Happy Hour by Michele Scott Page A

sharing
secrets, the occasional shedding of tears, and always a ton of laughter. Jamie
chronicled these get-togethers, which took place every other Sunday evening, beginning
at the cocktail hour of five o’clock— The Happy Hour .
    At first they tried coming up with some kind of group name like The
Decanted Divas, which was sort of fun, but a bit too corny. They tossed around
Grapevine Girls, but that one reminded them all way too much of the Eighties TV
show The Golden Girls starring Bea Arthur and Betty White. Jamie had
said, “We might all be middle-aged or close to it, but I’m thinking we’re not
ready for bingo down at the senior center. I’m not going for Grapevine Girls.”
    They almost chose The Vineyard Vixens—Danielle’s suggestion—but every
time any one of them said the word vixen, it started a chain of laughter
bringing tears to their eyes. “It is funny,” Danielle said. “Me a vixen?
Please! My husband left me because he was bored with our sex life.” She laughed
again, but Jamie and the others knew that it wasn’t as funny to Danielle as she
tried to make it.
    “Screw it, we don’t need a name,” Kat said, unclipping her light brown
hair and letting it fall to her shoulders. “It’s like a happy hour.”
    They all nodded in agreement and made a schedule as to who would host
happy hour on which Sunday.
    The hostess would choose the wine and recipes for the
evening. The rules were: no chug-a-lugging (these were tastings, not frat parties),
and no driving home buzzed (which occasionally happened to one or more of them;
Kat’s husband Christian was available to act as a taxi service if needed).
    Tonight was Jamie’s night and, as usual, she was running
late. It didn’t help that Jamie always chose some impossible recipe that
typically called for some ingredient she’d never heard of.  But she couldn’t
help herself because as she looked through her cookbooks on the Fridays before
her Sundays, she always found a mouthwatering photo that accompanied a
complicated recipe. The wine part was easy for her, though. Wineries from all
over sent wines to the magazine and someone had to sample them. Of
course Jamie reciprocated, writing them up in the Happy Hour monthly
column.
    Today was no different as far as the recipe. She’d chosen duck
a l’orange. Already five after four and the duck was in the oven, but she had
yet to make the saffron potatoes. Nora still hadn’t shown up. Even though times
were tight, and she’d let go of the cleaning service, Jamie had had to hire
Nora to take care of Dorothy while she was at work and to help out on happy
hour Sundays. Nora wasn’t the best housekeeper, even when she bothered to clean
and clear clutter at all, but she always made sure Dorothy had her meals and
was happy. And Jamie appreciated Nora’s sportsmanship. Taking care of Dorothy
came with a certain—um—weirdness. God bless her, but Dorothy truly believed
Nora to be Dean Martin.
    While Jamie searched the cupboard for saffron, Dorothy came
in, wearing a poodle skirt, a white blouse, and a bow that pulled her long gray
hair taut. Her blue eyes, exactly like Nathan’s and Maddie’s, blinked rapidly.
“Hi, honey. Has Dean called? I thought we had a date.”
    “No, Mom. I’m sorry. He hasn’t called. But he should be here
soon.”
    Dorothy laughed girlishly and did a twirl as well as a
seventy-seven-year-old woman could manage. Actually, her twirls were still
quite good. Dorothy, who’d been a dancer in her younger years, had also worked
in Hollywood for some time. Rumor had it that after she divorced Nate’s dad,
she’d partaken in a few scandalous affairs with notorious hot shots and bad
boys in the entertainment business. Now, a tendency to fall back into
yesteryear had left poor Dorothy not only believing that Nora the housekeeper
embodied Dean Martin, but there were days that she imagined that the UPS driver
and mailman were Frank Sinatra or Elvis. Yes—Elvis. Jamie loved the