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在先后被兩個陌生人錯認為是我丈夫的媽媽后，我一度心情沮喪，甚至懷疑他偷偷用了我的面霜。但當他字斟句酌地講出“You look lovely”這一“事實”后，我釋然了。

By Kate Chambers

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My husband is only nine months younger than I am. But lately people have begun to mistake him for my son.

Picture[1] the scene. I have persuaded him to accompany me to my local supermarket in eastern Zimbabwe.[2] I am relishing having someone to trot up to the bread counter, then back to the shopping trolley, off to find some vinegar, back to the trolley, while I muse languidly by the peanut butter.[3] “I must do this more often,” I say to myself happily.

We proceed to the till[4]. A security guard comes closer to help pack our groceries[5]. He greets me warmly: “Hello Amai” (mother).

I smile at him.

“Is this your son?” the guard asks.

“My son?” (My husband says afterward that my mouth dropped open.) I start to stammer[6]. “H’s ... h’s my husband!”

I beat a hasty retreat from the store vowing to always shop alone.[7]

Then it happens again.

This time we have been stopped at a police roadblock[8], one of several on the main highway between the capital, Harare, and the border town of Mutare.

An officer peers in through the driver’s window. “Where is the daddy?” he asks.

“The daddy?” This time it’s my husband who is stumped[9]. “My father is at home.”

The officer considers us. The thought of a fine keeps my lips clamped together.[10]

“Well, look after the mother,” he orders my husband before waving us on.

“He thought you were my son!” I say crossly, as soon as the driver’s window is safely sealed.[11] I turn and glare at my husband. “Can’t you stop looking like you’re 16 years old?”

“I don’t look 16,” he says mildly.

I study his profile[12]: not the hint of a wrinkle there. I wonder: Has he been secretly smoothing on the face cream my sister faithfully sends me? If so, it must work better on him than it ever has on me.

“You do,” I am forced to concede[13]. “Seventeen at the very most.”

My husband looked boyish when I first set eyes on him more than 10 years ago. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love. I’d just gotten off a long-haul flight from Paris, stumbled into an office in Harare, and there, behind the first desk I came across, was a ravishingly handsome man with thick dark curls and brown eyes.[14]

Six months and a bit later we were married.

Together we’ve weathered Zimbabwe’s long-running economic and political crisis, raised a son (and six cats), nurtured friendships, cherished two cottages, and argued over literature in the flickering candlelight characteristic of many an electricity-less evening here.[15] All of these are things you’d think would leave their mark on a man. Not on my husband, it seems. He has stayed boyish.

While I must have matured.

“Tell me: Do I really look old?” I ask, a few miles farther down the road. I fix my eyes on the thin gray strip of tar[16] ahead. As a writer in a country where spreading falsehoods can land you in jail, truth is my husband’s core business.[17] He weighs every word he types, checks every date in his carefully maintained set of diaries. I know that every word he says is true, or as near to the truth as he can get it. I wait with bated[18] breath.

“You look lovely,” my husband says. Mollified[19], I settle back into the passenger seat, congratulating myself on my choice of a mate. I will forgive the security guard and the police officer for their small mistake, I think. I am sorry I ever suspected my husband of using my face cream.

The world looks rosy again. I watch as vendors hold out perfectly balanced pyramids of shiny tomatoes as our car skims past.[20]

“You could always dye your hair bright red,” he says suddenly. “You know you’ve always wanted to.”

Vocabulary

1. picture: 描繪，描述。

2. accompany: 伴隨，陪同；Zimbabwe: 津巴布韋，非洲南部國家。

3. 我正盡情享受有某人快步跑到面包貨臺后返回購物推車，再跑開去找醋后再返回來之時，而我卻優哉游哉地凝視著花生醬。

4. till: =cash register，現金出納機。

5. groceries: [復] 食品雜貨。

6. stammer: 結巴，口吃。

7. 我從超市匆忙撤退并發誓以后要自己單獨購物。beat: 辟出（路），踏出（小徑）。

8. roadblock: 路障。

9. stump: 使……受挫（為難）。

10. fine: 罰金；clamp: 緊緊抓住，此處指“緊閉雙唇”。

11. crossly: 壞脾氣地，易怒地；seal: 密封。

12. profile:（人或組織的）形象，姿態，（頭部的）側面。

13. concede: 妥協地承認。

14. long-haul: （尤指飛機）長途的；stumble: 蹣跚而行；ravishingly: 令人陶醉地；curl: 卷發。

15. weather: 平安度過（困境）；nurture: 培養；cherish: 愛護。

16. tar: 柏油碎石路面。

17. 作為身在一個傳播謬論會招致牢獄之災的國家的作家，真實是我丈夫的核心事務。

18. bated: 減弱的，降低的。

19. mollified: 使平靜的，經撫慰的。

20. vendor: 小販；skim: 掠過。

（來源：英語學習雜志）