From Her Perspective

I was at a family party this weekend down the Cape.  Family parties are great.  Tons of food, tons of old people telling you you are pretty, and all the wine you can drink before your dad makes you go home because you’re too rowdy.  I love my family, I really do.  There’s just one small, inevitable thing that happens that strikes terror in my heart. 

In my family, I am the next in line to get married.  My older cousins are all hitched, as well as the ones my age.  They’re even having babies, which completely blows my mind.  The next set of cousins is still in college, so it’s all down to me.  This of course means that the second question asked of me (everyone knows it’s polite to talk about jobs first, even though nobody actually cares) is “Are you seeing anyone?” 

Ah, silence falls over the dinner table.  My younger cousins giggle into their sodas, relieved that they not only won’t be under fire like this for at least another five years, but because they also have boyfriends and girlfriends.  Aunties and uncles put down their forks and wine glasses, as though I am about to reveal the cure for cancer or the real recipe for KFC mashed potatoes or something equally huge.  Even the babies stop messing around in their high chairs.  I take a deep breath, muster up all the Pinot-fueled courage I can, and answer:

“No.”

The babies look disappointed and go back to mashing carrots in their hair, the aunties and uncles try to look reassuring, and my attached little cousins look smug.  As I stare into my plate and pray someone will start telling the story about the time my grandmother stole a car, I can see the wheels in my older relatives’ heads turning.  What nice boy do they know to set poor, spinsterly Kati up with?  Any desperate losers who live with their mothers and own tons of cats?  Any overly religious Republican with big teeth and hair that can take her to dinner?  Is there anyone left who could possibly love our girl?

I have been the type of girl who usually has a boyfriend.  Therefore, I was figured out.  It was likely I was going to marry whatever boy I dragged along to these events, so it would have been bad form for anyone to question that, although in hindsight it would have been pretty funny.  But over the last year, I have started attending family events solo, which is very jarring for a family who has collectively not changed a hairstyle since 1992.  This has not been easy on anyone, and the tentative questions about the failed relationships have turned a bit bolder.  I, in turn, have become bolder as well.

“Whatever happened to John?  You two always looked so happy…”

“Actually, Auntie Jean, the sex was terrible and he was cheating on me, anyway.  Can I freshen up your sherry?”

“And Mike?  Mike was lovely…”

“Except for the drug problem, Uncle Bob.  And the three testicles.  Do you need some more bread?”

I’m just teasing.  Answering questions like that honestly probably wouldn’t earn me any points with the Cawley brood (except the high-school kids, who think the word “testicle” is funny), so I always smile bravely and say that things just didn’t work out, my eyes glistening just enough for some poor relative to offer to get me a drink so I don’t have to get off of the couch.  And I figure that someday, maybe one of them will actually know someone cute.  Or maybe, and what is more likely, one of the younger kids will tattoo or pierce something in a visible place and people will have something else to gossip about.

But I always like to have a backup plan so here’s what I think I’ll do.  At Thanksgiving, I think I’ll tell everyone that my new man, George Glass, terribly regrets not being able to attend the party, that he is treating children with cleft palates in Switzerland while entertaining the Pope.  Everyone will be so relieved I’m figured out again that I don’t think they’ll even question it…