“Thank God,” Diane says. “Black pepper simply won’t do.”
I force a smile of understanding, thinking that Diane is a snob in the classic sense of the word, feeling superior on just about every front. She grew up with money and privilege (then married and divorced someone even more well-to-do), and although she does her best to hide it, I can tell she looks down on the middle-American masses—and even more so on the nouveaux riches—or as she calls them in a whisper, “parvenus.” She is not classically beautiful, but is striking in the first-glance kind of way that tall, high-browed blondes often are, and looks a full decade younger than her fifty-eight years due to diligent grooming, obsessive tennis playing, and a few nip and tucks she openly, proudly, discusses. She also has a natural grace about her—the kind that comes from boarding school, years of ballet, and a mother who made her walk around balancing encyclopedias on her head.
In short, she is everything a first wife fears—refined and sophisticated with no trace of bimbo to be found—and as such, I do my best to disdain her on my mother’s behalf. Diane makes the task difficult, though, for she’s never been anything other than gracious and thoughtful to me, perhaps because she never had children of her own. She also makes a great effort with Ruby and Frank, lavishly gifting them and playing with them in a heartfelt, on-the-floor way that their two grandmothers never do. Dex, who is spending Thanksgiving with my mother in the city, is suspicious of Diane’s efforts, certain that her kindness is more about showing off to my father and showing up my mother, but Rachel and I agree that her motivation doesn’t much matter—it’s the result we appreciate.
Above all, Diane keeps my father in line and happy. Even when she’s complaining—which she often does—he seems content to remedy whatever’s ailing her, almost inspired by the challenge. I remember April once asking if I ever felt in competition with her—if she had somehow eroded my “daddy’s girl” status. Until she posed the question, I hadn’t quite realized that my dad and I never had that kind of relationship. He was a good father, prioritizing our education, taking us on great European vacations, teaching us how to fly a kite, tie sailing knots, and drive a stick shift. But he was never particularly affectionate or doting, the way Nick is with Ruby—and I have the feeling it might have something to do with my mother and how closely I aligned myself to her, even as a child. It was as if he sensed my disapproval, my affiliation with a woman he was betraying, even before I knew what he was up to. So, in short, Diane’s flamboyant arrival on the familial front didn’t really change much between my dad and me.
I watch her now, reaching into one of her many personalized Goyard bags, retrieving a pair of cherry-red, jeweled, cat’s-eye reading glasses that only a woman like Diane could pull off. She slips them on and peers down at her cookbook, also pulled from her bag, humming an indeterminable tune with an aren’t-I-adorable expression—a look that she kicks into high gear as my father pops into the kitchen and winks at her.
“David, sweetheart, come here,” she says.
He does, wrapping his arms around her from behind, as she turns and kisses his cheek before returning her full attention to her butternut squash soup.