She raised her eyebrows. For a moment, her face lost its usual expression of granite certainty. — I’m sorry, what exactly is this? — she said slowly, clipping each word.
She turned to Paula. — Are these your new standards of hospitality? We drove across town.
Where’s dinner? Where’s the basic respect for your husband’s family? Vanessa snorted and crossed her arms.
— Mom, I told you. She doesn’t think much of us. Invited us to an empty table. College girls in a shared apartment do better than this.
Mike, pressed against the doorframe, was turning paler by the second. — Mom, it’s just… we didn’t get to it. I mean, Paula didn’t get to it.
— Didn’t get to it? — Eleanor thundered, fixing her daughter-in-law with a hard stare. — A wife sits at home, does her little tutoring on the side, and can’t manage to put dinner on the table for her mother-in-law? Paula, is this sabotage or just plain rudeness?
Paula calmly pulled out a chair and sat down. She had no intention of defending herself. She intended to play this one by her own rules.
— No sabotage, Eleanor. Her voice rang out surprisingly clear in the tense silence. — Two weeks ago Mike informed me that birthdays are, quote, “a marketing scam.”
And that giving gifts is for suckers and a waste of money. He did not buy me a gift. Eleanor blinked in confusion.
Vanessa’s smirk disappeared at once. In their strange but rigid value system, a man being cheap on an official family occasion was bad form. They might dislike the daughter-in-law, but the appearance of a proper family had to be maintained.
— He didn’t buy you anything? Eleanor slowly turned toward her son. — Mike, what exactly am I hearing?
— Oh, come on, Mom, it’s all just consumerism, — Mike started fumbling, shifting from foot to foot. — I was explaining that we need to be more practical. — Hold on, that’s not even the best part of our practical system, — Paula continued, taking control of the room.
— Mike decided we should split the food budget to save money. The funds set aside for his meals were gone three days ago. He bought expensive steaks, fancy sausage, and ate every bit of it himself.
I buy groceries for myself and our son with my own income, so yes, the table is empty. He invited you over, but he had no intention of paying for dinner himself, and he had already burned through his limit…
