is how lawyers must feel when they know they’re facing a tough case, and they’re waiting for the smooth-talking opposition to sweep in with their dramatic easel and charts and laser pointers and expert witnesses dressed up in smart suits and sensible pumps. Anthony and I sat in a corner booth at the Oak Room silently sipping our cabernet, waiting for the showdown to begin. Delilah and Carmela were both running late, giving us plenty of time to whirl around imagined scenarios and preplan our comebacks and diplomatic goalie blocks to every shot they take at each other, and at us.
Carmela, we knew, could hold her own.
Delilah, despite the inches of makeup and plastic surgery beneath it, had the thinner skin. She was more fragile, thus louder and more dangerous.
“Time,” I said, and he knew it was a question and not a request.
“Two-forty-five,” he exhaled, watching water droplets race one another in slow motion down the stem of his wineglass. Then he started humming the theme from Jeopardy. I stepped on his foot under the table.
“Emilie,” Delilah arrived behind us without our noticing. We missed the puff of green smoke, apparently.
“Mom,” I said, sitting up straighter and trying to look as cool as ever.
“Anthony,” she said and nodded her approval of his presence and his wardrobe.
“Mrs. Winchester,” he stood for her seating, holding his tie back from its precarious dangle near the open mouth of his wineglass. That would have been perfect. A cabernet-soaked silk tie.
“I suppose we’ll have to negotiate what you’ll call me after the wedding,” she said without looking at him.
Negotiate? With that, my blood went into a slow simmer. Is this where we come up with suggestions for what to call you, because I have a few to start with.
Anthony, ever the negotiator and corporate diplomat simply said, “Well, have your people contact my people.” And he didn’t crack a smile. God, I loved that man. Delilah blinked one slow blink. In my mind, I heard that Spanish soccer announcer screaming Goooooooooaaaaaaaal!
Carmela arrived like a human. She clutched her standard black purse with both hands at her waist, looked admiringly at the tables and leather banquettes upon her approach, and smiled at her son as she made her way to the table. Delilah moved at that moment from her position on the banquette to the chair at the head of the table. The head chair. Somewhere, she probably heard that soccer announcer bleating for her expert chess move. Carmela didn’t notice.
“Emilie, honey, hello,” Carmela gave me a warm hug when I stood for her, and she reached out to squeeze her son’s hand. “Delilah,” Carmela attempted, no venom in her voice, a warm smile. She was trying.
“Carmela,” Delilah said and held out her hand in one of those handshakes where it’s the tips of fingers that touch only. Some kind of Junior League secret handshake. Carmela raised an eyebrow for just a second before lowering herself, albeit a bit ungracefully, onto the banquette next to her son.
“Thank you for coming,” Anthony opened the meeting, and after ordering the mothers their drinks and leading the small talk until not one but two wines were sipped through by both, let the games begin.
“We know you both want to help with the wedding plans,” I said, putting an intentional emphasis on help. “And you both have brought up some good suggestions already.” Emphasis on suggestions. “So we thought it would be great to just meet for a friendly lunch and start talking about it.”
I forgot to put an emphasis on the word friendly.
Delilah sighed and Carmela shifted on the banquette, crossed her legs again to the other side, waiting for me to continue.
“Well…” Where were the words? Where was that great speech I had all mapped out? A single drop of sweat ran down my lower back and I shivered a little. That was all Delilah had to see. She poised herself to speak, lifting her arm and pointing a manicured nail at Anthony, but I stopped her by barreling onward.
Goooooaaaaaaal!
“We’re going to have a long engagement,” I started and didn’t stop. “We’re thinking two years so that we can save up the money to have a beautiful wedding and buy our place, pay off my student loans from grad school, and then have plenty of time to do all the planning, check out reception halls, do all the planning and enjoy the planning.” Yes, I did say the word “planning” three times in one sentence, and I didn’t breathe once during it.
“So you want to be on your own?” Delilah said, relishing the threat of her words.
“No,” I started. “That’s not what I said—”
“That is what you said,” Delilah huffed and pushed her wineglass away from her, ready to signal the waiter for the check.
“No, it’s not what she said.” Anthony looked right into her eyes on that one, strong and supportive and unmistakably fierce in my defense.
Delilah curled her lip a little and turned to me. “Does he always need to speak for you?”
It only took a moment for that to sink in, for me to meet her eyes with my own fierce defense. Carmela and Anthony froze. “Mother,” I started, searching for the words. “I’m going to ask you right now to apologize both to me and to Anthony.”
She looked like I slapped her.
“I’m serious,” I glared at her, all business. And I saw it. Her eyes rounded, and there was Donna Penks. My old mother came out to rescue Delilah.
“You’re right,” she said quietly and folded her hands in her lap. She looked down at them for a moment before breathing a deep one and delivering a genuine. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
Carmela looked at Anthony, who silenced her with a barely perceptible shake of his head, and Delilah looked at me to break the unbearable quiet at the table. I just let it hover there, so they’d remember it.
“Now,” I exhaled. “As I was saying…”
It went well. When we left the restaurant with polite hugs all around, Anthony put his arm around me to lead me into Central Park for a head-clearing walk. I didn’t even see the mothers off into their own cabs but just wanted to get the hell out of there. I don’t know to this day if Carmela and Delilah exchanged any chitchat as they waited for their rides, or if Delilah had a limo circling the block to await her return ride home. I don’t know if they made any attempt at peace, or if they pretended each other did not exist like the rest of the anonymous crowd hurrying on the streets of New York at any given moment. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All I could think of, and celebrate, as Anthony and I walked hand in hand through the park was that I had set the foundation. Both mothers knew they were involved, but not in charge. They knew it was going to be a long wait for this wedding. They knew they’d better at least be civil to each other, and to us, if they knew what was good for them. They knew we’d be footing the bill for the wedding and so they could just forget about their family legacies and fully loaded laptop programs, the cameras from InStyle and the fifty relatives from Italy coming over for the big event. They knew that we, Anthony and I, were in charge, and they were going to have certain responsibilities so they could be a part of the plans, not in charge of the plans. They would not steamroll, cajole, blackmail, emotionally sabotage, level, or guilt-trip their way into anything.
And that was that.
Period.
The next day, my mother suggested that we go to Vera Wang just to look around, and I said Yes. She offered to pay off my student loans and give us the full down payment for our house as a wedding present if she could just have a little bit more to do with the wedding. “It’s just a suggestion,” she said before hanging up her phone and strutting back out through the French doors of her estate and lying back down by the pool in her white bathing suit and waist wrap, slipping her black sunglasses onto her nose, picking up her vodka-spiked iced tea and smiling up into the sun while I sat there mute in New Jersey