3 hours ago
8
Adolescence leaves its mark on everyone but for my son the marks have been particularly obvious. I’ve lost track of how many casts he’s had. He loves electric bikes and at various times this has led to a broken arm, a broken hand, a broken leg, a wide variety of cuts and grazes, and terrifyingly close calls with much worse.
It also led to him getting a job as a delivery rider for the local Domino’s Pizza, which valued him for his speed (another broken wrist) and his ability to be cheerful in the face of unhinged customers. Once, after getting no answer when he buzzed a flat and phoned, he left a woman’s pizza on her doorstep. She called him “the scum of the earth” and promised he would lose his job and never get another one.
“Have a nice evening,” he said, and sped away.
You have to do a lot of shifts at Domino’s to save up enough money to take a girl to a fancy restaurant but this girl is worth it. She is smart and kind, with a smile as wide as the moon. They are at school together and the only time he has ever engaged me in conversation about a novel was when she was within earshot.
Like most teenage boys, my son doesn’t tell me much about their relationship – it seems to have been on, then off, then maybe on again? – but there was no ambiguity when he booked the two of them into dinner at Fratelli Paradiso in Potts Point. We’d been there a few months earlier for his sister’s 18th birthday. It was the nicest restaurant he could think of. He wore a collared shirt and cologne.
The restaurant is dark, chic and expensive. The tables are small and the waiters, mostly Italian, make you feel that you are all, together, part of something special. I’m sure the two of them felt this, though they didn’t dare order much. They shared some olives to start and one lasagne for main. They barely drank. But they talked and laughed, and had a lovely time.
When my son went to pay, the waiter told him that the woman who had sat at the table next to theirs had paid $100 of their bill. She was by herself and they hadn’t exchanged a single word with her. She must have heard quite a lot of their conversation – the tables are close together – but with the obliviousness of all young lovers, they had barely noticed her. All my son could remember was she was blond and middle aged.
“Like me?” I asked.
“Yeah, kinda.”
Who knows if either of them will ever see this woman in the street and have a chance to thank her for her random act of generosity. I know it’s unlikely she’ll ever read this but if she is: thank you. Thank you for making a special night even more special for these gorgeous young people. And thank you also for what you’ve given me.
My son will probably never tell me much about this relationship. I have thought often about how much I would love to have sat there, as you did, listening in to snippets of their conversation, just to see how they are with each other when they think no one is watching. So it makes my heart full to think that, whatever you heard them say that night, it moved you enough to do something so spontaneously kind and generous.
That’s enough detail for me.
