Page 97 of Fathers of the Bride

A bit later, as I was plating three dozen chocolate-dipped Madeleines… Yes, I’d also made cookies, okay? Just shush. Anyway, there was my Kelly asking, “Did you talk to Papa?”

“Mmmmhmmm.”

“And?”

“I told him to get stuffed.”

“You didn’t.”

“He was holding a tray of stuffing. It was a joke.”

“Did he know it was a joke?”

“Yes. He did. You see, that’s where we are. We’re at the joking stage of divorce.” I left out the part where he didn’t really know that. I guess he knew it now.

“So, you’re still getting divorced?”

“Of course, we’re still getting divorced. What makes you think we’re not?”

“Papa and Raj broke up. Raj put it on Instagram about twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, I see.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”

She gave me a suspicious look.

“What?” I asked.

“I’ve just been thinking about things, and I thought, well, you’ve been very angry at Papa. No one gets that angry if they don’t love someone.”

“Darling, I don’t know that that’s true. I’m very angry at the cable company and I’m not secretly in love with them.”

That earned me a very deep frown.

“All right,” I said. “If we’re using your logic, the fact that I’m getting along with Papa means that I don’t love him at all.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I do my best.”

She popped a Madeleine into her mouth and then walked away. I was tempted to call out the fact that the cookies were not vegan.

Dinner was called and I was enlisted to work the line. I dished out the green bean casserole. I don’t know who made it or where it came from, but it was made with canned green beans and that was simply wrong, wrong, wrong. I made them for one of my seasonal shows and it has to be fresh green beans, homemade French fried onions and an actual white sauce—I absolutely refuse to make any recipe that calls for Campbell’s cream of anything. I mean, what am I? A repressed fifties housewife?

Don’t answer that.

Andy was at the other end of the buffet table carving turkey. He was so good at it. Better than I am, actually—even though I did do a fabulous segment on it once. People found it so useful.

Andy, though, he carved intuitively. I always asked him to carve at holidays. Right back to the beginning, I think. Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter. Dozens of hams and turkeys. Occasionally a duck. Once a Christmas goose, like in Dickens—not a good idea. All those holidays together, lovely, lovely holidays…

“May I have some green beans?” a woman asked, standing right there in front of me.

“Sorry. Of course. My mind was elsewhere.”

“It must have been a very nice elsewhere.”