Rule Six Your parents are your family and your responsibility
Rule Six
Your parents are your family and your responsibility
The Awkward Family Dinner
Jessica
When Jack asked me to marry him, I only had one worry – if we got engaged, we were going to have to put our families in one place at one time, or specifically, his parents, my father and my stepmother, Karen.
My mum has been dead for the better part of a decade so I shouldn’t be a baby about having a stepmother, but there’s a reason all the fairy tales make stepmothers seem like witches.
She moved in the week that I moved out and redecorated the entire house, painting the wallpaper over with grey paint and putting thick grey carpets down over the wooden floorboards (‘So much more cosy!’).
Since her arrival, there’s been no trace of my mum in the house.
I tried to be good about it.
I got a therapy app on my phone, read a book about learning to like your stepparents, and then decided to say fuck it and just let myself admit that she’s a bitch.
Her twins, Leila and Sammi, moved into the house and they’ve got a whole little life together with Dad.
They go on cruises and to Disneyland.
I make a big deal about hating mass-produced packaged travel so that when they don’t invite me we can all pretend that’s why.
Obviously the sensible part of me knows that it’s really Dad’s fault.
He could take trips with me, come to London to take me to lunch, phone me once a week on a Sunday.
He doesn’t do any of that and that has nothing to do with Karen.
But it’s easier to blame her than to accept that he’s slipped into being a boring suburban dad who doesn’t bother.
Anyway, all of that adds up to Jack and I being two weeks pre-wedding, and our parents still not having met.
Everyone said that we had to introduce them before the day itself, so his parents have taken a pre-booked off-peak train from Cambridge.
They’re both tall, bony and wearing raincoats despite the fact that it’s not raining.
I’ve met them lots of times before, obviously.
I’ve stayed at their house, with its high ceilings and antique books, piles of papers everywhere and Radio 4 on in every room.
I went to their other sons’ solemn Oxford University chapel weddings (the only woman there in a push-up bra).
They’ve known me since I was about twenty-one, and I assume at some point they gave Jack the thumbs up because my engagement ring is a beautiful sparkly Victorian one from his mum’s family.
But despite having spent a decent amount of time with them, we’ve never progressed past small talk.
They’ve tried occasionally, offering gambits about books they’ve enjoyed or plays they’ve seen, but it’s always been very clear very quickly that they think I’m an intellectual lightweight.
I find them standing in the middle of the pub with an absent-minded air. ‘What can I get you to drink?’ I ask his mum. ‘Champagne, seeing as we’re celebrating?’
‘I’ll be fine with tap water, thank you. Gerald?’
Jack’s father nods that he’ll have the same and I go to the bar feeling scolded. I get two bottles of Hildon for them in an act of extravagant defiance, and order myself a very large glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
Jack escorts my family in from the car park, where I assume they’ll have parked the huge gas-guzzling SUV they drive. I realise, to my horror, that it’s not just Dad and Karen. I go to hug my father.
‘I didn’t realise you were all coming?’ I say, totting up how much more this thing is going to cost us with two additional people, neither of whom look like they want to be here.
‘Hello, babes,’ Karen says, kissing me. ‘This place is a bit dark, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t realise you guys were coming,’ I say to Leila, who is messaging someone on her phone.
‘Mum made us,’ Sammi says, looking up from her own phone.
Obviously there is no reason why two eighteen-year-olds would want to come to a lunch full of people they don’t know. They sit down at the shared table, where there now aren’t enough chairs. Jack and I drag another two-person table and put it on the end, which means that Sammi and Leila are bisecting the table. Jack and I exchange glances and decide that all we can do is split the difference. He sits at the far end, and motions to Karen and my dad to join him. I swallow and then sit across from his mother and father. This is going worse than I had anticipated, and I’ve been dreading it more than I’d dread a sort of smear-test, bikini-wax, bra-fitting trifecta.
‘How was the journey?’ I ask Jack’s parents brightly. I never thought I’d long to sit between my dad and Karen.
‘Oh fine,’ Gerald replies. ‘Jane got a very good deal on the tickets.’
‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe how expensive tickets are getting now. I was reading the other day that apparently they’re going to go up again next year as well, and then they’ll just be even worse, and it’s not like you’re getting anything different, are you? It’s the same train, and it’s probably going to be late!’
They both look at me like I’m a burbling idiot. There’s a very long silence which neither of them seem worried about filling. I look at Jane’s hands, big and red. The gold ring on her wedding finger is the only jewellery I’ve ever seen her wear. No one says anything.
Silence is burning my skin. Jack says that his parents would go a couple of hours just moving around the house, cooking, sorting things out, without speaking to each other. This makes Karen’s constant opinions about people on benefits, with a backdrop of Now That’s What I Call the 80s , seem appealing.
‘Have either of you read anything good recently?’ I try, when the silence gets too much. Across the Berlin Wall that is the Twins, I can see Karen explaining to Jack why we need to stop all immigration and my father is looking at his watch.
‘I enjoyed the latest Richard Flanagan,’ Jane replies eventually.
‘So did I!’ I say with delight. Why have I done that? I don’t know who Richard Flanagan is. I don’t know what his book is about, or what it’s called – with a gun to my head, I still couldn’t tell you anything about it.
‘Did you?’ Gerald says, sounding pleased. ‘I always forget that you’re a reader.’ Yes, Gerald, I want to say. I did the same degree as your son. At the same university. I actually got a 68.9 and he got a 67, so technically I’m more of a reader than your progeny.
They talk about the book for a while and I’m delighted for the distraction. The waiter comes and asks what we want.
Leila, not invited to go first, starts. ‘For starters, can I get the chicken satay skewers but like without any of the satay sauce on it?’
‘So just ... plain chicken?’ the waiter asks.
‘Yeah.’
He makes a note. Fucking great, now we’re having starters, which absolutely no one wants. It’s going to drag the meal out by another half an hour, maybe an hour, it’s going to cost another hundred pounds, and they weren’t even supposed to be here. I order the paté and the burger because I’m starving and I don’t care about being thin for the wedding anymore.
‘No starter for me,’ Jane says, ‘I can’t ever manage that much food. I’m not sure how you do it, Jessica. The plaice, please. Could you do a salad instead of the potatoes?’
This is not a slight. She is not talking about my body. She is not commenting on what I ordered. She does not have the girls’ school complexity to say anything that passive-aggressive. She’s a sensible, down-to-earth woman who likes plain food. She sees food as fuel, not as a way to punish or reward her body; she would be horrified to think that I’m upset by what she said. I know all of this. But none of it matters. And worst of all, like a monstrous stab in my stomach, I want my mum.
I want someone sitting across from me chiding me gently for not eating enough, telling me that I need a nice lunch. I want someone to gently run their hand across my cheek and tell me that I’m going to be a beautiful bride. I’ve got two women who are both perfectly qualified to act like a mum to me, and it’s not going to happen. Karen will tell me that she’s not sure the dress was the place to save money and Jane will give me a curt nod and no one is going to tell me that they love me and they’ve been excited for this day since I was born.
I flame bright red, and obviously because I’ve got red hair, when I blush it’s super obvious. Across the table, Jack catches my eye.
‘What’s wrong?’ he says, as we pretend to order more drinks at the bar.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just. You know. I miss my mum,’ I say, trying to keep myself together. There’s a break in my voice.
He wraps his body around mine and squeezes so hard that the ache in my chest temporarily subsides. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know.’
This isn’t the time to cry. ‘How’s it going at your end of the table?’ I ask, knowing that the answer isn’t going to be good. We’ve spent less time with my family, but every time we’ve been to stay, it’s been fairly awful. My dad claps him on the back a lot and tells him that it’s fine not to make much money, in a way which very clearly suggests it’s really not okay. And Karen tells him endlessly that ‘the media’ is biased and brainwashing. Last time we stayed, he genuinely almost burst a tyre accelerating away when it was time to leave.
‘Karen has told me I need to cover more stories about scammers who come over here and get on benefits,’ he sighs, ‘and your dad has said about four words. The twins are playing Candy Crush with the sound on. How’s it going at yours?’
‘Silence, a conversation about a book I pretended to have read, and some accidental food shaming from your mum.’
He looks shamefaced. ‘I’m sorry about them.’
‘I’m sorry about mine.’
‘Let’s swap seats,’ he says, as the waiter hands us a bottle of wine in an ice bucket.
‘We can’t do that. It’ll look so rude.’
‘I don’t care,’ he says, steering me towards Dad’s end of the table. ‘Go and sit next to Martin, ignore Karen and get some time with him. And when he tries to pay the bill because I make a “pittance”, smack his wallet out of his hand.’
I smile. We swap seats. And he is completely right. It’s easier. Karen tells me a long story about this cream she’s been using to make her cleavage less crepey, and actually it sounds quite good. I say I want to get some and she says she’ll pop some in the post, which is generous. She looks down the table at Jane. ‘D’you think she wants some too?’ she grins.
I want to tell her not to be bitchy. But instead I laugh. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think that’s her vibe.’
‘Nice to see my girls getting on so well,’ Dad says, coming back from the bathroom. ‘It’s going to be a top day.’ He pats my shoulder, and I know he wants to say something about Mum, and I know he can’t, and I’m sort of okay with that. At the other end of the table, the Rhodes clan are doing cryptic crossword, which Gerald has torn out of the paper and brought with him in his raincoat pocket. They’re silent, and happy.
After what feels like a really, really long time and is actually only about an hour, everyone makes their excuses. Jack walks his parents to the station. I wave my father off, feeling like the most mature adult of all time for having refused his offer to pay. ‘I know it’s tough without her,’ he says to me, gruffly, as he gets into the car. Then he presses some notes into my hand.
‘Jack and I paid!’ I say.
‘Get yourselves something nice for dinner then,’ he says. He looks guilty and sad and like he needs to spend some money to feel less guilty and less sad. And he can afford it.
When Jack reappears from dropping his parents off, I’m sitting outside the pub with a bottle of champagne.
‘We’re not going to be able to pay rent,’ he says, on the approach.
‘Sponsored by Martin. How was the walk?’
‘Fine. They’ve found a museum of Roman life half an hour down the road from our wedding venue so now they’re really excited about coming.’
I half laugh. ‘Doesn’t it make you sad? That they don’t care about us getting married?’
‘No.’ He smiles at me. ‘They don’t care about anything which doesn’t have a citation index. It’s just how they are.’
We sit in companionable silence for a few minutes.
‘I think maybe that’s the way to play it, you know,’ Jack says eventually, refilling our glasses. ‘I handle my family, you handle yours.’
‘Isn’t that the opposite of getting married? Aren’t we supposed to like, unite our houses or whatever?’
‘We both know neither set of our parents wants to be friends with the other. And we don’t want to be anything like either of them. It’d be nice if we could have a big happy Mediterranean family all living under one roof, but it’s not happening. You’re better qualified to deal with your family’s brand of mental and I’m better equipped to do mine. So let’s do it that way.’
‘It just sounds a bit selfish,’ I counter, despite longing to agree to the deal.
‘Not at all,’ he says, looking quite pleased with himself. ‘It’s prioritising each other’s happiness. Handling our own business.’
‘How would it work? If we’re in Cambridge for Christmas, you’re going to tell your dad that he has to let me watch the King’s speech even though it’s “monarchist propaganda”?’
‘Exactly. And if we have to spend the weekend with Karen and Martin, you’ll tell him that my terrible RSI means I can’t play golf with him.’
‘Don’t you think we’ll be upset if our kids do the same thing to us one day?’ I ask him.
‘We’ll have to try not to be the kind of parents who require it.’
I raise my glass to his and offer a little toast. ‘Okay, it does sound like quite a good deal.’
‘This marriage thing is a piece of piss.’
‘We’re not even married yet, you big show-off.’
We clink glasses, and I look up at the clear blue sky. It’s warm and light and the air smells of pollen. I hope it’s like this two weeks today. But even if it isn’t, it won’t really matter. It’s a little pub-and-registry-office wedding. I’m not doing it for the wedding bit, I’m doing it because I want to be Jack’s wife.