He Proposed at the Restaurant Where I Waitressed in College, and Then His Mother Walked In

Part 2: The Woman in the Cream Scarf**

She crossed the dining room like she owned it.

I had time. Maybe six seconds. Six seconds where David was still looking at me, still waiting for me to say yes, and I could see over his shoulder that this woman, this woman I had never met, was walking toward our table with a face I could not read at all.

I put my hand on David’s wrist.

“Your mother is here,” I said.

He didn’t turn around right away. He watched my face first, and something moved behind his eyes, something that had nothing to do with the ring or the story or the corner booth.

“What?”

“Your mother,” I said again. “She just walked in.”

He closed the box.

He closed it before he turned around, which I noticed, and I filed away, and I have thought about a hundred times since.

“Mom,” he said, standing halfway up. His voice was flat. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t tell me you were in town.”

“I’m not in town. I live an hour away.”

“You didn’t tell me you were coming to dinner here.”

She was in her late sixties. Silver hair cut precisely at the jaw. A camel coat that probably cost more than my car. She had David’s mouth, or he had hers, and her eyes flicked to the ring box on the table and then to me and then back to David.

“Sit down, Mom.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

“You will. Not now.”

“Now seems like a good time. She has a ring in front of her.”

The waiter had noticed. He was hovering near the drink station, holding a bread basket and pretending not to look.

I stood up.

I don’t know why I stood up. Some old instinct, maybe. Some part of me that remembered how to handle a scene in this dining room.

“I’m Emma,” I said, and I put out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She looked at my hand for a second before she took it. Her grip was cool and firm and brief.

“Katherine,” she said. “David’s mother.”

“I know.”

“He’s told you about me.”

“A little.”

She smiled with only the corners of her mouth.

“I’m sure.”

David was still standing. He was doing that thing men do when they don’t know whether to sit or leave, half-crouched, one hand on the edge of the table.

“How did you know I was here,” he said.

“Find My iPhone.”

“Mom.”

“I was worried. You haven’t called in three weeks.”

“That’s not being worried. That’s tracking me.”

“It’s the same thing when you’re a mother.”

The waiter finally committed. He brought a third chair. Katherine sat down at the head of our booth like a judge taking the bench, and she folded her hands on the tablecloth, and she looked at me.

“I owe you an apology, Emma.”

I sat back down. Slowly.

“For what.”

“For interrupting. This is clearly a private moment.”

“That’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” she said. “But I’m here now, and I would like to stay, if David will permit it.”

She wasn’t looking at David when she said it. She was looking at me. And I understood, in a way I could not have put into words yet, that this was a test. That the answer she wanted from me was the one that let her stay.

“Of course,” I said.

David sat down. He put the ring box back in his jacket pocket without looking at it.

Katherine ordered a glass of red wine. She ordered it from the waiter by name, which surprised me, because the waiter did not seem to know her.

“Marco,” she said, reading his name tag. “Thank you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He fled.

“So,” Katherine said, unfolding her napkin. “David tells me you two met at a conference.”

“We did.”

“In March.”

“Yes.”

“That’s fast.”

“Mom.”

“I’m just noting the timeline, David. Emma, what do you do?”

“I’m an architect. Residential mostly.”

“That’s lovely. Where did you study?”

“Ohio State.”

Her wine arrived. She did not thank the waiter this time. She swirled the glass, looked into it, and did not drink.

“David went to Kenyon,” she said.

“I know.”

“His father wanted him to go to Yale. David wouldn’t apply.”

“Mom, we’re not doing this.”

“Doing what, sweetheart. I’m just making conversation.”

She turned the stem of the wine glass a half rotation.

“Emma. Can I ask you something honestly?”

“Sure.”

“How much has David told you about our family?”

“Enough.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the answer I’m giving.”

Something changed in her face. A small recalibration. She was not used to being answered that way, I thought, but she was also, in some strange way, pleased.

“All right,” she said. “Fair enough.”

She finally took a sip of her wine.

“Then let me tell you what he probably hasn’t. His father died six years ago. Heart. Very sudden. I was not, I am not, an easy widow. David has been very patient with me. More patient than I have earned.”

David was staring at his water glass.

“I came here tonight,” Katherine said, “because I saw on his phone that he was at Marconi’s, and Marconi’s is where I had a fight with him twelve years ago. On my birthday. It was, in retrospect, one of the worst nights of my life, though I did not know it at the time.”

She set the glass down.

“I have wanted to apologize for that dinner for twelve years. I have not known how.”

The candle between us was almost out. The waiter came over silently and replaced it, and I watched his hands do it, and I remembered doing the same thing a thousand times, and I did not look at David or Katherine while I did.

“Why tonight,” David said finally.

“Because I saw the reservation on your calendar three weeks ago. And I could not stop thinking that you were bringing a woman to the restaurant where I told you that you were unlovable. And I thought, if he is bringing her there, either he has forgiven me, in which case I should thank her. Or he has not, in which case I should not let this go on any longer without at least trying.”

David looked at her for a long time.

“Mom.”

“I drove down this morning. I have been sitting at a coffee shop across the street for two hours. I was going to leave. I promise you I was going to leave. And then I saw you both walk in through the window, and I thought, I have to do this now, or I will not do it.”

I looked at David. His jaw was tight, but his eyes were not angry. They were something else. Something older than anger.

Katherine turned to me.

“Emma. I’m sorry. This is a terrible way to meet you. And a worse way to interrupt what I suspect was a very significant question.”

“It was,” I said.

“Would you like me to leave? I will. I’ll go, and you can have your evening.”

I looked at David. He was looking at his mother.

“Stay,” he said.

She let out a breath.

“Thank you.”

“But I’m not proposing in front of you, Mom.”

“Fair.”

He almost smiled. Almost.

Katherine reached for her wine glass again, and this time her hand shook, just slightly, and she noticed me notice, and something in her face got very quiet.

“There is one more thing,” she said, “that I probably should tell you both.”

David set down his water.

“What.”

She looked at me.

“Emma,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve actually just met.”

—

**