Jack with a Twist (15 page)

“You can’t serve lobster at a Jewish wedding!” I cry out very, very fast. I catch my breath and realize that I’ve jumped a bit out of my chair in my zest. So much for The Force.

“Anyway,” my father says, “some of our family members keep kosher and they would not appreciate being served lobster at this Jewish wedding.”

“Do you keep kosher?” Jack’s mother asks, furrowing her brow, with the same tone I’d imagine her using if she’d asked my father, “Do you practice cannibalism?”

“That’s not really the point—” my mother begins, before being cut off by my father.

“My Aunt Devorah does, for one,” my father says, “if you’ve got lobster on the plate, she won’t be able to eat the meat that’s next to it. She can’t eat something that’s touched lobster. So, what’s my Aunt Devorah going to eat?”

“No one really ever eats the entrées anyway, Barry,” Jack’s mother says to my father, reaching across the conference room table and putting her hand over his. “She’ll probably just fill up at the cocktail hour and skip the main course altogether!”

“Probably not,” my father says, “since at the rate we’re going, we’ll probably be serving
cheeseburgers
at the cocktail hour!”

“Well, we
are
from Philly,” Jack’s mother says.

All I can think is,
Please don’t say Philly cheese steak. Please don’t say Philly cheese steak.

“You are not serving Philly cheese steak at my only daughter’s Jewish wedding,” my mother says, now leaning onto the table.

See why we’re related?

“Well, of
course
we wouldn’t serve cheese steak at the wedding!” Jack’s mother says, laughing, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Those crazy Solomons! They almost had us going there for a minute. But, she was just kidding! And thank God, since there is no one thing in the world that is quite as offensive to a kosher butcher from Long Island than a cheese steak from Philly. Eating meat and cheese at the same time is enough of an offense to a kosher butcher as is, but the thought of using Steak-Umms in a sandwich is really just too much for my father to handle.

But, she was kidding! Which means that this thing can turn around in an instant. We can still salvage this day. In fact, we’ll probably all end up going out to dinner after this appointment. We’ll have lots of laughs and drink too much and after a while, we won’t even be able to
remember
a time where we didn’t all get along famously.

“But,” Joan says calmly, “we may do a little Philadelphia
homage
at the rehearsal dinner we’re planning for the night before the wedding for our out-of-towners.”

Almost under his breath, my father says: “You are going to serve meat and cheese at my daughter’s rehearsal dinner?” My mother and I lock eyes, both afraid to look at my father, whose face is probably bright red by now, fists clenched into tiny little balls under the table.

“Let’s move on to the cake,” the wedding coordinator asks, changing the subject. “What price range are we thinking about for the cake?”

Yes, cake. That’s it—let’s talk cake. That Catherine is good. Nothing can divert one’s interest quite like baked goods. Maybe she even has samples for us to taste and we can all have some and get on a huge sugar high and become the big happy family that I just know in my heart that we are destined to be.

Hell, at this point I’d even let my mother chug a glass of champagne if it would defuse some of the tension.

“We don’t want anything too outrageous,” my father says, “right, BB?”

“Yes,” I say, happy that my father and I have regained our composure, “something understated and moderately priced.”

“We don’t have to go moderate,” Jack’s mother whispers to me from across the table, “why don’t you just let us take care of the price of the cake?”

“It’s not just the price of the cake,” my father says, even though Joan’s remark clearly wasn’t meant for him, “I just don’t want it to look overdone and tacky.”

“Will we be giving out lamb chop party favors?” Jack’s dad asks. “That’s not tacky at all.”

“People love lamb chops,” my mother says. “Especially my husband’s. There are people who drive all the way from Westchester just to get a taste of Barry’s chops.”

“Jack,” I say, staring at my fiancé, still concentrating very hard on the albums Catherine has laid out for us, “do you have anything to contribute to this conversation?”

“Whatever you guys decide on,” he says, “is fine by me.”

“Just put us down for the most outrageous one you’ve got,” Joan says. And then, in a whisper, “on us!”

“I think we’ve made it clear,” my father says, taking a deep breath as he does, “that there is no greater pleasure in our life than to pay for BB’s wedding entirely. So Mimi and I would really appreciate it if you would let us do that.”

My mother smiles a Stepford wife smile and says: “Really. It’s
our
dream to throw BB the wedding
she’s
always dreamed of.”

“Thanks Mom and Dad,” I say, “you know, Catherine, there are so many wonderful choices you’ve got here for us. But, unfortunately, I’ve got a ton of work to do at the office, so I’m finding it hard to focus right now. I’d very much like to think about it and then come back with my parents and make my final decision.”

Wow. Don’t I sound, like, totally lawyerly?

“That sounds like a great idea, Brooke,” Catherine says, closing her notebook and giving me a warm smile. “Call me to set up the next appointment.”

“I think I’ll go powder my nose,” my mother says, pushing her chair back and getting up from the table.

“I think I’d like to come with you,” I say, as I stand, too, and round the corner to the other side of the conference room table. I give fake air kisses to Jack’s parents and ignore the fact that they try to draw me in closer for a hug. My mother does the same. When I come to Jack, I give him the same air kiss I gave his parents and I can see in his eyes that he knows why I don’t kiss him. My father reluctantly stands and says a proper good-bye to the Solomons.

“See you at home,” Jack says to my back as I’m already half-way out the door.

“See you at home,” I say without turning around. It’s the first time since Jack and I got together that I don’t kiss or hug him good-bye.

Once my mother and I determine that the coast is clear (read: Solomon-free—
thank God
I didn’t invite the siblings!), we go back to the conference room to pick up my father. The plan is for me to walk them to the parking garage and catch a ride back to my office on their way back to Long Island.

My father stands up as my mother and I walk into the room—he always stands when a lady enters or leaves a room—and I throw my arms around him for a big hug. As he hugs me back, I realize that I’m crying.

“I hope those are tears of happiness, BB,” my father says, “because I’m going to throw you the most beautiful wedding in the world.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, running my fingers along my eyelashes to catch the tears.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” my mother says, patting my head and then kissing it. “This will all work out. Jack will come through, just like he always does, and everything will be smooth sailing.”

“I know,” I say, but for some reason, the tears keep coming. My father takes his handkerchief out from his inside pocket.

“We’re just around the corner from Barneys,” my mother says. “Why don’t we duck in there and see what wedding dresses they’ve got?”

“I don’t think I really feel like it, Mom,” I say, as we begin walking downstairs toward the lobby.

“Call Ripley’s Believe it or Not,” my father says, “Our BB actually doesn’t want to shop. I thought that shopping was the cure to everything for my little Miller girls?”

“I just have too much work to do,” I say, carefully wiping my eyes and handing my father’s handkerchief back to him. My mascara covers the ornate monogram that my mother has put onto all of my dad’s hankies.

“Hey,” my father says, “I have an idea. Let’s all go to Don Peppe’s for dinner. There is nothing in this world that a little homemade red wine can’t fix. After a tiny glass of red and a huge plate of pasta, you’ll feel a world better. And after a cappuccino and cannoli, I promise to drive you back to your office. Whaddya say, BB?”

It would take a forty-five-minute car ride to get to Queens from midtown and even if we were seated right away, it would still take at least an hour and a half to order and eat. And you never get seated right away at Don Peppe’s. Then it would be another forty-five minutes to get back into the city, assuming we don’t hit any traffic, so that means I couldn’t possibly be back at my desk any sooner than three hours. And then eighty to one hundred hours of work awaits me.

But, then again, I’m not exactly rushing to go home to see Jack tonight, so what’s the hurry to get back to work?

“Sounds perfect,” I say as we reach the parking garage. We all pile into my father’s car and head toward the Midtown Tunnel.

B
ack when we were a loving, newly engaged couple who were merely living in sin and not fighting in both the courtroom and the bedroom, Jack and I had our morning routine down pat. I’d wake up first at 7:15 a.m., and hop in the shower while Jack snoozed the alarm until I was done in the bathroom. When I got out of the shower, I’d throw my hair into a towel, and get the coffee ready (that brewed every morning at 7:20 a.m., thanks to the kick-ass coffeemaker with timer settings that Jack’s cousins Judy and David bought for us for an engagement gift) while Jack showered. Then, we’d read the paper and eat breakfast together while my hair dried and I stared at Jack lovingly.

Since the Monique litigation began, things have not exactly been the same. Especially since the incident at the Pierre. Now, I sleep until 7:30 a.m. (those fifteen minutes make all the difference when you’ve worked past midnight…) and Jack takes the
New York Post
with him to work since I’ve usually grabbed
The New York Times
on my way out while he’s still in the shower.

Today, as I’m about to run out of the apartment with the
Times
firmly tucked under my arm, the phone rings. I briefly get that panicked feeling you get when someone calls you and wakes you up in the middle of the night. Why is someone calling here at eight-thirty in the morning? I look at the caller ID and see that it’s Vanessa.

“Whatever you do, do not look at the paper,” Vanessa says.

“Is something wrong?” I ask, sitting back down at our breakfast bar. I look at the clock and see that it’s 8:31 a.m. Jack will be out of the shower any minute.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Vanessa says, trying to sound nonchalant, “just don’t look at the
New York Post.
”

If I have any chance of making it out of the apartment before Jack gets out of the shower so that I can avoid him like the coward that I am, I’ve really got to leave now.

“What’s in the
Post
?” I ask, eyeing the paper that’s on my kitchen counter. It’s still wrapped in a roll, secured by a rubber band, and I wonder if I take the rubber band off, if I’ll be able to get it back on so as to make it look like I haven’t touched it.

“You are definitely
not
on the cover of the
Post,
” Vanessa says, “so do not look at it.”

Is this how she’s trying to get me to not check out the
Post?
Telling me
not
to look at it? Does she know
nothing
about reverse psychology? This woman is clearly not ready for children.

As I eye the newspaper, all I can think is: this is about Monique. This is all about Monique and Jean Luc. No doubt, my videographer has been tailing Jack and me, going through our garbage nightly, and by now knows all the sordid details of the dissolution of partnership. Hell, he probably already knows that Monique went to see Robin Kaplan, divorce attorney to the stars.

This is bad. This is very bad. The second Monique finds out about this, she is going to fire me. And then Noah will fire me! And then I’ll be jobless! On a lighter note, I won’t have to do the document production that Jack served me with the other day, but what kind of self-respecting bride walks down the aisle in five-hundred-dollar shoes while collecting unemployment?

Actually, unemployment might not be so bad. My skin will be clear from the lack of stress from work, and I’ll finally be able to find the time to go shopping for a wedding dress. Hell, I’ll have time to take a class to learn how to
make myself
a wedding dress! I mean, how hard could couture
really
be?

I’ll also have time to work out and finally start that wedding diet everyone tells me I should be on. Maybe I can even start taking tennis lessons like my mom! Then, by the time Jack and I get to Hawaii for our honeymoon, I’ll already have a killer backhand! (And much tighter glutes….)

While contemplating how much one can reasonably expect to make on unemployment and how many hours of tennis practice I’d need before I would look totally cute in a tennis skirt, I grab the paper from the kitchen counter and rip off the rubber band. I’m immediately relieved that the article is not about Monique and Jean Luc at all, so I can rest easy. I will not be getting fired today. Unemployment would have been nice, but it’s not happening for me.

Not today, at least.

Instead, right there, on the front page, for all the world to see, is the headline: Move over Hepburn and Tracy: It’s a Real Life Battle of the Sexes!

“Oh, my God,” I say into the phone and almost drop the receiver.

“I told you not to look!” Vanessa says, her voice an octave higher than usual.

“Then you shouldn’t have told me
not
to look!” I say, “don’t you know anything about rearing children?”

“I’m your maid of honor,” she says, “not your babysitter!”

“Same thing!” I yell into the phone.

“What are you looking at?” Jack says, coming out of the shower. He’s draped in just a towel, and using another to dry off his shaggy brown hair, and I momentarily forget that I’m still angry at him because of what happened at the Pierre.

“Nothing,” I say, trying hard to keep my eyes fixated on his baby blues, but instead just staring at his hairy chest and freckly arms.

“So, you saw it?” he asks, coming over to the kitchen counter. He drops the towel he was using to dry off his hair onto a kitchen stool and uses his other hand to pull up the towel that’s around his waist. My eyes are firmly glued to that other hand. “Brooke?”

You are still angry with your fiancé,
I remind myself.
Stop staring at his towel. Stop staring at his towel.

“Oh, yes,” I say, eyes flying back up to his face with a “Who, me?” expression on my own, “Vanessa just called me about it.”

“Don’t blame me!” I can vaguely hear Vanessa screaming into the phone. “Tell him that I told you
not
to look at it!”

“Van,” I say into the phone, “I’ll call you back.”

“So, I guess that you already saw it?” I ask Jack.

“I did,” he says, “but I thought you’d get upset, so I was hoping that you wouldn’t see it. And you’ve been running off with the
Times
lately, anyway, so I thought that maybe you’d miss it.”

Um, hello? As if I
don’t
go to www.nypost.com every day to read Column Five?

“Sorry,” I say, “did you want the
Times?
” I take the paper out from under my arm and hand it to Jack.

“I don’t want the
Times,
” he says, pulling me toward him, “I want to start having breakfast with you every day while we’re reading the
Times.
Like we used to. I don’t want you to run out of the apartment every day while I’m in the shower.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, as Jack sits down at one of the kitchen stools, his arms still holding mine. Then he drops his arms so that his hands are holding mine. “I’m just under a lot of stress here. I have a ton of work. Which you should know, since you assigned it to me.”

“I don’t think it counts as me assigning it to you since we don’t work at the same law firm anymore,” Jack says, baby blues smiling.

“And I’ve got wedding plans to think about,” I say, looking down at the kitchen counter.

“I’m sorry about the Pierre,” Jack says, putting one finger under my chin and lifting it up so that our eyes meet. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want us to fight,” I say.

“Me, neither,” he says, pulling me in for a hug. “I’ll talk to my parents.”

“Thank you,” I say, feeling my eyes begin to tear up for a minute, but then smiling through it. I can smell his aftershave and it gives me a tiny shiver. “Thank you.”

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Jack asks.

“I’d love one,” I say, and Jack jumps up from his seat and tends to the coffee. I look down again at the front page of the
Post.
I hate the picture that they’ve got printed. Is there any chance that they’ve used a different picture of us for the online version of the paper? Maybe I should e-mail them a copy of one of our engagement pictures to use online. In the print edition, they’ve got a shot of the two of us leaving the federal courthouse on the day of our initial court conference. For a second, I wish that I had worn a sexy Nanette Lepore suit just like Miranda had that day, with a camisole that was too low-cut for a court appearance, instead of the conservative dark suit and turtleneck that I actually chose. Then I begin to wish that I even
owned
a sexy Nanette Lepore suit with matching camisole.

Note to self: must pick up sexier suits next time I’m at Saks if I’m going to make a habit out of being photographed while leaving court.

Jack and I aren’t the main headline of the paper today, but we’re the big inset on the lower right-hand corner of the front page. Either way, you can’t miss us. The teaser tells me to flip to page nine, so I do. The same headline leads the full page article:

I allow myself to exhale as I realize that the court records were sealed before the press could get wind of the fact that the case is about Monique and Jean Luc dissolving their business partnership. I glance down at the photo that accompanies the story: Jack and I kissing in front of the federal courthouse, standing smack dab in the middle of Foley Square without any regard whatsoever to the people walking by. My ego loves it, but the rest of me can’t help but wonder: how on earth is this news?

I’m momentarily distracted by the photo credit—Jay Conte, aka our wedding videographer—as my BlackBerry begins to vibrate. I pick it up and see an e-mail from Judge Martin’s courtroom deputy.

Counselors:

In light of the media frenzy you were trying to avoid in your matter appearing before Judge Martin, when reporters came to the courthouse to try to find out the identity of the parties litigating in our sealed litigation, we thought it prudent to pretend to “leak” information about the case so that they would stop digging for information. As such, we had Judge Martin’s assistant “accidentally” tell the press that the reason this case was sealed was because the lead lawyers on either side were actually an engaged couple.

If you look at today’s New York Post, you will see that this story has appeared on page nine.

Best,

Brandon William

Courtroom Deputy to Judge Martin

Jack’s BlackBerry begins to buzz next, so I read him the e-mail.

“See,” he says, returning to the kitchen counter with our coffees. “All’s well that ends well. And our case is still firmly under lock and key.”

“But, what if they keep digging for dirt?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” Jack says, taking a sip of coffee. “It will be some other story tomorrow. I’m sure some reality show reject will be involved in some scandal and we’ll be yesterday’s news. Maybe even before today’s over.”

I can’t help but smile. I can never stay mad at Jack for too long.

“Well, for today, I hate the way I look in this photo,” I say to Jack as I sip my coffee. “So conservative and stodgy.”

“Conservative and stodgy?” Jack says, “Nah, you look just like Jackie O in the White House.”

My fiancé is well trained to know that anytime I’m feeling insecure, a reference to a fabulous celebrity is just what I need to get my confidence back. And, for me, it’s got to be a classic, old-time star—no Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon comparisons for me. He has his pick of the sixties icons: Jackie O (too conservative), Audrey Hepburn (too plain) or Marilyn Monroe (too fat). Even a fleeting Lauren Bacall comment (too sharp) is enough to turn my day back around.

Is it any wonder that we end up back in bed?