by Josie Brown
“No need to have her hate us both, right? One of us has to be the good cop. What say you take the fall for my misdeed”—To entice me, his lips roam over my shoulders—“just this once?”
“I say dream on. We’re in this together.” I stroke Jack’s chest. “Okay, listen, we’ll get home in time to pick up the kids from school. Ryan doesn’t expect us back in the office until after dinner tonight. I’ll text Aunt Phyllis to grab Trisha from ballet class. Why don’t you pick up Mary and Evan, while I do middle school carpool? We’ll grill burgers and catch up on all we missed while we were out of town. Then tonight, when we tuck her into bed—together—we’ll break the news to her.”
He lifts my hand and uses it to scratch his five-o’clock shadow. “Despite her—and our—feelings about Babette, maybe she’ll think it’s exciting, and historically significant that she stood beside the President of the United States at her parents’ wedding. And if it turns out that Lee is fronting the Quorum, we’ll give her something else to remember the Chiffrays: our Medals of Honor.”
“And if he’s not, she can visit her parents in jail,” I remind him. “Either way, it’ll be a memorable event.”
Chapter 4
Four Reasons Why You Need a Wedding Planner
The best way in which to enjoy your wedding ceremony is to stay oblivious to all the hard work and effort that, in the end, make it a rousing success. That’s just the first reason why you want to hire a wedding planner! Here are three more:
Reason #2: You’ll be too busy thinking about more important things—like how to lose another ten pounds, so that you fit into the wedding dress you bought almost a year ago.
Reason #3: You’ll need someone to blame if (a) the canapés are soggy, (b) your mother hates the seating arrangement, or (c) the florist brings the wrong flowers; and
Reason #4: Someone needs to play “bad cop.” Case in point: your mother would never forgive you for bitch-slapping your bridesmaid-slash-sister out of her giggles before she promenades down the aisle in front of you, but she’ll accept seeing li’l sis pummeled by your wedding planner. After all, the woman is simply doing her job!
When Jeff’s pal, Cheever Bing, hops in my SUV, he does the unthinkable: he shoves my son aside so that he can plop down in the front passenger seat.
This is verboten for two reasons. First, this specific seat is reserved either for my youngest, Trisha, or my son, Jeff. Cheever knows quite well that the rabble—that is, he and my other carpool charge, Morton Smith—sit in the back.
Secondly, I don’t need his baseball practice stench wafting in my direction.
I’m just about to remind him of this (my guess is that a twist of the ear will do it) when I realize that he’s fixated on me.
Well, on my stomach, anyway.
Surprising, since I usually catch him looking at my boobs. (For that, he’s learned to expect a kick in the pants.)
To break his trance, I snap my fingers in front of his eyes.
He shakes his head, confused. “You don’t look ready to pop. I mean, you’re carrying a small tire, but that could be your advanced years.”
I grab his collar, jerking him so close that we’re eye to eye. “What the heck do you mean by that?”
“You know: knocked up, bun in the oven, baby on board. All I’m trying to say is that you look almost normal.” His curiosity gets the better of him. His hand moves toward my stomach—
But I grab it just before he commits another unthinkable act: touching me.
My goal was the count of ten, but I only make it to six before I have to ask: “Why, in the name of sanity, would you think I’m pregnant?”
“My mom says it’s the only reason Mr. Craig would marry you—so that the kid won’t be a bastard.”
Why, that bitch!
I’m no stranger to the fact that Cheever’s mother, Penelope, despises me. Her snide asides to others about me are made just loud enough for me to catch them. Her mean-mommy posse—Tiffy Swift, and the unfortunately named Hayley Coxhead—are her Greek chorus in recounting my mommy misdemeanors and my public indiscretions to everyone in Hilldale.
My children are no exception to their snide asides.
On the other hand, I’ve been the soul of discretion when it’s come to the discovery of Penelope’s peccadillos, many of which expose her as a third-rate mother and a first-class slut.
I’ve cut her some slack because I’m a lady.
Okay, yeah, and because I’ve accidentally set her on fire at least twice.
Well, the honeymoon is over. If pyrotechnics is her fate, who am I to stand in the way?
Usually, it takes fourteen minutes to get from Hilldale Middle School to Penelope’s rambling cottage. I make it in eight. Even Cheever would have applauded the way in which I outran the two cop cars on my tail. However, he’s now shaking in his boots as he contemplates all the ways in which I could make his mother suffer, including any attempt on my part to disembowel the apple of her eye:
Him.
He shouldn’t worry. I’ve never been one to shoot the messenger. However, on several occasions, the perpetrator of the message has been blown to smithereens.
By the time I turn onto Cheever’s street, he’s wet his pants.
I was already resigned to the need for a full fumigation and detailing of the passenger seat. Now, I guess I’ll have to replace it altogether.
Still, it’s a small price to pay for putting Penelope Bing in her place, once and for all.
Despite their own disgust at Cheever’s lack of bladder control, Jeff and Morton haven’t had the nerve to chide him about it. Neither wants to deflect my anger in their direction. Smart boys.
I swerve into the Bings’ driveway, barely skidding to a stop in order to avoid hitting Penelope, who stands dead center in it as she plucks through a stack of envelopes she just pulled from a mailbox entwined with pale pink climbing roses.
“What the heck?” she squeals, as she stumbles backward, breaking a heel off of her Louboutins. “Damn it!” She swats the air in frustration.
Two bees, obviously upset that she’s invading their nectar reconnaissance, swoop in different directions before regrouping to hover menacingly over her head.
The two neighbors who stand across the street admiring the rhododendron bushes of a third are now enthralled enough to freeze their chitchat mid-sentence. This is quite frustrating, since the last thing I need are a couple of witnesses to a murder. Note to self: Play. It. Cool—
Cheever jumps out. Running to his mother, he howls, “Mom, save me from the fat pregnant psycho lady!”
Penelope clasps him to her bosom. The imperious smile on her surgically-enhanced mug is proof that she’s accomplished her goal:
Once again, I am Hilldale’s social pariah.
I can think of one way in which to wipe off her sneer. But, no, I fight the urge to lift my foot off the brake and mash it onto the gas.
Instead, I put the car in park and leap out. It’s finally time for our long-awaited heart-to-heart. “Did you tell your son that I’m getting married because I’m pregnant?”
Penelope smiles. “But…aren’t you? Do you mean to say that those extra pounds you’re packing are just plain old fat?”
“I am not fat,” I growl. “I’m healthy.”
“‘Healthy?’” Her emphasis on the word is accompanied by air quotes. “Is that what we’re calling obesity these days?”
“Give it a break, Penelope! For God’s sake, I’m a size four! Just because I don’t heave after every meal, like you and the rest of your coven…Wait! Don’t try to change the subject!” I’m so angry that I’m stuttering.
I take a step forward, so that she’s within throttling distance, should my otherwise gentle powers of persuasion fail to achieve the desired result. “I’m tired of you implying that I’ve somehow roped Jack into some sort of—shotgun wedding!”
She pats my arm sympathetically. “But of course you haven’t, dear! The fact that he’s stuck by your sid
e this long has nothing at all to do with the fact that you’d murder him in his sleep otherwise.”
It would be easier to assassinate her in her sleep—or shower, or while she’s shopping, or driving…you name it. But why tip her off to this fact?
Or the rest of my Hilldale neighbors, for that matter, three whose eyes gleam in anticipation of an impending mom-on-mom smack down. They hate Penelope as much as I do. Still, it ain’t gonna happen. At least not in public.
I shake off all my (and their) bada-bing-to-Penelope-Bing fantasies—for now, anyway. “Let me make this crystal clear to you,” I hiss, just loud enough for her to hear. “If I you say one more cruel word about me to anyone—Tiffy, Hayley, a teacher, a neighbor”—I yank Cheever up by his collar—“even your evil little spawn here, I’ll make your life so miserable that you’ll—”
One of the bees lands on Penelope’s forehead. Of course, with the amount of Botox injected there, she doesn’t feel it. But to anyone who may be nose-to-nose with her, it’s quite distracting, to say the least. I reach up in order to flick it away—
But the bee is quicker than me, and flies off safely.
I flick Penelope instead.
Furious, her eyes widen. The next thing I know, she’s slapped me.
Thrilled, Cheever yells, “Cat fight!”
Nah. I mean, let’s face it, it’s not much of a cat fight when your opponent’s swipe at your face lands as lightly on your cheek as a dandy dueler’s glove. It’s not because I want to encourage her to put some effort into it that I slap her with the back of my hand, but an inbred defense mechanism.
My smack catches her by surprise.
Fear dilates her eyes. Her natural instinct is good—to back off.
But how can she do so, when the little apple of her eye shoves her forward while cowering for safety behind her? Penelope feels obligated to take the hint:
If there was ever a time to be a tiger mom, it’s now.
Proof that she’s more adept in verbal sparring than outright mortal combat comes with her next move: a fist aimed at my gut.
Before it reaches its destination, I grab it and twist it so high behind her back that she doubles over from the pain. Penelope may be able to squeeze into a minus-two dress size, but her bony ass is still a large enough target for my foot. One kick puts her face down on the ground.
That shows her who’s boss.
I take a triumphant breath and look around, only to find that there are no spoils in my victory, just spoiled relationships:
With my neighbors, whose mouths are slack-jawed with horror.
With my son, whose eyes glisten with tears.
“You all saw it!” Penelope shouts. “She attacked me—for protecting my poor baby! I’ll never let him near her, ever again!”
Miffed, Cheever whines, “Mom, I’m not a baby,”
My walk of shame to the SUV is only a few feet, but every inch of it burns with my new reality:
I’ve set the worst example for my child.
By the time I reach the door, Morton has already jumped out. Thrilled, he pumps his fist ecstatically. “You kick ass, Mrs. Stone! But I’ll walk home from here. I’d hate for my mom to be snubbed because I’m still riding with Jeff.”
Ah, well. I should look on the bright side. No need to send out obligatory wedding invitations to my neighbors, now that I know I’m persona non-grata.
Jeff doesn’t say a word the whole way home.
My attempts at small talk are ignored. During my apology, which begins with a blathering attempt to explain about the bee, and how my survival skills work instinctively, he holds up a hand. “Mom, please! Don’t make it any worse.”
“Worse?” As if that were possible. “Jeff, please listen…You’re right. I have no justification for my actions back there. I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends.”
“They aren’t my friends.” He shrugs. “Maybe Morton—depending on how the wind blows.” He doesn’t have to tell me that, right now a gale force tornado is on the horizon, and both of us are in its path.
Should Penelope have her way, it will be a direct hit.
We’ve just pulled onto our street when Jeff puts his hand on my shoulder. Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror. “Mom, I know how hard it is to be normal, after…after all that you’ve been through since…well, since our birth father left us.”
It takes one to know one. Jeff’s ordeal as a terrorist hostage pushed him front-and-center onto a stage no child should ever trod upon: senseless violence, and its horrible entr'acte: the death of innocence.
I pull over to the curb. After letting the car idle in park, I put my hand over his and force my mouth into a semblance of a smile. “I can always count on you. Still, I wish I’d kept my cool. Penelope lives to make my life miserable.”
Curiosity furrows his brow. “But she can’t, really, can she? Not if you don’t care what she thinks.”
“You’re right. Her opinion means nothing to me. But yours—and Mary’s and Trisha’s and Jack’s and Evan’s—means everything. When I let Mrs. Bing goad me with her cruelty, I let down those whom I love the most.”
He shakes his head. “You have it all wrong. We love you—we will always love you—no matter what you do or say, even if it’s just embarrassing or stupid or…deadly.”
“It’s what I have to do—”
Before I can say anything else, he stops me by raising a finger to my lips. “We know, Mom. We accept it because you do it to protect us”—he points out the window—“and them too, even if they don’t know it.” He sighs. “Frankly, I’m glad we aren’t inviting the Bings. They live to hate us.” Finally, he smiles. “And besides, Cheever would eat all the cake.”
I laugh. “Speaking of which, so that this event goes off without a hitch, I’m assigning everyone a wedding task. Do you want to be in on the cake decision?”
Jeff shakes his head. “We’d better leave that to Trisha. It’s all she talks about—well, that, and dress shopping for her role as official flower girl.”
Oh heck. I just remembered. Trisha will soon get wise to the fact that I had Aunt Phyllis block Janie’s calls to her. In any event, tonight I break the news to Trisha in person that Janie wants to horn in on her role in my wedding.
“Besides,” Jeff continues, “I’m doing a spreadsheet of the guest list.”
“I guess we can forget the rest of Hilldale too,” I opine.
“Great, even more cake for us.”
I kiss his cheek. “That’s one way to make lemonade from lemons.”
The sooner Jack and I get married, the better. Is it wishful thinking to think I can annihilate the Quorum before I walk down the aisle?
Yeah, okay, maybe I’ll save that for after the honeymoon.
The convertible Audi R8 Spyder sitting in our driveway is the color of bubbly champagne. Because Jack left the garage door open, I can see that its owner chose to park behind his BMW i8 on the left, as opposed to Aunt Phyllis’s vintage Volkswagen Beetle, which is parked on the right.
The driver, a statuesque brunette in an elegant Aquilano Rimondi sheath, stands on our front stoop. The colors in her two-tone Phillip Lim satchel match the blues of her dress.
She must have just arrived, because her long manicured finger is poised to ring the doorbell. She pauses, though, when she hears my wheels crunch on the driveway as I slide my SUV behind the Beetle.
I’ve never seen her before, and she’s not any of the usual suspects—a local realtor, Hilldale’s Avon representative, or the Welcome Wagon lady.
When I open my car door, her poker face rearranges itself into a wide smile, but she waits until we are close enough to shake hands to hold out hers. “You must be Donna Stone—or I should say, the future Mrs. Jack Craig.”
I nod slowly. “And you are?”
“Your wedding planner!”
My shocked stare prompts her to add, “Oh…yes. Chantal Desmarais. Babette’s, er, friend.”
Chantal winces. To be ex
pected. After dealing with Babette on two weddings, I’m surprised she doesn’t have a permanent tick. “Yes, she is—was—a client. By that, I mean in my line of work, there is little repeat business, mostly referrals.”
I open the door and motion for her to enter. “Here’s hoping that in the first lady’s case, two times is the charm.”
“Yours as well,” she murmurs, as she walks through.
Strike one.
Then again, I’ve only got less than a month to plan a wedding and get married. At the same time, I have to take down an international organization that funds terrorist groups.
Maybe it’s time I learn to delegate.
“You want to get married when?” Chantal’s brows arch over her eyes like frightened gulls.
“Four weeks from now?” I shrug. “But…we’re flexible. Earlier works well too.”
“Ah, well, that’s a relief.” The sarcasm is unbecoming.
Having wrangled Aunt Phyllis, Evan, and the soon-to-be-Family-Craig in the great room, shushed us into silence, and linked her laptop to our large-screen television, Chantal now reveals a calendar for all to see.
“Okay, people, we’re on a very tight deadline, so listen up!” She stops mid-sentence until Jeff looks up from his computer and Trisha has stopped humming the tune from Frozen. Her trick for taking Aunt Phyllis’s attention away from her Crazy Taxi digital game is to grab her phone and toss it on an empty chair.
“What the hell, lady!” Aunt Phyllis stands up, furious. “My fare was up to six-hundred bucks!”
“It can wait. Isn’t the happiness of your niece more important to you?”
“How much effort does it take to find a dress, order a cake, and throw a party?” Aunt Phyllis grumbles. However, when she sits down, she mouths, I’m sorry to me.
To show forgiveness, I give her a wink and a smile.
By the time I look back at the TV screen, three June weekends have been exed out. “Ouch! How did that happen?”
