CHAPTER 4 - There Is No Such Thing As Fun For The Whole Family. - Jerry Seinfield

Summary

Lena's grandparents were about to serve the first meal Lena and her sister, Effie, would eat in Greece. The beauty out her window and her hope for good luck on this trip prompted Lena to take out the Traveling Pants and put them on. Downstairs, her sister was being her usual extroverted self while Lena hung back shyly. That was the way it had always been - Lena's beauty prompted the first attention from people, but Effie's affectionate, exuberant self soon drew their attention away. Grandma told Lena that she wanted her to look special, because a nice boy was coming to dinner. Lena hated being set up, but that was what Grandma was doing, and they had been there less than six hours. Effie said that Lena was hard on boys, but Grandma was convinced Kostos would be different, because he was the grandson of their dearest friends.

The action shifts to Carmen. Her dad met her at the airport, and Carmen rushed to embrace him. Carmen felt great pleasure, because her dad called her bun and baby and said she was beautiful, but he didn't care about her mom anymore. For some reason, that made his attention even more special. However, Carmen began to receive clues that perhaps things weren't as she expected with him. First, he had traded in his Saab for a station wagon, an odd vehicle for a single man, and then, he was reluctant to talk about his place. Finally, he pulled up in front of a large Victorian house in a suburban neighborhood and told her that it was home. He told her that he hadn't mentioned he'd moved, because he wanted to explain all the big stuff in his life in person. Then, he led her into the house where she was greeted by a woman, a girl about her own age, and a boy who looked to be about eighteen. The woman, Lydia, turned out to be her dad's fiancée, and the girl, Krista, and the boy, Paul, were her children. He also explained that they were getting married on August nineteenth.

Carmen was shocked and only asked to be shown where she would sleep. The room was decorated in peach carpet and matching accessories and her dad told her it was the guest room. Carmen's anger was beginning to boil up, and she tried to tell her dad how harsh it was to walk into this house and discover how his life had changed. But she couldn't get the words out, because, like him when he was with her, when she was with him, she didn't like to say the hard things.

Carmen wrote a letter to Bee in which she vented how much she hated surprises. She emphasized that she was a guest in family that would never be hers.

Notes

Both Lena and Carmen are met with surprises as they try to adjust to a new environment. Lena is being set up with a nice Greek boy by her grandmother and it upsets her, because she is so shy and wary of boys. Her experience had always been that they come on to her because of her beauty, and she feels used in that way. Carmen is surprised to learn that she has a new family. Springing this news on her this way is harsh and cruel, and she feels like she has lost the special summer she had envisioned with her dad.