I never heard a sorority sister affirm any unique character qualities in the women who formed the Circle of Solidarity. I never heard anyone say, "You are the soul of grace and tact." "Your kindness is an inspiration." "Your passion for geology made me change my major." Instead the sisters declared they valued one another because they refrained from backstabbing: "Here's a gal who will not snatch my boyfriend! God, I love her!" "Here's a gal who will loan me her Jimmy Choos! BFF!"

  I had never experienced a desire to Pass a Brick, or to dress it up, or to match my tights and shoes to those of my associates, but, overall, I came away from this sorority event more sympathetic than I had been. Also, I am grateful to my sorority for raising the whole question of What Not to Wear If You're a Brick. I had never thought much about how to dress a brick so as to bring out its best features.

  _____ Yes, I think a brick looks adorable in lace, and perhaps a bonnet.

  _____ No, I prefer to dress my brick in something more androgynous, such as a jumpsuit.

  My new-old friend Eva, whom I had known in college but whom I was just now really appreciating, has one of those souls that run deep, a clear cool well whose depth keeps on surprising, like Lake Louise. Something about her makes me feel at home, at rest. She has a way of looking at you from sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes that recalls a marmalade cat drowsing in the sun. In fact, this cat metaphor is much better suited to Eva than my earlier comparison to Sleeping Beauty; while the latter suggests oblivion, the former implies a restful alertness, which characterizes Eva very well. She sees everything. When I told her about Soren, she asked if I wanted to bring him round to dinner. "Um," I hesitated. "Bring him to dinner? To your house? No."