Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter

by Melissa Francis

  “Your family is great. Your sister is a little off,” Wray ventured. “But I’d be like that too if I had to move back in with my parents.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know,” I said.

  “She’s studying for the bar?” he asked.

  “In theory. I don’t know how much studying she’s doing. She said she was going to take the Kaplan course. But I thought that’s why you go to law school, basically to study for the bar,” I said.

  “Right,” Wray said, following the winding lane around the golf course. We went through the gatehouse and out onto the main road.

  “Turn right here. There’s a Bristol Farms back next to the exit from the freeway,” I said. “I was hoping that Tiffany would get a normal office job and her own apartment, and just start her life, sort of. Mom always says Tiffany wants to keep hiding in school. That’s why she went to law school. So she wouldn’t have to face life. She took almost six years to graduate from Berkeley, well, just over five, I guess. And then spent three more years in law school. She took a break in the middle. She’s been milking it for a long time. She’s never had anything like a nine-to-five, five-day-a-week job. I think it would do her a lot of good. Even if she was just like a paralegal or something. Turn here,” I said, pointing to the light at the intersection.

  “How old is she now?” he asked.

  “Twenty-seven,” I said.

  “Well, normally you apply for jobs as you’re graduating, right? So did she do that? How did she not sort of lock something down before she left San Diego,” Wray asked, turning on Westlake Boulevard with the highway now in sight.

  “I don’t know. I think her grades were pretty terrible. When I went down there for graduation, she seemed like she was sort of holding on by a thread. In college she’d made a pack of friends, but I didn’t meet anyone really at law school that she seemed to hang out with except her boyfriend, who was a jerk, a real angry loud type. Her apartment was a disaster and when we went out to dinner, she spoke sort of frantically and didn’t always make sense. The whole vibe was not good. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but it was not normal.”

  And it seemed to me that she was drinking a lot but I didn’t say this to Wray. I noticed that Mom would snap at her and nag when she drank now, but her complaints didn’t get any traction with Tiffany or Dad, since Tiffany wasn’t driving and she wasn’t so drunk she was knocking over the furniture or anything. Plus she and Dad were drinking from the same bottle, so clearly he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. Since I had been away from the group and now stepped back in, it was easier for me to see her casual drinking was escalating.

  We pulled into the parking lot of Bristol Farms, and right into a spot in the front row next to the bay of shopping carts.

  When I got out of the passenger side, I saw them. Tiffany and Dad getting out of one car, Mom closing the door of another, one row away.

  “Didn’t we all agree that you and I would do the shopping?” Wray asked, befuddled, pointing to my dad and sister.

  “Yep. And look,” I said, “there’s Mom, too. In a third car.”

  “Wow,” Wray said.

  “No one trusts anyone else in this family to do anything, even shop for lunch.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Weshould just elope,” I said to Wray, still admiring the ring he’d given me. He’d taken me to the top of the Empire State Building and surprised me with a beautiful square diamond. I said yes immediately. Now the sun bounced off my new ring like a disco ball.

  I was on a cell phone, sitting in a news van with my news crew, waiting for the search-and-rescue team to find a downed Cessna. We’d been on high alert deep in the Connecticut woods for four hours, and it had gotten old.

  “If I had a dime for every private plane crash I’ve covered in New England, we could pay for this wedding ourselves. Why do people fly in these two-seaters? They fall out of the sky like rocks. And I’ll be damned if they don’t find the thing the moment we decide to go for dinner,” I said into the phone. The photographer up front grunted in agreement at every sentence.

  “Come on. It’s gonna be great! It’s a huge party with all our friends,” Wray said.

  “You have no idea what you are in for,” I said, knowing he was comfortably seated at his desk at his office near the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, while I was crouched in a van in the woods, rummaging through my purse for a granola bar.

  “Sure our moms have gotten a little nutty with the details but it’s going to be beautiful,” Wray assured me.

  My call waiting beeped in. It was Mom.

  “Okay, it’s my mom again. With yet another detail I’m sure. She’s spending so much money. I don’t know how they can afford this. I’m sure my dad has no idea how much she’s spending.”

  “Doesn’t he ask her?” Wray said.

  “No, I’m sure not. Communication isn’t their forte,” I replied.

  “Well, why don’t you tell her we don’t need so many elaborate details and frills?” Wray said, always trying to solve the problem.

  “Yes. I have said that and it’s like talking to a wall. She tells me that I didn’t have any trouble spending a fortune on my dress.”

  “I’ll pay for that. If I can also pick out what’s under it,” Wray said.

  I ignored him. “I have less understanding of their finances than ever.”

  Beep.

  “Shit. I have to take her call or she won’t leave me alone. Bye.”

  “How many times a day does she call you?” he said, as I cut him off.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said into the phone.

  “There you are,” she said, completely annoyed.

  “Yes, Mom. I’m working. I’m in the woods . . .”

  “Well, don’t get a tick bite. That would ruin the wedding. Especially if it was on someplace that showed,” she said.

  “What’s going on?” I pressed, not wanting to make the call last any longer than necessary.

  “We have to decide if the chairs should be wrapped in pale pink chiffon fabric or apricot. The fabric makes a gorgeous bow on the back. Not too big,” she said.

  Beep.

  More call waiting. This time it was Dana from the assignment desk. She was the assignment manager for the station, but also a close friend who was in the wedding, and she’d suffered through the details as much as I had. Besides Wray, she was the main person keeping me sane through this process, the only one who understood I was juggling this job and Mom the Wedding Planner. I thought about conferencing her into the fabric vote since I didn’t care.

  “Do we need to wrap the chairs?” I asked. “How much is that?”

  “It’s a fortune, but it’s necessary,” Mom said.

  Beep.

  “Necessary? Mom, I’m working. I have to answer that,” I said, realizing that Dana could be calling about something other than my pending nuptials.

  “Pink or apricot?”

  “Hold on,” I said, clicking over to Dana. “What’s up? My mom is driving me bananas.”

  “They found the plane! Where are you? I just heard it on the scanner! Are you sitting in the truck? Get out of the truck, grab Brian, and run!” Dana yelled.

  I hung up on both calls and threw the van door open. Brian’s boots beat me to the dusty path in front of us and I chased him in the direction of the barking dogs. He had his camera up on his shoulder, rolling tape as he ran. I pulled the stick microphone out of my pocket and flipped it upside down to switch it on from the base.

  We caught up to the search party and other TV crews in time to see them pry open the plane door. Brian widened his stance to steady himself as he shot the state trooper climbing onto the plane’s wing. The trooper dipped his shaved head inside the cabin as two searchers held the door back.

  “Let’s get him out!” he shouted with his head still inside. Two rescue workers climbed inside the cabin and struggled to free the pilot, who was apparently still breathing.

  My phone rang again. It wa
s Mom.

  “I cannot talk,” I shouted into the receiver. “I don’t care what color the chairs are. Pick one. Or we can stand. I have to go. They’re prying this pilot from the plane.”

  And with that I snapped the clamshell shut and turned it off.

  Two weeks later Wray and I boarded a much larger plane to L.A, loaded down with everything we’d need for the wedding and the honeymoon. I’d spent the previous day, Monday, standing on a train platform in New Haven, where a mother and her four sons had been struck and killed trying to cross the tracks in the middle of the night. The tragedy had led every local newscast. Like most reporters, I’d become immune to death and destruction. I was used to seeing mangled cars containing bloody bodies right up close. Plus you start to notice how often a bad decision had set off a deadly chain of events. But this was too much. When we arrived, the children’s shoes were still lying on the tracks. The scene rocked even the most seasoned reporters among us. It was not an auspicious start to the week that would end with my wedding.

  “When’s Dana coming?” Wray asked as we boarded United’s flight to L.A.

  “Thursday. Which seems like a year from now.” I was banking on Dana to be my life jacket during this storm and keep me laughing. She always had the perfect quip or sarcastic remark to remind me that my mom’s nitpicking and crazy making was not life or death. It was like traveling with your own stand-up comic. I knew that when Mom fumed about some imaginary insult from a friend or family member or obsessed about the centerpieces, Dana would have the perfect joke about how our marriage hinged on the number of roses on each table.

  Wray tried to soothe my nerves, but he didn’t take them that seriously. He was relentlessly positive about the rest of the wedding week. He thought he could smooth over any bumps in the road. I wasn’t sure he understood that smoothing over landmines didn’t stop them from exploding. Still my worrying wasn’t helping and I’d been snappy with him all evening, barking at him all the way to the taxi that we were leaving for the airport too late. I didn’t want to start our future life together this way.

  “I’m really happy to be getting married. It’s not that. I’m just a little stressed about how this wedding is going to turn out. Bringing all these different worlds together seems like we’re courting disaster. My friends, your friends, your family, and my family . . .”

  Initially, I’d been most concerned about Mom, who could be offended by the change of a stoplight. I’d seen her return a dish of food at a restaurant just to spite a waiter. She’d stopped talking to each of her sisters for years at a time over simple disagreements, like whose turn it was to pick up the check. Already, she’d channeled a little hostility my future mother-in-law’s way for no reason, dismissing or denigrating any of her ideas for the wedding weekend. Wray’s mom had even chosen a gray dress for the ceremony so she wouldn’t upstage anyone, but when she’d called to tell Mom about her dress, Mom was put out by the intrusion. It was irrational. I just wanted her to play nice this one time.

  But I was actually most concerned about my sister, who didn’t even come to my bachelorette weekend in New York, when all my bridesmaids and close friends came to the city for a final weekend of staying out all night bar-hopping without boyfriends or husbands.

  “It’s so far, and I don’t really know your friends. You don’t want me to come. I’m too old for you guys anyway!” she’d protested.

  I’d told her that wasn’t true. But in my heart, I was relieved. She’d gone from being a party girl to a recluse in my parents’ house. All she had left was a few friends from Berkeley that she didn’t see much. She’d had a few jobs working in legal offices in the past year, but couldn’t hold on to them, telling us her job had been eliminated, or she didn’t like her boss. There was always a reason the job didn’t last. She didn’t go out with friends anymore. She hadn’t even wanted to go out with me and Wray the last time we visited. My parents had gone from concerned to frustrated to helpless.

  Now I was flying in for this all-consuming wedding. Her little sister was getting married. I felt guilty about the position I was putting her in, how I’m sure my wedding made her feel, that I was leapfrogging her one last time, getting married first. And at the same time I felt resentful. I wished she could just share my joy, and I could share hers. That’s what sisters were supposed to do. But I had no idea how to help her make some joy of her own. She was stuck, and even worse, sinking.

  When we arrived in Westlake Village, Wray took me to my parents’ house and abandoned me after a quick hello to my family. He checked into a nearby hotel with his family, where most of our guests would be staying too. The plan was for us to stay apart until the actual wedding. This was a horrible plan. I should have paid more attention when this scheme was being hatched.

  The next two days were a series of gatherings where the wedding planner and my mom broke down the smallest decision into excruciating detail. Wray mostly hung out by the hotel pool and played golf with his groomsmen, while I got entangled in things I’d never notice on the wedding schedule, like who was going to tie two hundred bows on the programs I didn’t think we really needed anyway. Then when the programs disappeared, Mom blamed Wray’s side, none of whom had been within a hundred feet of them.

  “Every time I enter a room, there’s a bunch of women crying,” Wray joked during one of the rare moments when I saw him. We were having lunch at Jack’s, a little café in Westlake Village Center.

  “I’m dreading the rehearsal dinner tonight,” I said, taking a bite of salad. I had a hard time eating when I was stressed, and now most of the clothes I’d bought for the wedding week and honeymoon were hanging off me loosely. It was such a cliché to shrink before your own wedding, but I couldn’t help it.

  “It’s going to be great. It’s a fish fry!” Wray said.

  “Your mom realizes this is Southern California right? No one eats anything fried here. It’s like a sin. Even if it is fried, no restaurant would even admit it. It’s the kiss of death. They call it blackened or pan seared or pan-anything-but-fried.”

  “Well, that’s more for us. She’s making everyone who came from Florida feel at home,” he said, always on his family’s side no matter what.

  “Whatever. It’s sort of the least of my problems at this point. I gotta go back. I have another dress fitting.” I kissed him and bolted.

  That night a hundred guests for the rehearsal dinner crowded into the courtyard of Lake Sherwood Country Club, just a few yards from where the wedding would take place the following day. A strong breeze swept through the clusters of couples as they stood in between the dining tables and chatted. Ladies more accustomed to Florida’s humid climate shivered in their short dresses as their dates held on to fluttering cocktail napkins. Waiters adjusted the temperature on the portable heaters they’d scattered through the party, even though it was nearly June.

  Towering palms filled the center of each table, with delicate hanging votives dangling from the branches and twinkling in the night air. When a breeze struck, a tall arrangement here and there would topple over, causing a waiter to leap into action before the peach tablecloths caught fire.

  In the middle of a group of guests, Wray’s mom, Martha, stood wearing cocktail pants and a tight camisole that showed off her slender build. Every strand of her cropped blonde hair was teased and softly sprayed into place. Her southern accent rose above the crowd as she greeted her friends. She was exactly the type of well-meaning, attractive, social woman Mom hated.

  “Wow, Wray’s mom is so fit,” said Nicole, my chic friend from New York who had reintroduced me to Wray at the Bubble Lounge in New York. She was a perfect physical specimen herself.

  “You should have seen her on the bike trip we took through the Loire Valley. She and Wray left the rest of us in the dust,” I said.

  “That’s a nightmare,” Nicole said with a laugh.

  A handful of waiters were busy setting out a buffet of traditional southern fish fry, consisting of small juicy chunks of
flaky white grouper lightly battered, with tartar sauce and cheese grits on the side.

  I stood with a few friends from high school and saw Tiffany hanging as close to Dad as a preschooler reluctant to be dropped off at a new school. She spoke to no one. I headed over to talk to her.

  “Hey, I love that dress,” I said, as she pulled on the black knit hem.

  “I got it with Mom at Nordstrom’s.” Her eyes only met mine for a second.

  “Did you say hi to Dana, my friend from work? Have you met her yet? She’s so great,” I offered. I’d asked Dana to try to look out for Tiffany, but I didn’t see her now. Dana was disarming and funny, and the perfect person to put Tiffany at ease and try to include her.

  “Did you know Wray’s family is doing a song? They are like standing up and singing. Can they sing?” Tiffany asked.

  “Well, his sister can,” I said.

  “Yep. It’s supposed to be a surprise but I saw them rehearsing. With props.”

  “Shut up!” I gasped. She nodded slowly.

  Before I could get more details, a tall, slender waitress with a neat blonde ponytail moved through the crowd letting everyone know the buffet had opened. Half the guests moved in, while the locals hung back, unsure of the cuisine.

  I ushered Tiffany over to the line and took a plate.

  “Is that Cream of Wheat?” my college roommate, Debbie, asked me as I stepped next to her in line.

  “It’s cheese grits,” Wray said from behind me with a smile. “It’s delicious.”

  Nicole was at the front of the line. A Texan, she had no aversion to Southern fare.

  My bridesmaids and I settled at a table to the side, talking and eating, as my parents came and joined us. Waiters filled and refilled the wine glasses around the table. Mom smiled and talked to Dana, who’d been my salvation, occupying and appeasing Mom all day, while Dad tried to get Tiffany to come out of her shell and join in the conversation.