Jack with a Twist (14 page)

Anyway, it’s time to get back to my own law firm. Where I can be accosted with work by partners in my
own
hallways.

D
o not cry. Do. Not. Cry. You are not going to cry. You are a tough, no-nonsense attorney who can handle anything. Even the twenty boxes of documents that Jack just sent you to review. Piece of cake, right? After all, each box should take approximately four to five hours to review, so it’s not that big a deal. That’s only, well, let’s see, eighty to one hundred hours of work ahead of you.

Eighty to one hundred hours of work. That is, like, so
not
a piece of cake.

And I’m due at the Pierre in forty-five minutes.

There’s only one thing that I can do now—only one thing that anyone in my position would do, really—feign illness to get out of this afternoon’s festivities. Which is absolutely fine by me. After all, I don’t even
want
to get married at the Pierre. The wedding’s only there since Jack’s parents bullied my parents into it. And, I don’t really care what they serve for dinner. My father’s going to dominate the day anyway with his talk of his beloved meats and I’m sure they’ll serve the glass of obligatory champagne to celebrate, so my mother should be prancing around with a lampshade on her head in no time flat. And I’m sure my father’s already worked out some sort of side deal with the chef, so, why should they need little old me to help with menu selection? They probably won’t even notice if I don’t show up!

I practice my cough and slouch down in my chair—method acting at its best to sound fatigued—as I dial the number for my mother’s cell phone. As it rings, I practice a lame, “Hello?” into the air and it’s perfect. Which makes sense, since when the twenty boxes of discovery documents were delivered to my office just a moment ago, it actually made me feel physically ill.

“Knock, knock,” a voice announces at the door. I hang up the phone quickly and sit up in my chair. “It looks like someone has got quite a bit of work cut out for her.”

“Jack,” I say as I get up from my chair to greet him. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d pick you up to take you to the Pierre,” he says, baby blues gleaming. I smile and forget about my work for a moment. Work that he assigned to me. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is my relationship with Jack. This is the man that I fell in love with. This is the man that I want to spend the rest of my life with. I knew it all along. Turns out I
can
do it all—I can have the perfect fiancé, work hard and win my case. All in three-and-a-half-inch heels. “And, of course,” Jack continues, gazing over at the stack of boxes he’s messengered to me, “I wanted to see the look on your face when you got our documents.”

This is the man who is making my life a living hell. This is the man I am going to decimate in court.

“Is this your idea of a joke?” I ask, holding up a handful of documents.

“These are the documents
you
requested,” he says.

“I just took a quick look at the first box, and already there are tons of duplicates,” I say. “That’s going to make it take me twice as long to go through this as it should.”

“The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure don’t say anything about having to mine the documents for duplicates. And there was a tight turnaround time on these, so it’s not like we had time to have a paralegal check for dupes, anyway.” Jack is smiling as he says it.

I am not smiling. “And there are tons of documents in here that aren’t even responsive to my requests.”

“Well,” Jack says, his smile sort of turning into a smirk, “I just wanted to make sure that we didn’t leave anything out. The judge would be furious if he thought that we weren’t giving you exactly what you deserve, sweetie.”

As we walk out of my office and down the hall, Jack starts telling me about our wedding videographer, Jay.

“So, is he supposed to be taking video of my filing cabinets?” Jack asks as we walk toward the elevator banks. “Is there going to be attorney-client privileged information on our wedding video?”

“Well, Jackie,” I say, “we just want to get footage of you in your natural habitat.”

“But, my natural habitat isn’t at the office,” he says.

“It isn’t?” I ask, with an innocent look on my face, as the elevator doors open up for us.

“No,” he says, walking into the elevator with me and then kissing me as the doors close. “My natural habitat is anywhere that you are.”

Swoon.

Jack and I kiss the rest of the way down the elevator, and then hop into the first taxicab we see. Fifteen minutes later, we are rounding the corner to the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, just across the street from Central Park. A uniformed doorman opens our taxi door and I walk out slowly.

The lobby is grand and lush and looks every bit the “testament to understated elegance” that their Web site promises, with its original 1930s detailing still on glorious display.

As soon as I walk in, I feel instantly reminded of something. From the black-and-white marble entranceway to the exquisite crown moldings on the wall to the lush royal-blue carpeting, I get the distinct feeling of déjà vu. And it’s not because I’ve been here before for events. There is something about the Pierre that reminds me of somewhere else.

Jack’s parents’ house.

And Jack’s parents look right at home, seated in chairs on the landing in the near right corner, talking quietly as they wait for us. My parents, on the other hand, stand out like a stripper in church (or pair of strippers, as the case may be), milling about toward the far left corner of the lobby, looking around curiously and waiting for us. The lobby is so large that they haven’t even seen each other yet.

Ladies and gentlemen, on one side of the lobby, we bring you Barry “the Butcher” Miller, who hails from the South Shore of Long Island, measuring five foot nine inches and weighing in at 250 pounds, 360 if you also count his wife, Mimi. On the other side of the lobby, we’ve got Edward “the Judge” Solomon, who comes to us from the mean streets of Philadelphia, measuring six foot two inches and weighing in at 225, and a hell of a lot more if you count his wife, too, since she’s wearing palazzo pants today.

It’s the clash of the parents: Round Two. Ding!

Now, I know what you’re thinking—the first meeting of the parents didn’t exactly go as planned. So, why on earth would I be bringing them all back together again? Well, I seemed to have this crazy notion that inviting everyone would be a good way to get the families to start getting along better.

And why should that be so difficult? After all, we’re here to celebrate a joyous occasion—the marriage of the Solomons’ youngest and my parents’ only—so of course everyone will soon come around and iron out their differences. Just being here all together today at the Pierre is the first step in becoming a big happy family. The type of big happy family an only child like myself has always dreamed of.

As I stand between the two sets of parents, in the middle of the lobby of the Pierre, a thought crosses my mind for the very first time—this might not work out the way I had originally planned.

Thank God I didn’t invite the siblings.

Both sets of parents meet Jack and I in the center of the lobby and we all awkwardly greet each other. The wedding coordinator spots us and waves. When I found out we’d be working with one of the Pierre’s wedding coordinators, I had this vision of our wedding coordinator being some hilarious European gay man, straight out of
Father of the Bride
(Steve Martin incarnation, of course). Or even J. Lo in
The Wedding Planner
with her totally fabulous hair and makeup (but without the whole stealing the fiancé thing). What the families really need now is an outrageous personality who can take our minds off our differences and get us to focus on what’s important. We need someone who can take the emphasis off the families and put it where it belongs: onto the bride and groom. Well, really just the bride, because, let’s face it, weddings are really all about the bride.

Oh, please! As if you wouldn’t want the world to revolve around you when you’re planning your very own wedding?

So, what we need is someone to defuse this time bomb of a situation we’ve got going here. We need a referee, a distraction, or, at the very least, someone to gang up on. In a word, we need Martin Short speaking with an unintelligible faux Euro accent. What we’ve got instead is Catherine Glass. Shiny blond hair swept up into a French twist, pearl earrings and a navy-blue suit, she looks entirely nondescript, nonoffensive, and just plain old non. Isn’t the wedding coordinator supposed to be some crazy colorful character? Or at the very least as fabulous as J. Lo? What a disappointment.

Catherine shows us to her office, where she has a conference room table set up with nine different types of table linens, four different menus, dozens of photo albums of past events at the Pierre piled up high, and seven chairs going around it. She sits at the head of the table, where her oversized leather notebook is placed, and my family files onto one side of the table with Jack’s family across from us. I consider, for a moment, asking everyone to get up and all sit randomly, the way we all sat at the Solomons’ house for that fateful dinner, but then I think better of it, hoping instead that no one will notice that we are lined up as if we were contestants on
The People’s Court.

“So,” Catherine begins, barely looking up from her notebook as she takes notes, “how many guests were we thinking of inviting to this affair?”

“We’d like to keep it small and intimate,” my mother says, folding her hands in front of her on the table. I do the same and smile back at my mom.

“Yes, we totally agree,” Jack’s mother says and I allow myself to take a deep breath. Maybe this afternoon won’t be as difficult as I thought it would be. See, we’re all in agreement already! “I’m not sure how many people you’ll have from your side, but we were thinking that six hundred might be a good number to shoot for.”

“Six hundred what?” my father says.

Jack’s mother laughs. “Barry, you’re so funny.”

“Six hundred guests?” I say, looking at Jack. He and I had always talked about having a small wedding. Jack picks up an album and begins leafing through the pages.

“Yes,” Jack says, barely looking up from the album, “only six hundred. We should definitely cap it at six.”

“I know that your family is bigger than ours,” my mother says with a smile, “but how could you possibly have six hundred guests?”

“Well, Edward has many business contacts that he’s got to include,” Jack’s mother says.

“Are you inviting the entire United States judiciary?” my father asks, looking at Catherine. I know that he’s hoping for a laugh from her, but she keeps a clipped smile on her poker face. I wonder if she’d play the role of dispassionate observer if she knew that my father was paying for the whole thing and tends to be a fairly huge tipper, even when it’s inappropriate and/or discouraged to give a tip.

“Perhaps we should talk menu first,” the wedding coordinator asks, pen poised and ready to write. “What were we thinking for an entrée?”

I see my father’s expression brighten, ready, no doubt, to start talking sirloin.

“We were thinking lobster,” Jack’s mother says first and I see my father’s face fall. My mother, all of the sudden, seems very interested in her fingernails.

“Lobster?” my father says, attempting a smile, “but, Joan, this is a Jewish wedding.”

Everyone just sort of stares at everyone else for a moment and I just silently pray that I don’t have to explain to the Solomons that lobster is
so not
kosher, which is why my father objects to serving it at a Jewish wedding.

“We were thinking filet,” my mother says, taking a deep breath as she looks up from her hands with a broad smile on her face. “Filet mignon.” The “‘which my husband will lovingly pick out and supply himself” part is implied.

“Excellent choice,” the wedding coordinator says, barely lifting her head up as she jots down notes.

“Maybe we should do a duet—the lobster and your meat,” Jack’s mother says. I’m sure I’m just imagining it, but it seems like she says the words
your meat
as if she’s talking about my father serving meat from mad cows. I know she’s a vegetarian, but surely she knows how high quality kosher meat is?

“
Now
you want a surf and turf?” my father says. No one seems to have any idea what my father is talking about, but I do. If only Jack’s mother had served the beef tenderloin my father brought her that first night they all met, maybe some of this hostility could be avoided.

“Joan and I really had our hearts set on lobster,” Jack’s father says. “Don’t you like lobster, Brooke? Whenever we go to the Palm, you always order lobster instead of the steak.”

“Well, I….” I manage to eke out. I always make fun of Jack for his inability to stand up to his father, but now, sitting here in the hot seat, with Jack’s father’s eyes on me, accusing me of loving the non-kosher creatures of the sea, I can almost understand where Jack is coming from. I really can’t imagine having a man like Edward as my own father. I can’t even imagine having him as the judge in one of my cases. (Judge Solomon: “Isn’t that right, Brooke?” Me: “Yes, Your Honor! I’m guilty!” My client: “You’re fired.”)

“Brooke and I love lobster,” Jack says, running his fingers through his hair. Et tu, Brute?

My father turns and looks at me as if he’s King Lear. But he needn’t worry about me.

Now, I know I eat lobster all the time in my regular day-to-day life. And Jack’s right, I would probably eat lobster every day if I could, but the point is, you simply cannot serve lobster at a Jewish wedding. Well, actually, you can (which has now been made exceedingly clear to me today by the Solomons), but the point is, when your father is a kosher butcher and he is paying for the whole thing, you simply cannot serve lobster at a Jewish wedding.

Don’t panic, I think. Be calm. Be cool. Use your super litigator skills to make this man and his father realize that they do not, in fact, want to serve lobster at a Jewish wedding. They want to serve the meat that my father will pick out lovingly cut by cut. But, be so smart as to make them think that they came to this conclusion themselves. The sort of Jedi mind trick young engaged women everywhere are forced to use on their fiancés and future in-laws every day.