After my older brother’s wife passed, I assumed he would eventually remarry. At 60 my brother is tall and lean with a full head of hair. Add to this that he can drive at night and that he managed to raise 4 kids who are neither in jail nor rehab and he is quite a catch by Coral Ridge standards.
While I assumed that a second wife would eventually be in his future, I was stunned at the speed with which the single women of Fort Lauderdale made their moves – specifically at the his wife’s wake. In a sort of a stupor, I watched while one woman offered to cook him dinner, and another said she’d check in on him often and a third promised to cut his hair. In his grief my brother was unaware of what was happening, but he was the only one in the room who was.
Of all the women who were after my brother, most of whom were my sister-in-law’s friends from her dance class, I hoped he’d hook up with Marie. I thought Marie would be the perfect wife: She was a devout Catholic who was on good terms with both of her ex-husbands. A Staten Island Italian, she had a weakness for flocked wallpaper and statues of the Virgin Mary, but she made up for it by being a superb cook – her fettuccini Alfredo is beyond belief, and her lasagna is the stuff of legends. My family takes food very seriously – as far as we were concerned Marie was the Anointed One.
My brother, though, had other plans. It was at Easter that his daughter spilled the beans that he was dating someone. “Marie?” I said hopefully. My niece was glum – she liked Marie too. “No,” said my niece, “but I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone who it is.” “Of course you did,” I said. “How about a glass of wine?”
This was a cheap but very successful tactic: If you give my niece a glass of wine and a sympathetic smile she will spill her guts, and this time was not an exception. “So,” I said again, “who is he seeing?” She took a large sip of wine. “Charleen,” she said.
I was sure I misunderstood. Charleen was another of my sister-in-law’s friends from dance class. She has a beer belly and a mullet and one long eyebrow. She has three kids from three men, 2 of whom were her husbands, one who was someone else’s husband. Charleen’s idea of cooking is to throw a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. “Charleen?” I asked. My niece nodded and reached for the wine bottle but I beat her to it. “Please don’t tell anyone,” said my niece.
Within minutes, my younger brother, mother and both sisters had sworn that the secret was safe with them too as we debated what to do. My younger brother felt it was male menopause and the relationship would not go very far. My older sister, who also knew Charlene from dance class, felt that my older brother was no match for Charlene. My middle sister, who has been in therapy for decades, wanted to schedule an intervention and my mother was all set to give my older brother a piece of her mind.
In the end we did nothing; after all what could we do? My older brother eventually told me he was seeing Charleen, but also that it was not serious, that she did not have the qualities he was looking for in a wife. “She’s not a very good cook,” he said and I breathed a sigh of relief. As I said, we take food very seriously in our family.