Men in Kilts

by Katie MacAlister

  “I think there’s some in the larder. And while you’re in there, would you bring out the second loaf of bread? We’re going to need it in order to feed this lot.” We were making sandwiches for lunch. A kind of late lunch/early tea, actually.

  The ladies in our party had been out all of the morning shopping, while the gentlemen stayed on the farm; the kids playing in the barn with Mabel and the cats, and the older generation tagging around after Iain as he did his chores.

  Brother was particularly fascinated by the dogs and how well trained they were.

  “The eggs are done, Aunt Kathie. What do you want me to do with them?” I gave Karen the instructions on cooling the eggs for the egg salad, and resumed my place at the soup kettle. Mo peered over my shoulder and crunched a piece of celery in my ear. “Not enough bacon.”

  “Yes there is, I know how to make potato soup—” I stopped, a horrible thought striking me. “What are you doing in here, Mo? You’re supposed to be out at the grocery store with Mom!”

  She waved toward a clutch of grocery bags on the table. “We’re back. Mom’s outside talking to—”

  I was off before she could finish her sentence. I had a horrible feeling I knew who my mother was talking to, and I had to separate them before disaster struck.

  “… and I can tell you are a woman who raised her daughters the right and decent way, Carol, but when I tell you the trouble I’ve had with Kathie, you’ll scream, you’ll positively scream. Do you know she intends on having the wedding at a ruin? And not even a nice one, but one that’s open to the sky and doesn’t have all of its walls! Have you ever heard of such a thing? I’ve been to many a wedding in my time, as I told your daughter earlier this week when I offered her full use of my expertise in taking the everyday event she has planned and making it into something people will be talking about for months, and I know a thing or two about how to put one on, but she insists that she and Iain want to have this minuscule nothing affair and not the wedding that my dear Iain needs and deserves. He was my first love, you know, or close enough to my first love to be considered my first love, and for that reason I owe it to him to make sure that his wedding is not a brief, shoddy sort of affair. I told Kathie this, but you know how this younger generation is, not that she’s that much younger than me, only eight or nine years at most and I certainly don’t think she looks any younger than me, but still, she is naive and young enough to not know her own mind even though she thinks she does, and lam—well, you know how men are, they’ll go along with whatever is easiest with never a thought to what they really want, and need, and deserve—” Too late. Mary had snagged my mother, Mom was listening to her with the same sort of look a rat gives a cobra, that hypnotized, blank, vacant sort of stare. It was all over for her. I returned to the house a saddened, wiser person.

  “Well, that’s it, the wedding’s off,” I announced to the kitchen at large.

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  “What’s Dad done now?” Joanna asked, waving a butter knife at me.

  “Nothing. Not a blessed thing. He is innocent of all things but having the dubious taste in marrying Mary.”

  Joanna and everyone else in the kitchen looked confused.

  “The wedding’s off,” I repeated for effect. “The wedding as we know it is now officially history. Instead of the lovely and charming intimate affair that Iain and I so painstakingly arranged, we will now have a giant, overblown, hideously expensive, fussy wedding that no one but Mom and Mary will enjoy, and which will probably result in years of acrimonious comments between Iain and myself, ending in a bitter divorce and my eventual downfall to alcoholism, while Iain turns into a dottering old man with no friends but his sheep.” You could have heard a feather drop.

  “Oh,” Mo said, and went back to slicing cheese for the ham sandwiches.

  Laura tutted . Bev dusted off her hands and put an arm around my shoulders.

  “I’m sure it’s not quite as bad as you think it is.”

  “No? You just go out there and listen to Mary and my mother talk. I’ll bet you a fiver they’re already talking about how they can fit fifty more guests in.” Bev smiled. “I’ll tell them lunch is almost ready.”

  “A fiver, Bev!”

  She nodded and pulled off the cloth she had wrapped around her waist as an apron, and went out to fetch my mother and Mary.

  I returned to the soup with a sinking feeling in my stomach, and tried to figure out a time when Iain and I would be alone long enough to escape the house and elope.

  Bev returned five minutes later, her face ashen. You could have heard individual atoms of oxygen striking the floor.

  Bev straightened her shoulders, and with an effort, gamely met my eye. “How do you feel about a champagne fountain topped with an ice sculpture of you and Iain in between two bagpipers?”

  By the time Sunday rolled around, I was following firmly in the footsteps of every other bride before me, and was a nervous wreck. I didn’t want to spend the night alone in a strange bed in a strange hotel—I wanted to spend the night lying on top of Iain, begging him to run away with me and save me from the hideous disaster that the wedding was sure to be.

  Instead, what I got was dinner out with the ladies—my hen party.

  February 13: Avoid Mary. Move to hotel. Hen party.

  Iain’s stag party.

  Joanna and Bev arranged for my hen party. I was pleased Bev had a hand in it, thus ensuring Joanna’s wild streak wouldn’t show up in the form of a male stripper or something equally as lamentable. Instead, what they had planned was a nice dinner at a private dining room in Brother’s hotel, a few gifts, a couple of bottles of champagne, and of course, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

  What they had planned and what actually happened were sadly two separate things.

  Oh, it started off well enough. We all met in town at a cute little restaurant for an early full tea, the kind with clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches, lots of little pastries, and so on. Laura had commandeered Brother’s rental car, Mary had her Honda, and I had Iain’s Volvo. We rendezvoused, synchronized watches, kept Aunt Amber from wandering off after a couple of construction workers, and soon were settled in the very lilac interior of The Lilacs, a cute little restaurant that specialized in being extremely twee. Tourists ate it up, along with scones, clouty dumplings, and heather honey.

  From there we did a few hours of shopping. What else could I expect? I had a group of women who, with the exception of Annie and Joanna, were not native to Scotland. Shopping was de rigueur , and who was I to argue with them? After shopping we retired to the private dining room Joanna had reserved at Brother’s hotel. To that point, things were going pretty well. I endured a modest amount of chaffing, nothing unusual, and Aunt Amber only once escaped us—while we were all drooling over a blue topaz pendant and ring set, she was offering to show the jewelry store manager how she did her famous half-dollar dance for Harry Truman.

  “Don’t ask,” I told the stunned store manager as he backed slowly away from Aunt Amber. “You truly don’t want to know how she holds the half-dollar when she does it.”

  Once we got back to the hotel, things just kind of degenerated. I blame the chiropractors, truly I do. They had been at a convention in Inverness, and a group of them had taken advantage of the nearness of Aviemore and had spent the day there skiing. Now, chiropractors in general weren’t, in my experience, wild and crazy guys. Most of them wore suits and serious faces, had extremely good posture, and nice, clean hands. But the group at the hotel we were at was evidently made up of the Bad Boys of chiropractic care. The problems started when it turned out both groups—the Bad Boys and my party—had been booked into the same private dining room for the same time.

  “What are we going to do?” Joanna asked in a near wail. As hostess of the party, she felt responsible for the hotel’s mistake and was close to tears.

  “Now, don’t worry, Jo, we’ll take care of that manager.” Bev motioned to Mom and Mary, and the three
of them went to corner the weasely little manager who had been bribed into allowing the Bad Boy chiropractors to have the room despite the fact that we had booked first.

  In the end, because our combined numbers were so small, and half the Bad Boys were tired from their day on the slope, we ended up sharing the dining room: our nine to their five. The hotel staff separated the tables into two lots, and we contrived to ignore the interlopers as best we could.

  All except Aunt Amber, who looked upon this circumstance as a gift from heaven, and therefore not to be ignored.

  “Any of you boys from around here?” she asked as she hiked up her orthopedic knee-highs. The group of us, except for Mary who thought Aunt Amber was a hoot, collectively rolled our eyes and moved her to a seat with her back to the Bad Boys.

  The waiters served the champagne, and Joanna called the party to order. “As the official organizer of this celebration, and soon to be step-daughter-in-law to the guest of honor—”

  Mo hooted at that. The Bad Boys looked up at her noise. “Even Brother’s kids aren’t old enough to be married!”

  “As I was saying, as official organizer, I’d like to start the celebration of this important occasion by giving the bride the obligatory symbols of her upcoming nuptials. First,” Joanna whipped out a large carrier bag, “the veil and tiara!” I tried not to roll my eyes as our group applauded when Mo plunked the tiara and a short bit of tulle on my head. The Bad Boys applauded politely as well, then returned to their stories of the hills they had savaged.

  “Next, her magic wand!” Joanna bestowed upon me a glittery wand with a silver star at the end. “And finally, to keep her new husband mindful of his manners”—the chiropractors looked up, interested—“a whip!”

  “Just like the one I have!” Aunt Amber piped up over the roars of laughter from the Bad Boys and Mo. “Only mine has a tassel at the end. Smarts something terrible, too.”

  I took the whip and endured another round of bawdy hints as best I could.

  Even my mother got into the act, offering a few choice suggestions as to what I could do with the whip. Get a little Bolly under my mother’s belt, and she really let her hair down.

  “Presents! Time for presents!” Bev declared, and I spent the next half hour opening packages containing pairs of crotchless knickers, see-thru baby doll jammies with plastic hearts in strategic locations, a pair of faux fur-lined handcuffs from Max’s wife, Denise, who was present in spirit only, and a his and her set of tasseled thongs (and I’m not talking about the kind worn on your feet). This last one was from Aunt Amber, who told us it had taken her almost a whole week of shopping at her favorite adult stores to find just the right ones for Iain and me. His was leopard print (he Tarzan), while mine was zebra (me Jane). I had to promise her we’d wear them on our honeymoon in order to keep her from modeling the zebra one for the chiropractors.

  By this point the Bad Boys had given up all pretense of keeping to their own side of the room, and stood up to view every new gift as it was opened. Aunt Amber was in seventh heaven when, as we cracked open the third bottle of champagne, the Bad Boys invited themselves to our table and joined the fun.

  “Want me to show you how to do the Lambada the hard way?” Aunt Amber leered at one of them, twirling her gold tasseled necklace and waving it at him.

  The Bad Boy, whose name was Joe, was game, but alas and alack, no music could be found.

  Dinner helped calm things down a bit, since everyone was too busy eating and chatting with the Bad Boys (who had pushed the tables back into the original configuration), but once dinner was over, the fun and games began.

  Most of the games were the standard stuff found at bridal showers of the bawdy bend—a round of Truth or Dare, advice to the bride in the form of the older generation recalling the wedding night talk their mothers gave them, and several really bad jokes by the Bad Boys.

  Then Joanna and Mo went out to Laura’s car and came back with another carrier bag laden with something bulgy. “This is a little game we played at my hen party,” Joanna said, and passed around small paring knives.

  “What, you do a little cosmetic surgery?” one of the Bad Boys joked.

  Joanna smiled a wicked smile at him, and with a flourish, whipped out a cucumber. “This is the Cucumber Game! Mo will pass among you with the bag of cucumbers. You will notice there are all sorts of sizes and shapes in there—

  please take one (the gentlemen are excluded from participation) that closest resembles your husband’s… um… willie.”

  “Joanna!” Bev said with a half a giggle. My mother snorted and immediately started digging through the bag.

  “Mom,” I objected. “You’re not married anymore and you’re not seeing anyone!”

  She snickered and pulled out a cucumber. “There’s a lot you don’t know, honey,” she chirped, and eyed the cucumber speculatively.

  Bev giggled fully this time, and after poring over the remaining selection, emerged from the bag with a small, stunted little cuke.

  “Mum!” Joanna protested. “Don’t you think that’s a little on the small side?” Bev took another sip of the champagne and waved her cucumber in the air.

  “Now, does everyone have one?”

  The Bad Boys all responded with rude comments. Joanna ignored them. “Fine.

  The idea is to use these knives and carve your cucumber to resemble the size and shape of your partner’s willie. Best carving job wins this lovely”—she dug around in another bag—“this lovely picture of a famous movie star.” She held up a laminated picture of a movie star—a porn movie star wearing nothing but a smile. The Bad Boys took one look and protested that a part of his anatomy had to have been retouched and wasn’t physically possible outside of the animal kingdom.

  Aunt Amber snagged the photo and propped it up in front of her while she carved.

  “For inspiration,” she told the Bad Boy next to her. He grinned.

  I was awarded the picture by virtue of being the bride, and therefore in need of such a thing. Aunt Amber was awarded First Runner-up for having the most lifelike rendition of a male member in cucumber. Mom won a ribbon for most humorous, Bev won the pity award (she pared half of the cucumber away until she had a lump the size of her thumb left, which gave Joanna a severe case of the giggles), Annie won the least artistic award, and Mo won the braggarts award (she did only a tiny bit of carving around one edge of a really, really big cucumber).

  “Well, that’s it then,” Joanna said, after having awarded the last prize. “I hereby declare this hen party over. The bride looks a bit tipsy, and judging from the angle of her veil, I believe we should escort her to her cold, lonely bed before she passes out.”

  “Ho, the night is young,” Joe the Bad Boy declared, and stood up to get our attention. “I’ve always heard you have strippers at these Hen Nights! I don’t see any strippers here.” He peered around him in a semi sloshed way. “So I guess my mates and me’ll just have to stand in for them. Nick, Tom, you two see if you can’t find us some music. Will and Ernie and I will keep the ladies entertained until you return.

  “Oooh, Chippendales,” Aunt Amber squealed, and jumped up and down in her chair clapping her hands, then suddenly dived into her handbag for dollar bills.

  Mo snorted, and held a brief consultation with Joanna. I will admit to having had a tiny bit too much champagne, and was convinced that if I waved my magic wand in just the right manner, I could make the Bad Boys vanish. Or at least turn into frogs.

  Joanna and Mo, who had abstained from champagne so they could ferry everyone home, strong-armed the manager into helping us dissuade the Bad Boys from either stripping or following us to the various locations. Mom and I did our best to peel Aunt Amber from her chosen Bad Boy (Joe), but I think she still managed to give him her number in Florida.

  I was in the car with Joanna, Bev, Laura, and Annie when the subject came up about what the men were doing for Iain. I knew David was playing host to his father’s stag party, but I had had a lit
tle talk with him a few days before and had made sure he understood that Cerise and her ilk were not to be included on the guest list.

  “Don’t worry, Kathie,” he said with a cheeky grin. “We won’t do anything that you ladies aren’t doing.”

  This worried me. How did he know what we were doing? Might he not have a wrong impression of the level of our lasciviousness, and act falsely upon it? And if we were carving cucumbral replicas of our menfolk’s manhoods, just what were they carving?

  “Hey!” I said, still waving my sparkly wand and occasionally bashing Joanna on the back of her head with it. “What do you guys think the men are up to?

  Hadn’t someone better check on them? I think someone had better check on them. I think we had better check on them. I don’t trust that David. He’s a sly boots.”

  Joanna giggled. “I’ve never seen you squiffy. I’m going to have to remember this to tell my children.”

  I gave her head a wave with the magic wand and got it tangled in her hair. By the time I pulled it (and a clump of her hair) free, the others had taken up the subject.

  It was motioned, seconded, and unanimously voted in that we drive out to the farm and check up on what the men were doing. Somehow on the drive there the beans were spilled about what really went on at David’s stag party. I honestly don’t remember being the one to tell it, but someone did. Joanna was angry with David for a week afterward.

  “OK, now here’s the thing,” I shushed everyone in the car as we approached the farm, and made Joanna stop at the beginning of the drive. The second car, driven by Mo, had followed behind us flashing its lights periodically because they hadn’t a clue what we were up to. “We need stealth here, ladies, stealth.

  We have to be very, very, very quiet so the men don’t hear us. Quiet is what we need. And stealth.”

  “What we need,” Annie said with a little burp, “is quiet. Stealth!”

  “Yes, excellent point, Annie Walker,” I praised her. “We need to be stealthy.