a bride herself. No one could keep their eyes off her, and I heard three “Delilah, you look fabulous!’s” as she made her way over.
She stopped four feet away, close enough only for a handshake, and she was looking down. I followed her gaze, which is hard to do from the side, and focused first on Carmela’s hand. No big rings on it, not a big deal. Maybe she’s looking at her manicure. Home-done, again no big deal, and Delilah wouldn’t stare unblinkingly in shock at a rather benign manicure. What was she looking at so intently?
My eye traveled down and my stomach lurched.
White shoes.
Carmela had on white shoes. After Labor Day.
Where the hell is Anthony with my drink?
Carmela had her eye on something too. The quadruple strand of pearls? The smooth Botox work on Delilah’s forehead? Delilah’s nuclear-white teeth? Carmela was narrowing her eyes, trying to see something without her glasses, and Delilah instinctively brought her hand up to her mouth. Was it her breath? Lipstick on her teeth? Parsley caught there?
Carmela would tell me much later that she hadn’t been looking at anything in particular. She just wanted Delilah to feel self-conscious about something. Who is this woman? I remember thinking when the truth came out. Mother Earth has an insidious side.
“Mother,” I started the official introductions after the showdown at the Insecurity Corral had ended. “This is Anthony’s mother, Carmela Cantano. Carmela, this is my mother, Delilah Winchester.”
The women shook hands icily, broke out the no-teeth smiles, and simultaneously tilted their heads while chirping out hellos.
“This is a lovely party, Dinah,” Carmela complimented, nodding over her shoulder at the vast display of grandiosity she saw. Crystal, china, small and classy servings of butternut squash risotto presented on individual silver spoons.
“It’s Delilah,” my mother purred, deflecting the shot and rising further above. “And thank you. It’s the least I could do for the kids.”
The least I could do. Even I winced at that one.
“Well, it certainly is grand,” Carmela said quickly. “So…Emilie tells us you write romance novels?”
Delilah lifted her chin. “Not romance novels, darling…romance epics.”
Anthony arrived with our drinks just in time. How am I going to find some common ground between them? I wondered, draining my pomegranate-colored champagne in two swallows. The only thing these two women have in common are that they both have their original sets of ovaries and they both hate Mayor Bloomberg for being a poor imitation of Mayor Giuliani, like he’s just filling in for the real one.
“Mother,” I tried again, silently pushing away any talk of ovaries and premenopause. “Carmela volunteers at the hospital. She cradles the preemies, to give them human contact.”
Delilah immediately turned to barrel-chested Vic, who had sidled up at the wrong moment. “Well, that must make you feel secure,” she said, and I think we were all stunned. “That she spends her time with infants…you know where she is all the time.”
God, Mother, stop.
Blank stares only pushed her on, and I heard the champagne’s effect on her tongue. “Because sometimes you don’t know…”
Was she flirting with Anthony’s father? Could that slurred nonsense be called flirting?
“Right,” Anthony said. “Anyway…”
“Mother,” I started to try again, thinking something gardening would work. But Anthony nudged me, the international sign for give it up, babe.
“Yes, darling?” Delilah sparkled, her eyes flat.
“Um…” Nothing. I had nothing. “This is a lovely party.”
For the rest of the night, I was the Jane Goodall of my own engagement party, always tracking, observing, keeping a keen eye on the interactions between the two females of the species, noticing the dominance displays, the avoidance. As Carmela circled through the living room, touching and eyeing everything from the ornate molding of the mirrors to the gold bookends that held Delilah’s library (and she is the Tom Clancy of romance novelists…each book is more than 500 pages), I always knew where Delilah was in relation to her. I tried to see this ballroom of a living room through her eyes, wondering what she was thinking about the artwork, the sculptures, the photos of my mother with the actresses who have played her roles in TV movies.
And I watched Delilah, getting more drunk by the minute, running her hand over the collar and bicep of every man she spoke to, even the waiters. Tucking a fallen curl behind her ear and laughing like a teenager. I hadn’t seen her eat anything all night.
“Korean duck?” Anthony appeared out of nowhere, with a plate full of Asian eats and aromatic noodles.
“No thanks,” I sighed. “I’m skipping the main courses and going right for the dessert.”
“Ahh…it’s a chocolate ganache moment,” he teased and kissed me on the ear. I melted slightly, leaned against him, untensed for a moment to smile at yet another guest I didn’t know wishing us well. At least this one got our names right. I’ve been Amy, Allison, Emmeline, and Emsy all night. Twice I’ve had my cheek pinched, twice the other kind of cheek pinched, three times hugged until breathing was difficult, and about six times told what Viagra can do for our sex life and a happy marriage in the future. All I knew was that there were entirely too many smiling elderly gentlemen in the room. Made me want to hide the tray of oysters…and my mother.
“They’re not clicking,” Anthony said, and for a moment I associated the comment with these old men’s false teeth. Ah, pomegranate champagne, deliver me from reason.
“Huh?” I stepped back onto my other heel.
“The mothers.”
“Ah, yes…the mothers.”
The mothers of all evil, the mother hens, the mother—
“So what is it, do you think?”
“What is what?” I blinked a few times and tried to focus on the love of my life, who with a reassuring hand on my shoulder told me he knew I was tipped.
“What is it that’s making them act this way? So hostile. Some kind of class warfare?”
I looked up at him, to see if that was a joke, or if he was serious. He was serious.
And before I could open my mouth, his mother approached us with a thin smile and her husband yawning behind her. “So…Emilie…”
I created a smile for her. “Yes?”
Cautiously, with an eyebrow raised, she said, “You don’t have fur coats too, do you?”
How blessedly perfect a moment, right then, for the chefs to light the bananas flambé, sending giant lines of orange flame in dramatic, balletic curls to the top of the room. Perfect. Just perfect.
Chapter 4
“We could elope,” I ventured, not blinking and mesmerized by the dashes of white lines coming one after the other on the highway’s surface. Anthony was driving, amazingly dedicated enough to stay sober that evening, and I was silently chanting driving directions inside my head: Stay on the right side. Stay on the right side. Stay on the right side.
“You know you don’t want that,” Anthony yawned and gave his upper back a stretch with a backward curve of his shoulders and a quick flick of his head to the side to crackle his neck bones.
“It would be easier.”
“Ah, but it wouldn’t be right.”
“I know.”
Anthony put his hand gently over mine, and only then did I realize I had been