I had just gotten divorced, which is not ordinarily considered one of the better ways to improve your social life, although I suppose it does create an opening.
At the time I had a small accounting practice operating out of my house in Kennesaw, Georgia. I processed clients at home and at night, delivered their financial reports during the day, and filled the dead spaces with cold sales calls. One of my clients owned a shop called The Dinner Warehouse, selling high-end housewares and kitchenware.
I went by a couple of times a month, picking up whatever I needed to do the accounting and dropping off the previous month’s reports. The shop employed maybe half a dozen women, most of them somewhere around middle age or a little beyond, and since I have never suffered much from an inability to talk, they knew more about my life than was strictly necessary for the preparation of a set of financial statements.
So, after my divorce became final, I walked in one day and announced to the assembled ladies:
“I just got a divorce. Do any of you have a single daughter I could meet?”
Now, I wasn’t conducting an organized search. I was running my mouth. Most of the women just said no.
One did not.
She looked at me and said, with considerable conviction:
“You’re not meeting my daughter.”
Well, I hadn’t asked for her daughter in particular, but there is something about being specifically forbidden to do something you weren’t planning to do in the first place that gets your attention. Still, I let it go. I had other problems.
A Telephone Pole Enters the Story
The divorce may have been final, but the fight over the house wasn’t. My former wife and I had an ante-nuptial agreement that apparently possessed the useful legal quality of being incomprehensible. On the advice of my attorney, I moved out and into a temporary apartment while the lawyers and the house and the money sorted themselves out.
I wanted to buy another house, but I had another difficulty. I was starting a business, which is a wonderful way to convince a mortgage company that you may have a bright future but not necessarily next Tuesday. I needed a co-signer, so I called my mother.
Mother agreed to sign with me, and that appeared to settle the matter until she went shopping one day, backed her car into a telephone pole, and wound up at the hospital. This was not part of my real-estate financing plan. She wasn’t seriously hurt, as I remember it, but she was upset enough that when the mortgage papers arrived, she decided she wasn’t in any mood to fool with them.
“I’m too upset to sign a mortgage right now,” she said. “I’ll just pay cash for the house.”
And she did.
Somewhere in the annals of American finance there may be a recognized procedure in which an automobile, a telephone pole, and an irritated mother combine to solve a mortgage problem, but I had not previously encountered it.
Suddenly, I Could Meet Her Daughter
On my next visit to The Dinner Warehouse, the ladies naturally asked how things were going. I told them about the divorce, the house, the mortgage, Mother backing into the telephone pole, and her eventual solution to the paperwork problem. Something changed. The woman who had previously made it quite clear that I was not meeting her daughter leaned across the counter.
“You’ve got to meet my daughter Celeste,” she said.
Then she gave me Celeste’s phone number. I don’t know that Mother’s paying cash for the house had anything whatsoever to do with this sudden revision of my eligibility. I merely report the sequence of events and leave the interpretation to scholars.
For the next couple of visits, Celeste’s mother kept after me about calling her, so eventually I did. I invited Celeste to my new house for dinner.
The Chicken Declines to Cooperate
Now, a man inviting a woman to his home for dinner on a first date ought to have certain basic matters under control. He should know what time she is coming. He should probably stop whatever else he is doing before she arrives. And, if dinner involves the use of an oven, some passing acquaintance with the operation of said oven might prove advantageous.
I failed on most counts.
Celeste arrived while I was still working around the new house because I had temporarily lost track of the time. That was embarrassing enough, but I had at least demonstrated foresight by putting a roast chicken in the oven a few hours earlier.
When I opened the door and saw this beauteous child of twenty-three, just over half my age, standing there, I was awestruck. I was also excited and ready to show off my culinary skills. I apologized that I was not properly dressed for our dinner date and asked whether she would mind waiting in the living room while I went upstairs to improve my appearance. She agreed and retired to await my return.
When I came back down, I checked on the chicken.
Unfortunately, it had failed to participate in the plan.
It was still raw.
New house. New oven. I didn’t know how the damned thing worked. So there I stood, entertaining the daughter I had originally been prohibited from meeting, in the house my mother had bought after backing into a telephone pole, with a raw chicken sitting in an oven I apparently lacked the technical qualifications to operate.
Faced with such a situation, I did what any accomplished romantic would do. I took her out for pizza.
Apparently, I Flirted with the Waitress
We drove around Kennesaw until we found a pizza place and went inside. According to Celeste, I then spent a substantial portion of our first date flirting with the waitress. I don’t remember it quite that way, but Celeste does, and when two people have been together for more than forty years, a fellow eventually learns that there are historical questions upon which further research is unlikely to improve his position. She has witnesses. She has never needed to call them, but I notice they stay on call.
Besides, she came back.
The pizza apparently didn’t kill the relationship. Neither did the raw chicken. Neither, for that matter, did I.
One Damned Thing Led to Another
I have occasionally wondered what would have happened if any one piece of that ridiculous sequence had changed. Suppose I hadn’t made the wisecrack in The Dinner Warehouse. Suppose Celeste’s mother hadn’t told me I wasn’t meeting her daughter. Suppose Mother hadn’t backed into the telephone pole. Suppose she had simply signed the mortgage papers. Suppose I hadn’t gone back into the store and told the story.
I don’t know. All I know is what actually happened.
A divorce led to an accounting practice. The accounting practice led to The Dinner Warehouse. Running my mouth led to a prohibition against meeting somebody’s daughter. A telephone pole led to a house. The house story led to a phone number. The phone number led to a raw chicken. The raw chicken led to pizza.
And the pizza led to Celeste.
The Route
The road to the right woman may run through divorce court, a telephone pole, a raw chicken, and a pizza joint.
You don’t have to understand the route.
You just have to be smart enough, once you find her, not to lose her.
I’ve started to wonder how many of my stories work like this one, with the thing that mattered arriving sideways, by way of something that looked like a mistake. That’s the question behind The Model, if you want to watch me worry at it.