The Spinster Sisters (7 page)

“And they’re going to temple together?” Paige says.

“What can I do? He is who he is. If he thinks rediscovering his Judaism with her will be a good thing, who am I to argue?”

“You’re being too good!” Paige gets up onto the couch and props herself on her knees in a pinup-girl pose with her chest thrust out. “Have you met me? I’m Mallory, and these are my breasts and I’m sort of a lawyer and I used to be in the army and I lived in Vietnam and I invented the Internet and I’m so wonderful and fabulous and I’m making your ex-husband become a rabbi since I wrote the Torah, and I’ve decided that he’ll be my new husband and I hate that you have a nicer apartment than he does, and so I’m going to try to make you as uncomfortable as possible in your own living room.”

We start to laugh. Paige rolls over onto her back, unbuttons two buttons on her shirt, throws her legs up into the air, and starts doing little ballet maneuvers with her feet. “And do you drink pop, because I invented pop. I’m the first one that ever thought you should put a flavor and sugar into sparkling water, and that makes me a genius and did I mention that I have lovely breasts and like for you to look at them? I notice that you have furniture in your house, and I think that’s fascinating, as I build all my own furniture from scratch.” Paige allows the front half of her body to slide off the couch so that she sprawls gracefully onto the floor. She strikes another provocative pose. “I think it’s so cool that you’re watching a movie. I starred in a movie, and I wrote it myself and I directed it and I produced it and I designed all of the sets, and I sewed all the costumes myself and it was going to be called
Me Me Me: A Retrospective
and shown at Cannes and Sundance, which was an idea I gave to Robert Redford a long time ago, but my funding fell through because nothing good ever really happens to me, I have to make it happen myself, and I come from a terrible family, my father beat me as a child with my mother’s shoe, and she popped pills, and every bit of success that anyone in the world has ever had is somehow related directly to me and my perseverance, and even though I cannot pass the bar, I’m still the super-duper genius girl of the universe.” Paige collapses, spent and out of breath.

By this time, the two of us are laughing so hard we’re practically peeing in our pants. On the one hand, I feel a little bad making fun of Mallory, who was clearly so uncomfortable with the idea of my having a continuing relationship with Brant that she needed to stake out her territory. On the other hand, her behavior had been so appalling that I am hard-pressed not to feel justified in having a little amusement at their expense.

I open another bottle of wine, and Paige and I watch the last twenty-five minutes of the penguin movie. When it’s over, she asks me what I think.

“Well, first of all,” I say, “these are not Jewish birds.”

Paige starts to laugh. “Why not?”

“Really? With the walking seventy miles over the ice, and no food and the wind chill a hundred and eighty below zero and the egg on the feet and it could fall and it could freeze and then there’s a two-day window where the mother has to get back if she hasn’t been eaten by a leopard seal. The poor father, four months in the cold, no food, and one little piece of phlegm to sustain the kid, if it actually hatches. I mean, honestly.”

“But it’s so heartwarming. And it’s so sweet, their relationship with each other,” says Paige. “And it’s amazing, their ability to survive.”

“Look, I’m trying not to be a cynic about this. And I’m trying to get past one of my least favorite things, which is the strange desire for filmmakers to anthropomorphize animals. I mean, ten minutes on the mating ritual as if it’s some nightclub, and everybody’s finding the perfect dance partner. I could even get past that. And Lord knows I would listen to Morgan Freeman read out of a phone book for two hours most happily. But I’m going to be honest here. I think these may be the second-dumbest creatures on the face of the earth.”

“So which are the first?” Paige asks.

“That’s easy,” I say, “the goddamn filmmakers!”

She snorts wine through her nose.

She laughs, and I start laughing, too. I know that I’m taking out some of my frustration with Brant on the poor penguin movie.

We chitchat for a little while until Paige starts to yawn. “Sorry, Boss Lady,” she says, “I’m fading.”

“Me, too.”

“I should probably go home.”

I walk her to the door and then go back inside to clean up the wineglasses. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is a creature dumber than the penguins and the filmmakers. If there is, my ex-husband is definitely in the running.

Nothing is more important than family. Whether it is the family you
were born into or the family you create around you with your good
friends, that support system is essential to a good life. But two of the
most difficult things to manage can be your family’s involvement in
your relationship and the relationship you have to your lover’s family.
There are all sorts of pitfalls to be aware of, and family can often be a
significant factor in relationships going awry. If one partner’s family
doesn’t approve, it can bring enough tension into the relationship as to
be detrimental to good communication. And respecting the feelings,
traditions, and needs of both families is the only way to keep your partnership
strong.

 
 
 
 
We have reserved the private dining suite at One Sixty Blue for dinner, to celebrate Jill and Hunter’s engagement and meet his family. Aunt Ruth and Aunt Shirley and I got here a little early to ensure that everything is set up to our exacting standards. This meant that within ten minutes of our arrival, Aunt Ruth was delivering a lengthy set of directions to the waitstaff, and Aunt Shirley had weaseled her way into the kitchen to meet the chef. I’m taking a quiet moment in the sitting room attached to the dining area to gather my thoughts.

Jill hasn’t said too much about Hunter’s family. She’s only met them twice before, and even then just for short weekends. All she has said is that they are pretty conservative, sort of B-list Philadelphia Main Line types, not gazillionaires, but definitely wealthy, and that they have always been very polite to her, if not necessarily what one would call warm. And the brother, some sort of Wall Street wunderkind, apparently spends most of his time disappearing to talk on the phone. Jill confessed earlier today to a small bit of apprehension about tonight, worried that Hunter’s family will find the aunts a little too strange to like, and that the whole Jewish thing will rear its ugly head. Not to mention the fact that they have been known to give money to some of the very groups that are currently making our professional life hell. Hunter swears that they don’t have a problem with the Jewish thing, especially since it isn’t like he is planning on converting, but Jill thinks he is a little bit myopic about his family in general. He also thinks that when they attend the galas hosted by their cronies to fund-raise for candidates who are pro-life that it isn’t making a statement about their own feelings about the abortion issue; they are just supporting their friends. God bless Hunter. I hope he is as clueless about our many faults and foibles.

“Well, I think the meal is going to be lovely,” Aunt Shirley says as she glides into the room to join me. “The chef was delightful, and the kitchen is immaculate and humming.”

“They’ve never disappointed us before,” I say, just as Aunt Ruth appears. She folds her long legs into one of the chairs.

“Well, are we ready to meet the in-laws?” Ruth asks.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” says Shirley, shaking her head. “Why should I be so nervous?”

“It’s just natural,” I say, reaching over to pat her arm. “I’m nervous, too. These people are becoming family, and our family has always consisted of just us. Suddenly we have to take a whole other group of people into account.”

“And they’re WASPs,” says Ruth bluntly.

“Ruthie, that’s terrible!” Shirley flashes her eyes at her sister. “You must behave yourself. Tonight is very important to all of us.”

“I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way, simply a statement of fact. They are WASPs. We are not. There won’t be a common footing. It’s likely to be awkward in the beginning, and since we know that, it makes us nervous.”

“Our common footing is Jill and Hunter,” I jump in. “These people created Hunter, and we love him, right? So there is no reason to expect that we won’t love his family.”

“Of course, dear,” Ruth says.

“You’re so right,” Shirley offers. “I’m sure they’ll be lovely.”

“For WASPs,” adds Ruth.

“Well then, smile, because here they come,” I say as the glass doors open and Jill leads her soon-to-be new family into the room.

“This is my sister, Jodi, and my aunts, Ruth and Shirley.” Jill points to us each in turn. “Everyone, this is Hunter’s father, Cleveland.” Jill gestures to a tall, ruddy-faced man with oddly greenish blond hair and broad shoulders.

“Everyone calls me Cleve,” he says, stepping forward to shake hands.

“And this is my mother, Grace.” Hunter escorts his mother by the elbow. She has a helmet of perfectly frosted hair, a slim figure, and the placid lack of expression that seems to come with BOTOX or Xanax or both. She offers her hand to me first, which is ice cold. I instinctively grasp it in both of my hands, if nothing else to warm it up.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Charles,” I say.

“Please, do call me Grace,” she says in a breathy, nasal voice that makes me wonder if the perfectly upturned button nose is original or a reproduction.

“And this is Hunter’s brother, Stallworth. But everyone calls him Worth.” Jill points to a slightly taller version of Hunter, but instead of Hunter’s golden hazel eyes, Worth’s are the piercing ice-blue of those dogsled dogs. I step forward with my hand extended, but he raises one finger at me and reaches inside his jacket pocket for his phone, which he flips open with one hand as he sidles back out the door.

Cleve laughs. “That’s my boy! Something always cooking. You’ll have to excuse him, ladies. He means no disrespect; he’s just an important fellow with pressing business obligations is all.”

Aunt Ruth snorts softly, and Aunt Shirley shoots her a look that expresses her extreme displeasure. A waiter arrives with a tray of champagne flutes and hands them around. Worth reenters the room.

“So sorry, everyone. I have a deal on the line that is sort of tenuous at the moment. But I’ve informed my assistant not to forward any more calls until after dinner, so hopefully we won’t be disturbed again.” He walks around the room, kissing first Aunt Ruth, then Shirley, then me. The waiter hands him a glass of champagne.

“I’d like to propose a toast,” he says. “To my little brother and soon-to-be sister. There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. Homer.”

“Hear, hear!” says Cleve.

“In life you are sometimes the chicken in the henhouse, and sometimes the chicken in the soup. May you never both be in the soup on the same day. Bubbe Spingold,” Shirley says. Cleve and Grace raise their glasses, puzzled looks on their faces, and sip quietly.

The waiter comes back to let us know that we can repair to the dining room, and we file out of the sitting room quietly and take our seats at the large, round table. The waiter tops off our champagne glasses. Hunter and his family are on one side of the table and the four of us on the other. I’m not the only one who notices this.

“Well, this is no way to get to know one another,” Ruth says. “Everyone stand up again.”

Grace and Cleve peer sidelong at one another.

“Come on, up!” Ruth insists. We all rise obediently.

“Now, Hunter, you move to the other side of Jill.”

He walks around to where Aunt Shirley is sitting.

“Shirley, you there, next to Worth.”

She heads over.

“Cleve, you here, next to me, then Jodi, then Grace. Now, sit!”

We all look around. She has alternated Spingold/Charles all the way around the table. Doesn’t matter which way one turns, there are in-laws everywhere.

“How smart, Ruthie, so much better for us all to get to know one another.” Aunt Shirley beams.

Two new servers enter the room with our original waiter and begin to pass out small plates.

“An
amuse-bouche
from the chef, chilled artichoke soup with tuna tartare crouton,” the headwaiter announces, and the three of them disappear. We all pick up our spoons and begin to eat.

 
“So, we’d love to talk a little about the wedding, if that’s all right with you kids,” Cleve says, as the desserts begin to arrive.

“Of course, Dad,” Hunter says.