Installment Forty-Nine

"Joelly, dear, why don't you make some introductions?"

What would I do without dear Edna and why wasn't she my mother instead of my mother-in-law?

She had quickly taken control of the situation, though it would have been nice if my tiny apartment had more than a sofa salvaged from a garbage heap and a makeshift kitchen stool to offer as seating. Not quite the diplomatic room groupings I had grown up with nor a room bearing the slightest resemblance to the opulently furnished homes I had enjoyed as an expat oil wife.

My body had gone stiff, my brain's hard drive was short-circuiting, and it was as if a pause button had been hit, freezing the living screen in front of me.

Do I look at my almost ex-husband, who was glaring at the Irish man he had resented for three decades even though he had never set eyes on him? Or over at my future son-in-law, who had his arm draped protectively around my daughter? And what about my wonderful mother-in-law, who had tried to rescue me from her own son?

Of course I couldn't take my eyes off Gabe. Older to be sure, his hair streaked with grey, his eyes tired. But I could still see the face of the young man. Memories made so young can't be deleted easily.

Then, as if someone hit play, the action in the room resumed.

Everyone spoke at once, though it was difficult to make out any words. I thought I heard Deborah introducing Sean to her grandmother who was in turn trying to introduce Edna to his father. But before he could do that, the loudest voice cut across the room:

"Just what the hell is going on here?"

"Martin, mind your manners, dear," said his mother.

"Mother, bud out."

"Please don't talk to your mother that way!"

My apartment was a chat room come alive, no one speaking in more than 140 characters as if they were tweeting each other, and making about as much sense as most of the inane drivel on that social media network.

The cacophony didn't let up. Martin was yelling, moving on from his mother and then to me, but I wasn't listening. When he turned and started shouting at our daughter, though, my consciousness began working again.

"Deborah," her father was saying in a very loud voice, "you might have warned me about all of this. I had no idea that Sean--yes, hello Sean, nice to meet you, I guess--is the son of this man. He has been a murky shadow lingering over almost the entire thirty years of my marriage to your mother."

"He may have been a shadow but your girlfriends were flesh and blood."

How could I say that out loud? I was acting as badly as TBM.

Embarrassed and ashamed to reveal how shabbily I had allowed myself to be treated, I wanted to run away, but my mother-bear instinct kicked in. I needed to protect my daughter, an innocent bystander whose only crime was falling in love and wanting to get married without it turning into a full length Fellini movie. Maybe Woody Allen. Deborah is my priority, I told myself.

I began moving towards her because I could see her stricken face. But my phone chose to ring at that exact moment. I looked at the call display.

"It's Brian!" Deborah’s tears stopped before they could get rolling and we both started to laugh.

"And who might Brian be then?" asked Gabe, finally throwing his two cents worth into the madness.