Welcome to another installment of “Dad, Interrupted.”
“Dad, Interrupted” is a weekly newsletter where I describe, in lighthearted, moderately embroidered stories, my family-man misadventures with my wife, my kids, my friends, my in-laws and assorted chuckleheads I bump into.
This week, I’ll delve into love and marriage and their surprising links to — wait for it — television.
Jeanette and I were watching the Emmys earlier this year, and much of our attention was focused on one of the big winners, “The Bear,” that show about a Chicago restaurant starring Jeremy Allen White.
We weren’t focused on Jeremy because “The Bear” won a lot of Emmys, though, and we weren’t even talking about Jeremy’s then-new Calvin Klein underwear campaign. We were talking about “The Bear” because Jeremy grew up in our neighborhood in Brooklyn and he’s one of our daughter Clara’s coterie of local friends. During the kids’ middle school years, Jeanette remembered, he’d hang out in our house with the rest of her gang.
The Emmy marathon ran for three hours, though, and at one point our attention was also drawn to another big winner, “Succession.” We haven’t seen “The Bear” yet, but we have watched all seasons of “Succession,” and both Jeanette and I thought it was excellent.
I also homed in on “Succession” for a different reason. “Succession” strongly reminds me of another iconic TV series about a powerful, wealthy family. That show was “Downton Abbey,” which ran a decade and more ago.
Jeanette and I thought that was a terrific show, too, but I also had a special, off-screen affection for it, as I will now explain…
My wife Jeanette and two of her friends are seated on a tan couch. They are all wearing crowns, two silver and one gold, which all three women have probably salvaged from their kids’ old Halloween costumes. Kenny and I, the two husbands present, are at the grazing table, moving from the Stilton cheese to the Marmite spread to the Boddingtons Ale.
It is 2014 or thereabouts and we are watching “Downton Abbey,” which is why the women are wearing crowns and we men are eating unfamiliar British food that we’re not sure how to pronounce. The women are such big fans of this show that they have turned this viewing into an event. Kenny and I say we also enjoy “Downton.” Kenny is telling the truth, but I am kind of not.
Oh I like the show, but my No. 1 reason for watching it is Lady Mary, the Grantham’s oldest daughter. It’s not for her performance, although that is excellent. It’s because the actor who plays Lady Mary, Michelle Dockery, ticks many boxes for me. She has a winsome smile, she has assertive cheekbones, and, most of all, she has a deep, throaty voice. “Carson,” she breathily purrs when she summons the head butler. “Matthew” she sighs when she speaks to her boyfriend. She calls her mother “MaMA.”
It’s not the words. Lady Mary could be saying, “My horse has ringworm” for all I care. It’s the sounds that get me. Lady Mary’s voice is the sizzle of morning bacon when you had no dinner the night before. During one episode, when she is in bed with that wimp Matthew, she says, “Now stop talking and kiss me before I get cross.” I nearly choked on the cherry tomato I was eating when she said that.
Given my feelings, I learned a thing or two about Michelle Dockery. I know she’s 5’ 8” and likes Nina Simone. I know she is ethnically Irish and grew up in London. I know that her real voice is tinged with what is called and Estuary accent, which is kind of like Cockney but a little different.
I also know that her fiancé was Irish and died of a rare type of cancer, and that she met him through the Irish actor who played the Irish chauffeur on “Downton.” I know that her dad was a truck driver, that she sings “Blue Skies,” the Irving Berlin song, very sweetly, and that she’s also performed with Sadie and the Hotheads, a band founded by her TV mom, Elizabeth McGovern.
I haven’t lied to my wife Jeanette about all this. I just haven’t broadcast it. And I don’t have to, do I? Because it’s completely innocent, and also a family tradition. My mother watched “The Untouchables” in the 1960s mostly to admire the hunky Robert Stack. My father somehow managed to see Pam Grier – the star of 70s Blaxploitation films like “Sheba, Baby” – every time she appeared on TV. Do I myself remember Olivia Wilde, bewitching even in her white doctor coat, on “House?” Or do I remember Jessica Paré on “Mad Men,” slinking around John Hamm on his birthday and singing “Zou Bisou Bisou”?
Indelibly I remember them.
Still, a married man must be wary.
The three monarchs on the tan couch are now discussing Sybil. She is the youngest of the three Grantham daughters, the one who’s a bit of a rebel and shocks the family by marrying the Irish chauffeur.
“The youngest always gets more leeway,” says one of the queens.
“She doesn’t have the toff thing down,” says another of the queens.
“Yep,” I pipe up. “Lady Michelle is definitely the most aristocratic of the three daughters.”
Nitwit, I think as soon as I say this. I had said “Lady MICHELLE,” using the actor’s real name, not “Lady MARY,” her screen name. This was a dangerous mistake.
Jeanette’s crowned head turns slowly toward me. The queens all move slowly because the kid-size crowns they’re wearing might otherwise slip off their adult-size skulls. Still, this accidental necessity gives them an impressive stateliness.
“Lady MARY, you mean honey,” Jeanette says. After a pause she adds, “Although the actor’s real name is Michelle Dockery, so you’re not totally wrong. Did you know that, or was it just a coincidence?”
The other two crowned heads now also slowly rotate toward me. They know a flailing husband when they see one. I am famously ignorant of the world of entertainment; for me to know Lady Mary’s real name is Michelle Dockery is like Jeanette knowing that Jim Hickman was the first New York Met to hit for what baseball fans call the cycle. He did it on Aug. 7, 1963 at the Polo Grounds, and I was right there to see it.
“I ran across her name somewhere,” I lie. “Probably one of your gossip sites.”
“You never use my laptop,” Jeanette said. “Were you reading about her on your laptop?” The other two queens sip their Pimms Cups slowly. This is bonus material, kind of like seeing scenes that had been left on the cutting-room floor.
At that taut moment, my thoughts turned to my wife’s brother, Wellington. (Her family is Southern, so they have names like that.) As a kid, Wellington had a pet boa constrictor, six feet long, that he kept in a large glass tank in the cellar in their Kentucky home. The snake had no name, which tells you a lot about Wellington.
Anyway, Wellington fed the snake live mice, and since boas eat very infrequently, the feeder mice would sometimes spend agonizing days or even weeks quivering in the corner of the glass tank, wide wet eyes trained on the snake, dreading the moment when its look of indifference turned into a gaze of interest, followed by an exploratory flick of the tongue.
But as I nibble my Stilton wedge of cheese — a true mouse! — I see something that Wellington’s mice had desperately looked for but never found. An escape hatch.
“Matthew’s car!” I say, pointing at the screen where “Downton” is playing. “It’s veering out of control!” The queenly heads swivel as quickly as they can back to the TV.
And so the interrogation has ceased. But I know this is only a reprieve. Once Something Is Noticed, Nothing Is Forgotten. I make a mental note to Google the bios of the rest of the “Downton” cast, so that anyone who happened to check my laptop’s search history would see just another ardent fan of the show. Just like my friend Kenny.
There's Something About Mary