Dinner Party at Aunt Penny's

      “Jennifer, You'll be in charge of setting the table. Melissa is our guest and we shouldn't work her too hard. I've invited Joe and Estelle, Harold and Isabelle, George and Gertrude. I bought a whole salmon that I'll poach. A creamy dill sauce will go nicely with it. Boiled new potatoes, asparagus, and we'll make a tossed salad with that S.S. Princess Louise dressing. Did you know I acquired that dressing recipe on a cruise to Mexico? I had to trade Miguel--the darling concierge--a small fortune to get it,” Aunt Penny barks a smug laugh as her eyes relive the memory.

      We are sitting in her sunny breakfast nook, my college friend Melissa and me, Penny's niece. Aunt Penny sits back in her chair, swoops of white hair glowing in the light, her large stomach a small mountain of intimidation resting on her slim thighs. That mountain was made from at least three gin martinis a day for thirty years, I say to myself. I have memorized her drink order, from many a dinner out: “Gin martini, Bombay, if you have it, straight up, ice on the side, olives, but only the big ones. If you don't have the big ones, then a twist.” Melissa and I sit quietly now, awaiting further instruction.

      “You have to be careful who you invite to small dinner parties,” Aunt Penny instructs, stretching out her long fingers, eyeing the pearly paint on her nails.  “Joe will talk anyone's ear off, but Harold and George are pussycats and will balance out Joe. God, how much can you stand of Dr. Joseph Gilbert's tales of thoracic surgery and Leeds—he's an Anglophile and should have just stayed there if he liked it so much. At least he follows football. In dinner conversation, fall back on sports, never politics, when in doubt. Do you girls watch sports”

      Melissa and I stare at our plates for a moment, a little terrified of giving the wrong answer. But you can hardly fake being a sports fan, so we apologize, confess that, no, we don't watch sports.

     “Well, that's fine. You two don't have time for television anyway, with all the studying you have in college. I never watched TV when I was your age. I only starting watching football when I retired, to be sociable. It's horribly violent. Barbaric, really. But there's golf. Everyone around here plays and watches golf, of course. Did you know Tiger Woods was playing here just last month? A lot of fuss. I like Mick Mickelson, myself. ”

      We sit mutely in full agreement, fiddling with our grapefruit spoons, the damask napkins sliding off our laps. She continues her debriefing on tonight's guests. “Estelle is good at making everyone feel comfortable, Isabelle too, but Estelle can egg Joe on too much. His nickname for her is Monkey, can you imagine? Mind you, Estelle has been my best friend for thirty years, and she's a dear, but they both go on and on about their beloved Britain and I want to shoot myself. Not everyone finds the subject so fascinating. Gertrude, I'm not even sure how much English she understands. You will probably not comprehend a word she says with her thick German accent. She clearly married George for his money; he's as homely as a warthog and she's, well, you'll see, buxom and bleached blonde hair. A trophy wife, no doubt.”

      Melissa and I nod, the obedient pupils of the retirement-age dinner party. We swallow our opinions and judgments about Penny's judgments. Penny (christened Marietta) is sixty-seven, recently retired to a groomed, gated community in northern coastal Florida, a complex called Sawgrass that is also the headquarters of the golfing world's PGA tour. She retired from Los Angeles, and was supposedly the first female vice president of a major international pharmaceutical firm. When she answers her home phone, it is with a punched, “Penny Carr!”-- as if she were still behind the corporate desk. She never married, although she assures me, she had several proposals. Her house looks as if it were furnished by the Smithsonian—historic, exotic, tasteful and utterly breakable. In the living room, the oriental carpets are white with blue, pink and green filigree. The upholstery is either all white or silk pastoral scenes of women with parasols—even the Queen Anne dining room chairs are padded in complete white. Hand-painted cloisonne eggshells nest in gold rings on a side table, next to a tall wooden statue of a tribal god and a pale green marble dish. The deep red carved Japanese cabinets in the dining room smell like cedar when you open them. There are drink coasters on every surface.

      Aunt Penny looks at Melissa's lightly rouged cheeks and lip color. “Jennifer, why can't you put on some make-up like Melissa? You could use some color. You've got your father's pale, English skin. Lipstick is always a good idea. Do you do your nails?”

      I lift my trimmed blank nails slowly up above the table. “No, I see you don't. Well, I keep mine painted when I haven't got a lot of gardening to do. My toes, too. It's pretty, and there's nothing wrong with being a little pretty, Jennifer. A little glamor. Women in my generation know about glamor, hair done, proper shoes. You girls with your long straight hair, and those shoes--God, Jennifer! What did you call them? Doctor Martens? They look like the kind of shoes they made polio survivors wear when I was a girl. Ghastly, Jennifer. I need to take you over to Neiman Marcus for some decent shoes. Are you wearing that London Fog that I bought you? A good trench coat is priceless. Melissa, do you have a good trench coat?”

      “Oh, Yes, I do, a navy blue one” Melissa replies quickly, nudging my foot with hers under the table. What a liar. I'll get her and her breakfast lipstick later, when we're alone.

      By mid-afternoon it's time to set the table. Melissa and I go into the dining room and begin getting out the china, crystal glasses and silver. Two glasses, three forks, a dinner plate, a salad plate...I call out to Aunt Penny, who is in the kitchen wrapping the whole salmon, head and all, in cheese cloth, a Williams Sonoma apron cinched neatly around her girth. “Aunt Penny, how do the glasses and silverware go again?”

      “Look it up! It's in the back of the Joy of Cooking. I have it marked.” I slide quietly into the kitchen and find the cookbook on a shelf near the breakfast table, and bring the book back into the dining room. Melissa is standing by the table, her eyes wide and hands behind her back, afraid to move the crystal stemware around too much. We manage to put the table together and go into the kitchen asking if we can do anything else. Aunt Penny tells me to get some dill from the herb garden outside. I freeze. We didn't eat many fresh herbs growing up and I don't think I know what dill looks like growing in a garden. As if she can read my mind, Aunt Penny says, “You do know what dill looks like, don't you?”

      “Uh, I think so.”

      “Honestly, Jennifer, didn't your mother teach you anything? Follow me!” We go out the patio door to a little patch of plants growing by the house. Aunt Penny bends down with a grunt and snips off some feathery fronds from a small bushy plant.

      “This is dill.” She holds it up to my face, hot with embarrassment. “There is rosemary. Oregano. Basil. Thyme. Mint,” she points sharply to the other little plants. “It's time you learn these things, Jennifer. You're twenty-one years old.” She turns briskly and I follow her back into the house, wishing I had the guts to stand up for myself, wishing I could do more right now than give her the finger behind her back.

      It's five-thirty. Aunt Penny is dressed in a long silk blouse and flowing dress pants, a thick gold chain with a small jeweled magnifying glass around her neck. A silver serpentine ring winds its way around the ring finger on her left hand. She's just made her second martini from the bar set up on the kitchen counter. Melissa and I shuffle around in our hippie skirts and peasant shirts. Aunt Penny asks me to set out some cheese and crackers and a bowl of nuts. She eases herself into the white armchair in the living room and puts her feet up on the ottoman, admiring the bright mauve of her toenails through sheer stockings. While in the kitchen, I pour myself a large tumbler of Cabernet and set out the cheese and crackers.

      Aunt Penny spies my glass choice. “No, Jennifer. If you're going to have wine, get a proper wine glass.” I return to the kitchen.

      At six o'clock, the doorbell rings. Joe and Estelle come through the door, with Harold and Isabelle on their heels. Aunt Penny gives perfunctory cheek kisses to everyone, while Melissa and I stand to the side, silent, smiling. The group turns and Aunt Penny introduces us with a strange mix in her eyes and voice: pride—to be the temporary owner of such youth—and disapproval, that our appearance doesn't exactly scream Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O. While she's making introductions, and her friends are showering us with welcomes and questions, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jimmy Durante walk through the door. The wave of flowery perfume and cologne that enters with Gertrude and George is stinging; it's so thick, I swear it's visible. I involuntarily take a step back while George thrusts his hand forward telling me I must be Jennifer, so pleased, so pleased. Penny has told us so much about you. Gertrude beams the smile of someone with no children of her own and I pray that she will not kiss me. She booms forward, her bosom like the bow of a ship, and I silently hold my breath, feeling a thick smudge of lipstick on my cheek. She titters and wipes it off with her thumb, “Zo Zorry!” I am five years old. So why do I have the urge to flee outside for a cigarette and brandy?

      Aunt Penny orders everyone into the living room and announces that we are to get our own drinks; she's being casual. Joe sidles up to me quickly, asking me about my studies and my older brother Geoff, whom he has met and likes very much. Aunt Penny is in the kitchen, getting the salmon out of the oven, putting the potatoes in a covered dish. She peers around the doorway into the living room, and calls out to me. Melissa follows. “Jennifer, I really could use your help right now. Joe will monopolize you for the whole evening, if you let him. You have to circulate; it's rude not to.” She turns her green eyes on Melissa. “Melissa, go talk to Joe about something he knows about.”

      At the table, the conversation flows freely and centers on Melissa and me. Joe and Estelle want to hear all about my recent semester in London. I tell tales of living in the home of a divorced vicar who boarded university students for extra money. I talk about the shows I saw and the Shakespeare class I took. Joe is bursting at the seams. He jumps in to tell a story of brilliant show they saw at a “theatre in the round” in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and how they got their tickets to the sold-out show.  Joe has just begun when Estelle jumps in, on the edge of her seat.

      “No, no, Joe! That wasn't how it happened at all!”

      “Monkey, don't shout!” Joe shouts.

      My eyes dart over to Melissa, whose face has crumpled in an attempt to stifle a shocked laugh. The table grins and lets Joe and Estelle argue over their story. Then I catch a glimpse of Aunt Penny, who has not been the center of attention for quite some time. She stiffens, places both hands flat on the table, and with Joe in mid-sentence, mid-story, blurts, “Alright, we have to move on to dessert. I bought the caramel flan from Contessa's, and everyone will eat some.”