Fed up

honor for me to stand in for her father.” He smiled and went out the back door.
    I mixed up a yogurt dip for the fruit platter and then put puff pastry shells in the oven to bake. They’d eventually be filled with a sweet cream filling and topped with strawberries.
    At about quarter of eleven, when I was finally finishing up, my mother answered the doorbell and let Robin and Nelson in. Ushering them into the kitchen, she said, “Chloe, your friends are here.”
    Not friends, exactly.
    “You’ll never believe it,” my mother exclaimed, “but Robin and I know each other!”
    Nelson, hiding behind his camera, panned to my face.
    I said, “Oh, really? How?”
    “Robin produced a show on gardening at a house where your father and I had designed the landscape. Small world, isn’t it?”
    “That was what? Two years ago?” Robin asked.
    “I think so,” Mom agreed.
    “Come on, Nelson,” Robin said. “Let’s get some footage of the rooms and the decorations.“ She directed her cameraman to the dining room. Robin wore a bright floral dress, and an eighties-inspired wide white belt hugged her small waist. She stomped away with Nelson, and her skirt flounced decisively.
    A few minutes later, at five before eleven, the doorbell rang again, and I welcomed Naomi, who’d supervised my school internship during the past year, into the living room. When Naomi engulfed me in her usual bear hug, I had to blow her long braids out of my mouth. Since I’d known her, Naomi had chosen a version of the Bo Derek hairstyle; her entire head of hip-length hair was braided into chunky strands.
    Naomi barely knew Adrianna, but Adrianna had so few female friends that I’d had to pad the guest list. Including men wouldn’t have worked, since almost all of Adrianna’s male friends were ex-boyfriends. The women who disliked Adrianna were fools. They envied her looks and were put off by what they saw as her haughty manner. Little did they know what a loyal, generous person she really was. In any case, Naomi belonged at the shower and at the wedding because she’d written the letter of recommendation for me that was required by the commonwealth before issuing a Certificate of Solemnization. Attesting in writing to my “high standard of character,” as the instructions phrased it, had made Naomi feel intimately involved with everything about Adrianna and Owen’s wedding and procreation. Among other things, she’d mistakenly gained the impression that Adrianna and Owen were following her advice about what she called “alternative birthing” methods. Naomi, who was a big fan of the alternative, the natural, and the New Age in all its forms, had had a long conversation with Adrianna about the benefits of acupressure, hypnosis, water birth, and guided imagery during labor. It was typical of Naomi to have misinterpreted the gasps of horror that Adrianna emitted during the discussion as exclamations of enthusiasm. In reality, Naomi’s arguments in favor of drug-free birth had done nothing except fuel Ade’s desire for a super-strength epidural.
    “What an exciting day!” Naomi was glowing with enthusiasm. “Wait until you see the gift bag I have for our mother-to-be! It’s full of aromatherapy oils that promote relaxation during labor. And all sorts of other goodies! In a bag made from natural hemp, I should add. Just like my dress.” Naomi spun around, sending her braids flying horizontally off her head while showing off her clay-colored pinafore. I ducked before I got smacked in the face but complimented her on her politically correct attire. “What a beautiful house!” she exclaimed after her three hundred sixty-degree spins.
    My parents’ stucco house did look wonderful. In keeping with Adrianna’s fall theme, my mother and I had run red, orange, and brown ribbons along the traditional Spanish archways that ran between rooms on the first floor. Last year, my parents had refinished the wood floors in the large living room and had put in terra-cotta and decorative hand-painted tiles in the dining room to enhance the style of the house. The walls had been painted in soft earth colors, and at times I felt as if I were actually in New Mexico instead of in a Massachusetts suburb.
    Adrianna arrived dressed entirely in hot pink, her nails painted to match her above-the-knee maternity dress and her chunky shoes. “I swear on my baby’s life that I’m going to kill my mother,” she hissed into my ear as I hugged