“We are?”
He laughed, and she laughed, too, although she had not been joking. He was open and gushing; cynicism did not occur to him. She felt charmed and almost helpless in the face of this, carried along by him; perhaps they were indeed dating after one kiss since he was so sure that they were.
Kimberly’s greeting to her the next day was “Hello there, lovebird.”
“So you’ll forgive your cousin for asking out the help?” Ifemelu asked.
Kimberly laughed and then, in an act that both surprised and moved Ifemelu, Kimberly hugged her. They moved apart awkwardly. Oprah was on the TV in the den and she heard the audience erupt in applause.
“Well,” Kimberly said, looking a little startled by the hug herself. “I just wanted to say I’m really … happy for you both.”
“Thank you. But it’s only been one date and there has been no consummation.”
Kimberly giggled and for a moment it felt as though they were high school girlfriends gossiping about boys. Ifemelu sometimes sensed, underneath the well-oiled sequences of Kimberly’s life, a flash of regret not only for things she longed for in the present but for things she had longed for in the past.
“You should have seen Curt this morning,” Kimberly said. “I’ve never seen him like this! He’s really excited.”
“About what?” Morgan asked. She was standing by the kitchen entrance, her prepubescent body stiff with hostility. Behind her, Taylor was trying to straighten the legs of a small plastic robot.
“Well, honey, you’re going to have to ask Uncle Curt.”
Curt came into the kitchen, smiling shyly, his hair slightly wet, wearing a fresh, light cologne. “Hey,” he said. He had called her at night to say he couldn’t sleep. “This is really corny but I am so full of you, it’s like I’m breathing you, you know?” he had said, and she thought that the romance novelists were wrong and it was men, not women, who were the true romantics.
“Morgan is asking why you seem so excited,” Kimberly said.
“Well, Morg, I’m excited because I have a new girlfriend, somebody really special who you might know.”
Ifemelu wished Curt would remove the arm he had thrown around her shoulder; they were not announcing their engagement, for goodness’ sake. Morgan was staring at them. Ifemelu saw Curt through her eyes: the dashing uncle who traveled the world and told all the really funny jokes at Thanksgiving dinner, the cool one young enough to get her, but old enough to try and make her mother get her.
“Ifemelu is your girlfriend?” Morgan asked.
“Yes,” Curt said.
“That’s disgusting,” Morgan said, looking genuinely disgusted.
“Morgan!” Kimberly said.
Morgan turned and stalked off upstairs.
“She has a crush on Uncle Curt, and now the babysitter steps onto her turf. It can’t be easy,” Ifemelu said.
Taylor, who seemed happy both with the news and with having straightened out the robot’s legs, said, “Are you and Ifemelu going to get married and have a baby, Uncle Curt?”
“Well, buddy, right now we are just going to be spending a lot of time together, to get to know each other.”
“Oh, okay,” Taylor said, slightly dampened, but when Don came home, Taylor ran into his arms and said, “Ifemelu and Uncle Curt are going to get married and have a baby!”
“Oh,” Don said.
His surprise reminded Ifemelu of Abe in her ethics class: Don thought she was attractive and interesting, and thought Curt was attractive and interesting, but it did not occur to him to think of both of them, together, entangled in the delicate threads of romance.
CURT HAD NEVER BEEN with a black woman; he told her this after their first time, in his penthouse apartment in Baltimore, with a self-mocking toss of his head, as if this were something he should have done long ago but had somehow neglected.
“Here’s to a milestone, then,” she said, pretending to raise a glass.
Wambui once said, after Dorothy introduced them to her new Dutch boyfriend at an ASA meeting, “I can’t do a white man, I’d be scared to see him naked, all that paleness. Unless maybe an Italian with a serious tan. Or a Jewish guy, dark Jewish.” Ifemelu looked at Curt’s pale hair and pale skin, the rust-colored moles on his back, the fine sprinkle of golden chest hair, and thought how strongly, at this moment, she disagreed with Wambui.
“You are so sexy,” she said.