Read Online Goodbye To All That by Judith Arnold - Free Book Online

and Gordon had received from his cousin Roberta as a wedding present, and arranged a platter of grapes and sliced Jarlsburg.
    She’d also downed two cans of Diet Coke before ten a.m. That had been purely medicinal. She was sure she’d need another can once this meeting was over. Maybe two more cans. Maybe six. She’d climb back on the wagon tomorrow.
    “Do you have any wine?” Melissa asked, her gaze circling the table. Her eyes glistened, as if she were a nanosecond away from erupting in tears. How the hell were they going to persuade their parents to forget this silly divorce idea if Melissa was falling apart?
    It was possible her falling apart would keep their parents together. Histrionics might work, especially histrionics from Melissa, who was, after all, their precious baby.
    “No wine,” Jill said, then added for Doug’s benefit, “No scotch, either. We’re doing this sober.”
    “Shit,” Melissa muttered before plucking a raspberry-patch tea bag from the straw basket in which Jill had stacked an assortment of teas.
    “Who is that man?” their mother asked Melissa as she carried a steaming cup of coffee to one of the dining room chairs and sat. So casual, so relaxed, as if she hadn’t ordered Jill to assemble everyone for the purpose of announcing the dissolution of her marriage—and as if she wasn’t thoroughly pissed at Jill for having pre-announced the announcement.
    “Lucas Brondo,” Melissa answered, compulsively bobbing her tea bag in and out of her cup. He’d been introduced to Jill’s parents when they’d arrived, but with everyone crowded in the hallway and Noah performing an elaborately choreographed hand-shake-hand-slap with his grandfather while the twins babbled simultaneously and Abbie wrapped her grandmother in a much more enthusiastic hug than she ever gave Jill, Melissa’s guy had faded into the background.
    Obviously he hadn’t faded completely. Her mother had noticed him.
    So had her father. “Brondo? That doesn’t sound Jewish. Is he Jewish?”
    Melissa sighed. “I have no idea.”
    “Brondo,” her father pondered aloud. “Like that actor, what was his name? Marlon Brondo. He wasn’t Jewish.”
    “Brando, not Brondo,” her mother corrected him. “Look, Jill got you that rugelach you love.”
    “You’re a sweetheart. Thank you.” Jill’s father slung an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Evidently he didn’t mind that she’d revealed the truth to Doug and Melissa. She tried to gauge his mood. On a cheerful scale of one to ten, he seemed somewhere between a four and a five. The prospect of a divorce apparently hadn’t crushed his spirit. Either that, or the rugelach had taken the edge off his despair.
    At sixty-four, he was still a handsome man, his face lined but not pruny, his hair silver but not thin. Dressed in khakis and a polo shirt—a golfing outfit nearly identical to Doug’s—he looked fit and sturdy. If he was cheating on her mother, Jill would smash the plate of rugelach over his head.
    “Those grapes look nice,” her mother commented, scrutinizing them as if searching for insects on their curved maroon surfaces. “Did you get them at Whole Foods?”
    For God’s sake. She didn’t want to discuss where she shopped for grapes. “Everyone sit down,” she said. Someone had to take charge. As usual, Jill would wind up being that someone. “Get something to drink, sit and let’s talk.”
    “There’s nothing to say,” her mother remarked stiffly. “You’ve already told everyone.”
    Jill dropped onto the chair at the head of the table. She studied her mother, seated halfway down the table to her left. Like her father, who was seated halfway down the table to her right, her mother looked fine. Her hair needed work; smudges of gray marked her temples and streaked through the chin-length strands. She ought to color it like Melissa’s, which looked truly spectacular—not just its feathery cut, with a hint of bangs grazing her eyebrows, but