Jack With a Twist

mahogany that is a striking contrast to the whitewashed brick that covers the rest of the house. My father drives around the courtyard circle to pull right up to the front of the house, but then my mother complains that it is rude to park right in front of someone’s house, so we drive around the circle two or three times until my mother is happy with the placement of where my father has parked the car. Jack’s sisters and their husbands haven’t arrived yet, so there is no way to gauge where we should park. But the grounds are landscaped to the hilt, so I consider all of this driving in circles to be a nice opportunity to take a look around at the beautiful trees and sculptures adorning the property.

Hopping out of the car the moment it stops, I fly up the steps and into Jack’s arms.

“Nervous?” he whispers into my ear as we hug. I can smell his aftershave, and it goes down my spine.

“Not at all,” I say, running my fingers through his shaggy brown hair, “What do I have to be nervous about?”

“We come bearing gifts!” my father bellows, the thick Brooklyn accent of his youth ever-present, as we take off our coats in the foyer. It is a vast entranceway with a beautiful antique table as its focal point, a floral arrangement climbing four feet high in an Hermes vase right in the middle. Servants materialize from out of nowhere to whisk away our coats and then disappear just as quickly as they arrived. My high heels make more noise than I intend as I walk along the cool, ivory marble that covers the entranceway floor, and I begin walking on the balls of my feet in an effort to make less noise.

Jack’s mother, Joan, comes floating into the foyer, looking impeccable, as usual. She’s dressed in the sort of thing you’d imagine Jackie O, in her Jacqueline Kennedy years, wearing for a simple evening of entertaining at home: black high-waisted palazzo pants and a crisp white shirt with French cuffs. She’s even got her thick dark brown hair styled just like Jackie’s, shoulder length with just the right blend of subtle movement and helmet head. I can see a smile cross my mother’s lips as she winks at my father and I know that at this precise second, she is thinking that she does not have to worry about the mother of the groom upstaging the mother of the bride. You see, she has this thing about high-waisted palazzo pants. She thinks that only women who have something to hide (read: fat thighs) wear them.

She often encourages me to wear high-waisted palazzo pants.

As I kiss Joan hello, the first thing I notice is that she is wearing the pair of Manolo Blahniks that I wanted to buy last month. This realization creeps me out a bit and I wonder if there are any other strange similarities between Joan and me that will mean that Jack is a total mama’s-boy freak.

My mother is wearing a form-fitting black shift dress, her best set of pearls, and black pumps with a kitten heel. Am I the only one who didn’t get the dress-like-Jackie-O memo today? Are Jack’s sisters going to show up dressed for Camelot, too?

I, instead, am dressed like Audrey, with a big ballerina skirt and a matching wrap sweater. It makes me giggle when I see that the crimson tie that Jack’s wearing with his navy sports jacket and gray trousers matches my ensemble exactly. Not even married yet and already we think exactly alike! The meeting of the parents? For a couple like us, that’s no problem! Tonight’s going to be a piece of cake.

“You shouldn’t have,” Jack’s mother says, as she reaches out for the package my father is holding. My father and I had a huge fight regarding the package he is holding. When it comes to a hostess gift, my father seems to think that nothing says “Welcome to the family” like a nice cut of beef tenderloin. I tried explaining to him, to no avail, that giving your future in-laws raw meat was inappropriate, even if you are a kosher butcher.

In fact, giving raw meat as a gift is never appropriate in any situation, an argument which my father sharply refuted. (“It is never inappropriate to give raw meat as a gift. Never.”) I explained that there is nothing that is festive or celebratory about raw foodstuff, even if you did lovingly pick out each cut of meat. It is simply not done in polite society.

Especially when you’re going to meet your future in-laws for the first time.

Which is why I have a bouquet of white roses and lilies in my hand, which I place firmly in Jack’s mother’s other hand in a vain attempt to distract her from the packet of E. coli that my father has just given her.

We all hug and kiss awkwardly and make the introductions as Jack’s father, Edward, walks into the foyer. As my mother curtsies and calls Jack’s father “Your Honor,” I try to laugh and pretend that she’s joking. Since she’s not laughing herself, it’s a tough sell. Jack sees what I’m doing and begins laughing himself.

See why we’re so perfect for each other?

“So,” my father says, “open it! I have a feeling you’re going to want to open what I brought you right away.”

“How sweet,” Joan says with a smile.

“I brought flowers!” I call out, in a pathetic effort to distract Jack’s mother. But, there’s no fighting it. No matter what I do or say, she’s about to open the present.

“This is very interesting wrapping,” she says, as she puts a perfectly manicured finger underneath the tape that holds the butcher paper together.

“Don’t you want to look at the flowers first?” I say in desperation. “They’re white lilies! Your favorite!”

She looks up at me for a second, wondering, no doubt, why I’m pushing the flowers on her like one of those urchins who accost you in the streets of Paris, but the fact of the matter is that I just do not want her to open that package. There has got to be some way to distract her. Maybe I should just grab Jack and kiss him passionately and everyone will be so charmed by our young love that they will drop what they are doing (or opening, as the case may be) and forget all about my father’s hostess gift. Or maybe I could hit the fire alarm and get everyone out of the house quickly. But then I guess that sprinklers would go off and that would, like, totally mess up my hair and makeup. And, anyway, pretending to set the house on fire the first time your parents come to your future in- laws’ house is probably not the best way to make a first impression.

I turn my face away as Joan opens the package and the meat almost falls onto the floor as she looks up in horror.

Why, oh why, couldn’t I have just been orphaned at birth like other kids? Life can be so unfair sometimes.

“Oh, my goodness,” Jack’s mother says, looking somewhat faint, “it’s raw meat.”

“That’s my best cut of beef tenderloin I’ve got there for you,” my father says, beaming.

“How very kind,” Joan says, as she passes off the red slab to a servant who appears out of nowhere.

“I’ll help you get it on the barbecue,” my father suggests. “I’ve taken the liberty of pre-seasoning it, so we can toss that baby right onto the grill.”

“Thank you, Barry,” Jack’s mother says, “but the chefs have already prepared dinner for us this evening.”

“Oh,” my father says, looking like a little boy who’s been chosen last for teams during gym class.

“Anyhow,” Joan stage whispers to my father, “I’m a vegetarian.”

“You don’t say?” my father says and looks at my mother. My father doesn’t trust vegetarians. Especially vegetarians who are wearing six-hundred-dollar leather shoes.

After the dust on Tenderloingate has settled, we sit down at a mammoth table in the Solomon’s formal dining room where we learn that the main course is—gasp!—fish. My father is not pleased. (“These fancy chefs of theirs never heard of a surf and turf?”)

I’m seated next to Jack somewhere smack dab in the center of the table, with my father on one end, to the right of Jack’s mother, and my mother down on the other end, to the right of Jack’s father. My mother will later tell me on the car ride home that they were placed in the “seats of honor” at the table. I make a mental note to look that up for truthfulness on the Internet later.

Jack grabs my knee under the table and I giggle in his direction. As I look up, I catch Jack’s oldest sister, Patricia, watching us from across the table. I smile at her with a look that says, “Ain’t love grand?” but she averts her eyes as soon as hers meet mine.

All three of Jack’s older sisters appeared, husbands in tow, soon after my family had arrived and we’d made our way into the salon for pre-dinner drinks.

I know! Who has a salon?

Jack’s sisters weren’t really what I thought they would be—I envisioned them grabbing me and pulling me aside and showing me the room Jack grew up in. No doubt, in our excitement about the families coming together, we would all jump on his bed and start giggling like schoolgirls as they regaled me with funny stories about Jack’s