Maggie’s show of affection caught Dad off guard, and he held his breath and waited for the big news to drop. Maggie getting engaged was a given, of course. What had Dad on the edge of his seat was when the marriage would take place.
“Okay, darling. That’s enough. If I listen to you babble for one more minute, the anxiety might kill me. Tell us: When’s the big day? If you ask me, three months would be ideal. Two per month is reasonable, since as you know they’re not so easy to shed at my age!”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie replied. “But what are you talking about?”
“All the pounds I’ve got to lose to fit into the old dinner jacket!” our father exclaimed, slapping his belly.
I looked to Maggie, but she seemed equally perplexed. Michel swooped in to save the day.
“He means: for the wedding. The dinner jacket for your wedding,” he explained with a sigh.
“That’s why you called us all here tonight, isn’t it?” Dad said, smug and satisfied. “Where is the old chap anyway?”
“Who’s that?” Maggie asked, once more looking to Michel.
“Good old Fred,” he replied drily.
“Okay. I say give it a half hour, and if you two are still talking nonsense, we’ll take you to the hospital,” said Maggie.
“Good lord, Maggie, we’ll be taking you to the hospital if you keep on like this. What is up with you? Forget the whole thing. I’ll just wear my suit. It always was a bit large for me, so as long as I can keep my breathing to a minimum, I should be able to close the jacket. Though it is brown. They say you shouldn’t wear brown to a wedding, but I’ll tell you what else they say: desperate times call for desperate measures. After all, this is England, not Las Vegas, so if we don’t have time to get all our ducks in a row, that’s just the way it is, and we can leave it at that.”
Once more, my sister and I exchanged a dumbstruck look, until the sheer absurdity of the moment made me burst out laughing. It was an uncontrollable fit that soon proved contagious. Dad was the only one to hold out, but he never could resist a good case of the giggles and was soon in stitches with the rest of us. By the time Maggie managed to catch her breath, sighing and wiping the tears from her eyes, Fred’s unexpected arrival caused everyone to burst out laughing once more. Good old Fred’s bewildered look was the icing on the cake.
My father cleared his throat. “So, how about you tell me just what we are doing here if the two of you aren’t getting married?”
The word made Fred freeze halfway through taking off his jacket. Maggie saw his worried eyes and blurted out, “Don’t worry!”
“Dad, everybody . . . We are gathered here for the sheer pleasure of being together,” I interjected, trying not to sell it too hard.
“As far as reasons to gather, that one is far more commonplace,” Michel stated. “From a statistical point of view, so I’ve been told.”
“I don’t see why we couldn’t have done this at home,” Dad grumbled.
“Well, we would have missed out on all these laughs,” Maggie insisted, and then went in for the kill. “Can I ask you a question? Was Mum well-off when you met her?”
“At seventeen?”
“No, later. When you got back together.”
“Not at seventeen, not at thirty, not ever! She didn’t even have change to get the bus from the railway station when I picked her up . . . you know, when we reunited,” he added, choosing his words carefully. “Just think, if your mother had been a few pence richer that night when she got off that train, she might have never even called me. You know, it’s high time I confessed something to you kids. Fred, since you’re not officially part of the family yet, I’d ask that you keep it to yourself.”
“Confess? Confess what?” I asked.
“If you save the questions till the end, you’ll find out. Children, your mother and I may have somewhat embellished the circumstances under which our relationship was rekindled. Truth is, your mother did not just miraculously reappear, hopelessly and desperately in love with me, after being spontaneously struck with the epiphany that I was her one true love, despite that being how we may have described it, from time to time.”
“Always described it, every time,” Michel corrected.