Dinner is at 7:00 pm at their house, which is about a half hour drive from my place. Carla comes from farther away than me, so she’s usually the first to arrive, which is another good thing. The less I have to be alone with Mom and Dad, the better. I get there just on time. Dinner doesn’t usually start until 7:30 pm, which leaves thirty more minutes than I need to have my life examined. I pop a Dirty Little Secret with only the spit I can gather in my mouth and let it crawl its way down my throat. It feels terrible, but it’s a necessary evil to get through the next few hours.

“Baby, you’re home!” My dad always greets me warmly, even though it doesn’t last long. He still calls me baby even though I’m not. Dads like to keep the names they give their daughters forever. It doesn’t bother me, I appreciate the warmth of it all, even though I know it’s just a tease.

“I am.” He gives me a tight hug, and over his shoulders I see mom making sure all of the place settings on the table are just right, because God forbid there be a hair out of place —what would everyone think? To her left are Carla and Peter. My sister looks like she’s gulping the wine in her glass. It’s almost to the top as she tilts her head backwards and opens her mouth like she’s trying to swallow the universe. An over-poured glass of wine is a surefire indication that my parents are around. Every sip helps. Mom makes eye contact and tries to smile at me. I return the favor, even though both of us are faking it a little. It’s a smile we both want to be genuine, but know in our hearts that it isn’t.

“You look great.”

“Thanks, Dad.” That’s another thing about fathers of daughters—they tend to be overly complimentary, even when their compliments are clearly untrue. It’s like they know that their little girls will be picked apart by the world one day, and why add to the negativity?

I give Carla and Peter a hug and make my way to the woman of the hour. These dinners are my parent’s idea, but they’re really my mom’s thing. Dad loves seeing us, but he’s not as formal as all this. The place settings, the invitations and reminders via email —it all screams of mom. It all screams of formality and appearances. “Mom,” I say, reaching out my arms. “Everything looks great, as always.” I hate how fake I am right now. “The house smells amazing. A roast?”

“Yes,” she answers, pulling away from my hug and looking me up and down. “Good nose.”

Her look is the antidote to Dad’s compliments. He builds, she destroys. That’s how I grew up. I can see what’s leftover of Nana in Dad when he’s kind to me. Whatever else his shortcomings may be, he’ll always be her son. He’s a prince to the only real queen I’ve ever known. That will always count for something. “No Joel tonight?”

And there it is, the question that I’ve been dreading. That must be a new record. Everyone in the room hears her question, and I can practically feel Carla’s eyes drilling into me. The band-aid is getting pulled off. The last thing I need is to drag the torture out. “Actually, mom, we broke up.”

“When?” she asks. Her lack of reaction freaks me out, and it makes me think that Carla sold me out and told her before I got here.

“A week ago or so, I’m not even sure.”

I wait for her next words, and in the interim silence I play a little game in my head that I made up when I was a kid. It’s called guess what mom’s going to say? There are no real prizes, and I lose all the time. If she were easy to read the game wouldn’t be fun. Tonight, my guess is fake sympathy and another dead hug. Let’s see.

“Oh,” she says, like she just walked in on someone masturbating. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, lying through my teeth. “I was going to. I knew we’d talk tonight, you just beat me to it by asking about him.”

“Of course I was going to ask about him, Talia, the man’s been a guest in my home every month for a year. Didn’t you think his absence would raise a few questions?” A few things about this line of questioning. If I were one of the perps in a cop drama, this would be the moment where the friendly interrogation turned into something more sinister—when the cop revealed his true intentions towards the guy sitting under the hot lamp who he was just acting friendly towards. This would be the part where I ask for my attorney and shut the whole thing down.

“I know he’s been a guest in your home, mom. I brought him, after all. I was just trying to explain that I wasn’t hiding it from you, is all.” I’m lying, and she knows I’m lying. My mom is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

“Right,” she says, turning around and going right back to her place settings. I don’t know which is worse—the thinly veiled judgement that I was expecting, or the indifference that I wasn’t.

My dad plays his part and follows my mom into the kitchen, and all I want to do is leave. Carla walks to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t tell her, I swear.” I believe her.

“I know. Are you going to offer me one of those?” I motion to her now half full wine glass. Carla reaches around my shoulder and walks me a few feet, away from prying ears. Peter joins dad in the kitchen with the ice queen while I anticipate what my sister is going to ask me.

“Are you on anything?” she asks.

“Why? You holding?” I laugh a little too hard. There’s this internal dialogue I have when I know I’m going to lie—my therapist calls this rationalization. It’s when I wrap all of my bullshit up behind a wall of privacy and convince myself that stretching the truth or leaving out key details is okay because, well, it’s no one’s business. That’s what I’m about to do right now. “No,” I say, looking her right in the eye. “I’m not on any meds right now. The last one I took was two days ago.” And by days, Carla, I mean minutes.

“Alright, then, let’s get you straight.” She pours me a glass of the red she’s drinking, and I take a gulp like I just crossed the finish line to a marathon. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but what I do know is that it’ll help me get through this dinner.

Mom, Dad, and Peter (he’s such a good son-in-law) bring out dinner, one serving platter at a time. Mom loves Peter. He’s everything that Joel wasn’t — stable, successful, really good looking. He’s the perfect match for their chosen daughter. He also has the same name as my Dad. Maybe that’s it. And despite the fact that Carla’s Peter is several inches taller, and generally a larger man than my father, somewhere along the line everyone got into the ironic habit of calling dad ‘Big Peter’ and calling my brother in law ‘Little Peter’ whenever the two of them are in a room together. I think the whole thing is dumb cause it makes no sense. It would have been more logical to say, ‘older Peter’ and ‘younger Peter’, but I guess that would have hurt Dad’s ego. Just because I’m me, I’ll sometimes call my brother in law ‘Big Little Peter’ just to mess with everyone. It thrills mom to no end.

The only issue mom ever had with him was when he and my sister got married four years ago. It’s too fast and you’re too young, mom told Carla, even though she was younger when she married my dad and they had been dating less than a year also. That’s my mother for you, the woman never met a double standard she didn’t like. I take another gulp of wine, not stopping to care what anyone thinks.

Two hours pass by quickly, especially when you’re as drunk as I am. By my third glass of wine I’m fucked up—the alcohol is mixing with my meds and making me feel completely out of it. Carla notices—she’s leaned over twice during dinner to ask if I’m okay, and each time I shrugged her concerns off. But I’m not okay at all. After dinner we all have the cake I brought over, and I stay at the table while everyone helps clear and reset everything. I’m afraid if I get up right now I’ll fall over. Mom would love that—it would give her material for years.

“You sure you’re okay? I can drive you home. You’ve been hitting the wine a little hard. Mom and dad don’t realize but I do.”

“I’m fine, Carla.” I’m not fine, Carla, not even a little bit. Please don’t listen to me.

Mom puts the dessert I brought over out and slices a small piece for everyone. Things haven’t been that bad. Maybe Carla didn’t tell them any details about Joel, but I suspect she told them to lay off of me. She’s always been a buffer for me—running interference between me and our parents. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she said something to them about my relapse. I’m fine with it. Even so, I’m drunk as shit, and when I’m drunk I tend to blurt things out that I wish I hadn’t.

“So, mom and dad, remember when I told you about Joel before?” They just look at me. I know I’m yelling a little. They don’t answer, which means they know I’m drunk and they’re just tolerating me. “Well I met someone else. Someone better. His name is Brandon and he’s like electricity.”

“He’s like what?” my dad asks. I realize how that sounded as soon as it was out of my mouth. I decide to run that one back.

“Forget that last part, I’m sorry. But the rest is right. I met Brandon. I’m in his reading group at the bookstore.”

I can see everyone looking at me like I’m nuts. I don’t like the way it feels at all, but I took it here. Dad jumps in to be supportive and make this a little less weird. “Well that’s. . . great, baby. I’m glad you met someone, and about the reading group. What’s his name again?”

“Brandon,” Carla says, saving me the trouble of speaking any more than I have to.

“You knew about him?” my mom asks. No matter how much I try I can’t stay out of her verbal traps. Carla just jumps on the grenade.

“Yeah, mom, I know about him. From what Lia tells me he’s a great guy.”

Mom listens to Carla. She respects her. I could have brought a newspaper clipping of Brandon saving kindergarten students from a burning building, and it would have held less weight than Carla’s word. Mom smiles and nods. “Next Sunday,” she says abruptly. “Bring him over for dinner. Your father and I would love to meet him.”

I want to protest. I want to say, ‘hell no’, I want to. . . “Sure, no problem, I’m sure he’d love that.”

“Great.”

I lean into Carla and tap out. “Okay. I need you to drive me home. We need to talk on the way.”