Xander(narration): She starts to talk about how it all began...her reasonably sized mtropolis...the ancestral church...the expensive education

Xander(narration):...and how they all never let her forget it.

Xander(narration): ...until my own latch-key childhood looked like heaven in comparison.

Xander(narration): ...the things that had attracted her to Robert in the first place...everything that her social group valued....a good family...going to be a lawyer...credentials were impeccable...

Xander(narration): -- and so is the Gewurtztramminer by the way -- ... and most of all he sincerely believed with all his heart...that he was a primal man...

Xander(narration): ...and that it was his destiny to conquer all that lay in his path...particularly the girl Melissa, who at this point had not even reached the legal age of majority.

Xander(narration): ...the bacon-wrapped fillet mignon sizzles so loudly that it nearly drowns out Di's rendition of the years-long courtship...conducted without the slightest hint of an assignation....

Xander(narration): -- the chiraz is abominable -- ...and so is the beau's sense of romance...

Xander(narration): ...the elegant evenings in silent parlors... surrounded by eager parents who were too breathless with vicarious excitement to think up any interesting conversation.

Xander(narration): By the time we reach the fifth course she almost starts telling me things I don't already know. ...things she hasn't thought about in years.

Xander(narration): How she'd suspected Robert had been sent into their arms not becuase he was a young man in search of a suitable helpmeet -- his phrasing -- but because he'd developed an inappropriate fondness for a twelve-year-old back home.

Di: Despicable when an older man takes advantage of a young woman like that!

Xander: It all depends on the age of the younger party.

Xander(narration): After they were married they'd gone to law school together. Di had stuck it out through the last year and her first pregnancy.

Xander(narration): She'd given birth three days after graduation.

Xander(narration): A topic which I wish she'd treat less graphically.

Xander(narration): It wasn't the words so much as the images running through her mind.

Xander(narration): After that they bring the cucumber punch and we're...half-way to the end!