All That and Then Some

ALICE - We Are Family

IN AN UNLIKELY FEAT of timing or simple coincidence, all four grandparents have arrived more or less together. Vic's parents, Bill and Evelyn, push in ahead, well dressed and bearing liquor store bags. They plant air kisses and bustle into the kitchen to begin preparing martinis.

Love Bill and Evelyn. So much more considerate than my parents, who enter next, empty-handed, asking what's for dinner (my Dad) and wondering aloud if I'll burn the potatoes again (my Mum).

Still, they're here and that's what counts. When I sent the spur of the moment invitation out this morning, I'd assumed they'd be too busy at such short notice (it is, after all, my Mother's creative writing group night), but they'd dutifully dropped all plans when I said their granddaughter needed them. Or, perhaps more accurately, that I needed them to help me remind her why she should get back to campus before she loses the semester.

While Bill and Vic pour martinis and drop juicy olives into glasses, I check on the two lasagnas I worked all afternoon on: a vegan one for Maeve and a regular one for the older people who can't fathom why anyone would want to eat non-dairy anything. The tremendous pain in the ass of cranking pasta dough through the little metal pasta maker (brought home from our honeymoon in Italy and used exactly once since) will all have been worth it when my culinary skills are loudly appreciated later, I assure myself.

Once everyone has a drink in their hand (except my Father, who declines a martini and asks instead for Fresca: a strange aspartame-tasting soda that was popular in the 80s but is nearly impossible to find now and of course I don't have), they take up their positions around the large dining room table like a ragtag version of the UN.

Switzerland opens with pleasantries. "Cheers, everyone," Evelyn lifts her glass toward the middle of the table.

I notice my Father (Canada) trying to make eye contact with my Mother (the UK, Boris Johnson era) while everyone clinks glassware, but as he's way over on the other side of the table, he is overlooked by his once-closest ally.

"Ed," Vic's Dad (America?) says to mine, "That's a hell of a sweater you have on. Now, where does a person get a sweater like that?" Despite being on the same side of the table, Bill couldn't be more different from my Dad, and there's a barely hidden air of superiority in his not-quite-a-compliment. 

Just happy to have been included in the conversation, my Father beams and plucks at his tacky Christmas sweater, which looks to be made of highly-flammable polyester yarn and features three blue cookie-monsters wearing gold crowns, giving gifts to a baby Jesus. Or, what one can only assume is the baby Jesus because the cradle is mostly hidden under my Father's robust middle. "It's a beauty, isn't it?" he says with some pride.

"Very unique," agrees Evelyn.

"Uniquely garish," murmurs my Mother under her breath, but loud enough to be heard by my Father, who is accustomed to her little digs and shrugs it off. He doesn't remind her that she herself bought him the sweater a lifetime ago when she too thought Cookie Monster nativity scenes were funny.

The room falls into an awkward silence.  I take a large gulp of my martini and feel the warm confidence it supplies make its way to my vocal cords, causing me to ask a question I will instantly regret: "How's your creative writing group, Mum? Written anything good lately?"

She looks delighted to have been asked. "As it happens, one of my stories is going to appear in a preeminent publication of short fiction."

"Fantastic!" enthuses Bill, who has clearly never read my Mother's writing. "We'll be sure to go out and buy ten copies! What's the publication?"

"Penthouse Forum!" she says with the same general haughtiness as if the answer had been The New Yorker.

Evelyn's mouth forms a little 'ohhh' shape while Bill blushes from the neck up. Neither of them appears to know what to say about that. I stand up abruptly and head to the kitchen for another drink, eager to excuse myself from any further discussion of my Mother's new hobbyist career as a smut auteur.