Marcia Talley: Occasion of Revenge

After the rocky start, I was determined that the dinner would proceed pleasantly. Sitting on my father’s left, I told Darlene about the St. John’s College library where I was cataloging the collection of L.K. Bromley, the famous American mystery writer. I brought everyone up to date on my volunteer work for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Somewhere in the middle of asking Scott a question about the big account he had just landed, I noticed Darlene was shoving her spaghetti around on her plate, turning it over with her fork as if she were hoeing a garden. A tidy pile of mushroom bits grew to one side of her plate.

Ruth noticed it, too. “Something wrong with your spaghetti, Darlene?”

Darlene glanced up at Ruth. “I’m allergic to mushrooms.”

“Oh?” By the grim set of her jaw, I could tell Ruth didn’t believe that for one minute.

Daddy laid down his fork and patted Darlene’s hand. “Ruth will fix you something else, won’t you, Ruth?”

Without saying a word, Ruth stood, shoved back her chair, walked around the table, and snatched Darlene’s plate. I hurriedly excused myself to see if I could help. By the time I got to the kitchen, Ruth had tipped Darlene’s dinner into the garbage disposal and flipped up the switch so violently I thought it would fall off the wall. Over the grinding she snarled, “What the hell does he think I am? A short-order cook?”

Even though Daddy had been a bit over the line, I found myself coming to his defense. “She is his guest, Ruth. He just wants to make her happy.”

“Well, next time he can make her happy at the Maryland Inn or Cantler’s.” She sluiced the remaining sauce off Darlene’s plate, then mounded it high with fresh pasta. “Get the butter out of the fridge for me, will you?”

I handed Ruth the Land-o’-Lakes and said, “Look, Ruth. I don’t like Darlene much, either, but what can we do? Daddy’s a grown-up, and he’s clearly smitten. I keep thinking, what would I do if Daddy didn’t like Paul?”

Ruth stared at me thoughtfully, a carving knife in her hand.

“I’d want him to give Paul a chance . At least try to get to know him better. Wouldn’t you?”

Ruth used the knife like a machete to hack off a chunk of butter, then she dropped the butter on top of the pasta and sprinkled it with chopped parsley, ground pepper, and a generous portion of grated cheese. “I guess so.” She passed the plate under my nose for inspection. “ Voilà! ”

The aroma of freshly grated parmesan teased my nostrils. “Yum.”

“She can like it or lump it,” Ruth shot over her shoulder on the way back to the dining room.

I picked up the tall wooden pepper grinder and followed my obstinate sister. By the time I breezed through the door, Darlene had her new dinner and Daddy was fussing over her like a nanny. “There. Is that better?”

“It’s fine, Georgie.” The smile she gave Ruth reminded me of the car salesman in Glen Burnie from whom I bought my used Le Baron.

“Ah, good.” He nodded.

“Tell me, Darlene,” Ruth asked just as Darlene had raised a full fork of spaghetti to her lips. “Where did you and Daddy meet?”

Darlene lowered her fork and smiled. “We met at McGarvey’s. My son, Darryl, works there.”

“Oh? Doing what?” Ruth leaned forward, her hands neatly folded on the tablecloth in front of her.

“He’s a waiter.”

I thought about all the times I’d eaten at McGarvey’s Saloon and tried to match my recollections of the wait staff there with the face of the woman sitting directly across from me. I couldn’t do it. I closed my eyes. If Daddy’s romance stayed on course, one of those waiters might soon be my stepbrother.

I killed some time helping Sean grate parmesan on his pasta while I thought about it. So, Darlene had a son. Yet she wore no wedding band, just an ornate turquoise-and-silver ring on the pinky of her right hand and a plain, gold school ring of some kind on the other. Paul must have been wondering the same thing. “What happened to Darryl’s father?” he asked gently.

Darlene lowered her eyes. “I’m a widow.”

Daddy had been nodding at his place, his head hanging so low it was in danger of crashing into his plate. Suddenly, he perked up. “Darlene has two children. Deirdre is twenty-eight, three years older than Darryl.”

Darlene speared a cucumber with her fork. “My first husband died when Deirdre was eleven.”

Georgina touched her arm. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Opposite Daddy at the head of the table, Ruth sat glowering like a malevolent Buddha, her eyes like slits. I glared back at her, willing her to keep her mouth clamped shut before something rude tumbled out. So, the glamorous Darlene had been married at least twice. But, as much as I wanted details about Darlene’s background, for the sake of family harmony I swallowed my questions, even though I was in danger of getting an ulcer from all the nervous acid and tomato sauce churning around in my stomach.

Thankfully, Emily changed the subject, telling us all about New Life Spa in Virginia where Dante had already begun work. “It’s so la-de-dah,” she spoke directly to Darlene, “that you need to make an appointment years ahead of time.”

“Like Greenbrier?”

“You’ve been to Greenbrier?”

“Once,” Darlene said. “In another life.”

Emily studied Darlene curiously, as if waiting for her to elaborate, but when the seconds lengthened and there was nothing more, she said, “It’s sort of like Greenbrier, but way up in the Blue Ridge near Front Royal.”

“Does the spa provide housing?” Scott wanted to know. Typical. He’s an accountant.

Emily shook her head. “I wish! No, we’ve been house-hunting. Fortunately, New Life pays well enough that we’ll actually be able to afford a small house, if we stay outside the Washington metropolitan area.”

Darlene twirled her fork idly in Ruth’s impromptu culinary masterpiece. Apparently she didn’t like the pasta parmesan, either, because there was a mound of it still on her plate. “Are you going to work?” She smiled at Emily. “Outside the home, I mean.”

Emily grinned fondly at Chloe who perched next to her in a high chair, calmly squeezing warm French bread between her fingers, making sure it was thoroughly dead before licking what was left of it off her knuckles. “No. Dante and I plan to homeschool our children.”

This was news to me, but clearly not to Paul, who smiled benignly at his daughter across the table. Or perhaps he had retreated from the battlefield and was mentally far, far away, working on some theorem. Either way, we would discuss this homeschooling nonsense later.

“I sent Darryl and Deirdre to Catholic schools,” Darlene said. “It was all I could afford.”

I had decided that the conversation was going nowhere and had shanghaied Georgina to help me clear the table when Daddy gazed at Darlene, his eyelids at half mast. “Poor Darlene. She’s lost three husbands.”

I nearly dropped the dirty dishes I had been balancing, plate upon plate.

“It’s still hard to talk about.” Darlene bowed her head. Emily skillfully steered the conversation back to the more happy topic of Darlene’s children. Between trips to the kitchen I learned that Deirdre was a graduate student in biology at the University of Maryland and lived in a condo in Bowie.

After a few moments, Ruth joined us at the kitchen sink. “She’s lost three husbands? How careless of her!”

Georgina arranged a row of salad bowls on the top rack of the dishwasher. “Well, it’s not exactly her fault, is it?”

“How do we know?”

“Ruth!” My sister had been watching too many reruns of Murder, She Wrote .