My father is newly, blissfully remarried— and I can’t stand it

IT

was his grin that unraveled me.

So wide, I almost expected a cat to appear.

I blinked hard. Possibly my brain was half addled, what with the noxious perfume produced by the roses stuffed in every corner.

Three-quarters addled, by so much heavy. My childhood home, unrecognizable. Smothered by layers upon layers of suffocation.

Brocade curtains. Velvet tablecloths. Frames and figurines, miniatures and ornaments and so much clutter I couldn’t or wouldn’t identify.

That, paired with Friday night postprandial heaviness, and I was bound to hallucinate.

I turned to Aunt Dee, trying not to wince at the chair she was ensconced in. Pink and gold?

“Where did you say you’re going?”

Her eyes danced, eyebrows flexing upward as she beamed the smile that had drawn all the neighborhood kids to love her, me included.

“We’re off to Alaska next month! Didn’t Ta tell you?”

I glanced at my father. No, “Ta” hadn’t breathed a word.

Even now, he sat silently, unwrapping a mint thin. But grinning.

I looked over at Shiffy, but she was searching for a tissue. My sister’s allergies, right. In this ridiculous hothouse, what should I have expected?

“Shiffy?”

She sneezed twice, violently enough to set aquiver the teardrop crystals belonging to the chandelier hanging low over our heads.

I waited until she had finished destroying the makeup around her nose.

“Tatty and—” I stopped, because I still called her Aunt Dee in my head. I was certainly not going along with Savti. “They’re going on a trip, did you hear about that?”

I looked around to see if our husbands were listening, but nope. They had been swallowed by the massively stuffed armchairs on the other side of the dining room, legs sprawled over frills. I could see a hand holding a crystal tumbler; heard a low laugh. So they were alive.

Shiffy sneezed again. Tatty started on another mint.

A nameless something crept up my throat.

See, I had been doing just fine in all this ridiculousness. Fine.

So the cute neighborhood widow whom everyone loves — and forgets to feel sorry for because she’s been alone for so long and manages her life better than anyone — made news. She’s finally engaged, after 30 years! Isn’t that wonderful.

It’s more than wonderful and we’re all walking around with goofy blissful grins, because it’s just the cutest shidduch. Across the street!

Even now, thinking about it, heat flooded my cheeks — not all of it from the floral carpet marinating us in carbon dioxide.

Cutest shidduch! The Schuster widower, how perfect! Sure, both kids married. Poor man, wife ill for so long.

Sure, she’ll move into his house; why should she stay in that tiny apartment she’s lived in her whole life when he has a mansion?

Sure, Aunt Dee would move into the home of my youth and turn it into a massive tea cozy.

Slowly but surely, the neat, clean home Mommy had meticulously kept was being buried under more frippery and frappery than any human could possibly call normal. Gold tassels. Pleats and ruches and corpulent couches.