“Let’s hope,” I said. He’s insufferable.
“I didn’t know there were three tents, did you?” He rocked back on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. “I think that’s awkward, don’t you? Poor planning. One would have been best. That was my expectation.”
“I understand that one would have been best, but their large tent collapsed and they’re expecting rain, so we set up two more—”
He studied the sky. “There’s not going to be any rain, Stevie, I can tell. I understand that the flowers will be here shortly?” He arched an eyebrow at me. “They’re not here now.”
“They’re coming, Herbert, in the colors you ordered.” Not the colors that Aunt Janet had wanted. I had ordered the flowers that Aunt Janet had wanted, and he had called the florist himself to check, shouted at the florist, then shouted at me. “I’m sure Janet will be disappointed, but at least you have the flowers you want.” Is there a more obnoxious man on this planet?
“Correct. I’m paying for this celebration and I know what works best. Janet’s choice, of wildflowers mixed with daisies and sunflowers, was ludicrous. We’re not a hippie couple.”
“No, you’re not.” Aunt Janet is a gentle soul who has been smashed to smithereens by you, and you’re a runty boar.
He continued to peruse the grounds around my head, as if I didn’t exist. “See to it that the virginal white roses I ordered are on the arbor. They’re symbolic. I want them in the photographs when I make my announcement against gay marriage. That’s very important, Stevie. I’m a man of means in this community, and I want it clear that Janet and I celebrated in style, not with some barbeque where we flipped hamburgers.”
I had to get out of there. “Where’s Aunt Janet?”
“Hmmm?” His attention was already elsewhere, probably trying to find something else that I did wrong.
“Where’s the bride?”
His mouth tightened. “I believe she is finally preparing herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Janet gets nervous at these gatherings of people—so many important people in one place it’s intimidating for her, she’s a quiet, anxious sort of wife—and I told her to go and lie down and take her medicine so she does not embarrass us. I also sent Ellen Tofferson up to help her.”
Bad idea. “She hates Ellen Tofferson.”
“Ellen knows how to handle my wife with discretion.”
“Ellen is condescending and rude to Aunt Janet. She’s grim and bad tempered and uptight—” I felt the anger bubbling in me, hot and acidic.
“She is a pillar of this community.”
“Everyone hates her. She’s obnoxious. They only put up with her because she writes checks from her late husband’s estate.”
“Ellen is proper, understands how important maintaining our society is—”
“She brags about her money, drops names, and has made it her life’s work to launch vendettas against other women—”
“Your opinion is unnecessary and unwanted. I will handle Janet. Now, I’m sure you have things to do.” He turned on his heel and left.
I glanced up as a curtain moved in Aunt Janet’s window.
Aunt Janet glared down at her husband, and I saw it then: Raging fury. Bitter resentment. Disgust.
Not good.
I should have taken it as a warning sign of the upcoming roar, but someone else needed me, so I turned to help.
Minutes later I saw Ellen Tofferson stomping down the stairs, her bosom shaking with indignation. She announced to Herbert that Janet was “throwing her usual fits.”
Herbert rolled his eyes, sighed heavily. “All men have a burden. This is mine.”
Ellen put her hand on his upper arm, her wrinkled, blobby face heavy, serious, sympathetic. She is built in a pear shape with a bobbing bottom and gray hair. “I’m with you, Herbert. I am with you.” Her bosom shook indignantly again of its own accord.
I was not with him, I wanted to hit him.
Someone came up and asked me a question about the placement of tables and chairs. Another person, from the caterers, had a different question. My phone rang. It was the florist. My phone rang again. It was the ice sculpture people. They were on their way. “We had inspiration! Big inspiration, Stevie! We come down now. You love it!”
The party was starting, officially, at six P.M.
This would have been a fine time for the party if Aunt Janet was not roaring.
“Heavens to shit!” she said, throwing her powder box across the room.
Aunt Janet never swears.
“Heavens to shit!” she said, louder this time. She threw her compact blush. I ducked. “It’s been forty shitty years!”
Polly lay back on the bed and fiddled with her necklace. She was stunning. Her curls were pulled back in waves. She was wearing a burgundy-colored dress, no sleeves, golden piping, gold shoes. On anyone else it would have been silly, but she looked like an ultrachic gypsy. “Uh. Yeah. It has been. You chose to stay for forty shitty years. You stuck yourself there and didn’t move and we got stuck there, too, for our entire childhood. We were all whipped dogs, and now we’re celebrating. Hoo-ha!”
Aunt Janet gripped the edge of her vanity, her robe hanging open, and exhaled. “Heavens to shit, I hate what I am about to do. I told him I didn’t want to do this, I told him many times. And here we are. Here we are. He didn’t listen. No, worse, he did listen, but he didn’t take into account what I was saying. He didn’t care. And I don’t care enough about myself to stand up to him and say, ‘Heavens to shit, I don’t want to remarry you.’” Her chest heaved. “I don’t even want to stay married to him. Not for one more heavens-to-shit minute!”
She hurled three lipsticks. One hit Herbert’s pillow. Another hit a huge photo of his parents that he insisted on keeping in their bedroom, right across from their bed. Now that is a sexual turn-on. The third lipstick flew right out the window and landed in the wedding cake that an employee from the bakery was carrying out to the tents. No one noticed until the guitar player bit down on it later that night.
He was a bit drunk so he flipped it open and tried it on.
The raspberry glacé color went very well with his eye color.
The cake was delicious.
While Aunt Janet continued to disintegrate, which included ripping down the portrait of Herbert’s parents and dumping shampoo over their faces, I rushed back downstairs to check on the party details. The last thing I heard from Polly was, “Mom, it’s about choices. Here’s your choice: Do you want to recommit yourself to a venomous tyrant? No decision here is a decision, you know what I mean? I think your decisionless decisions gotta stop. That’s a thought for you to throw around.”
“Holy damn,” Aunt Janet said, as if she’d been hit by a bolt of enlightenment. She yanked her hair out of the bun Herbert had insisted the hairstylist make. “Holy damn, I don’t want to be here, and holy damn, I can’t be decisionless for one more blasted minute.”
The tables were set on the sprawling grass under the tents with the white twinkle lights and the floral arrangements, boring but pink and tidy, as Herbert had ordered.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lance, gorgeous in a gray suit, strolling along the back perimeter of the property. I snickered, couldn’t help it. I saw a few boxes under his arms, tucked in tight. I watched as he settled himself at a back table, then opened the boxes and popped something out into the three chairs. Next, he fiddled with something under the table that he’d brought in a bag. I had to struggle to keep my laughter to myself as before my eyes three different “girls” appeared in the seats.
Right there, right then, Lance was blowing up his dolls.
Ah, wasn’t that sweet! He had brought Lolita! My, her breasts had grown!
And there was Norway. I called her that because she was six feet tall with blond hair and a toothy smile.
And Sabrina Dina. Wasn’t she spectacular this evening?
I wondered which guests would willingly sit next to
the “ladies.” I envisioned the head of one of the ultraconservative political parties here. She was a rabid, half-cocked nut. Or the president of the anti-gay group, a snivelly, tiny, whiny man with a wife who resembled a zombie corpse.
I was distracted by a balding man, short and smiling, leading three younger men.
“Hello,” I said. Aha, the ice sculpture people.
“Yes, yes! You Stevie?” the Russian man said, arms thrown out wide. “We done. It beautiful. A song. A siren. You love, yes, I know you love.”
I directed them to one of the long buffet tables and thanked them profusely for their time. I was actually looking forward to seeing the two doves with the heart between them.
I was distracted again by the caterer, who had another question about one of Herbert’s endless changes. She had brandy on her breath—she had warned that this party might drive her to drink, and I could not blame her. When I turned around, the ice sculptors had unveiled their creation.
My breath caught smack in the middle of my esophagus. Right there.
I so wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. I held my mouth tight as a lid on a can of carrots so as not to offend the four men staring at me, eagerly awaiting my effusive praise.
Clearly, there had been a misunderstanding between me and the Russian gentleman. These communication problems!
“It magical! Some mystery there, too, you no think?” he asked. “It in the eyes. Mystery! Romantic!”
“Uh, yes, mysterious! Definitely mysterious.” I clamped my teeth together on my giggle.
“It a sea fairy tale!”
“You’re right,” I said, muffling a chuckle. “A sea fairy tale.”
“A sea legend!” he gushed. “An enchantress of the fishermen for hundreds of years!”
“Definitely an enchantress.” I lassoed my laughter.
Hoo boy. The ice sculpture was an enchantress. In the middle of the buffet table lay a five-foot-long ice mermaid with a secretive, sexy smile on her secretive, sexy face. She had flowing hair, a curving fish tail, and she was topless, as you would expect from a mermaid.
The Russian and his employees stuck their chests out. Proud. Confident. Manly. Waiting for profuse praise.
She had voluminous boobs, that was a fact. The nipples were quite large, too. But, perhaps seawater changes the composition of those things. Herbert would…well, there were no words to describe what he would do when he saw those boobs and nipples. And the tail.
“It’s a work of art,” I told them, suddenly enormously pleased. “A work of art.”
The Russian beamed with pleasure, standing up on his toes. “I so glad you like. Took long time. The breasts”—he cupped his chest in all seriousness. “They take long time. Must be smooth. Soft, yes?”
Yes, I nodded. Oh, yes. I gripped my giggles. “They must be soft.”
“Soft and big.” He cupped himself. “Mermaids big. Shells right there sometimes, so big.”
“Absolutely.”
“But not tonight. No shells. This art. Mermaid art.”
“Mermaid art!”
I snuck a peek over at Herbert, who was upbraiding one of the Hispanic employees of the catering company. “Herbert will pay double for your efforts.”
The Russian man beamed again, then said, “Masterpiece, no? She masterpiece. Those breasts! Perfect! Take long time.” He wiped his eyes.
I patted his shoulder.
“I miss her already,” he weeped.
Minutes later I was on the phone, frantically trying to get ahold of the quartet that had still not arrived. I finally reached them. They were not coming. On the way here, the driver had hit the accelerator instead of the brake and they’d driven through the front of an adults-only club. “We completely smashed a display of sex toys,” one of them said. Minor injuries, but all were in the hospital. “I had no idea those things even existed! Have you heard about this new toy for men called a Pink Princess? Guess I’ve been inside too much playing my violin. So sorry we can’t be there.”
Lance heard the conversation, saw my stricken face, and said, “I’ll take care of this,” and ambled off, phone to ear. I grabbed our neighbor, Mrs. Bunce, none too gently, and asked her to play piano for the vow part of the ceremony. The piano was right inside the door, in the living room, feet from the now-virginal-rose-drooped arbor on the deck where Herbert and Aunt Janet would renew their vows.
“Sure I will, darling, but this is not a happy day for me. Your aunt is simply retrapping herself, married to a rabid alligator. Virginia and I don’t get it. She should be tramping around the world with us on one of our trips.” She sighed, waved her hand. She was wearing beige pants and a beige shirt, her hair in a long beige braid, and hippie sandals. She was a multimillionaire. “I’ll do it, but I’d rather play the death march, that black and morbid song. I was hoping your aunt would make a break from that stiff-assed anteater….”
Herbert came up behind me seconds later, then signaled with his pointed finger for me to follow him. We ducked into the den. “Where the hell is the symphony quartet?”
“They were in a car accident.”
“Damn.” He shook his head. He did not even ask if they were hurt/mangled/dead/decapitated. He didn’t care. “Stevie, I was counting on you to do this, this one small thing for your aunt and me, to make a few calls to arrange my anniversary celebration, and apparently it’s too much for you, isn’t it?” He glowered at me. “After all that I have done for you, taking you in, raising you, dealing with your weight issues, your emotional issues, putting you through college—”
I was furious. Suddenly, stunningly furious. Maybe it was my weight loss that had given me confidence. Maybe it was dealing with Crystal and the Athertons and Polly and watching Aunt Janet finally grow a spine. Maybe it was because of Jake and this golden glow he’d brought to my insides, but I let that leechy cockroach have it.
“Let’s get something straight, Herbert, right now. First off, yes, you took me in. It’s my understanding that you didn’t want to, but Aunt Janet said she would divorce you if you didn’t.”
He paled. It was the truth. Polly had told me she’d overheard a conversation.
“So don’t pretend you’re this magnanimous, generous man. You made sure I never felt part of your family. You made me feel fat, dumb, and unwanted, a burden. I knew, from the second I stepped into your house, that you didn’t want me there. How do you think an eleven-year-old feels, knowing that?” My lungs constricted. “I was a little girl, Herbert. Helen had tried to kill me. She killed Sunshine.” My voice broke. “She killed herself. My grandparents died shortly after that, one after the other. I lost everything. Do you get that? Are you capable of getting that? You even took away my name after shaking me every night for months.”
Something flashed in his eyes. Maybe it was emotion, but it was too quick for me to catch, and he slammed his sausage lips together. “I provided for you—”
“You provided for me?” Can a body turn red-hot with anger? “Hardly. You received social security payments for me each month. You had the proceeds from Grandpa’s business. There was the Schoolhouse House and all the land that you sold. The farm equipment. The cars and trucks…”
“I told you, the business went bankrupt. I had to sell everything.” He shook his head sadly, but he was suddenly as pale as a mean ghost. “Your grandpa was not a businessman. Way too generous with his employees. He was in the…” Herbert coughed. “I know you don’t understand business, but your grandpa was operating in the red, and that’s why the company went…uh…under two years after he died.”
“You know what, Herbert?” I could barely speak, but I was finally going to voice what I had always suspected. I had checked up on my grandpa’s business online. It was sold two years after Herbert got his hands on it, and it was still there. “I don’t believe you. It was a thriving business. I think you ran it into the ground, that’s what I think happened.”
He turned a sickly white-green color.
“I think y
ou’re the one who’s not a businessman. You’re the one who ruined it all. When your own father died ten years ago he specified who was to run each section of your family’s company, and you were not named. Yes, I know that, we all do. You’re a figurehead. That’s it.”
He stumbled back, stunned.
“You probably went into my grandpa’s company, and when the employees hated you and your smug, superior attitude, you probably cut their pay, fired the older people, brought in your own people, and sank the place. That’s what happened, right?”
His head jerked, right and left. “I won’t discuss this with you. You don’t have a head for business. You wouldn’t understand the mess that I found there. I have acted as your father for years—”
“No, you haven’t. I know what a father is, what he does, because I had Grandpa. You’re not a father to me. You’re not even an uncle I want to claim as my own. The only reason I have contact with you at all is because of Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly.”
“You ungrateful—”
“Ungrateful? I am ungrateful?” I fought back tears. “I wish that you had refused to take me in. I wish you’d let me stay in Ashville with The Family. Me, Lance, Aunt Janet, and Polly would have been better off without you, even if we lived in a tiny house and had no toilet. I might never have had the extreme eating addiction I did, and Polly wouldn’t have anorexia. Am I grateful for you? No, I’m not. You have hurt me thousands of times, and I’m done. I am done with you. You are a toxic person, and I will not have contact with you again after tonight.”
“You’re done with me after tonight,” he scoffed, but he looked scared. His eyelid twitched and his hand shook when he pushed his white hair back.
“Yes. I am. I regret all these years that I’ve put up with your cruelty, your overbearing, critical personality. I regret that I didn’t have the self-confidence to walk away from you. But what I regret the most is not being part of a healthy family, and now I’m fixing that.” I could hardly believe what I was saying. Was I ready for this? Could I do it?