Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige by Kathleen Gilles Seidel Read Free Book Online

was a good color for me. I have light brown hair, hazel eyes, and freckles. The colors other people said looked good on me were kind of boring.
    I grew impatient with myself. Why was I having trouble deciding? That should tell me something. And what was the point ofa dress that felt good on the legs? I would be wearing pantyhose. So I crossed the street to Lord & Taylor and paid full price on a very acceptable, very boring sleeveless black dress.
    I know that I don’t look great in black.
    Ten days before the party, Mike called again. “Your father sent in his RSVP, but he hasn’t done anything about a hotel room.”
    “Of course he hasn’t. He’s staying with me. As are Cami and Jeremy.”
    He paused. “Claudia has Cami and Jeremy on the list for the hotel. Do you have room for them?”
    I interpreted that as a criticism of my house. “Yes.”
    “You do understand that Cami and Jeremy need to be on time. They really have to be there to greet the guests. They can’t be late.”
    “They’ll be there on time.”
    Twenty minutes later he called back. “I just confirmed with Jeremy that he and Cami want to stay with you.”
    I knew that.
    “And so I spoke to Claudia”—he was sounding uncharacteristically hesitant—“and she was concerned that it would be awkward for you, having everyone stay at your house.”
    “Why would it be awkward to have my father, my son, and my future daughter-in-law staying at my house? There will be lines at the bathrooms, but that’s inconvenient, not awkward.”
    “Oh, well, you know . . . with them all going to the party and all . . .” His voice trailed off, and I got it.
    I was not invited to this party.
    I felt my mouth drop open. I wasn’t invited? How could that be? And why didn’t I know?
    Zack had opened the invitation, and he wouldn’t have done that if it had been addressed to both of us. But even if I had seen only his name on the envelope, it still wouldn’t have occurred to me that I wasn’t expected to come.
    “It did seem a little odd to me,” Mike was saying, “but Claudia said that you wouldn’t expect it, that divorced people do not expect to go to one another’s occasions.”
    I was speechless. I truly was.
    What had we promised the boys? That we would still be a family. And families don’t do this.
    Or did they? What did we know? It wasn’t as if either one of us was on a second or third divorce and so knew the rules, the guidelines for how to be divorced, for managing it perfectly.
    Although he wasn’t going to admit it, I knew that Mike had made the same mistake as I had. He too had assumed that I would be coming. So far we had been trusting our instincts about when we should go places together, and that had been working well enough. But now we were adding someone else’s judgment to the mix.
    Did I mind missing the party? I wasn’t sure. I could think only about how humiliating it would have been if I had shown up, clueless and uninvited, startling Claudia, forcing her to beg the caterers to squeeze in another place setting.
    But even if I didn’t mind my staying home, I knew who would—Jeremy and my father. Even the twelve-bedroom Zander-Browns might find it awkward. Cami’s family was flying in from New York on Saturday morning. They were coming straight to my house for lunch. “We’ll see you tonight,” they would say after lunch, and I would smile blandly. “I won’t be joining you. Your hostess did not care to invite me.”
    This wasn’t going to reflect badly on me. Claudia was the one who would look terrible. I had the moral high ground here; I was the Offended Against. I could see myself enjoying this every bit as much as going to the actual party. I just wish that I had bought the dress with scarlet and magenta poppies. If I was going to get all dressed up with no place to go, I might as well be in a dress I liked.
    I knew that I needed to warn Jeremy that I wasn’t going to theparty. Firstborns do not like to be