Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [27]
Kathleen, Anna, and Joanne were a long way down a bottle of white wine in the kitchen, huddled around the table, although it was after two in the afternoon and lunch was more than ready to serve. A little like a coven of witches, albeit more of the giggling than the cackling kind, cursing man in general, and some men very specifically. Stephen was watching television with his father, bending over occasionally to ruffle the hair or tweak the nose of one of his three fatherless nieces and his nephew, Jake, currently hunched over a Nintendo DS.
Jennifer wanted lunch to be served and to be over. She didn’t want to be here. Her heels hurt, and her head ached, and she wished she were at home, in the flat, in a pair of sweats.
It hadn’t always been this way. The first time she had come here for Christmas, she’d been high as a kite, head over heels in love with Stephen, and wanting more than anything to hasten the process by which she could become a part of this new family. Desperate to make a good impression, she’d carefully packed and prepared, bought thoughtful gifts and wrapped them with care.
Joanne’s first child, Jake, was about six weeks old, and the whole Christmas revolved around him. He spent the day, somnolent on a beanbag, center stage, dressed in an elf Babygro with matching hat, the star player in a protracted Kodak moment. Everyone, even Stephen’s dad, was doting and love-struck. Joanne had worn elastic clothing, breast pads, and an expression of beatific exhaustion all day, and it had felt contagious, so that by the end of the evening, they were all reclining on chairs and sofas, gazing happily at Jake, and each other, and the Bond movie.
That had been the first year. It had been pretty much downhill from there, until it had reached the point where Jennifer started dreading it around Halloween.
She must have sighed. Stephen’s mum stood up and came to her, a comforting arm snaking around her shoulders. “You all right, love?”
She pursed her lips together in a nonsmile and nodded.
“Thinking about your mum?”
They hadn’t known each other well. Engagement party, wedding, the odd Sunday lunch. They’d had the peculiar, forced intimacy of in-laws, a stilted relationship. They weren’t alike, and Jennifer doubted they would have been friends under different circumstances.
The truth was, she wasn’t thinking about Barbara now. Not really. She was thinking about the things in her life that she did have some control over, not the things she didn’t.
But it was easier to nod and accept the sympathetic cluck and the hug and then, from Joanne, the big glass of wine.
Given that she was condemned to eat two Christmas lunches, she was glad this one was first. Mark’s lunch would be delicious—this one was dry and flavorless. The turkey was overcooked to the point of sawdust, and the gravy was like dishwater, which made you glad there was barely enough in the gravy boat to moisten your bulletlike Brussels sprouts. No stuffing, no cranberry sauce, no chipolatas wrapped in bacon.
“For the sake of the children” there were crackers and hats and stupid jokes. The children had no interest in sitting at the table, anxious to escape back to their new toys and the afternoon film. Jennifer, studying the clock above her father-in-law’s head, knew how they felt. Anna and Joanne were talking in code about the CSA and their exes’ new girlfriends. She was getting a headache from trying to keep up with their encrypted references. Several times, Stephen’s mum tried to change the subject, but those new forays, which concerned Stephen’s job, and their plans to holiday in Tunisia at Easter, and the new Italian restaurant that had opened down the road, would inevitably peter out into semiawk-ward silences that led right back to the bitching.
Jennifer had the sense that she was the only one here who found the meal difficult. It felt as though the rest of them were inured to the mediocrity—of the food and the conversation