Jack With a Twist

planned, and this is what they chose to do. We don’t agree with it, but let’s not stoop to their level and make a scene.”

Would not making a scene exclude crying? Because I can feel the tears beginning to form behind my eyes and I have to take a deep breath to keep them at bay. I turn to look at my mother and can practically see the smoke coming out of her ears.

“It looks delicious, doesn’t it?” Joan says, coming up behind us, on her way to our table. “You said that you don’t keep kosher normally, so Edward made the suggestion that a little bit of lobster today might be nice! Wasn’t that a great idea?”

My mother and I don’t say a word. We simply both look up, expressionless, and stare at Joan.

“Well, I, for one, don’t eat lobster,” Vanessa says, and I wonder if Joan is going to ask her if she keeps kosher.

“You don’t?” Joan says, “Well, that’s okay, we’ll just tell the waiter. There’s a substitution—salmon—for anyone who doesn’t want lobster. Do you like salmon?”

Vanessa looks at me and I look back at her. Vanessa, unable to come up with a response, shrugs her shoulders in response to the salmon.

Across the room, I see my Great-Aunt Devorah get up from her table and walk out of the restaurant.

This is all Jack’s fault. This is all Jack’s fault.

My mother, Vanessa and I all order the salmon substitution, on principle alone, while the Solomons all gobble up their salads, oohing and aahing about how delicious they are, and are your salads good, too? My mother will later tell me that the fact that the Solomon girls all order their salads without the dressing on the side, with the dressing plopped right on top like a big fat blob, says a lot about their character. I don’t really know what she means, but I will later just nod in agreement since I’m so angry about the lobster. Solidarity. Nothing like a mutual enemy to get a team to come together.

This is all Jack’s fault.

We don’t open any presents since Joan says that there are simply too many guests, so the whole shower is over in about two and a half hours, which Joan says is the perfect amount of time for a bridal shower.

I wonder aloud how on earth Jack and I will get all of our gifts home, and then, as if on cue, Jack, his father and all three of the brothers-in-law come in to help us out.

As per the usual, the brothers-in-law are all in uniform: pastel Loro Piana cable sweaters? Check. Pressed khaki pants? Check. Black Gucci loafers? Check. I don’t even try to figure out who’s who. I don’t care who’s who. I only care that Jack, the man I am going to marry, is walking right toward me.

In that instant, I just know that everything will be all right. Jack will fix everything.

Jack walks toward me, running his fingers through his shaggy brown hair, and I can’t help but smile. The stress of the day just fades away and I forget about everything—about how tired I am, about how stressed I am at work, even about the lobster. Jack walks toward me, holding a bouquet of flowers that I recognize as being the same flowers we’ll be using for our table arrangements at the wedding, and it all just fades away. It’s just Jack and me in that room.

As he gets closer, I stand up to give him a hug and a big kiss. Everyone starts clapping for us as we kiss and I feel like the main character in a romantic comedy. He’s Richard Gere and I’m Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. No, wait, actually, she played a prostitute in that movie so I’m not Julia Roberts. Okay, he’s Tom Hanks and I’m Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. No, Tom successfully destroyed Meg’s business in that movie—we’re Hanks and Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle. No, wait, in Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks had a kid and if it turns out that Jack has some love child stashed away somewhere, that would not be good. What kind of a cute romantic comedy would that be?

Wait—I’ve got it! He’s George Peppard and I’m Audrey Hepburn! I can finally have my Breakfast at Tiffany’s fantasy now. Yes, that’s it. And, anyway, she was really more of a “party girl” than Pretty Woman prostitute, so that’s okay. And she had such cute outfits in that movie.

Okay, so that’s it. We stand there, in the middle of the bridal shower, kissing, and I’m Holly Golightly (sans the $50 for the powder room) and he’s Paul Varjack (sans the whole kept-man thing) and I’ve decided to give the cat a name and we’re kissing in the rain. Or, we’re kissing at Mega, but you get the general point I’m trying to make. Then, he gives me the flowers and I tilt them toward me to take a sniff. We’re going to have lilies at the wedding—my favorite—and I just love the delicious scent they give off.

Only, when I tilt the flowers back, I see something strange inside of the wrapping. And it’s not the baby’s breath. No, there’s something blue in there that does not belong. And it’s not a little something from Tiffany and Co. I look up at Jack and he’s giving me a smirk, just staring at me. Waiting for something.

I put my hand inside the bouquet and take out the blue thing. It’s the blue back of a discovery request, with the familiar Gilson, Hecht and Trattner listed as the attorneys who drafted it.

Jack is serving me with a set of Interrogatories. At my own bridal shower. I look up at Jack and he smiles at me.

“Gotcha, counselor,” he says.

Am I the only one who is starting to think that this isn’t very funny anymore?

19

“Can we move the appointment to this weekend?” I ask my mother.

“Again?” my mother says, “you want to move another wedding dress appointment?”

“I just have so much work to do,” I say, looking around my office at the boxes of documents that are piled high, one on top of the other.

“You always have so much work to do, BB,” my mother says, “it’s time for a break.”

“I’ll take a break as soon as I’m done with these Interrogatories,” I say, getting ready to hang up the phone. I had to skip our last wedding dress appointment since I had to meet with Monique to get the information I’d need to complete the Interrogatories, so I know that my mother is nearing her breaking point.

“That’s what you said about the document requests,” my mother says, “You said we could shop once you were done with those. But, now the wedding date is approaching quickly. Having a dress custom made is already out the door, I’ve accepted that, but at the rate we’re going, we’re not even going to have time for alterations for something off the rack.”

“We’ll find something,” I say, doing my work as I speak to her. “We always do.”

“Finding the perfect wedding dress isn’t like running to Saks to pick up a little black dress. You saw how long it took us to find Monique.”

Why does she always have to bring up the Monique thing? It drives me nuts the way she makes out like I’ve chosen my work over my relationship just because I took on Monique’s case. When she knows that I’m just working hard to try to prove myself at work. Simple as that. Why does she have to infuse meaning into it? Why does she have to make it mean more than what it actually is?

I promise to make the appointment we have scheduled for tomorrow night and this seems to allay my mother for the moment. We hang up and I turn back to my computer screen. The words all seem to blur together, and I find it hard to focus my eyes. I pick up the Interrogatories Jack served on me and try to make notes on them, but they, too, seem to have words and letters scrambled across the page.

After I finish drafting my responses, I should draft my own set of Interrogatories to serve on Jack. That’ll show him. As it is, I’ll be in the office all night working on how to answer his set of Interrogatories. Drafting a quick set of my own wouldn’t keep me here much longer. Once you’re totally sleep-deprived, does an extra hour lost really matter that much, anyway?

Jack taught me how to draft Interrogatories; I should be able to do them in my sleep. First, you have to figure out what information you need in order to prove your case. Well, that one’s easy for me—I need to know why Monique’s husband is being such a jerk. I need to figure out why, in the face of a simple business matter, he