white hair and round tortoiseshell spectacles, from behind which peer magnified round blue eyes. There is a brushy mustache and a toothy grin. The man is dressed in vintage nutty-professor wear: tweed jacket, detached suede elbow patches, wrinkled chinos cuffed over Converse Jack Purcell sneakers. A carefully constructed, haphazard disheveled state. This man is the mad scientist right out of central casting. Now tell me, does your mind jump to “God, what a catch!”? Or do you think, “What the hell is the six-foot redhead in the sexy dress doing with him?” Well, in either case, it was—and is—love. Peter once told me that he had been waiting his entire life for me to come along. As the beige spirits predicted, I had no choice in the matter—he is my destiny.
THEN AGAIN, MRS. SHELTON MIGHT HAVE HAD A POINT. ONE DAY I was paging through the arts section of the newspaper and spotted a sure loser.
“Oh, look,” I told Peter, “another all-star-cast movie. Those never work. Something called
“How do you know that?” I asked, stunned by his offhanded remark, and not a little scared by the list of women—gay icons, each in her own way.
“How do you not?” he said, a small amount of disdain in his voice. I reflected on how his mother once told me he was “light on his feet.”
“He’s one of the boys, you know,” she imparted. “One of the
Well, thank God he’s also a pyromaniac, because his utter love of all things incendiary marks him as completely not gay. Whenever we travel through states where fireworks are legal, he stops at the roadside stands and stocks up. He keeps a stash in the basement of our country house and brings a few out on special occasions. On Truman’s birthday, a rocket Peter had lit took off flying on the horizontal, aimed squarely at Peter. He caught the noise over his shoulder and immediately started running through the field. In his defense, the rocket did look as though it were heat seeking. We all watched from the house, laughing hysterically as he ran like a girl to avoid the explosion of color. He later claimed that he was going for the laugh, but he wasn’t very convincing, sweating and huffing as though he’d just run a marathon of fear. Okay, maybe not
I have found a way to use some of Peter’s, let us say, more feminine traits to my advantage. He is always willing to help me with the design of a dress, and he is never leery of carrying my purse at a party, he is so secure in his manhood, or lack thereof. I think he secretly likes the sparkle of the tiny Judith Leiber clutch against his old Rat Pack black tuxedo. Even more amazing, though, is his complete lack of hesitation when I send him out for tampons or yeast infection cures.
“Here,” he says, handing me a bag. “I got you the Monistat three-day capsules with the external cream, and the one-day treatment from Vagisil that comes with the cool comfort wipes. I wasn’t sure which you’d want, and they both sounded like viable possibilities.”
I’ve always been aware of how much smarter Peter is than pretty much everyone around him, including his wife and offspring. I used to chalk this up to the age difference (eighteen years, but who’s counting), but lately I’ve had to admit that he is simply always right. I have come to accept this truth, which makes it no less annoying. Because he is smart, he assumed his children would be as well. He was a bit disappointed when the test scores started rolling in.
“Sorry,” I said, handing him a pre-k admissions score sheet. “I’m average. I diluted your gene pool.”
This houseful of average doesn’t bother me at all. I have seen many a person with a genius IQ have difficulty navigating day-to-day life. Peter is one of these types, always misplacing things and being mildly disappointed in the world around him. It can’t be easy for him, and if he were a people person, I’m sure it would bother him more. He has wonderful social skills, but prefers not to use them. Peter’s carefully cultivated “crazy professor” demeanor is an attempt to ward off normal discourse, particularly with strangers. He also has this way of looking at you with crazy horse eyes, which is sort of off-putting at parties.
I recently read about prosopagnosia, a brain malfunction that interferes with facial recognition. Peter has this. We can be at a party thrown in his honor, stocked with blood relatives and lifelong friends, and he will still tug my sleeve and whisper “Who is that?” in my ear as a colleague of twenty years walks up to us to say hello. I have to say “Hi,
Peter doesn’t rely only on his scary eyes and wacky hair to excuse him from being social; for many years, he used smoking. It worked brilliantly—he could step out of a conversation or a meeting, or exit between courses at a boring dinner party, and hide away for the eight minutes it took to drag one down. He had this funny little habit of putting out a cigarette by rolling the cherry off the end. He then put the butt in his pocket; by the end of the day his clothes would be full of stinking shriveled trash. One day he was in a meeting with clients when little twirls of smoke started coming out of his pocket. A smoldering butt had combusted and ignited the accumulated garbage. When Peter realized what was happening, he tried to get up and leave, but by then his jacket was on full-tilt-boogie fire and he was fast becoming a ball of tweed and flames. His clients started screaming in Italian, as Italians are prone to do, running at him and patting him down as someone else threw a glass of water at his chest. This was the man responsible for building their corporate headquarters. Talk about a career on fire.
PETER HAS GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO BEING MISTAKEN FOR THE boys’ grandfather when he’s out with them. He may be old enough, technically, but he does not sit on a hill smoking a pipe, watching me child-mind from afar. He is lithe and energetic, and a natural athlete. Peter has perfect posture and extremely elegant hands. He is so graceful that he can make bowling look like ballet. But for all his finesse, he is fiercely competitive. There is no such thing as a friendly game of croquet for Peter, and we have learned not to play board games with him because of this drive to be on top.
But unlike some younger fathers, who are still building their careers, Peter never hesitates to put us first. Yes, he does card tricks, he runs like a girl, he has an uberannoying habit of overintellectualizing everything. But he never complains about the cost of my shoes; for that alone, he is a keeper. I love the fact that, as an older father, Peter has his work/family priorities firmly in place.
One day a few years ago I was in Union Square with Peik and Truman after school. They were with their skateboarding pack, executing jumps and spins and other death-and police-defying acts of wonder. Truman, being five, was drifting into the larger space of his big brother, and acting very much like an eight-year-old in every way, until Peik had had enough of sharing his friends and boxed Truman out. Not one to sulk, Truman looked around for new fun and noticed a troupe of break-dancers getting warmed up. He loves break-dancers, and we often go on adventures in the subways at night to watch them perform. Knowing what was about to happen, I got out my phone.
“Peter,” I said, “you have to get to Union Square with your video camera. Truman is about to dance.”
“I’m in a meeting with the lawyer.”
“Really, Peter. Believe me. You must get this on film.”
“I’ll be right there.”
By the time he arrived, Truman was being introduced to the crowd as part of the crew. The dancers lined up one by one to take their solos. Sure enough, they sent Truman out for his turn. Truman stepped forward in his preppie rugby shirt and carrot-orange hair and executed a series of spins and worms and even the Michael Jackson crotch grab. I laughed until I cried, watching that performance. Peter was thrilled to have preserved the moment. He looked up at me and mouthed, “Thank you.”
I pointed down at my new alligator Manolos and mouthed, “Oh no, thank you.”
HELP WITH THE HEAVY LIFTING
