Page 19 of Sister of the Bride

“Oh, I love her!” Mom says.

“Who’s Dr. Nora?” Nonna asks.

“She’s a self-help guru! She has, like, seven million Instagram followers and a bunch of books. She’s friends with Oprah, and I heard she helped Serena Williams before her last French Open, which shewon,” I explain. I’m a little surprised Nonna hasn’t heard of her, but Nonna also can’t figure out how to set an alarm on her phone, so the podcast app is probably a little beyond her.

“Should I have worn a nicer dress?” Mom asks, looking down at the floral number she selected. It was one ofsevendifferent dresses she tried on this morning—well, four dresses and three pants/blouse options, because apparently we need to act like we’reallmarrying into the Bryan family, not just Polly.

“Please be cool,” Polly says through gritted teeth, her words running together in a last-ditch plea as the front door swings open.

I expect to see a housekeeper, or maybe a butler in a pinstriped waistcoat and tails like the guy on the Monopoly box. I expect to see white walls and minimalist furniture that no one actually sits on. Based on the lawn alone, I expect anArchitectural Digestspread or at least something worthy of the pages ofVogue. But those expectations are blown to bits as soon as Mackenzie’s parents open the door and a festival of color appears behind them.

“Welcome!” Dr. Nora Martinez-Bryan says. Just like in her Instagram posts, she’s wearing a flowy, classy linen ensemble in vibrant colors, her hair cut in a shiny black bob. She justlookslike someone who has the answers to all life’s questions and will gladly allow you to sit at her knee while she shares them with you over a steaming cup of tea.

“We’re so glad to meet you, Marinos!” A dark-skinned bald man with a salt-and-pepper beard, who I assume is Mackenzie’s father, welcomes us in with great big bear hugs. “I’m Frantz, and this is my wife, Nora.”

“It’s so wonderful to meet you,” Mom says, stepping through the door and smoothing out the imaginary wrinkles in her dress. “Your home is just lovely.”

And truly, it is. The walls are painted rich jewel tones and are covered with framed photos, art, and hanging sculptures. The sweeping mahogany staircase is carpeted in a plush wine-colored runner that bears signs of years of feet hustling up and down. The living room to the right is filled with mismatched, well-loved furniture that begs you to flop down on it.

And there are books everywhere.

Everywhere—bursting from bookshelves, piled in teetering stacks on tables, discarded on the expensive-looking Persian rugs. Nora even has one tucked under her arm, which she was apparently reading just before answering the door. She quickly places it on the nearby entryway table, dog-earing the page first, before pulling Polly into a hug.

“So good to see you, mi querida,” Nora says before stepping back and welcoming the rest of us into her home. “We got a chance to visit the girls this summer in London. It was a real treat, and we fell in love with Polly just as fast as Mackenzie did! My daughter, by the way, will be down in just a moment. Please excuse her—she’s negotiating a deal, and we are still working very hard on establishing a proper work-life balance.”

“Oh, she’s just young and hungry,” Frantz says with a chuckle, and while I figure in this she must take after her father, I’m still hard-pressed to see how uptight, type-A, prim Mackenzie could have come from either of these people. Everything about them is joy personified. Mackenzie seems like she’d have to have joy shocked out of her with a cattle prod. “Please come in.”

We all shuffle after Frantz and Nora into the living room, where we settle into seats that are as comfortable and welcoming as I suspected. Frantz ambles over to the bookcase in the corner, and that’s when I realize the house isn’t full ofonlybooks. There are also records. Lots and lots of records. Frantz flips through a shelf and pulls one out, sliding the vinyl out of the sleeve.

“I hope you don’t mind—I always love to set a mood,” he says with a mischievous grin, then drops the needle on Prince’sPurple Rain.

“Dad is deep in a Prince phase at the moment,” Mackenzie says as she marches down the stairs—truly, the womanmarchesas if she’s never been relaxed for a moment in her life. “I hope you’re all ready to party like it’s 1999.”

“Prince is not a phase, my darling,” Frantz replies. “Prince is a lifestyle.”

“My husband has been collecting vinyl since before the CD boom,” Nora explains. “It’s his passion.”

“I was doing it before it was cool,” he says.

“My dad, the original hipster,” Mackenzie quips. She walks over and takes a seat next to Polly, slipping her hand into hers and doing that thumb thing again. This time it bothers me a little less, or maybe that’s just because of the insanely cozy wingback chair I’m sitting in. I’m about to ask Dr. Nora if she ever needs a house sitter, because I’ll do it for free.

“We all must have vices, and vinyl is mine,” Frantz says, dropping into another wingback chair with a shrug.

“Me, I like baseball and medical dramas,” Nonna says.

“Books, obviously,” Dr. Nora says, gesturing around at her library. “Also gardening.”

“Yes, I was just noticing your yard,” Mom says, moving to the window to peer out. “It’s just lovely.”

“It’s my pride and joy,” Nora replies, sharing a Cheshire grin with Polly that clearly has some kind of inside joke buried within it. “Would you like a tour?”

I have never wanted anything less, since it would require me getting out of this chair, but everyone else seems jazzed to go look at plants, and so off we troop into the morning heat. All but Mackenzie, who stops short at the sound of her ringing phone and quickly peels off to answer it. Polly doesn’t seem to mind that her fiancée is spending the first meeting of their families on the phone, but it bugs me. I have to work to arrange my expression into something other than a scowl, Toby’s warning about how loud my face speaks ringing in my ears.

I don’t know a thing about gardening, but I have to admit that the yard is impressive. I half listen as Dr. Nora talks about gingkoes and fig trees, peonies and daffodils and roses. Plants are nice and all, but the thought of having to keep something other than myself alive makes me want to take a ten-year nap. Who has time for all that watering and pruning? I got a basil plant for my windowsill once. It was dead within a week, and I remembered why they sell fresh herbs at the grocery store.

I hear the sound of bubbling water, then come upon a pond the size of a sedan in the middle of the sloping yard, surrounded by natural-looking stones. A tangle of brightly colored fish the size of small cats comes rushing toward the sound of feet, flashes of orange, yellow, black, and silver swimming back and forth, rushing for the rocks.

“They’re like dogs,” Frantz says as I step closer to the edge. The fish scramble as close to me as they can get, and I get the sense that if they could grow legs, they’d climb out of the pond and beg right at my toes. “They get excited at the first sign that someone has food. Want to feed them?”

---