Mama Gets Hitched (17 page)

“It’s been a while for us, hasn’t it?”

“Too long.”

“How much time before we get back to the camp?”

“Too much,” I murmured.

Our eyes met. My heart pattered. What had I been doing, playing around?
This
was the man I wanted. And I wanted him right now.

He gestured to his soaking-wet slacks, which showed each muscle and bulge quite clearly. “Do you think they’ll let us use a cabin when we get back to the camp? Maybe clean up and dry off?”

I concocted a fantasy of Carlos and me in the shower, working one another into a lather. As a lascivious grin spread across my face, I wondered: Did I look as predatory as that big gator?

I was studying the
shade of purple on Betty Taylor’s front door, trying to determine if it occurred anywhere in nature, when Maddie answered the bell.

“Why are you so late? Mama is madder than a box of frogs!” She wrinkled her nose. “And what is that stench? You smell like something they left behind in the cast net.”

Maddie’s eyes moved from my head to my feet.

“Those boots are soaking wet, Mace! Betty’ll throw a fit. She just had her lavender carpet cleaned for Mama’s bridal shower. You better strip off those stinking things before you come inside.”

At the word “strip,’” I felt my face get hot. My eyes darted away from Maddie. Memories of what Carlos and I had done all afternoon in an empty cabin at the fish camp filled my head. Skilled at reading the body language of guilty middle-schoolers, Maddie gave me an assessing look.

“Well, at least you have some color in your cheeks. We’ll tell Mama you’re trying out a new blush for the wedding.”

“I …”

She raised a crossing-guard’s hand. “Stop right there. I don’t want to hear it. I just hope you’re using protection.”

If my face was red before, it was burning now. “Maddie, please! I’m not one of your students.”

“No, you’re just acting like one. Do I know the lucky man?”

I pressed my lips together.

“Was it Tony?”

I shook my head.

“Is it that rodeo devil, Jeb Ennis, back in the saddle again?”

Another head shake.

“Oh, no you didn’t! Are you playing around with poor Carlos again?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “He wasn’t exactly complaining.”

“Give him time. I have no doubt you’ll be back to making him miserable once the afterglow’s gone.” She
tsked
. “Now, get out of those nasty boots and slap a smile on your face. We’ve just started a game of Pin the Tail on the Groom.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Sal’s here?”

“Yes, everything’s patched up; Mama’s over the Mystery Woman. But now, Sal’s the life of the party, and he’s stealing her spotlight. She might just give him the hook.”

As I stood on the mat to remove my boots, Maddie muttered as she moved down the hallway: “ ‘All the modern showers have the bride and groom together, Maddie.’ That’s when I
should
have said, ‘Since when is Himmarshee modern, Mama?’ ”

I heard a loud whoop of female laughter from the next room. And then Sal’s Bronx honk boomed, “Careful there, Dab! Another inch closer and I couldn’t perform my husbandly duties on the honeymoon.”

Ohmigod! It was the hussy from the drive-thru!

I came into the living room, barefoot, just in time to see a blindfolded senior citizen in a silver lamé mini-dress, holding a fabric donkey tail in her hand. The sticky swatch at the end was aimed perilously near Sal’s private parts. As Dab gave a sultry laugh, Mama did a slow burn on the couch.

As I sat, she hissed, “I never should have invited that shameless woman. She’s flirting with Sal, right in front of me, and I’m the bride!”

“Shhh,” Marty whispered from the floor. “Dab looks like she’s been rode hard and put up wet. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“And she’s ancient,” Maddie said. “I doubt she’s flirting.”

“Well, I’m sixty years old …” Mama started.

“You’re almost sixty-three,” Maddie corrected.

“Thank you, Maddie. I didn’t know you were running the Florida Department of Vital Statistics in addition to the middle school.” She smoothed her hair and lowered her voice. “As I was saying, Dab’s only got about ten years on me. A woman, and especially that one, doesn’t forget how to flirt just because she gets older.”

Mama seemed to notice me on the couch for the first time. “If it’s a woman who ever knew how to flirt, that is.”

I let the shot roll off my back. I was just grateful she was focused on Dab instead of on my late arrival. Or my bare feet. Or the color in my cheeks from incredible sex.

“Didn’t you say she had a doozy of a story, Mama?” I asked.

“Only if you think dancing naked on stage in a cage in Las Vegas is a story.” Mama raised a hand, ticking off items on her fingers. “Or, it’s a story being married more times than me, even though she claims we’re equal because she actually married the same man twice. Or, doing time in prison …”

“Uhmmm, Mama?” Marty said. “You’ve done time, too.”

She waved her hand. “That was just jail, honey. And it was all a mistake. Dab Holt got sent up for murder, I heard. They say she shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”

Marty snorted a swallow of pink wine out her nose. Maddie said, “For heaven’s sake, Mama! You’re quoting a lyric from a Johnny Cash song.”

“Well, I can’t help that, Maddie. Maybe he wrote the song about Dab.”

“How come we’ve never met her? She sounds fascinating,” I said.

Dab was snake-dancing around Sal, using the donkey tail like a stripper’s scarf.

“My goodness, Mace! I tried to give you girls a good example growing up. I wouldn’t have exposed you to a woman as bad as Dab.”

Maddie said, “Dab beat out Mama for Miss Swamp Cabbage in 1965. They never spoke again, until Mama decided to make amends by inviting her to the shower.”

“The vote was rigged.” Mama fluffed her hair. “I suspect she did a special favor for one of the judges. Plus, she was too old, according to the rules. She lied about her age!”

“Imagine that,” Maddie said.

“How’d she come by that unusual name?” Marty asked.

“Her daddy called her that because she was so tiny; just a little dab,” Mama said.

I looked at Mama’s frenemy, doing a shimmy now, the shiny fabric of her dress stretched tight across her breasts. They perched unnaturally high and round on her skinny frame, like two honeydew melons on a grocer’s shelf.

“I guess she got her nickname before she got the implants,” I said.

Betty came over just then with a cup of punch and a plate: A deviled egg, a pig-in-the-blanket, some spicy bean dip with a few tortilla chips, and three ham-and-cheese roll-ups.

“Bless you, Betty. I’m starving.”

“Well I could tell you didn’t stop home to eat, Mace, ’cause I know you would have done something with that hair.”

My hand went to my mass of snarls. I couldn’t remember if I even washed it after my dip in the lake. There hadn’t been much time for hair care once Carlos joined me in the shower.

“Is that a new shade of blush, Mace?” Betty asked. “It’s very becoming. But, honey, you have got to come in to Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow and let us fix that mess on your head. You can’t walk down the aisle in that beautiful dress with hair that looks styled by a weed whacker.”

“Amen!” Mama said, though her eyes were still fastened on Sal and Dab.

Now, Dab was affixing the tail to Sal’s upper arm. She gave his bicep an appreciative squeeze. Mama sat on the edge of the couch, as if she was about to launch herself like a missile at Dab.

“My Lord!” Dab’s voice sounded like sex and cigarettes. “You must really work out. And I
do
hope that’s your arm.”

Marty giggled. I leaned behind Mama and raised my eyebrows at Maddie. She grinned.

“Looks like you
are
never too old,” she said.

Mama rocketed off the couch, shouting, “Next!”

She grabbed the blindfold off Dab. I thought she’d yank out a handful of her scarlet bouffant, too. But she just gave Dab a tight smile.

“Maybe you’d better sit down and rest a bit, honey.” She patted Dab’s arm. “Those varicose veins must act up something awful at your age.”

“I guess at your age your eyesight’s not what it used to be, Rosalee.” Hiking a high-heeled foot onto Betty’s coffee table, Dab displayed a surprisingly shapely leg. “I don’t have any varicose veins.”

Pushing past Dab to claim her rightful place on stage, Mama tied the blindfold gingerly, so as not to muss her helmet of hair. Since I was woefully familiar with the Mama Show, I turned my attention to my food and punch while I checked out Betty’s home.

And I’d thought Hair Today was a purple palace. Her home made the salon seem sedate. The living room drapes were mulberry velvet, with low-hanging swags in the same shade. The over-stuffed couch was plush, and as purple as an eggplant. The carpet was a thick pile, closer to lilac than lavender. About the only thing that wasn’t purple was the TV, and it wore an orchid-hued doily like a lacy hat.

In her sherbet-colored pantsuit, Mama looked like a tangerine in a bowl of plums.

Among a dozen or so guests, I recognized some of Mama’s bingo buddies and several of her fellow church-goers. D’Vora, from the salon, chatted with Charlene, the waitress from Gladys’ Diner. Alice Hodges sat by herself, an untouched plate of food on her lap. Her clothes were clean and pressed, and she wore a hint of lipstick. She’d tried to fix herself up. But her eyes were still blank; her complexion sallow. It seemed as if no one wanted to breach the force field of mourning that surrounded her.

Just as I was about to stand up to go check on Alice, the doorbell rang. Glancing at her watch, Betty frowned. She’d probably been hoping to have us all gone in time to sit down with her feet up, a plate of leftovers on her lap, and
American Idol
on the tube.

“Rosalee, were you expecting another guest?” Betty asked.

Slipping off the blindfold, Mama did a quick survey of the room. “I invited my nephew Henry so Sal wouldn’t be the only man. He said he couldn’t make it until later, though.”

Sal cleared his throat. “It … it … might be C’ndee.”

Mama’s brows shot up.

“She called this morning to say she’d taken a little trip to the coast. She said she was really sorry she missed dinner with you and her nephew at the Speckled Perch. I told her to stop by tonight so she could tell you in person.”

“Well, isn’t that nice.” Mama gave Sal one of her looks. Translation: She’d like to hand him that blindfold and stand him up at the wall of a firing range.

He tugged at his collar. “Sorry I forgot to mention it.”

“I’m sure you are.”

The bell ding-donged again, an impatient sound. As Betty hurried to get the door, every other pair of eyes in the room watched Mama and Sal to see what would happen next. Even Alice seemed to shake off her sleepwalking state to attend to the pre-wedding drama.

Maddie started humming the theme from
Jaws
.

“Oh, my Gawd! That
cake is absolutely GORGEOUS!” C’ndee’s big voice blasted from the dining room. “I have to visit the little girl’s room, but be sure to save me a slice.”

“Cake,” Maddie and I chorused.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Marty called out, in a voice brimming with artificial cheer. “Mama, why don’t we go into the other room and cut the cake?”

A murmur of assent went around the room. Mama cast one more withering glance at Sal, who seemed to shrink a little under the glare.

“Poor guy,” I whispered to Maddie. “He better man up if he wants to go
mano a mano
with Mama.”

“You know it. She likes a challenge. If she can walk all over him, he won’t last long enough to board the
Maid of the Mist
on their honeymoon.”

“They’re not going to Vegas?”

“Nope, Niagara,” Maddie said. “She has bad associations to Vegas, what with Husband No. 2. Then again she’s been to Niagara Falls, too. Was that with No. 3 or 4?”

Marty hissed under her breath, “Hush, the both of you! You’ll jinx the wedding.”

The party relocated to the dining room, where all of us attempted to stay on our best behavior. Mama’s snit was quickly forgotten, and she was already laughing and kidding again with Sal. She dabbed her finger in a bit of stray icing, and got on her tiptoes to put a dollop on his lips. Then she kissed it off.

Sal beamed as the two of them shared the process of cutting, plating, and passing pieces of cake. The thick white frosting was decorated with dark purple roses, no surprise.
Best Wishes, Sal and Rosalee
, was written in cursive, in a lighter shade of purple.

I was working on an exit strategy that would allow me to eat cake, and still get out the door before that shower game where guests squeeze a nickel between their knees and try to walk. Whoever drops her nickel first is definitely not a virgin. Considering the afternoon I’d spent, I doubted if I could squeeze my legs around a basketball, let alone a nickel.

Our plates full, my sisters and I returned to our positions in the living room. As Maddie savored a jumbo-sized icing rose, Marty said, “Are you going to talk to C’ndee, Mace?”

“You bet I am. If she ever makes it out of the ‘little girls’ room.’ What in the world is taking her so long in there, I wonder?”

Maddie shuddered. “Maybe she got some bad seafood over there on the coast.”

My older sister had once eaten some bad raw clams in Vero Beach. She’d been convinced ever since that the only good seafood was frozen, deep-fried, and served with a side of hush puppies.

Knowing Maddie’s taste for retelling the Revenge of the Clam story, in detail, Marty changed the subject. “I called the park today, Mace. Rhonda said you’d left with Carlos.” Her eyes sparkled with curiosity.

I ignored Maddie’s tongue clucking. “He asked me to go with him to question that lowlife, Darryl. We took a boat from the fish camp, but we never made it to Osprey Bay Island.”

“That’s because they took a little detour.” Maddie was wearing her know-it-all look.

“Well, we started taking on water. Carlos went overboard, and nearly drowned. And we barely escaped being eaten by a giant gator. So, I guess you could say we were detoured.”

“What!??” My sisters gasped.

Mama walked up with Sal, hands entwined like teenagers. “Did I miss something?” she asked.

As they sat, I launched into the tale of the Missing Drain Plug and How I Saved the Day. I was savoring the contrite look on Maddie’s face, when a hubbub arose and interrupted me.

“Get your hands off me, you hick!” The voice was loud, angry, and pure Joisey.

“Don’t call me a hick, you hussy!” That one was rural and shrill. Alice.

The voices were coming from the hallway, near the powder room. We all looked at one another. Then we leaped off the purple couch, plates of cake forgotten. We heard a loud
thump
, like a body getting shoved into the wall. Then
slap
, the sound of an open hand hitting skin. Just as we rounded the corner into the dining room, Alice and C’ndee came staggering out of the hallway. Each had a handful of the other’s hair.

“Let go!” Alice screeched.

“You first!” C’ndee countered.

Betty started clearing her souvenir shot glasses and Princess Diana plates off an accent table. Sal roared, “C’ndee! Stop it right now.” The two women circled, round and round.

“She started it.” C’ndee landed a kick with her red stiletto on Alice’s shin. “Bitch!”

Alice hopped on one foot. “Whore!” she yelled, connecting with a solid punch to C’ndee’s left breast.

“Ouch!” C’ndee cried, as everyone but Sal cringed.

He bulled his way through the moving mass of shower guests turned fight fans. He almost made it to the battering duo, even had one beefy arm stretched out to separate them, when C’ndee gave Alice a mighty shove. Alice grabbed at her opponent’s left shoulder and held on as she fell backward.

The two of them toppled together onto the dining room table. The punch bowl tipped, spilling a juice mixture of cranberry and pineapple, with lemon-lime soda. A fruity smell rose in the room. Globs of lime sherbet dotted Betty’s carpet, like green islands in a lilac sea. Then the cake slid from the table, splat onto the wet carpet. The two women went next, coming off the table only to lose their footing in frosting, sherbet, and bridal shower punch.

Mama clutched her hand to her throat. “Make them stop, Sal!” she wailed. “They’re ruining my shower.”

As I watched Alice and C’ndee tumbling across the floor in white frosting and pink punch, I had to disagree with Mama. This was the best bridal fete ever.