Fools Paradise (11 page)

Fran laid a hand on her daughter's arm. “Your grandfather's paying, sweetie.”

“You can't ask him for that much.”

“I will. That much and more. This is for my daughter. It's the only wedding I'll ever throw.”

Apparently Mom Ditorelli was determined to make the old man suffer. Bobbyjay was behind that idea a hundred percent, but not if it was going to upset Daisy.

“I can help,” he said.

“NO!” Daisy shrieked. “We're—we're getting married but not with all this—I can't do that to—” She choked again and the saleslady stepped forward swiftly with a tissue before black stuff could run off Daisy's eyes onto the dress.

“I think it's time for lunch,” Mom Ditorelli said to the saleslady. The two of them started stripping the dress off Daisy right there in the showroom. Bobbyjay watched, fascinated, until she sniffed and raised her chin at him.

He swiveled away in his chair. The view from the mirrors all around the room was even better. It was amazing what real clothes did for her. Usually she looked such a pup in those schoolgirl clothes, trying to be sexy and looking like jail bait instead. But, wow, he thought. If she would stop with the two pounds of makeup, you might see how beautiful she was.

Their eyes met in the mirror. “Don't you have to go back to work?” she said.

Maybe he ought to stay and protect her from her mother.

“I'll feed her. She'll feel better,” Mom Ditorelli said.

“Go on,” Daisy said. Her eyes were tragic. The saleslady draped a robe around her shoulders just as Bobbyjay was hoping to see her in her bra and panties. “I'll be fine. Remember. You are
not
going to help with the money.”

“Uh, we'll talk later,” he said to Mom Ditorelli.

“And don't talk over my head!”

Her mom kissed him on the cheek. He beat it before he could get between them again.

Mom left her alone until they found a restaurant and ordered. “What's the matter, baby? You aren't having second thoughts, are you? I really like him.”

“I do too,” Daisy said miserably. She sucked down so much margarita that her fillings froze.

“Good, because this wedding means a lot to me. I want you to be happy,” Mom said. “How's the sex?”

Daisy choked a piece of ice.

Mom cocked her head. “Hm. Maybe we'd better have him up to Lake Geneva with us when we go next.”

“I just don't want Goomba to have to pay so much. I can get married at the courthouse in any old dress,” Daisy said, forgetting for the moment that the big wedding was essential to the plan to save the grandfathers.

That distracted Mom from sex, thank God. “No way. He owes you, baby. You've got a good man at last. I'd been so afraid you would take one of your loser cousins. I think Marty was afraid of that, too.”

“Mo-om! I'm not a hillbilly.”

“Well, you had it pretty bad for Badger for a while there. He's related to your grandfather somehow—some kind of second cousin or first cousin twice removed, I can never keep it straight.”

“I loathe Badger,” Daisy said. Her left eyeball still hurt from sucking icy margarita too fast, but the rest of her felt stronger. “He's a busybody and a snoop. Plus he's old.”

“He wants the best for you.”

“Who fucking cares,” Daisy said crossly.

“At least your grandfather had the sense to ask him to look after you out there in the Local,” Mom said, and Daisy's blood pressure shot up a thousand percent.

“He what!?”

“He's worried about you working out there in the theatres. So am I.”

I should have kicked harder.
“Mom, I'm a grownup. I'm legal in all fifty states. I'm very happy with Bobbyjay. So Badger Kenack can stick his—his eye into his everything else.”

Once Daisy had money, she could move out. Signing a W4 form at the Opera House had raised her hopes that she might actually see a paycheck someday.
And an apartment of my own,
she thought, feeling like a traitor to Mom.

“I'm happy with Bobbyjay,” she repeated. “So you don't have to stay around if you don't want to.”

Mom drew back sharply. “If I don't want to? Darling, what are you saying?”

“Mom, you told me when I was sixteen, you're only staying in that house so you can chaperone me around Goomba's strays. Now Bobbyjay can be my chaperone.”

“Oh, sweetie, I know your Goomba would never let any of them get out of line.” Daisy was about to explain exactly how good Goomba's chaperonage was, but her mom laid a hand over hers. “Does it occur to you, maybe I'm more comfortable living there rent-free than I would be paying for my own place? Maybe your Mom's a bit of a coward, having lived there so long, with the Ditorellis keeping an eye out for us and helping when I need it.”

She couldn't blab on Tony now. What if Tony got Goomba to kick Mom out?

“Keeping an eye out.” Daisy grunted. “C'mon, you're fearless, Mom. You work for all those lawyers. Look, I know you're always worried about money. I'm a grown woman and I need a job. I want a job. I want to pay my way finally.”

Mom looked concerned. “You pay your way all the time. You work like a dog for this family.”

“Money counts, Mom. Me having my own money will set you free, so you can decide if you really want to stay here or not. How can you really decide, if you feel like you're still responsible for me?”

It was Mom's turn to sound choked up. “I'll always feel responsible for you, Daisy.”

“Groovy,” Daisy said cheerfully. “And now I get to feel responsible for me, too.”

Mom frowned. “You're responsible for everyone. That's just wrong. The men in this family! All they care about is work and their income. Marty has buffaloed you with his money worship. He'd love to make you think that only paying work counts.”

“He's right.”

Mom threw up her hands. “I've really blown it, haven't I? Some feminist single mother I am. I divorced your father for being just like them, and then I went and let them brainwash you into this little-wifey thing while I work overtime at the office.” She touched Daisy's hand. “You have a future outside the home. But what you do inside it is important too.”

Daisy shrugged this off, wondering if her paying job would be as awful as Mom's. So far she wasn't totally adoring the Opera as much as she'd hoped to.

“I don't plan to keep house for Goomba and his strays forever,” she said firmly, trying to shore up her courage. “If I can keep the Opera House job.”

“No, of course not. You're marrying a wonderful young man,” Mom said. “If I let you think you were unemployable because your grades were poor—if that made you stay with me, doing the housework when you hated it—” Mom sounded guilty and sorrowful.

Daisy hung her head. “I blew it, Mom. I blew off school. Now I know what happens to you when you do that.”

Mom's voice trembled. “Has it been really dreadful?”

Daisy put her arms around her. “Just boring. And they don't appreciate me, and—”
they pinch me
“—and stuff. And I don't have a boyfriend. And I don't go shopping with my own money. I don't even have a car—omigod, did I tell you Goomba wants to buy me a BMW? I had to fight like a tiger to stop him. Goomba gives me his credit card any time I ask. I know how hard he works for that money. He says so all the time. I can't feel comfortable spending it on my own stuff, 'cause it's his credit card.”

“That wicked old man,” Mom said with feeling.

“He loves me. He loves us both. When I think how about hurt he is over this engagement, I almost can't do it.” If Goomba were to walk into the restaurant right now, she would blurt out the truth.

“He's a ruthless old control freak,” Mom said. “He did that ‘so-hurt' number on me when your father took off with his dancer on that last tour. And I bought it and moved us in upstairs.”

“He still means it. He wants to keep his loved ones near him,” Daisy said. That was what made this fake engagement so darned hard. “Goomba's love holds the whole family together. He isn't always gentle in his love, but he means to be.”

“Love,” Mom said, “should be more unconditional than that. I'm just grateful he seems to accept Bobbyjay. The way he feels about Bobby Senior—” She stared blankly at a waiter's behind.

Daisy licked a tear off her upper lip. “Mom, why did Goomba start fighting with Bobby Morton Senior?”

Mom turned the stare on her. “Maybe you should ask him that yourself.”

“Why?” Daisy rolled her eyes. “Because it'll be good for me, or good for him?”

“Both of you,” Mom said briskly, signing the credit card slip and picking up her purse. “I hope you're not too tiddly to shop for shoes, because I need retail therapy now. Nothing wedding, either.”

Daisy smiled. “I hope you don't get in trouble at the office for such a long lunch.”

“Slutty shoes to wear at Lake Geneva for your Bobbyjay, hm?” Mom said. Now she was back at sex.

“How about some steel-toed boots? I dropped a leko on my foot yesterday and it hurt like sin.”

The morning of the fishfry dawned clear and pleasant and Daisy cursed it. Why couldn't Chicago come across with some of those famous Spring icy showers? Or even some snow?

Goomba had been up until one o'clock last night erecting a rented canopy, with Wesley's help. The useless twins, Vince and Tony, had rolled in around two with beer on their breath and a pair of girl's underpants around Tony's bicep like an armband. Daisy, of course, was up until two-thirty, rewashing the thawed smelt and then layering them with crushed ice in big bins.

She only hoped the Mortons would be as hung over as her cousins.

Goomba got up late and ate a monster breakfast, keeping her running back and forth with the coffeecup and fresh waffles for over an hour. “Got to be fueled up for the big day,” he said when she gave him a look along with his six waffle. “How about some eggs,
angelina
? Sunny side up with the next waffle.”

So of course she was still cooking breakfast when the useless boys staggered out of bed at eleven, which meant mixing up a whole new batch of waffle batter and two more pots of coffee.

“Don't worry,
angelina
, we'll pitch in,” Goomba assured her.

“Coffee,” Vince said, holding out his cup while he scarfed waffle.

Daisy snorted.

She had just four hours to get the tiramisu made. That was her biggest worry. The ladyfingers would take two hours. Then it was just a matter of throwing stuff together and refrigerating it.

She put a big frozen lasagne on the countertop to thaw for lunch.

In theory, some of Tony's ex-wives and Vince's ex and a couple of Mikey Ray's girlfriends were bringing food, and if Tony's ex Valerie came she'd have serious help. But that wasn't until one o'clock.

She didn't feel she could count on the Morton women chipping in with covered dishes.

By eleven-thirty the ladyfingers were cooling on the table and Wesley was guarding them while she filled the large spaghetti pot with beer batter for the smelt.

At noon, she put the lasagne in the oven.

At one o'clock the men rolled in from tapping and sampling the beer kegs and she had to break off to put the lasagne and some fresh garlic bread in the dining room and rescue the ladyfingers from predators. Then it was a sweaty hour of assembling tiramisu while she ferried coffee to the men in the dining room, got the dessert in the freezer for the first half hour, ran up and downstairs with six loads of laundry, put Wesley to work with the vac, and kept the bread machine fed.

At noon Goomba came in, looking indignant. “Some people don't seem to know that an invitation for three means three o'clock.”

“What?” Daisy looked up from slathering garlic butter on eight more loaves of fresh bread. “Oh, no.” All they needed was a pre-party fight between Goomba and some Mortons.
I can't police him and cook!
she thought, panicking.

“Like I can't throw a party for my own granddaughter!”

Behind him, someone big and blond loomed in the kitchen door.

“I thought you might like some help,” Bobbyjay said.

“We're doin' fine!” Wesley snapped.

Daisy didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Bobbyjay looked around the disaster-area kitchen with mild curiosity. At the sight of his big bland face, a lump formed in her throat.

“You're bossing the job,” he said. “Where you want me?”

“Goomba?” Daisy said helplessly.

Her grandfather looked at her fiancé with loathing. “Work with the women,” he said inexcusably.

Daisy squeezed Wesley's arm with a buttery hand. “I really don't think I can trust Bobbyjay with the laundry. Would you bring the last load up to my bedroom and sort it, buddy?”