High Tea

Lunch at the Tchaikovsky Restaurant in St. Petersburg, Russia

"Dad, please, do it for me! For God's sake, you look like some kind of derelict! Your pants are stained and baggy and your plaid shirt is torn! ", pleaded the carefully groomed fortyish woman, as she kept tugging at her black skirt and smoothing her long emerald green silk sleeves.

 "I ain't, I told you!",  the old man said, his brows almost joined together tight and hard.

Rocking in his swivel chair by the bay window, his hands crossed over his stomach made rotund by too many beers, his back to his daughter, he is staring at the snow flakes splattering noiselessly against the pane. The clock chimes 4:45, Peter is due at 5PM. The room is filling with the aroma of the steeping Earl Grey tea.

At least he showered and shaved this morning, she thought pacing the floor, as she does when her exasperation with her father gets the best of her. What on earth has happened to him since Mom died? Her English sense of decorum would be outraged by the way he looks today! He's become a recluse, looks like hell, and talks and behaves like a bloody caveman!

 "And pullleeeez! Don't talk like that! Why do you insist on sounding like a hillbilly? You never did when Mom was here!"

Chewing on her left thumb nail, she walked to the kitchen to get the small salmon mousse and cucumber sandwiches for the high tea she had planned for Peter to meet her father. Just as Mom would have done ... 

"Well, Missy, ain't it too bad that you'll be ashamed of your old man again. You cain't expect me to change at 75, you know!", he said rocking and swiveling in a constant, hypnotic motion, his face still closed tight.

Returning from the kitchen, she fingered and re-arranged and fussed with the china tea set she had laid out earlier for that special English ritual. Her father is still staring, rocking, swiveling, and facing the window, his back to her.

He's doing it again! God, how I wish Mom were still here, she thought pulling again at her skirt and fidgeting with her necklace. Trying to slow her pacing, she remembered to take those deep, calming breaths she learned in yoga class. The old geezer drives me crazy! Why is he doing this? Isn't he happy that I found a man I love and who's good to me?

 "Dad, do you know that you really hurt my feelings when you don't care about what's important to me? Doesn't what I think or feel matter to you at all any more? Dad!!! Peter is important to me! He'll be here any minute. Please! Go put on the trousers and shirt I ironed for you. They're on your bed."

"There you go again, Missy! I told you I ain't fussing over no fancy stockbroker!" The rocking continues. The nailbiting resumes.

"Dad, this is the man I am going to marry, and I really wish you'd look presentable to meet him. Don't you understand?"

To keep her hands busy, she again fussed with the tea cups, silverware, sandwiches and pastries she had already repositioned several times on the sideboard by the clock.

"Oh yeah, well, why should he want to meet me, anyway?" snarled her father, swiveling around to look at her. " He ain't gonna live with me! He ain't taking me away, Missy. I ain't going nowhere. I'm staying right here where I belong."

The old man span around to again face the window, and resumed his staring at the snowflakes which are less visible in the falling darkness.

There he goes again! Is he ever going to get used to my having my own life? I can't live with him forever, for God's sake! Oh, I really can't stand this any more, she thought, her stomach doing their usual somersaults. We've been at this tea thing for over a week. And now it's 4:50, and he is still not dressed! What a fool I am! Why the hell am I bothering with this cantankerous old man? Who cares whether my father gets to meet his future son-in-law? Why am I inflicting this on all of us, including Peter who certainly isn't looking forward to the experience? OK, I give up!

Her pacing stopped and her hands dropped to her sides. Several deep breaths made her shoulders go up and down slowly and rhythmically, and she sat quietly for a few minutes on the other chair by the window, the one her mother used to sit in. The very feel of the blue crushed velvet, worn thin and shiny in spots from age and wear, soothed her anxiety and frustration.

She stood abruptly and walked across the living-room toward the study, and said:
"OK, Dad, let's forget it, then. Have it your way. I'll just call him on his cell phone and tell him not to come."

The rocking stopped, and the old man slowly pivoted around to watch his daughter as she went into the study. Then in a flash, the old man was out of his chair to follow her, fussing with his shirt and looking more ornary than ever.

"Wait a minute, Missy! What do you mean, you don't want me to meet him?! "

"I didn't say that, Dad. Of course I want you to meet him. Why do you think I invited him for high tea? But obviously you don't want to go through the trouble of looking and acting civilized for the occasion, so we'll forget it. I guess it was a bad idea in the first place."  Facing the window, she started dialing.

"A bad idea? Why was it a bad idea? Oh I see! I ain't good enough to meet your new beau, is that it?" said the old man as he stormed out of the study and across the living room and disappeared into his bedroom.

With a puzzled frown, followed by the beginning of a faint smile, her taught face started relaxing. She sighed, put the receiver down and returned to the living-room. My new "beau"! Honestly, he sounds like he is 150 years old…  Dropping on her mother's chair, and shouting to overcome the distance that separates them, she replied: 

"Not at all! It's just that I realize you're right: I am marrying him, you're not. So what does it matter if you two like, or even know, each other? We'll probably never visit, and you'll obviously never come to see us!"

Through the open bedroom door, she detected the muffled sounds of metallic hangers sliding across a clothes rod. His closet door slammed shut, his dresser drawers jerked open. The faint smile turned into a relieved grin. Letting out a heavy sigh, she rested her head back and waited.

"So now, I find out I'll never be invited to your fancy house!" he shouted back at her from his bedroom. "Well, Missy, lemme tell you som'thin," he went on, talking over the noise of running water in his bathroom. "That'll be the day when any daughter of mine -- and, mind you, I only got one -- is shacking up with no man, stockbroker or not, without my checking him out first! And that's final!"

"Shacking up"! So help me God, Dad, I am marrying him! Looking out the window, she saw Peter's car pull up alongside the curb through the snow which is falling harder than ever. The clock strikes 5:00.           

"Tea's ready!", she announced to no one in particular.

"Might as well drink the blasted stuff, now that you done all that fussing over the sandwiches and all. You know how I hate to waste!" grumbled the old man coming out of his room.

Her eyes dampen suddenly as she saw her father, dressed in his best gray suit -- the same one he wore for Uncle Fred's wedding 15 years ago --, a burgundy hanky elegantly tucked in the breast pocket of his suit coat, with matching tie, and his handsome, but usually unruly white hair, smooth and wavy.

Without a word, she kissed her father on the forehead while thinking, I wonder how many years it took Mom to figure out what makes you tick…

 At the sound of the doorbell, the sprightly old gentleman bolted for the door, intent on being the first to welcome his future son-in-law.