DINNER WITH RICHARD & CORRINE
The restaurant was full when we arrived, with well-heeled Washingtonians and an international assortment of VIPs spouting conviviality over tapas plates of garlic shrimp and miniature omeletes. Richard approached the host’s station, a wrought iron stand tiled in bright Spanish colors, and tapped at his name, displayed upside down on the reservations list. The host, a gorgeous Brazilian woman in a halter dress, pantomimed her explanation: our table was still occupied. Everything is crazy, no?

Richard frowned.

Almost immediately, a gratis round of cocktails appeared.

"Still trying to drink martinis?" my mother said, sipping her scotch with a mischievous look.

"I'm trying to eat more olives," I said. "What I really want is a martini glass full of olives, with a splash of vermouth." What I really really want, I thought, is a cigarette, and noticed that my index and middle fingers were attempting to smoke my skewered olives. I dropped them back into the drink.

A distinguished looking man in a gray suit approached, his careful haircut and courtly demeanor reeking of old school diplomacy.

"Richard," he said, in a crackling Latin accent. "Would you like to join us?" On the last part of the sentence he tipped a hand toward my mother and me, indicating that a beautiful flower like my mother should not be required to stand about on her sling backs for even a moment.

"My wife Corrine," Richard said. "Eduardo Passarona."

My mother and Eduardo Passarona shook hands.

"And my daughter, Gabrielle," Richard added.

It had long ago been decided that the "step" would be left off of daughter for the purposes of political introductions — family friends knew I wasn't Richard's daughter, and anyone else who discovered that fact might assume he was being generous, or that he and my mother and I were a real family. But I knew, and Richard and my mother knew, that neither of these notions, planted in the mind of a new acquaintance, were true. We were a model family, an example of a family: a facade.

This impression of stability was reinforced by the fact that Richard looked like the head on a coin. A nicely shaped head, which made his remaining fringe of hair seem dignified, as if hair was superfluous, anyhow. A jaw you could see the right angles in, patrician nose and grey eyes with flints of yellow that glowed when he got angry. All of the men on horses in the city, the bronze statues of civil war generals and the like, vaguely resembled Richard. He had an air of command that instilled immediate respect, because it was underscored, written in the lines on his face, with loss: three years before my parents had divorced, Richard's first wife, Jane, had died.

In the diplomatic corps, divorce bore a taint: it represented a failure to solve a problem. But remarrying after the death of a spouse was sanctioned, encouraged — every man needed a woman, and Richard's loneliness made him even more respectable. Due to some deep double standard, Tom bore all the stigma attached to my parent's divorce. His goofy good looks were further evidence against his ability to sustain relationships or find workable solutions: he seemed slightly feckless, with his Kenneth Branagh flop of waving blond hair, slightly protruding eyes and booze-ruddy cheeks.

"Thank you so much for the invitation," I heard Richard say. "But Gabrielle has just returned home from New York, and we have some family business to attend to. We wouldn't want to bore you with it."

Eduardo nodded and smiled, looking at me knowingly, and I blanched. What family business was that?

"Family business?" I said, after Mr. Passarona returned to his table.

"Red herring," Richard said. "He's a terrible bore. The only way to fend him off is to threaten to be more boring."

We stood, sipping our cocktails. I looked suspiciously at my mother and at Richard. Ordinarily, they waited for a few days to tackle some unpleasant topic, with the reflexive secretiveness of government officials. When whatever issue they were stewing on was finally presented, they'd formed an inescapable verbal dragnet, woven out of the moral superiority of people who had never fucked up, or at the very least, never been caught.

"No family business?" I said, attempting to sound cavalier.

My mother's face opened and clicked closed like a pocketbook, and she exhaled a small sigh.

"Mom?"

"We'll discuss it once we're seated. Richard, can you ask again about the table?"

Richard approached the hostess station again, and I imagined seeing him from the other side of the line, grey eyes and stern beak, his tall, broad-shouldered frame moving forward with slow deliberation. He was solid state. At a certain point in any negotiation, Richard could assume a Terminator-like weightiness that bridged no further debate: we would be seated, right now.

The hostess sensed his approach, her smile evaporating.

"Yes, Mr. Watson, the people, they are paying the check right now. We'll have you seated in two minutes." She gave a passing waiter the hairy eyeball. He glanced at her, then at Richard, and pressed on, the parties check in his hand. She brought the smile back, gave her bias cut dress a little tug, and Richard became flesh again, making a jovial face accompanied by a two-handed variation on her earlier gesture, which said, "things aren't so crazy, no?"

My mother set her drink down on the table, and unfurled her napkin.

"That wasn't such a long wait," she said.

"That was five minutes," I said.

"It seemed like more," my mother replied, giving her glossy bobbed hair a little shake. "I'm famished."

My mind was scrolling up and down a list of my most recent shortfalls, in search of the topic of the "family business" that would probably come up between the first and second courses, anxious anticipation being a commonly used tool for unhinging the enemy of the power broker. I couldn't locate anything that wasn't already a much discussed problem.

"It's nothing you've done," my mother said.

"I’d like a pinot," she addressed to the space between Richard and the waiter, who was now hovering over us, in tight tuxedo pants and a lavender button down shirt that set off his smooth dark skin and wavy, jet black hair.

"We'll have a bottle of the Fess Parker," Richard said. "Gabi, you'll drink red?"

"Yup," I said, and smiled desperately at the waiter, to make up for my parent's cavalier behavior toward anyone serving them; the good manners that were the foundation of their success did not trickle down.

"You'd tip twenty percent if he dumped the food in your lap," my mother said when the waiter departed.

"Well, he is awfully handsome," I said, dodging her, due to the dangerous proximity of the subject of money and service industry jobs. I felt conversationally out of shape, under prepared for the bobbing and weaving that accompanied a meal with my mother. My ability to rebound, to get off the ropes, was severely impaired by a crushingly loud interior monologue: nothing about me was genuine. Nothing about me was me — I was just an amalgam of other people's borrowed traits. I was a fake.

"He is that," my mother agreed.

"Alright, ladies," Richard said. "Enough about our waiter."

Something I found simultaneously endearing and a bit creepy about Richard was

his jealousy over my mother's attentions.

"He's carried a torch for her since I introduced them," Tom had said when he got news of their engagement. "I could just tell. So could poor Jane, believe you me."

"Believe you me," was the sort of jocular, wink and a punch expression Tom used when he was drinking beer, part of what my mother called his "Irishness." In Tom's mind, he and the departed Mrs. Watson were lonely allies.

My mother arched both eyebrows and gave Richard a coquettish look.

"Well, we might as well discuss it now," Richard said.

I felt myself curdling under the rosy glow cast over our table by one of several tasteful glass lanterns .

The waiter returned, brandished the bottle of Fess Parker at Richard, opened it, and poured.

"What can I get for you?" he asked my mother, who'd folded her menu decisively. My appetite was greatly diminished. I stared at the menu, mystified by the descriptions.

"Miss?" the waiter said. Anxiety grouped the words in nonsensical clusters: pork ribbon pink chop. Shrimp basted garlic ball.

I pointed at an item, and looked beseechingly at him. He took a step back, holding his pen inches from his guest book.

"That," I said, crudely.

"Mmmhm," the waiter said, suddenly a psychiatrist taking silent notes.

"Would you like anything else?"

"No thank you," I said. He departed, and I noticed with irritation that my mother looked on the verge of laughing.

“So, tell me about this job at the theater,” she said, and I unconsciously checked a box in my head: showtime. There was a version of my mother’s mothering that was reserved exclusively for public situations in which she could appear to be supportive and concerned; a version I’d always noted occurred while there was an audience.

But Richard no longer qualified, not after nearly nine years of marriage. Her display of motherly interest was channeled through the same mannerisms that accompanied her hostessing at a cocktail party — to the unacquainted eye, it was nearly impossible to discern that she was just passing through in pursuit of her own agenda. I had to be cautious, too; if I were to throw caution to the wind and respond to her questions as though they were those of someone without a master plan I was failing to accomplish, I’d leave some soft part of myself exposed, a winter rabbit in a summer field. My usual response, in company, was to become politely closed for business, only offering the minimum of information. Tonight, with the as yet undisclosed “family business” hovering over me, and a vague misgiving about Tom, I already felt unhinged.

“I don’t know much about it yet,” I said. “I guess I’ll be helping out on their next production.”

“Well, surely they’ve given you some sort of job description,” she said.

“I’m not sure it qualifies as a job,” I said, swiveling my upper body away from her, and resting my elbow on the table. “It’s more like an internship.”

“An internship?” she said, pleased with the official sounding language. Now she could say I was doing an internship, an honorable enough way to not get paid in D.C. – where for the hot months of July and August the whole city balanced precariously on the inexperienced enthusiasm of interns: in law firms, think tanks, government agencies. If she left off “at a theater” it might be okay.

“A behind-the-scenes look at local theater,” I added in a newscaster voice. This, she could not use in conversation with family friends, whose children were all already rescuing endangered species or skipping off to medical school.

Richard laughed, with an odd note of approval. A great believer in the efficacy of the secret maneuver, Richard thought wanting to be on stage was a little unseemly, though when called, he could occupy the spot light with a king’s demeanor. He preferred to control matters invisibly, Oz behind the curtain.

“Everything important happens behind the scenes,” he said, and my mother glanced at him.

“Not if you want applause,” she said, flipping her gaze back to me, her expression dry and casual, as though she hadn’t just given me a punch to the kidney.

“Who needs applause,” I countered, spinning around in the ring to face my corner.

She ignored that, waiting for me to open myself up again.

“I don’t need applause,” I added, in a tone that suggested maybe she did. I know you are, but what am I?

“So,” my mother said, sounding tired, having been paired with such an unworthy opponent. She’d do a little gratuitous footwork for the stands. “What happens backstage at the Garage? I know they did a production of the Rhinoceros last season — good avante garde stuff.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Ionesco?” she said.

“Right, right,” I said. If a woman were to be properly armed with culture, she should be able to remember names and titles.

I dipped bread into oil, and doggedly washed it back with wine, a blurry collision of rote movements. The carousel rotation of customers and staff seemed to speed up my pulse as the food settled in my stomach. Clouds of indecipherable language drifted by, snatches of Arabic and Italian. The waiter returned with three small plates, our first course, and I realized I’d ordered escargot. Small, black lumps shaped like earplugs sizzled in a hot terra cotta dish.

“Ugh,” I said.

“This is not what you wished?” the waiter asked.

How many different ways can I answer that question? I thought.

“No, it’s fine,” I said.

“So,” my mother said, smoothing her napkin in her lap.

“Hmm?” I said. I was properly disoriented, ready for the showstopping roundhouse.

She leaned forward, and said in a low voice, “Richard is being groomed for a very important position.”

“Ah,” I said.

She smiled the contented smile of someone whose hard work and dedication has been finally rewarded.

I tried to look as though I understood what position she was referring to, and nodded affirmatively at Richard.

“Congratulations,” I said cautiously.

“We think its best to wait until its official to be more specific,” she said.

“My security advisor,” Richard said, smiling at my mother, allowing her his victory. I flashed briefly on the speechifying that would accompany his appointment: “…and I couldn’t have done it without…”

“Well, that’s great,” I said, a bit loudly, waiting for news of my reprieve to communicate from my brain to my stomach, which still churned violently. At the tables behind us, Eduardo Passarona and company were pretending not to observe our “family business.” Richard made a move I’d seen him make at countless dinners, when he was ready to shift the topic of discussion: he inhaled, crossed his legs, and swept some imaginary lint from his knee.