Chances Are

by Barbara Bretton

  “Be that as it may, if you’re over size eight, don’t show your arms,” Aunt Connie barreled on. Her gaze zeroed in on Maddy’s less-than-perfect upper arms like a pointer during duck season. “Case closed.”

  “Liposuction did wonders for your double chin, Connie,” Aunt Lucy observed with a wicked smile. “Too bad Dr. Weinblatt also sucked out what was left of your brain.”

  Gina snickered loud enough to be heard in Pennsylvania while Denise and Pat quickly turned away so nobody could see them laughing. Lucy and Connie had been at war for as long as anyone could remember. Age had done little to diminish the sibling rivalry that had been simmering between them for more than sixty years.

  Maddy caught sight of Aidan’s sister-in-law Claire reflected in the huge dressing room mirror. Claire looked both amused and slightly embarrassed by the familial bickering, but at least she wasn’t playing connect-the-dots with Maddy’s stretch marks the way her blood kin were. Still, there was something disapproving about Claire, something Maddy couldn’t quite put her finger on but sensed through the wise-cracks and laughter. Claire had seemed to like her well enough before she and Aidan announced their engagement, but the second Maddy showed up with a ring on her finger, Claire had turned noticeably chilly and, to Maddy’s surprise, the coolness hurt.

  It had to be hard for Claire to watch Aidan build a new family after all these years of being a single father, while she was still adjusting to life without her husband Billy. Aidan’s firefighter brother had died in a blaze almost three years ago, leaving Claire alone with five children, a heavily mortgaged house, and a rundown bar on the blue-collar side of town.

  Who could blame the woman if she found it tough to join in the preparations with a full heart? Still, Maddy found she missed the old wisecracking Claire. They hadn’t been close, but at least the potential for friendship had been there.

  Claire turned slightly, and their eyes met in the mirror. Maddy made a face, and Claire offered a sympathetic smile. It was the kind of smile you flashed at the woman in line behind you at the ATM. Impersonal. Easily forgotten. Still, it was better than the polar breeze Maddy had been feeling lately from her future, sort-of sister-in-law, and she was grateful.

  Unfortunately, that was when she made the fatal mistake of sighing deeply, and the top button popped the loop and rocketed across the dressing room straight toward Aunt Toni.

  Bull’s-eye.

  Toni slapped her hand over her right eye and let out a howl. “I’ve been shot!”

  It would take more than a bolt of lightning or a minor earthquake to get Maddy out of this one with her dignity intact. “Aunt Toni, I’m so sorry. My—uh, my button popped.”

  Toni glared at Maddy from between splayed fingers. “I told you to try on the ten, didn’t I?”

  “Ma!” Gina’s expression was downright murderous. “Can you give it a rest?”

  “I think I need a doctor,” Toni said, ignoring her daughter completely. “That button shot across the room like a bullet! It could’ve put out my eye.”

  “For God’s sake, Ma.” It was Denise’s turn. “It didn’t touch you. I saw it hit your ring and ricochet past you.”

  “My own daughters don’t believe me.” Toni turned to her sisters for support. “Is this the thanks I get for all I’ve done for them? I could’ve been killed, and they stand there telling me nothing happened.”

  Gina whipped out her cell phone and flipped it open. “You’re right, Ma. You’re lucky you weren’t killed. In fact, it might have been attempted murder. I’ll call the cops so you can file a report.” She winked at Maddy. “Death by bridal button. It’ll look good on the front page of the Star-Ledger tomorrow morning.”

  Toni huffed. She had had a lot of practice over the years and was a world-class huffer. “I don’t know why we had to drive up to Short Hills anyway. We should’ve gone to the Bridal Barn in Freehold. They specialize in plus sizes.”

  “That’s it,” Rose said, flinging open the door to the enormous dressing area. “Everybody out!”

  “You’re throwing us out?” Toni looked horrified.

  “What did I do?” Connie demanded. “I’m not the one who’s calling the cops.”

  “Out!” Rose repeated. “Every single one of you.”

  Maddy gathered up her voluminous skirts and stepped down from her pedestal. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  “Not you,” Rose said, grabbing her firmly by the wrist. “The rest of you.”

  The aunts and cousins grumbled, but they knew Rose meant business. Crystal, the PBS research assistant, made a gallant attempt at standing up to Rose but quickly—and grudgingly—admitted defeat. Claire, however, looked profoundly grateful.

  “My sisters are horses’ asses,” her mother said as she closed the door behind the extended DiFalco clan plus two. “If I ever doubted that fact, they proved it today.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me.”

  “Buttons pop all the time.”

  “Sure they do,” Maddy said dryly. Every time you tried to squash a size-ten woman into a size-eight dress without a shoehorn.

  “Don’t make more of a popped button than the situation warrants.”

  Easy for you to say, Rosie. You’re not the one whose cellulite was hanging out on display.

  “I’m a size ten. I’ve been a ten all my life. Why pretend I’m an eight when I’m not? If I can live with it, why can’t the rest of them?”

  “Lucy was looking more for style than fit, Madelyn. They can take care of the fit once you’ve settled on a gown.”

  Maddy took a deep breath, and two more buttons clattered to the floor. There was no time like the present. “Ma, about the gown . . .”

  Rose helped slide the fussy bodice off her daughter’s shoulders. “Not your style at all. I completely agree.”

  Another deep breath. Thank God there were no more buttons to pop. “I’m not sure any of them is.”

  She stepped out of the gown. Rose, unnaturally calm, gathered it up and reached for the enormous padded hanger.

  “You’ve only tried on one dress, Madelyn. I don’t think you should lose hope quite so fast.”

  “Ma, this whole thing is moving a little too fast for me. I’m not sure a big wedding is what Aidan and I have in mind.”

  “Your wedding is only four months away.” Rose fastened the dress to the hanger and suspended it from the rod in the corner. “Isn’t it time you decided?”

  Four months, three weeks, and eleven days. The unemployed accountant in her was keeping close track. “I thought we might just enjoy being engaged for a while longer before we start planning the wedding.”

  “I understand,” Rose said, although it was clear to Maddy that she didn’t, “but if you’re serious about a late September wedding, we need to start planning right now.”

  “It’s not even June yet, Ma. We have plenty of time.”

  “The best places book up years in advance. We’re already operating at a disadvantage.”

  “Then we won’t plan a big wedding.” Check and mate! “We’ll just have a small, intimate gathering.”

  She had to hand it to her mother. Rose didn’t even blink. “A big wedding is every bride’s dream.” A beat pause. “Especially if the bride comes from a big family.”

  “The DiFalcos have seen more than their share of weddings. One more would only get lost in the shuffle.”

  “God knows we’ve given more than our share of wedding presents to your cousins. It’s time we were on the receiving end.”

  A wiser woman might have retired to her corner to fight another day, but old habits die hard. Her mother’s words reawakened her sleeping inner teenager, the same one who had made Rose’s life as difficult as humanly possible a lifetime ago and enjoyed every minute of it.

  “Aidan thinks we should elope.”

  This time Rose’s expression shifted from surprise to shock and then from shock to outrage. “I hope this is your idea of a joke.”

  Oh God. Why
did she say that? A hand grenade would have done less damage than those five words. “He—uh, he suggested we grab Kelly and Hannah and fly to Vegas.” Next time she heard someone espouse total honesty, she would mention this hideous moment.

  “I thought he was smarter than that.”

  She had been about to add that Aidan had probably been joking, but her mother’s remark stung. “Actually, I think it’s a very good idea. You’d save a lot of money, and I wouldn’t have to stand around in my underwear while your sisters ridicule the size of my butt.”

  “Your aunts are the way they are. If I had a nickel for every insult they’ve sent my way, I’d own every B and B from here to Maine. You’re entirely too thin-skinned, Madelyn. You always have been.”

  “Apparently my skin is the only thing about me that’s too thin.”

  Rose quickly gave her the once-over. “Well, you have put on a few pounds since Christmas.”

  “Thanks,” she snapped. “Nothing like words of comfort from the mother of the bride. Make sure you give my measurements to Crystal so she can use them in the documentary.”

  “I didn’t say it was unbecoming. You’re tall. You carry it well.”

  “Sure I do,” said Maddy. “I guess I’m not supposed to notice that medieval corset the saleswoman brought in with her.”

  “Proper foundation garments can make or break a formal gown.”

  “I really don’t need a lecture on girdles, Mother.”

  “I never said you needed a girdle. Bridal gowns require a certain type of underpinning. You either have boning sewn into your dress or you wear a merry widow. It’s all part of the game.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to play that game.”

  “It’s one day of your life, Madelyn. It’s about family.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she shot back. “It should be about Aidan and me. Nobody else.”

  Rose turned away, but not before Maddy saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. Her mother never cried. The only time she had seen Rose cry was that terrible day last year when they had rushed Hannah to the hospital and for a while it had seemed they were going to lose her. It had been a day of intense emotions. Anger. Guilt. Fear. And then the almost punishing sense of relief when Hannah came back to them.

  “Ma,” she said, swinging wildly between anger and guilt, “don’t cry.” She forced a laugh. She felt naked and vulnerable, standing there in her ratty cotton underwear. More like her mother’s child than the mother of a child of her own. “Get a shoehorn. I’ll try to squeeze into that dress if it means that much.”

  “No need,” said Rose as she turned back toward Maddy. The tears had been replaced by the familiar steely resolve that had sent her daughter running clear across the country immediately after high school. “It’s almost one-thirty. I think everyone could use some lunch.”

  “But why don’t we—”

  “I’ll get your clothes.”

  Maddy was trapped. Rose was already halfway out the door, and it was clear Maddy wasn’t going to follow her in her bra and panties. The only thing she could do was wait until the snippy saleswoman relinquished her sweater and jeans to Rose, then join the rest of the clan for lunch.

  Humble pie with a side of crow.

  A DiFalco family favorite.

  “I FOUND A Priscilla of Boston with cap sleeves that would look wonderful on your daughter.” The sales associate, whose discreet name tag read Dianne, pointed to an explosion of ivory satin and lace draped across a padded chaise longue. “And in a ten, no less. You have no idea how difficult it is to find anything suitable in double digits. We try very hard to accommodate the fuller-figured bride, but—” Her sigh of disappointment wasn’t terribly convincing. “What can I say? Most of our customers maintain rigorous workout schedules, especially as the big day approaches.”

  Bitch.

  “We’re going to stop for the day,” Rose said, managing a polite smile when what she really wanted to do was rip out the woman’s artificial heart. “But thanks for all of your help.”

  “She only tried on one gown.”

  “That’s right,” Rose said pleasantly.

  “You can’t make a decision based on one gown.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Rose agreed. If there was one thing being an innkeeper had taught her, it was how to dissemble with the best of them. “That’s why we’re stopping for today and going out to lunch.”

  The woman’s heavily Botoxed face approximated a human emotion. Amazing she could convey such disdain with so few moving parts.

  “May I ask if she liked the Wang?” She flipped open a notebook and uncapped her pen. “I maintain a database of the prospective bride’s preferences.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Rose said. “May I offer a suggestion?”

  “Please do. I welcome input.”

  “Next time, try not to insult the prospective bride about the size on the label. Not very good for business, dear, and even worse for the young woman’s confidence.”

  It wasn’t the left hook she wanted to deliver, but that verbal jab to the chin implant was almost as satisfying. Rose had seen her daughter’s face when talk turned to dress sizes and untoned muscles, and she had wished profoundly that she had thought it through before arranging this shopping trip from hell. It was one thing for Rose to gently criticize her daughter’s expanding waistline or taste in clothes. It was something else again for anybody else to even think about it.

  Rose was a lioness where Maddy and Hannah were concerned. The depth of her love had the capacity to terrify her. It made her vulnerable to life, to fate; and for a woman like Rose, that fed into her deepest fears. When she had first been diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago, her first thought had been for her daughter. She had stopped going to Mass a very long time ago, but the day before her surgery, she had found herself in the last pew at Our Lady of Lourdes, praying not for herself but that her daughter would be spared a similar fate.

  “My daughter’s clothes,” she demanded of the salesclerk, feeling an overwhelming desire to escape the perfumed excess of the salon.

  Although it was clear there wouldn’t be a sale—certainly not today—the salesclerk maintained her professional poise in the face of a disappearing commission. Rose was impressed. “I’ll bring them to her immediately.”

  Suddenly she saw her daughter the way the salesclerk never could. Her beautiful body, not the body of a girl any longer, but the body of a woman. A mother. The faintest silvery lines across her belly and breasts. The gentle softness that came with giving birth and nursing a child. Maddy had never been more beautiful or more vulnerable to the criticism of others.

  And she should have known better than to expose her child to the scrutiny.

  “I’ll take them,” she said, then waited while the salesclerk fetched the faded jeans and hand-knit sweater from some secret cubbyhole far away from the Wangs and Acras and Priscillas.

  Lucy aimed an uplifted brow at Rose from the far end of the bridal salon while her other sisters scowled and turned away. It might as well have been fifty years ago when they were squabbling over a poodle skirt and the boy next door. They no longer fought over clothes or men—thank God for that—but everything else in the universe was fair game, most especially their children.

  Of course they weren’t children any longer. Except for Maddy, their daughters had been married and divorced and married again. They were already showing signs of outdoing their mothers in the marital sweepstakes, racking up numbers that would break your heart if you were foolish enough to think about it for too long. This would be Maddy’s first trip down the aisle, and Rose wanted her day to be everything blessed and special that a wedding day could be. But, most of all, she wanted the marriage to be a good one, the kind that grew stronger, grew deeper, long after the wedding albums had been tucked away.

  The salesclerk returned with Maddy’s clothes. Rose thanked her, then slipped back into the private dressing room.

  Maddy was slumped on the edge of the cha
ise longue in the corner, wedged in between a bolt of snow-blind white lace and a stack of design portfolios. She looked up at the sound of the door, then looked away when she saw it was Rose standing there with her sweater and jeans.

  Rose handed her the clothes. “I figured you’d seen enough of our friend Dianne.”

  Maddy slipped the bright yellow cotton sweater over her head and tugged it on. “Thanks.”

  “We’ll wait for you by the cars.”

  “Okay.”

  Rose hesitated in the doorway. “This shopping expedition wasn’t a very good idea after all.”

  “Really?” said Maddy. “And here I’ve been having a swell time.”

  She wanted to apologize. The words “I’m sorry” balanced on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter them aloud. Did wanting the best for your only child require an apology? Was dreaming about a storybook wedding fit for a princess a crime against the nation?

  “Don’t take too long,” she said instead. “Bernino’s stops serving at two, and it’s a bit of a drive.”

  “Something to look forward to,” Maddy mumbled as Rose closed the door behind her.

  Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never harm you.

  Whoever said that clearly never had children.

  Chapter Two

  IT TOOK EVERY ounce of Claire Meehan O’Malley’s self-control to keep from dropping to her knees in front of Rose DiFalco and kissing her cocktail ring. She had been about to fake a heart attack in order to get out of that toxic dressing room when Rose unceremoniously kicked their collective asses out, and not a moment too soon.

  Claire had always believed her own family had the market cornered on dysfunctional behavior, but after seeing the DiFalcos up close and personal, she had to admit there was a new contender for the crown. Compared to the DiFalcos, both the Meehans and the O’Malleys were rank amateurs.

  Those two old cows, Connie and Antoinette, looked like they were counting down the seconds to a brawl. Claire crossed paths with them a few times a week, and she always found herself whispering a prayer of thanks that she didn’t have to look at either one of them over a breakfast table in the morning. No wonder their families were so screwed up. Generation after generation of DiFalco women continued to pick the wrong men with unerring accuracy.