Anyway, he said, “Are you sure this is a good idea? We could call your parents and tell them we’ve been exposed to the flu or something.”
“My mom loves getting sick, because it means she has an excuse to lie in bed and not exercise for her usual two hours a day and to order my dad to bring her things,” I said. “No. Our parents have to be in the same room together sometime. Let’s get it over with now.” I was talking about myself as much as them. “You don’t want the first time they meet as equals to be at our wedding, right? That would be awkward.” I glanced over my shoulder to see if panic or excitement or any emotion that could give me a hint about how he was feeling, really, seriously, please, flashed over his face. Nothing. As usual, the man was impassive as a rock.
We were interrupted by a knock at the door. My mom didn’t wait for me to respond, just pushed the door in. How had she gotten past the doorman and my security guy? I really needed to get my locks changed.
“Pom,” she said, leaning in for a bony cheek bump, leaning back with a waft of her subtle perfume, which Reginald Poivre formulated especially for her and somehow left you with the impression that you’d walked by an undercover film star (not movie star. There’s a difference). “So lovely to be here. I noticed a loose tile in your lobby’s mosaic. You might want to inform the doorman. You do have a doorman, don’t you?”
“Of course I have a doorman,” I said. “You probably swept right by him. His name is Byron. You have a friend named Byron, don’t you?”
She was as stone-faced as Gabe. “I don’t recall.”
She did, of course, recall. Who could forget the months of rumors splashed across every tabloid about her and Byron, her all-too-personal trainer? But she still hadn’t figured out how to respond by the time my dad cleared his throat behind her, prompting her to move on. Hopefully she wouldn’t take it out on Andrea.
“Oh, how nice to see you, Angela,” I heard from the other room.
Great.
I bared my teeth at my dad. “Thanks for coming.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and we both knew he was apologizing on behalf of my mom. He liked to do things like that: apologize without even trying to do anything about whatever he was apologizing for.
Most of me knew that this was just him, and he was who he was, and at this point in his life he wasn’t going to change. There was a little part of me that still believed, though, a small, bright part I didn’t want to douse yet. “You know, you could say something.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
My eyes immediately dropped to his hand, which was covered in a wrist brace. “What happened?”
He shook his arm out, frowning. “The carpal tunnel flaring up again.”
“I see,” I said. Convenient. “How about your nose?”
He looked at me blankly. “My what?”
“Your nosebleeds,” I said. “Mom said you’ve been getting them lately, remember? ‘Don’t get blood on the couch.’?” I let the words hang in the air for a moment before the blankness in his eyes crystallized into recognition. “You should probably get that looked at.”
“Right, right, the nosebleeds,” he said. “Yes, yes, I should.”
I let him hug me, certain that he was lying. But he couldn’t bea killer, right? I’d find out over Gabe’s delicious roast chicken and schmaltzy potatoes and magical salad dressing (the secret was pickled shallots, which apparently wasn’t a secret at all but a standard recipe, which sounds fake, but okay).
We served the food pretty much immediately so that we only had to suffer so much small talk about the weather and… that was it, basically, since that was about all my parents and Andrea had in common. I needed my parents to relax a bit and feel like they were superior before springing any murder talk on them. At least at the table they could talk about the food, and I wanted to get something in front of them before my mom could ask about—
“And where is Gabe’s father?” my mom asked.
Double great. Gabe had wondered beforehand if I might request to my parents that they not say anything about the subject, but I’d shut that down immediately, because telling my mom not to mention something would mean she’d concoct the absolute most painful way to mention it at the most inopportune moment.
Andrea’s face pinched. I cringed inside. Even knowing that this was the best way to handle it, considering that we’d be able to wrap it up and move on without my mom bringing it up over and over again, I couldn’t help but feel like an absolute garbage person. “He lives in Texas,” she said. I prayed she wouldn’t say anything else and give my parents any more ammunition.
Gabe’s face was like stone. His father wasn’t in his life much. He’d left him, Andrea, and Caleb, Gabe’s brother, when Gabe was three. He was an above-average father in the realm of sending birthday cards mostly on time and issuing invitations to visit him and his new family in Texas anytime, except for whatever time Gabe suggested, because somehow he was always busy then. I’d never actually met him, only heard his voice briefly on the phone the day after Gabe’s birthday.
“Try some of the salad,” I said hastily, motioning to the hugepile of it on my mom’s plate, where it crowded out the paper-thin slice of chicken she’d taken to be polite. “Gabe makes this really good dressing.”
My mom gingerly placed a leaf into her mouth and chewed like it was trying to bite her back. “Mmm,” she said unconvincingly. “Very oily.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a backhanded compliment or if she was genuinely trying to be nice. I chose to believe the latter. “It’s much better than the salad at my gala, though of course the memory is tainted,” I said, as casually as possible. “I can’t believe we haven’t talked about it yet. You were sitting next to Conrad Phlume that night. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, it’s devastating, of course, even though he was such a nasty person,” my mom said with not a little bit of glee. “It’s a tragedy whenever someone loses their life. Especially when it was someone who was sitting at your table, which means the police come to question you more than once even though you tell them you have an extremely important hot yoga class to go to.”
“That’s the true tragedy,” I said somberly. My mom nodded as if I were finally the daughter she’d wished for her whole life. Hopefully Andrea knew I wasn’t actually this shallow and callous. “Dad, how about you? How are you feeling?”
