"Are you kidding?"
She shook her head. "Let's not talk about it, OK? Not today."
"You don't want me to meet your family and you don't want to talk about it?"
"Just picture me naked in that stupid coat and it will take your mind right off my family."
"Not true. It just makes me imagine your father holding a shotgun."
She giggled. "My father holding a shotgun. Now there's a picture. He'd never touch a weapon."
"A pacifist?"
"No, a klutz. He'd shoot off his own leg." She laughed again, but in a moment that dark, distant look was back on her face. It wasn't until Quentin moved the conversation far away from parents and families that the mood cleared and she was happy again.
5. Bliss
Was it possible that his parents liked Madeleine too much? Quentin expected them to be delighted that he had a fiancée at all and that he had brought her home to meet them, and he expected her to charm them because she was, after all, charming. But within hours they seemed to have lost all sense of proportion. Everything she said, they laughed or oohed or tsk-tsked or whatever the appropriate response was. Their attention toward her never flagged. They offered her drinks, food, their own bed—it was way beyond hospitality.
They were obsequious. It was as if they were servants and Madeleine was the mistress of the house. It embarrassed him, but he couldn't seem to get either of his parents alone to tell them to lay off a little; nor could he seem to find a moment alone with Mad to explain that they didn't always act like this, that they must be compensating for all those years that they had given up on the idea of his marrying.
Poor Mad must be going crazy with them fawning on her all the time, but she was a trouper, she didn't show a sign of irritation. Just acted as though it were the most natural thing in the world.