I leaned against my wreck of a car and waited for Shannon to come downstairs. When she finally appeared, I thought it was a joke. She was wearing a print dress with a ruffle around the edge. It was a wrap dress that looked perfect for a country picnic. She wore a white tank top under to shield anyone from an accidental view of her chest. Her hair was curled and was pulled out of her face in two half ponytails tied with ribbon on either side of her head. Immediately, my eyes jumped to the hem of her skirt. Was she wearing cowboy boots? She wasn’t. She was wearing wedges that tied with little bows in the back.

“Just as a head’s up,” I said. “Simon will probably be at this dinner. Are you going to be able to face him in that getup?”

She flicked her hair off her shoulder. “Simon still doesn’t know me. Perhaps this is a little more country than how I used to dress around him, but not a lot more. I have heaps of clothes that play to the same melody as the gemstones and mirrors on my walls. I only go out to meet men I really like in pleather pants and red lipstick.”

She hesitated on the walkway before joining me by the side of the car.

“What?”

“You don’t think I look good?” she asked shyly.

“You do, but you look a little like you’re playing a part in a play. Do you really own a lot of clothes like that?”

“If I don’t impress your mother…”

“Then you don’t impress my mother. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived at home.” Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks. “Simon told you something about my mother, didn’t he?”

Shannon looked away. “Your mother is his Aunt Beverly, isn’t she?”

I nodded.

“Then, yeah, he told me a lot about her.”

I did not facepalm myself. I calmly opened the car door for Shannon and closed it after her.

***

Like Shannon, I did not bring my dates home for my mother to meet. I knew that meeting my mother would only confuse the woman I wanted to date. If the woman I was seeing loved my mum, it would become a stroke in my favor and if she didn’t, it would become a stroke against me. I didn’t want to add my mother to the equation of whether or not a woman wanted to be with me. I wanted whatever happened between us to be between us, not between me, her, and my mother.

On the drive over, I almost took an exit to take Shannon to a drive-thru rather than take her home for dinner.

“Should we have brought rolls or something?” Shannon asked blankly.

“There’s a cake I picked up from a bakery in the back.”

We pulled up the long driveway and saw my brother Finn and Simon’s brother Jep tossing around a football in the front yard. I got out of the car and Jep yelled, “Think fast" and threw the football at my head.

I caught it and hurled it back to him. “Don’t throw that at me until I get my woman in the house.”

Shannon’s appeal was summed up in the effect she had on Jep and Finn. They stared at her open-mouthed as she came out of the car like she was an exotic bird flying from its cage.

Without saying hello, Jep muttered, “No wonder Simon is pissed.”

“Is he here?”

They nodded in unison, as I made introductions. She got the cake I had forgotten all about, charmed them with a flip of her hair, and a minute later, I led her up the front steps.

I knew my father was impressed when he saw her. The clothes she was wearing weren’t as awkward as I originally feared. She was used to wearing them and wore them with ease. Even the ribbons in her hair seemed natural.

My mother came around the corner and looked at the two of us, confused. “Where’s Simon?” she questioned. “He should have told me if he was going to bring a date.”

“Mum, this is Shannon. She’s my girlfriend now.”

“Ah, yes,” my mum said as she adjusted the apron around her waist. “You’re the girl Fletch was fooling around with in that picture on Facebook,” she said.

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Shannon’s face didn’t even register that she had heard my mother speak. “We brought you a cake. Is there anything I can help you with in the kitchen?”

My mother looked through the clear plastic at the cake like it was the ugliest, ickiest cake she’d ever seen. Shannon held it up and kept her face a mask of calm.

“Well, I suppose we can find a place for it, somewhere near the back. As for helping me with the dinner, everything’s all taken care of, but you and Fletch can bring in some firewood if you’re so bent on helping.” She took the cake and disappeared back around the corner toward the kitchen.

The beautiful expression Shannon had been holding on her face abruptly fell. She stared after my mother with tight conviction marked on her face.

I took her hand and led her out the back of the house. “The firewood is back here,” I said, dragging her after me.

Outside, in the cool of the backyard, I muttered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think she’d react so poorly to you. She didn’t even say hello. If you’d like, we can leave right now. I don’t know what Simon told her about you, but I think I’ll have a word with him later about it.”

She shook off my hand and sat on the woodpile. “Fletch, please relax. I have been introduced to many mothers and some of them like me and some of them don’t.”

“Do you know what makes the difference?”

“What I’m about to say is strange, but from my experience, it’s true.”

“What?”

Shannon cleared her throat. “The mothers who are glamorous and loud, they like me, and the proper ones don’t.”

I choked a laugh. “You must be joking.”

“I wish it was a joke. Your mom looks like the poster matriarch for country living. I tried to dress like that, but it isn’t enough. Not when I have Simon’s scalp on my belt. Your mom probably never played with a man in her life. She probably doesn’t understand the rules of those games and has always looked down on the women who play them. It’s amazing how many women don’t like other women because they like men, are interested in them, know how to please them, and so forth. I’ve had a lot of that hate. The thing is, it drives me away from other women and makes me want to be with the men who accept me, which makes the women even angrier. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“You have a lot of experience with this?”

“Yep. Lots of practice being disliked for my appearance and charm,” she said, getting up and stretching her arms. “I can do this.”

“Have you ever won over a mother who felt that way about you?”

She rubbed her temples. “No. Sometimes they convince their sons to dump me.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you got dumped often.”

“It’s happened a few times. If it’s over something like this, I tend to be able to let it go. After all, if a guy who can’t tell his own mother what he wants, he must not want it very much.”

I watched her in the sunlight. The fabric of her dress moving over the troublesome curves of her body. The skirt fluttered in the wind and opened to show a slit up to her thigh. Why had I brought her here today? It seemed like a terrible misuse of time when there were only so many hours in a weekend. She bent to pick up a log. My hand caught her wrist before she touched one.

“Leave it. Picking up chopped logs without gloves is a good way to get a sliver. Your arms are bare. I’ll get it.”

Back inside, I stacked the logs next to the fireplace and heard my mother call us to the table. She sent Shannon to get Finn and Jeb from the front lawn like she was a maid who had served my family for twenty years. Shannon went and was more effective than any other person had ever been at getting the younger men into the house. They were like fishermen jumping into the ocean at the sound of a siren’s call.

The table was lined up with Shannon and me on one side, Jeb, Finn, and Simon on the other side, with my mother and father at the ends. I had expected trouble from Simon, but he merely averted his eyes like he wasn’t thinking about Shannon. The boys and my father were curious. They asked her where she grew up, what she did for a living, where she lived, where she had gone to school, and where she went to church.

Many of the questions were ones I’d never asked her. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in the tiniest details about her. It was that I didn’t want to bore her. It was subtle, but she was showing signs of boredom and fatigue. They were exhausting her.

Or maybe it was my mother with her critical stare.

“What are your hobbies?” my mother suddenly asked.

“I like to go to the library,” Shannon answered demurely.

“So, you like to read?”

“Shannon has a very interesting collection of books,” Simon interjected. “My favorite one was The Scientist’s Cure for Lovesickness.”

“Really? What was his cure?” my mother asked, raising her goblet.

“It wasn’t written by a real scientist,” Shannon explained.

My mother’s laugh was tinny and tinkling. “Of course not.”

“I mean, it’s a novel. That’s just the name of it. It’s about a botanist who falls in love with an unknown person who designs the most beautiful tea rose. She’s smitten. Through some careful investigation, she discovers who made the rose that was more perfect than any other.”

“Who was it?” my father asked kindly.

“It was an old man… her father. The love she felt was not romantic. She didn’t know him. She just loved his work and longed to learn more about him. She had never known her father, nor had she thought that there might be some kind of love between them. For those who long for love from unachievable heights, it’s a story of hope. You might not get romantic love, but you will get unique love.”

She glanced at Simon like the story meant something to the both of them.

Simon’s shoulders slumped. The table had become a place of deathly stillness. Not even my mother moved or spoke. Slowly, he said, “You defeat me.”

I stared at the two of them. In her own way, she had offered him a love that had nothing to do with romance and he was saying he was willing to take it. I wondered though. I wondered what he had told my mother that had made her treat Shannon like a hostile force. I wondered where the book they were talking about was. It was no longer on her bookshelf and she didn’t lend out her books.