Chapter 38

Not wishing to sound hubristic, but, sitting there at the table, back in my family home, the love of my life, my future wife, by my side, I was in a very happy place.

It seemed like my beloved was also loving the heck out of being here, being part of a normal loving family, eating together for the sheer joy of living.

There was a huge smile on her beautiful face that seemed like it wasn’t ever going to quit, and as her pink tongue emerged catlike from between her white teeth and red lips to lick the sauce from her fingers, her sparkling eyes told me clearly that she would be delighted to make this a regular occurrence.

Her constant complimentary remarks to Dad and Mom were without doubt racking up the points, and Katelyn and James seemed just as fond of her as their kids were.

I had no doubt in my mind: this was gonna work out just fine.

Mel couldn’t be a better fit with my family.

Unlike my previous live-in girlfriend, Marsha.

Not that I’d ever brought her back home to meet the folks. I’d attended Katelyn’s wedding stag, rather than have her in the photos.

I sipped my drink and took a moment of reflection.

After Marsha’s apartment lease had ended, and she’d moved in with me rather than sign again at an increased rent, she would sometimes invite a few of her friends over for a Sunday brunch or lunch.

Mostly they preferred meeting up at some trendy restaurant of the moment, where there was a chance they’d appear in the background of some paparazzi’s photos of a celebrity, but occasionally – normally when payday hadn’t yet come around – they’d descend on us.

Once, and once only, I’d cooked barbecue for them.

That had been QUITE the different occasion to today.

I’m not a total religious freak over the rituals of barbecue, but Dad did instill in me the one true way. That it takes careful preparation, quality ingredients, and long slow cooking to get the very best results. Without that ‘holy trinity’, it just ain’t barbecue.

Which had not been possible that day.

Not only had Marsha failed to give me sufficient notice we were expecting guests, but when I’d rushed around the grocery Saturday evening, the butchery counter didn’t have the correct cuts for slow cooking – everything was over-trimmed and way too lean.

Even though I’d stayed up very late after I came back from the store, to get the vital process underway, the rub and marinade hadn’t had nearly sufficient time to fully permeate the meat, and, if I’m brutally honest with myself, the end product was mere slow-grilled meat in barbecue sauce. Okay, but not nearly good enough. Dad would have been so disappointed in me, had he known.

Not that Marsha’s ‘friends’ were capable of telling the difference. They were stereotypical SoCal reality show fodder. Marsha wasn’t the only one on the ‘music’ or PR business, and they all had the sunglasses and air kissing down to a ‘T’.

Mid- to late-twenties and they hadn’t grown up, still living only for the moment. Being broke before payday, every payday. They truly epitomized ‘style over substance’ and spending time in their company only clarified my instinctive feeling that Marsha and I had no real future together.

I guess I shouldn’t ever have expected better of such a group of shallow and trend-chasing individuals; I’ve lived in SoCal long enough that little surprises me anymore – Gwyneth Paltrow and the money-spinning ‘lifestyle’ mayhem that is ‘Goop’ counts as normal out here – and, being catty about it, I suspected some of our guests had sniffed so many lines of white powder over the past few years that their olfactory nerves had become deficient.

They failed on all three counts of the principles of barbecue. They were intrinsically incapable of slow enjoyment of the occasion, they used silverware instead of their fingers, and, worst of all, they all left much of their portion uneaten on the plate. That in itself was an insult to the cook and reflected badly on their upbringing. There’s nothing more annoying than unappreciative guests when you’ve busted a gut to try to give them a good time. I could have gotten a good night’s sleep, picked up a package of pre-prepared ‘barbecue’ at the grocery an hour before they were due to arrive, and they wouldn’t have known the difference.

Oh, and their constant use of their phones during the meal was yet another thing I’d long given up getting upset about., like their late arrival. They were so far gone up their own assholes they couldn’t see how rude their behavior was – and Marsha, their hostess, was one of the most prolific offenders. Amazing, really. Most of their current group of ‘friends’ were already around the table; it was as if they’d totally lost the art of quiet relaxation.

And, surprise, surprise, there had been no offers of help for the cleanup afterwards. I’d had the first dishwasher load well under way and all the glasses washed by hand before Marsha appeared in the kitchen from a final exchange of platitudes with departing guests.

(I’d nearly disgraced myself one time early in our relationship, when one of the guys actually came out with the ’Missing you already!’ line as he left. I mean, how dated and fake is that one? Luckily, I’d managed to conceal my snort of derisive laughter in a coughing fit – although I had absolutely zero respect for the man, showing my lack of reverence for one of Marsha’s friends would have made things difficult at home, and at the time we were mostly getting along fine.

The only upside to the whole ‘barbecue’ debacle was that I had plenty of leftovers for my lunches that week. And the taste got better the longer they were in the tupperware covered with the sauce.

Since Marsha and I had parted company, I’d hosted the occasional cookout for the few good friends I’d made in Los Angeles, but I’d seriously neglected them since I’d started courting Mel. I was sure most of them would understand, though the occasional wife might have preferred that I would have ended up with one of their single friends they’d introduced me to.

Whatever, I needed to start circulating again with Mel by my side.

And a cookout, with barbecue, seemed like a great way to do just that.

I came back to the here-and-now and found Mel smiling at me.

Damn, I’d seriously lucked out finding her. That pricy subscription to the introduction service had been worth every red cent.

Katelyn emptied her glass and nudged her husband; James quickly stood and refilled everyone’s glasses, adding his own greasy finger marks to those already there. Another internal smile for me – Marsha’s guests had expected a fresh clean glass every time, like in the pretentious bars and restaurants they frequented.

A couple of minutes later, Dad got to his feet and asked Mel if she could manage ‘just a little’ more meat.

Mom spotted that Mel was about to be polite, and intervened before she could decline a second helping, telling Dad that ‘it had been years since the poor girl had last tasted real barbecue, or received Southern hospitality’, and he wasn’t to take ‘no’ as an answer.

Their future daughter-in-law grinned, declared she simply didn’t dare to say ‘no’, and passed her plate over for a refill. Dad loaded her up with one of everything, and Katelyn passed her the bowl of rice salad.

While Dad was piling ribs on my plate, Mom asked me if we wanted to take some leftovers back to LA. I was forced to turn down her offer because we only had cabin luggage, and that would be subject to the TSA limits. I was pretty sure barbecue sauce would be high on the list of suspicious substances – heck, if you can’t even take a sealed bottle of water through security, there was little chance a carry-on package of leftover barbecue would make it.

She nodded sadly. “You could have had a Tupperware if you had checked baggage, but you’re right not to risk it for the cabin. Who the heck decided on three- and one-half ounces of liquid must really have issues!”

(I didn’t disagree. Although I understood that absolutely no-one wanted a repeat of the 9/11 hijackings of domestic flights, in my experience the TSA officers sometimes seemed to delight in making air travel tedious. I’d whined to my boss one day while we were waiting in line for the checks before flying back to LA from a conference in Phoenix, saying we’d have been way quicker to drive the 400 miles, and he’d laughed before describing how easy things had been before September 2001. Man, flying in those days had been so simple!)

“How about a chicken sandwich for the flight? Surely they can’t confiscate that?”

I answered ‘yes’ for both of us, knowing that Mom would be more troubled about not giving us anything than concerned about the few minutes of kitchen work required. I was pretty sure that the TSA rules allowed a sandwich, though we’d have to ask the cabin crew for a drink to wash it down or buy some bottled water after getting through security.

And Mom’s fried chicken sandwiches are a treat – slices of moist breast filet with a spicy coating between two slices of sourdough spread with home-made savory relish. Way better than the bland lo-fat chicken mayo sandwiches I sometimes bought from the hospital canteen.

By the time we’d done full justice (yes, James and I had thirds) to the feast Dad and Mom had prepared, not only were our fingers and lips generously covered with sauce and juices, we also all had streaks of deliciously spicy stickiness on our cheeks, chins, and noses.

There was a whole lot of laughter as Katelyn passed around the napkins to wipe our faces.

I grinned to myself as I hid my face behind the absorbent paper. Marsha’s friends – assuming they’d allowed themselves to get messy in the first place, which was unlikely – would have had a total meltdown at smearing their lip gloss and makeup, and then rushed off to the bathroom to check that the sauce hadn’t discolored their expensively whitened teeth.

The two kids were WAY too far gone for dry napkins to tackle the job.

Ben had smeared it most everywhere, including his clothes, and Abby had just proven that three years old is still young enough to have pieces of slaw in her hair.

Mom chuckled and took them off to the kitchen (and plentiful warm water from the faucet), bribing them with the promise of two scoops of icecream once they were cleaned up.

Our offer of help was rejected, Mom assuring us she had everything under control.

Though Dad did pick up his grandson – carefully holding him against his apron – and carry him to the house.

Katelyn took the opportunity of the kids (and our parents) being out of earshot to tease me some more, by saying they couldn’t quite decide whether to start their year-long world cruise on the West or East coast, and what would I recommend, going with the time zones or against them?

James just grinned and let it ride; from our conversation of the previous morning, I knew not only was there was no way they could take a year out at this time, but there was also zero chance of Katelyn leaving her babies for a week, let alone a year.

I countered the teasing by suggesting that maybe Mel and I could adopt Abby and Ben, then Katelyn and James would be totally free to go off on their cruise for just as long as they wanted, maybe go around the world in both directions. It would give Mel and I a great start on our own family, with Abby as a budding babysitter for the younger ones priced in, and, on their return, they could get going on replacing the kids with some more.

James pretended to cover his ears; Katelyn just said, “No way!”

“No?”

“No.”

My brother-in-law emphasized the point by claiming that his hands had never recovered from being squeezed to death in the delivery room, and that he had no intention of going through the torrent of verbal abuse again.

“So you’re not planning on any more? Didn’t you say, back at Thanksgiving, that you were considering a third? Weren’t you practicing making babies last night?”

My sister did have the grace to blush.

“Uh, yeah, but what I meant was that IF we went for another baby, we didn’t want too long a gap between them.”

“And?”

Her face took on a tender expression. “You know something? Giving birth is an absolute bitch, but both times I totally forgave James for knocking me up the moment the nurse placed them on my chest. Not that I take back anything I may have said to him in the heat of the moment...”

James just grinned and held his peace. Having visited our maternity wing at the hospital and overheard some of the language emanating from the birthing rooms, I was guessing that not only had she questioned his legitimacy, but also promised him a dry spell stretching into the next century...