A work of fiction...

On our second date we talked about our families. At first it seemed like the natural next step, to exchange details of hometowns and siblings while eating at the trendiest Thai restaurant in the city. Soon, though, it became apparent that what we shared in common was not just a love of dogs and long hikes in the mountains, but mental illness.

"My father," she began, "had affairs."

"I suppose most men do," I laughed my reply thinking of the money Dr. Phil and Oprah make on such assumptions.

"We were a secretive family," she continued, "and that is why I was so fascinated by my father's story once I decided to find out the truth behind the secrets."

"Is there such a thing," I asked. "Truth, I mean." I held my tea cup like a hand warmer, close to my face, my ring tapping quietly against the white curve.

"I suppose not, but I was interested in that too, in how memories create truths and that if you could gather up enough memories, somehow a truth might emerge. Or so I hoped."

"And what truth did you find?"

She smiled at me and I think it was in that moment I realized I would fall in love with her. "I interviewed one of my father's mistresses."

"Oh." There was no other response. I sipped my tea. "How did you know who to interview if it was all a secret?"

She went on to tell me the stories, the woven texture of her childhood and the family friends who held pieces of the mystery. She'd found out the name, had even suspected this was the name, and then pursued her, thoughtfully, mindfully, and patiently.

They met at a local hometown restaurant and in the end, clarity followed. There was no bitterness. There was no understanding. There was just this mistress sharing her side of the story with a woman, once a girl, who lived on the edges of it.

"That's quite a story," I sighed. The food had arrived and we divided the small portions of basil noodles and swimming angel next too the sticky rice on our plates. "But I can top it."

She looked up then, her left eyebrow raised and said, "Sounds interesting."

"My mother had an affair with the neighbor. A cab driver, she ran away with him when I was 17. Just jumped in the cab and headed to D.C."

We stopped eating.

"He left her there...no money, no car, no way to get home."

"What did she do?" I could tell she sympathized with my mother. Just wait, I thought, just wait.

"She became a call-girl, a high-priced prostitute working for a so-called dating service."

"Your mother," she stammered, "Oh my."

"It gets better," I laughed, the kind of laugh that comes out more like a huff than a giggle. "After a series of husbands, she just recently ran away with the boyfriend she met while tutoring him in jail."

"Wait, wait," she put her hand up and her fork down. "She was tutoring him because he was in jail or she was?"

"He was in jail, and he recently got out. He's been deported back to Mexico and she is meeting him there, actually has met him there and they are probably doing it as we speak."

Her cheeks turn red, something I would grow to love later on. "How old is your mother?" she asks.

"68. Her prison lover is in his 40's. He could be my brother."

"But..." and it trails off because I can tell she can't quite think of any question to ask. Nothing has prepared her to ask a question for a situation like this.

"She's French," I say, as if that explains the choices. "She waited over two years for him to be released from prison. She has always fallen for unavailable men."

"I should say," is all she can manage.

"She writes to me about it in French and I read my emails a bit sickened and sad that she doesn't see the pattern, she doesn't see that he is simply using her for sex, for money, for god knows what else."

"This has happened before?"

I look up. I realized I've been staring at water chestnuts floating in an oily browness. "Oh, something like it happens every time she meets a man who she thinks is her Romeo, her Casanova, her ticket to the good life. And then they swindle her or dump her or impregnate someone else and she finds another man, equally inaccessible and equally as parasitic. It's a vicious cycle."

"I should say."

We are silent for a long while, longer than what is comfortable for a second date.

"You win," she says.

I look at her confused, quizzical.

"That's a much better story than mine."