Melanie Gideon - Wife 22

“You wrote me a song?” asks Zoe.

“Is that your car, Jude?” asks William, referring to the Toyota parked in front of our campsite.

Jude nods.

William helps Peter to his feet. “Let’s go, you’re driving. Peter can stretch out in the backseat. Alice, you and Zoe follow in our car.”

“You’re driving like a crazy person. You don’t have to tailgate them,” snaps Zoe.

“Did you know Jude was coming?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Who were you texting on the way down here?”

Zoe crosses her arms and looks out the window.

“What’s going on between the two of you?”

“Nothing.”

“And ‘nothing’ is why he drove four hundred miles in the middle of the night to serenade you?”

Even though I’m furious at Jude-why couldn’t he have made his surprise appearance in daylight?-I think what he did was incredibly romantic. I loved Say Anything. Especially the iconic scene where John Cusack is standing on his car holding up his boom box in that trench coat with the huge shoulder pads- I see the doorway to a thousand churches in your eyes . Eleven words that pretty much sum up what it was like to be a teenager in the 1980s.

“It’s not my fault he keeps stalking me.”

“He wrote you a song, Zoe.”

“Not my fault either.”

“I saw the way you were looking at him. Obviously you still have feelings for him. Finally!” I say as we drive off the dirt onto a paved road and Jude picks up speed.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” says Zoe, covering her face with her arm.

We drive down an empty road, past meadows and fields. The moon looks like it’s sitting on a fence post.

“Where the hell is the hospital!” I cry after ten minutes. Finally on my right I see a set of buildings, ablaze in lights.

The parking lot is practically deserted. I say a silent prayer of thanks that we’re in the middle of nowhere. If this were Children’s Hospital in Oakland, we’d be waiting five hours to be seen.

I forgot about stitches. Actually, I forgot about the lidocaine shots that come before the actual stitches.

“You may want to look the other way,” suggests the ER doc, the needle in his hand.

Whenever we watch movies or TV that has any bit of sex in it, Peter asks me, “Should I look away?” Depending on the content, if it’s just rolling around on the bed fully clothed or kissing or a little bit of dry humping, I tell him no. If there’s any sign body parts might be making an appearance, I tell him yes. I know he’s seen breasts on the Internet, but he hasn’t seen them with his mother sitting beside him on the couch. I don’t know who would be more uncomfortable in that situation-him or me. He’s not ready. He’s not ready to see himself get injected with lidocaine, either.

“Look away,” I say to Peter.

“I was talking to you, actually,” says the doctor.

“I don’t have a problem with needles,” I say.

Peter has a death grip on my hand. “I’m going to distract myself now. By having a meaningless conversation with you.”

His eyes stare intently into mine, but my eyes skitter involuntarily toward the needle.

“Mom, I have something to tell you and it may come as a surprise.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, watching the doctor begin to make injections all around the wound.

“I’m straight.”

“That’s good, honey,” I say, as the doctor now begins to inject the lidocaine inside the wound.

“You’re doing great, Peter,” says the doctor. “Almost done.”

“Mrs. Buckle,” says the doctor. “Are you okay?”

I feel dizzy. I grab onto the side of the bed.

“This always happens,” says the doctor to William. “We tell the parents not to look but they can’t help it-they look. I had a father in here the other day who suddenly collapsed when I was stitching up his daughter’s lip. Pitched right over. Big guy. Two hundred pounds. Chipped three teeth.”

“Let’s go, Alice,” says William, taking my elbow.

“Mom, did you hear me?”

“Yes, sweetheart, you’re straight.”

William forces me to my feet.

“Your son is straight. And would you please stop shaking?” I say to William. “It’s making me nauseous.”

“I’m not shaking,” says William, holding me up. “You are.”

“There’s a gurney out in the hallway,” says the doctor.

Those are the last words I hear before I faint.

The next day, after a six-hour drive home (two of those hours being stuck in stop-and-go traffic), I go straight upstairs to bed. I’m exhausted.

Zoe and Peter follow me into my room. Peter hurls himself onto the bed next to me, fluffs a pillow, and grabs the remote. “Netflix?” he says.

Zoe looks at me with concern.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. I can’t remember the last time she looked at me kindly.

“Maybe you fainted because you were getting sick,” she says.

“That’s very generous of you, but I fainted because I watched the doctor stick a needle into an open wound in Pedro’s belly.”

“Six stitches,” Peter says proudly, pulling up his shirt to expose the bandage.

“Aren’t you overdoing it a little? The doctor said you’d be fine by today,” says Zoe.

“Six stitches,” Peter repeats.

“I know, Pedro, you were very brave.”

“So are we watching When Barry Met Wally or what?” asks Peter.

After Peter admitted to me he had no desire to see The Omen , I put an end to the mother-son creepy thrillers club. Peter and I are now the sole members of the mother-son romantic comedy club, and I promised when we got home that we’d begin the Nora Ephron series. First we’ll watch the classic When Harry Met Sally, then Sleepless in Seattle , and finally, You’ve Got Mail . I do not expect these movies to result in any nightmares for Peter, other than the horror of realizing how often and comprehensively men and women misunderstand one another.

“I hate romantic comedies,” Zoe says. “They’re so predictable.”

“Is that your way of saying you want to join the club?” asks Peter.

“Dream on, gangsta,” she says, leaving the room.

“Should I look away?” Peter asks one minute into the movie, when Billy Crystal is kissing his girlfriend outside Meg Ryan’s car.

“Should I look away?” he asks again during the famous fake orgasm scene in Katz’s deli. “Or maybe just plug my ears?”

“Should I look away?” he asks when-

“Oh, for God’s sake, Pedro. People have sex, okay. People love sex. People talk about sex. People simulate sex. Women have vaginas. Men have penises.” I wave my hand. “Blah, blah, blah.”

“I’ve decided I don’t want to be Pedro anymore,” he says.

I mute the movie. “Really? Everyone’s gotten the hang of it.”

“I just don’t.”

“Okay. Well, what do you want to be called?”

Please don’t let him say Pedro 3000 or Dr. P-Dro or Archibald.

“I was thinking-Peter.”

“Peter?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, that’s a lovely name. I like Peter. It suits you. Should I be the one to break it to your father or should you?”

Peter unmutes the movie.

Billy Crystal:There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance.

Meg Ryan:Which one am I?

Billy Crystal:You’re the worst kind. You’re high maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance.

Peter mutes the movie again. “Why did you think I was gay?”

“I didn’t think you were gay.”

Peter gives me a skeptical look.

“Okay, I thought there might be a possibility.”