Page 1 of Fathers of the Bride
Prologue
Kelly Kettering-Lane
Growingup with two fathers in L.A. was not a big deal. Yes, there was the occasional uberdude who tried to make a lame joke about some sitcom from like a zillion years ago. I don’t even know why that was supposed to make me feel crappy. It never did.
Honestly, I’ve had more trouble with the fact that my name sounds more like a street address than a real live human being. That’s been pointed out a few hundred thousand times and it always makes me blush.
Yes, if you dig around on the Internet you can find right-wing trolls who claim to have data proving that I suffered terribly when two gay men snatched me out of foster care, dressed me in Baby Versace, and sent me off to private preschool. The horrid abuse continued with day school at the Hollywood Schoolhouse garbed in Little Marc Jacobs, followed by middle and upper school at Harvard-Westlake where—my social conscience having sprung to life—I refused to wear anything that didn’t come from the Goodwill. Much to my fathers’ chagrin.
Capping off the complete and total destruction of my life, my fathers sent me to college. Such evil! I picked UCLA refusing to even consider applying to USC. They retaliated by giving me a brand-new BMW 228i, which I traded in on a 1999 Volvo, giving the leftover money to Habitat for Humanity. That was a tense Sunday dinner.
Seriously, the only truly terrible thing my fathers ever did to me was separating during my senior year of college. According to the trolls this should have been thebestthing that ever happened to me. They were wrong. It wasn’t. It so wasn’t.
And then there was my wedding… my awful, horrific, disastrous wedding worthy of Dino De Laurentiis. (BA: Women’s Studies, Film History minor.)
Of course, my apocalyptic wedding would not surprise anyone in my generation. After all, our parents are the ones who’ve plundered the world, bringing it to the brink of destruction; compared to that, ruining a wedding is a piece of cake.
1
Miles Kettering-Lane
Kelly was comingto lunch and I had no idea what to make. Was she still vegan? Was she gluten-free? Did she eat dairy? I had so much trouble remembering. As a precaution, I made my classic barbecued veggie salad. I did grill some chicken—for me—but I was nervous about putting it on the table. Sometimes just the sight of meat would set Kelly off. Or at least it had when she was four.
That’s when she’d announced she would no longer eat meat. At four-years-old! Absolutely absurd. At the time, we did what any good parents would do. We lied. We told her bologna, salami and pork were all made from vegetables. It was simple really, all we had to do was avoid meats that were named too closely to the animal they came from: chicken, turkey, fish. But then, alas, the children at preschool spilled the beans about the facts of food.
Over the years, my daughter’s dietary choices ebbed and flowed, often influenced by whomever she was close to: a best friend, a beloved teacher, a boyfriend—thankfully not until senior year of high school—or a girlfriend—not until sophomore year of college. Still not sure if that was youthful experimentation or something that might stick. Not that it matters, of course. I’m fine if she likes girls or boys or both or everything all at once. As long as she’s happy and everything’s consensual, I’m cool. The cool dad, that’s me.
Anyway, I was saying that my daughter was now twenty-four and I had no clue what to serve her. Yes, I know, I could always ask. But she’d thrown me for a loop when she called and said she wanted to come to lunch.
“Come to lunch?” I said, my voice rising an octave. “What? I mean, you’re in—are you back? When did you— Where are— Why aren’t you here?”
“I’ll explain everything on Saturday.”
“No, tell me now.”
But she didn’t. She said good-bye and abruptly hung up. It was all terribly confusing. She’d joined the Peace Corps after college—who knew they still existed, right? I certainly didn’t. Anyway, she’d been in Malawi—a peaceful but dreadfully poor African country—for more than two years. I’d known that she was coming back soon but I’d expected to pick her up at LAX and bring her home, to her old room in the house she grew up in, where she technically still lived. None of this made any sense. Lunch on Saturday?
Oh my God, she was with her father. Herotherfather. Him. She’d called him first. He’d picked her up at the airport and now she was staying with him. The worst had happened. The thing I’d feared since the separation. My little girl had chosen, and she hadn’t chosen me. She’d chosenhim.
I wanted to kill him. And that horrible boyfriend of his—Raj.Honestly, the end of a relationship gives you an understanding of double homicide no one should ever have. But there it was. I wanted to kill them both. Though, I wasn’t sure how to best go about it. I mean, if I wanted to get away with it. And Iwouldwant to get away with it. That was a given. I wondered if UCLA gave an extension course in how to kill your spouse.
The house. When I wasn’t worried about what to feed my own daughter, or how to kill my ex, I worried about the house. Andy Lane and I bought the house a few years after the Northridge quake brought real estate prices crashing down. It was located on Finch Circle above Sunset in The Bird Streets and was a four-bedroom Spanish-style home clinging to the side of a Hollywood hill. There were two floors with breathtaking views of the basin, four large lawn-covered terraces making up the backyard, three bathrooms and a powder room, a rec room, a den, an eat-in kitchenanda formal dining room.
After we separated, Andy and I agreed to keep the house until Kelly got back from Malawi. Which meant we’d also postponed the actual, final, divorce. We’d made a legal separation agreement and put the rest on hold.
But now, now that Kelly was back and apparently not living in the house, we’d finally sell it and finalize the divorce. The problem with that was I didn’t want to sell my house. I could barely even think about it without triggering the first signs of a panic attack. Just the idea of it sent me running for an Ativan.
If Kelly wasn’t living here, then there was no reason for us to keep the house. We’d have to sell it. And I’d have to move—to a Beverly Hills adjacent condo. Or, worse, an up-and-coming neighborhood. In the valley!
Not that I couldn’t make the best of it. I’d made a career of making the best of it. You probably don’t remember, but I had one of those style shows on the Home & Crafts network when they were just starting out.The Happy Home. No? Doesn’t ring a bell? I used to do fun segments like “Things to Do with Dryer Lint.” I made placemats. Stylish but inevitably gray.
And then, for a while, I was appearing on all the morning shows with helpful household hints. I had a line at K-Mart until they collapsed. And the Boston Store until they folded. And Carson Pirie Scott until—well, you get the picture. Eventually, no one would touch me. I mean, seriously, none of that wasmyfault. I’m a style guru not a corporate raider.
Anyway, I still do books and blogs and vlogs and the occasional appearance. I’ll be signing books at the mall in Sherman Oaks next month… if you’re not too busy.
Oh God, where was I? Oh yes. I had just finished setting the patio table on the upper terrace, which we call the dining terrace, when I heard the front door open and close. Kelly was home. I rushed into the house and met her in the foyer. I stopped to take her in—she was sun-darkened and thin in a pair of khaki shorts, calf-high socks, a pressed white shirt, and an over-sized African-print scarf wrapped twice around her neck. Her hair needed an emergency trip to a Beverly Hills salon, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. Maybe I could talk her into WeHo. Or even plain old Hollywood.
Saying, “Daddy,” she ran into my arms. Squeezing her tight, I couldn’t help but notice how small and fragile she seemed. I wondered, as I had many times in the last two years, how we could have let our little girl travel halfway around the world. I breathed in the smell of her—she’d changed something, her cologne or her soap, I wasn’t sure. She managed to smell exotic and homey all at once. I didn’t want to let go of her.
