Brenda Janowitz - Jack With a Twist

I begin stuffing mini cupcakes into my mouth.

Vanessa and Stephanie walk out of Stephanie’s office just as I’m licking some frosting from my fingers.

“Thank you for everything,” Vanessa says, giving Stephanie a hug. I wipe my hands on a napkin just in time for Vanessa to introduce me to Stephanie.

“Did that guy hit on you?” Stephanie whispers as she shakes my hand, nodding her head in the direction of the tall, dark and handsome stranger who spoke to me earlier. “My assistant said that he came over and hit on you.”

My goodness, I am so on fire that even Vanessa’s divorce attorney’s assistant noticed! My hotness simply cannot be concealed. Even a trained eye like that of a divorce attorney can tell that I am so fab that I get hit on left and right even with my engagement ring on!

“Well, I might be taken,” I say as I flip my hair off my shoulders, “but I’ve still got it.”

“That guy hits on everyone,” she whispers, “that’s why he’s getting a divorce.”

Or not.

I immediately reach for another mini cupcake.

I half expect to hear the theme song to Dynasty ring out every time I pull up to Jack’s parents’ house. Just twenty minutes outside of Philly, it is an enormous home that sits on seven acres of immaculately maintained landscaping, complete with its own double tennis court, Olympic-sized swimming pool and accompanying pool house that is larger than the house I grew up in.

Seeing it tonight, now through my parents’ eyes, it’s like I’m here for the first time again. I remember when Jack took me home to meet his parents, how that ever-growing feeling of surprise grew like a pit in my tummy as we drove down the tree-lined block, houses getting bigger and grander by the second.

I knew the house would be elegant—after all, Jack’s father is a federal judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and his mother is a socialite, so, of course their home would look like something out of an Aaron Spelling nighttime soap. It’s just that I hadn’t expected it to be quite so, well, large. Jack is totally down to earth, and on the few occasions when I’d met his parents, they seemed very unassuming as well. Although maybe I should have known that the house would look something like this from the places we’d have dinner whenever Jack’s parents met us in the city. It’s a veritable Zagat’s Top Ten whenever Jack and I dine with the Solomons: Le Bernadin, Per Se, Danube…the more extensive the wine list, the better. Usually, when my parents come into the city to take Jack and me for dinner they drive us out to Don Peppe’s in Queens, an amazing Italian joint just a stone’s throw away from JFK airport where the owner’s grandmother is the head chef and they only serve homemade red wine.

We stop at the tiny guardhouse at the foot of the driveway to announce ourselves, and as the tremendous wrought-iron gates open for us and we drive up the winding driveway, my father announces, “Your tax dollars at work.” I say a little “thank you” to the gods above that Jack decided to head up earlier in the day to spend a little time with his parents before the big meeting-of-the-families dinner and isn’t in the car to hear the play by play of the first reactions to the house. On the car ride up, I’d tried to subtly warn my parents about the size of the Solomons’ house, since I didn’t want their mouths to drop to the floor in front of Jack. But, as it turns out, there’s really no easy way to warn your parents about your in-laws-to-be’s house without making your parents feel totally and completely inferior. Which is why I ended up not saying anything to them at all.

As we pull up to the front door, I see Jack standing outside, waiting for us. Even though he’s over six feet tall, he looks like a little boy against the massive fourteen foot double doors. They’re carved out of a rich mahogany that is a striking contrast to the whitewashed brick that covers the rest of the house. My father drives around the courtyard circle to pull right up to the front of the house, but then my mother complains that it is rude to park right in front of someone’s house, so we drive around the circle two or three times until my mother is happy with the placement of where my father has parked the car. Jack’s sisters and their husbands haven’t arrived yet, so there is no way to gauge where we should park. But the grounds are landscaped to the hilt, so I consider all of this driving in circles to be a nice opportunity to take a look around at the beautiful trees and sculptures adorning the property.

Hopping out of the car the moment it stops, I fly up the steps and into Jack’s arms.

“Nervous?” he whispers into my ear as we hug. I can smell his aftershave, and it goes down my spine.

“Not at all,” I say, running my fingers through his shaggy brown hair, “What do I have to be nervous about?”

“We come bearing gifts!” my father bellows, the thick Brooklyn accent of his youth ever-present, as we take off our coats in the foyer. It is a vast entranceway with a beautiful antique table as its focal point, a floral arrangement climbing four feet high in an Hermes vase right in the middle. Servants materialize from out of nowhere to whisk away our coats and then disappear just as quickly as they arrived. My high heels make more noise than I intend as I walk along the cool, ivory marble that covers the entranceway floor, and I begin walking on the balls of my feet in an effort to make less noise.

Jack’s mother, Joan, comes floating into the foyer, looking impeccable, as usual. She’s dressed in the sort of thing you’d imagine Jackie O, in her Jacqueline Kennedy years, wearing for a simple evening of entertaining at home: black high-waisted palazzo pants and a crisp white shirt with French cuffs. She’s even got her thick dark brown hair styled just like Jackie’s, shoulder length with just the right blend of subtle movement and helmet head. I can see a smile cross my mother’s lips as she winks at my father and I know that at this precise second, she is thinking that she does not have to worry about the mother of the groom upstaging the mother of the bride. You see, she has this thing about high-waisted palazzo pants. She thinks that only women who have something to hide (read: fat thighs) wear them.

She often encourages me to wear high-waisted palazzo pants.

As I kiss Joan hello, the first thing I notice is that she is wearing the pair of Manolo Blahniks that I wanted to buy last month. This realization creeps me out a bit and I wonder if there are any other strange similarities between Joan and me that will mean that Jack is a total mama’s-boy freak.

My mother is wearing a form-fitting black shift dress, her best set of pearls, and black pumps with a kitten heel. Am I the only one who didn’t get the dress-like-Jackie-O memo today? Are Jack’s sisters going to show up dressed for Camelot, too?

I, instead, am dressed like Audrey, with a big ballerina skirt and a matching wrap sweater. It makes me giggle when I see that the crimson tie that Jack’s wearing with his navy sports jacket and gray trousers matches my ensemble exactly. Not even married yet and already we think exactly alike! The meeting of the parents? For a couple like us, that’s no problem! Tonight’s going to be a piece of cake.

“You shouldn’t have,” Jack’s mother says, as she reaches out for the package my father is holding. My father and I had a huge fight regarding the package he is holding. When it comes to a hostess gift, my father seems to think that nothing says “Welcome to the family” like a nice cut of beef tenderloin. I tried explaining to him, to no avail, that giving your future in-laws raw meat was inappropriate, even if you are a kosher butcher.