How My Parents Fell For My Husband

by Amy Sohn

I found out he wasn’t Jewish but I decided that was OK; he wasn’t husband material. He’d be a hot fling. I invited him to the party but he declined, which was good because I wound up drinking strawberry margaritas all night and getting so drunk that I threw up after my last guest left. When he came to pick up the paintings we went on a long walk. Because I wasn’t thinking of him as a potential mate, I was myself when I was around him, and not so nervous.

Soon it became clear that in addition to being hot, he was also an avid reader, a gentleman, and a rough-edged romantic. He cooked for me, well, in his tiny galley kitchen. He read me Bernard Malamud at night. He bought me used books by Kleist and emailed me photos of vintage porn, saying the women’s bodies reminded him of mine. We went to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, and during the closing credits I told him that I loved him.

One night a couple months after we met, I invited my parents over for dinner. “I can’t believe you’re cooking,” said my mother.

“I’m not. Jack is.”

We all sat around my tiny table and Jack made a bouillabaisse with good salad and sourdough bread. My dad ate three portions. When he found out that Jack had gone to Harvard for graduate school, he seemed doubly impressed. So Jack wasn’t Jewish but he was a mensch, a great storyteller, and he loved me.