Zoe grins and leads me by the hand into the family room where Daphne and my mother sit knee to knee on the couch, sipping Kir Royales.
“Where’s Benny?” my mother demands before even saying hello to me. It has always set my teeth on edge when she calls him Benny. I hate it even more now that we’re not together.
I can feel myself stiffen as I sit on an armchair across from them and say, “He can’t make it today.”
“Why not?” my mother asks.
“He had to work.” I smile brightly. “Business is booming.”
This statement should be a dead giveaway. I don’t use expressions like business is booming .
“But Benny never works on Saturdays,” my mother says, as if she knows him better than I do. “Is there trouble in paradise?”
I marvel at my mother’s ability to sniff out any controversy. Her favorite expression is “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
(which, incidentally, is her stated rationale for believing the tabloid press, no matter how outrageous the story).
“We’re fine,” I say, feeling relieved that I made the decision to wear my wedding ring one final time.
She looks around fervently, then leans in and whispers, “Don’t even tell me he’s pulled a Scott on you.”
I shake my head, wondering how she, of all people, would dare cast stones at Scott. Then again, my mother is one the finest revisionist historians in the world, giving O.J. Simpson a run for his money. O.J. seems to have convinced himself that he didn’t kill anyone, and in my mother’s mind, she never did a thing wrong. At the very least, she has rationalized that my father drove her to cheat, which is absolute nonsense. My father was a better husband than she ever deserved.
“No, Mother,” I say, thinking how much easier and clear-cut an affair would be. I could never stay with a man who cheated on me. No matter what the circumstances. I am more like most men in this regard. No second chances. It’s not so much about morality, but about my inability to forgive. I’m a champion grudge holder, and I don’t think I could change this about myself even if I wanted to.
“Don’t you lie to me, Claudia,” she says, enunciating each word for maximum impact. Then she nudges Daphne and asks in a loud voice if she knows something. Daphne shakes her head and takes a sip from her champagne glass.
“Mother. It’s Zoe’s day,” I say. “Please stop.”
“Oh, dear God ! There is trouble!” she practically shouts. “I know when there’s trouble.”
My dad mutters something about how fitting that is, on account of her being the cause of most of it.
My mother narrows her eyes, spins in her chair to face him. “What did you just say, Larry?”
“Mother,” Maura calls from the powder room where she is doing her last-minute preening. “Please stop whatever it is you’re doing in there!”
“Unreal. How is it that I’m being blamed for concern for a child?” she says to Daphne, her only potential ally in such situations. Daphne feels the same way about our mother as Maura and I do, but she can’t help sucking up to her. She is vulnerable and sensitive and needs my mother’s love in a way that both angers me and fills me with profound pity. Maura and I long ago walled ourselves off from caring about what my mother does or does not do. For some reason, Daphne can’t do the same.
“Unreal,” my mother says again, looking wounded.
” You’re the one who is unreal, Vera,” my dad says from across the room.
The unfolding scene is so predictable that I have another sharp pang of missing Ben. We often scripted the day ahead of time, placing wagers on who would say what and how long it would take for the words to be uttered.
My brothers-in-law, Scott and Tony, look up from their task of submerging beers in a large bucket of ice on the back porch and make their way into the living room where they exchange a “we’re in the same boat, pal” glance. They have little in common, Tony is a plaid-shirt-wearing, sports-page-reading guy’s guy and Scott is a cologne-wearing, Wall Street Journal-subscribing slickster, but they have bonded over the years in that in-law way that is common in many families. Always the perfect host, Scott pours an Amstel Light into a chilled glass and hands it to me with a cocktail napkin.
“Here you go, Claudia,” he says.
I thank him and take a long swallow.
“What’s all the commotion about?” Tony asks. He and Daphne have been together since high school. Their long history coupled with his unwavering fidelity has earned him the right to chime in a right that Scott lacks even in his own house.
“Ben’s not coming,” my mother informs them. “What do you make of that? Am I the only one who thinks this is suspicious?” She looks around, hand pressed to her cleavage.