Mama Gets Hitched (14 page)

Marty couldn’t help it.
She giggled. She does that sometimes when she’s nervous. Looking horrified, she clamped a hand over her mouth. But the more she tried to hold back, the harder her shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

“Sorry, Mama,” she managed to squeak out.

The look Maddie aimed at our little sister could have formed icebergs on Lake Okeechobee. “I don’t see what’s so funny, Marty.”

Marty couldn’t speak. Her knees had gone weak. She propped herself against the frame of the front door and simply pointed into the foyer at Mama and Teensy. The harder Mama cried, the louder the little dog yowled. The two of them sounded like the most talentless duo ever kicked off
America’s Got Talent
.

“S-s-so glad I could a-a-amuse you, Marty.” Mama hiccupped accusingly. “Maybe when the remainder of my life falls apart, you can get your sisters in on the joke, too.”

Mama plastered a haughty look on her face and pulled herself up to her full height, four-foot-eleven inches. But it’s kind of hard to project dignity when you’re absent one shoe, your mascara has melted into raccoon eyes, and a Pomeranian is trying to wriggle out from the armpit of your raspberry-hued jacket. I felt a chuckle coming on, too.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Maddie pushed past us through Mama’s front door. “The both of you are completely useless.”

“Are not!” Marty and I said at the same time, which kicked my chuckle into all-out laughter.

Maddie wrapped a protective arm around Mama’s slender shoulders, and then glared at us over the top of our mother’s smooshed ’do. Marty and I only laughed harder.

The next thing we knew, Mama and Maddie had turned their backs on us. The foot with the raspberry shoe kicked out to the door, slamming it in our faces. I heard the deadbolt lock rotate with force.

“You can join us when you learn some manners,” Maddie called out through the open window.

I raised my eyes to Marty’s. The guilty look on her face probably mirrored my own. Our ill-timed guffaws had run their course. Like school kids sensing real trouble on the bench outside the office, we took a few moments to compose ourselves. Then I knocked at the door.

“May we come in now?” I tried to make my voice sound serious. Mature.

Marty leaned to the window and added, “We promise to be good.”

Heavy steps vibrated on the other side of the door. Maddie. I didn’t hear the dog’s paws scrabbling over the floor, though. Teensy was probably with Mama in the kitchen, sulking.

“Beautiful timing, sisters,” Maddie hissed as she opened the door. “Now Mama is sad
and
mad. She’s furious at you two.”

Mad was good, I thought. I’d rather see her angry than moping and beaten down like she became in that last year of her marriage to No. 2. Marty and I arranged our faces into appropriately chastened expressions. We slunk in behind Maddie as she led the way into Mama’s kitchen.

“Good evening, girls.” Mama’s tone was frosty.

“Evening, Mama.” We tried to sound contrite.

Marty and I silently took our seats. A box of pink wine sat on the kitchen table. The glass in front of Mama was half full. Maddie was busy, putting out gingham-checked placemats, and pulling more glasses from the cabinets. I waited as she poured our wine, and drew a tumbler of tap water for herself. Mama kept her eyes on the table, fiddling with a ceramic salt shaker shaped like a duck. Still sniffling a bit, she traced the line of the duck’s yellow-gingham collar.

I caught Maddie’s eye and gave a slight nod toward Mama’s wine glass. Maddie slid it under the box’s pour spout and filled it to the brim. When the rest of us had taken our first sips, I broke the silence.

“Mama, you can’t possibly mean you’re backing out of the wedding. Surely this is something we can work out?”

Silently, she lifted the tail end of a raspberry-sherbet scarf she wore around her neck and dabbed at her mascara-muddied eyes. I hoped the scarf wasn’t Dry Clean Only.

Marty tore off a piece of paper towel from the roll on the table. Maddie fished a compact out of her purse and handed it to Mama. Never one to ignore the presence of a mirror, she popped it open to take a peek.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.” Mama snapped the compact shut like it caught fire. “I look a fright.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said loyally.

“It’s mainly the mascara,” Marty added.

“That and your hair,” Maddie pointed out helpfully.

Mama opened the mirror again. “I always said I’d never cry over another man, girls. And here I am.” Examining the damage, she fluffed her hair’s flattest side and picked off mascara clumps with the paper towel. She extracted her Apricot Ice lipstick from her pantsuit pocket, and swiped it twice across her lips.

Then she handed the compact back to Maddie, took a big swallow of wine, and squared her shoulders. “Enough is enough,” she said.

I didn’t like the final sound of that.

“What happened, Mama?” I glanced at the swiveling hips on her Elvis wall clock. “It’s barely been an hour-and-a-half since we talked. How could Sal go from the love of your life to the scum of the earth in such a short time?”

She took another big swig of wine, not even bothering to blot the lipstick stain off the glass. “Plain and simple, girls,” Mama said. “He’s a liar.”

My sisters and I looked at each other. When Mama gets that made-up-her-mind tone, it’s easier to push a Brahma bull up a steep hill than it is to get her to see any alternatives.

Marty shook her head. “I’ve never known Sal to lie.”

“Well, then, you don’t know him very well, Marty, because he flat-out lied to me about that woman Mace saw him parking with.”

“They were just standing there. They weren’t ‘parking,’ Mama.”

An imaginary picture immediately popped into my head of Sal and Ms. Sunglasses wrestling like horny teenagers on the roomy seat of his Cadillac. Now I’d have to recite the first several stanzas of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to banish the image from my mind.

“Well, whatever they were doing, he denied even being out there at all. And he kept trying to get me off the phone, like I was annoying him for even asking.”

She swallowed more wine, and stared out the window into the night. When Mama spoke again, her voice was soft and distant. “I’m telling you, girls, Sal sounded just like Husband No. 2. I remember it so well, this one time when I called to check on him when he was home sick from work. That lying S.O.B. couldn’t get me off the phone fast enough. I found out later he wasn’t sick at all that day. Number 2 had some hoochie-mama from an Orlando strip club in my bed at the exact moment I called.”

My heart went out to her. We’d all known No. 2 was a rat. But we were still young when they were married. She’d never shared those kinds of carnal details.

“That’s awful.” Marty put a hand over Mama’s on the table.

Mama shrugged. “That wasn’t the first time. Wouldn’t be the last.”

Maddie topped off her glass of wine.

“Maybe it wasn’t Sal out on the road,” Marty said, but even she sounded doubtful. “Are you certain you saw them, Mace?”

Maddie snorted. “Mace can pick out a hawk on a pine branch at fifty yards and tell you if it’s a red-tailed or a red-shouldered. And Sal is a lot bigger than a hawk.”

“Yeah, he’s more like a buzzard,” Mama said.

Now she was name-calling. I just wished I’d turned around on that highway and checked on Sal and Sunglasses, like Mama asked me to. We’d have the real story, and her imagination wouldn’t have had a chance to spin out of control.

We all fell silent, each with our thoughts. Then, Maddie got up to rummage around in the refrigerator. She returned with three-fourths of a butterscotch pie in one hand and two take-out containers from the Pork Pit in the other. I rose to get out some plates and silverware, while Marty slipped the take-out into the microwave.

“I couldn’t eat a thing,” Mama said. “I’m too upset.”

Maddie cut her a small slice of the pie anyway. Mama pushed the plate way off to the side of her placemat, even though butterscotch was her favorite.

Once my sisters and I had filled our plates, Maddie announced: “Well, I like Sal. I’m not going to believe the worst about him until I hear what he has to say.”

Last summer, Maddie’s attitude toward Sal had been the last to change. But once he won her over, she was in his corner for life. Even if he was a New Yorker.

Marty defended him, too. “Can’t you give Sal the benefit of the doubt, Mama? Remember there were a lot of things he wouldn’t—couldn’t—tell us last summer. But everything turned out all right in the end, didn’t it?”

Mama didn’t answer. Marty’s question hung in the air, which was rich with the tangy smell of barbecue sauce, the aroma of macaroni and cheese, and the sweet scent of that pie, topped with a mountain of whipped cream.

Mama’s fork darted over her placemat for a tiny bite of her pie.

Encouraged, I said, “Your wedding shower’s tomorrow night at Betty’s, isn’t it, Mama? Be a shame to let all Betty’s preparations and those nice gifts go to waste.”

She regarded her left hand under the kitchen light. “I suppose I’d have to give Sal back his ring, too.”

Maddie added, “Not to mention, the deposits you’ll lose, canceling at this point.”

I heard Marty’s sigh of relief when Mama slipped the plate to the center of her placemat and really started in on the pie. She had it about half-gone when Teensy gave a yelp and skittered out from under the kitchen table toward the front door.

“Is that barbecue I smell?” a man’s deep voice boomed over Teensy’s barking. “Y’all better have saved me a plate.”

Our cousin Henry made his way into the kitchen, Mama’s Pomeranian yapping at his heels. Teensy did a few revolutions around Henry’s ankles, the pitch of his barking climbing higher each time he went airborne.

“Aunt Rosalee, I love you to death, but if you don’t silence that little varmint, I’m going to marinate him in sauce and stick him on a barbecue spit.”

Mama gasped, snatching Teensy off the floor and clutching him to her chest.

“You wouldn’t!” she said.

“Oh, I would,” Henry answered, but his grin belied the threat.

As Henry took a seat, I put a quarter-rack of ribs on a plate, and then doused the meat in warmed barbecue sauce. When I handed it to him, he licked his lips. “You got any cornbread? And how ’bout some baked beans?”

Maddie harrumphed. “You’d think an uninvited guest would be grateful for what he’s served.”

“Hush, Maddie.” Mama slapped her on the wrist. “You know Henry’s never a guest in this home. Henry’s family.”

As Mama got up to fetch his favorite sweet tea from the refrigerator, Henry leaned around her back and stuck out his tongue at Maddie. She balled up a paper towel and tossed it at him. It bounced off Henry’s forehead and hit Teensy, asleep on the floor.

“I saw that!” Mama’s tone was serious, but I noticed the trace of a smile on her lips.

Say what you will about Henry, and we three sisters have said plenty. We always could count on him, though, to make Mama smile. And that was just what we needed tonight.

Henry tore through his food, as focused as if he were presenting a case to keep a client off Death Row. Mama helped herself to another little sliver of butterscotch pie. Marty made coffee, and Maddie and I cleared the table.

When Henry stopped for a breath before his dessert course, he slapped himself on the forehead. “I almost forget to tell you my news!”

“Yes, even you might have trouble talking while you’re choking down half a pig.” Maddie handed him a length of paper towel.

“I noticed you weren’t exactly dainty either, Maddie, shoveling in that pie.” Henry mopped the lower half of his face.

“Your news?” I prodded.

He took his time wiping barbecue sauce off each finger, extending the dramatic moment like the grandstanding attorney he is: “Word is down at the courthouse that C’ndee Ciancio is being sought for questioning in the investigation into Ronnie’s murder.”

Marty’s hand flew to her throat, just like Mama’s. And it must have been a comfort to Henry to see my older sister’s mouth drop open in surprise. “You’re not serious?”