Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Great, I’m a chauffeur now,” Steve said. “You think they sell those black caps downstairs? Maybe they have a uniform store, for the maids and the chauffeurs and the butlers.”

  “They’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.” Rita popped another almond in her mouth and began to cut again. “Drive carefully.”

  Steve got the car and picked up Mimi and Sheryl. “We’re making a stop first,” Mimi said, as they cruised down Collins Avenue. The street was full of rental cars and out-of-state license plates. In every lane, an old person was creeping along, peering at street signs through incipient cataracts. “We’re ordering lovely announcements to send to people after the wedding. Just because Sheryl is getting married in a hurry doesn’t mean she shouldn’t get gifts. There’s the printer, on the left.”

  From the printer they continued to Fish ‘n’ Fashion. Estelle had insisted on providing Sheryl’s wedding gown, solving the problem of whether to go traditional or modern. Instead they were going safari, with something Katharine Hepburn might have worn if she’d gotten married on the African Queen.

  The dress was made of khaki, with a long train of mosquito netting, and featured epaulets and brass buttons. It was the only wedding gown Steve had ever seen with pockets. Sheryl complained that it was too tight. “I don’t want to hear about it again,” Mimi said. “Wedding gowns are supposed to be tight. If you don’t like it then don’t eat anything until Sunday.”

  Steve drove out to the site on Friday for a meeting with Uncle Max, Junior, and the rest of the team. It was good to see Celeste and Miranda, even Brad and Maxine. He even missed the pestering of tenants and architects and contractors.

  He presented the proposals and counter-proposals. “There’s still one big sticking point. The Florida Club insists that the lizard lives only around the drainage ponds. They want us to reorient the whole property and make that area the preserve. We want to put the preserve in the back, away from the road and the parking lots. Until we get that resolved and get approval from the EPA, we can’t start up again.”

  “You’re doing a great job, Steve,” Uncle Max said. “You keep negotiating and get us all back to work soon. We’re all ready, aren’t we, team?”

  There was some mumbling and nodding of heads. “I can’t hear you,” Uncle Max said.

  The team chorused, “Yes.”

  “Again!” Uncle Max commanded. “I want them to hear you all the way out to Building A. I want them to hear you in Washington. Do you want to finish this building?”

  “YES!”

  After the meeting, Steve walked out to the site with Junior to check on things. “How’s it going?” Steve asked.

  Junior shrugged. “I get drunk every night and I get laid once in a while. Nothing else to do.”

  They walked through the quiet building, their voices soaring up into the rafters like pigeons. “You could catch up on your reading,” Steve said. “Or go sightseeing. There’s lots of places to go in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Get real,” Junior said. “You really see me out at Marine World, feeding the sea lions? I didn’t do that kind of shit when I had kids. I’m not going to do it now.”

  “You have kids?” Steve asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Two,” Junior said. “A boy, he’s eight, and a girl, seven. They live with their mother.” Junior stopped to examine a stud wall, which seemed out of alignment.

  “Do you ever see them?”

  Junior shook his head. “Her second husband adopted them. They know about me, but we don’t keep in touch.” Junior shook the wall and it wobbled.

  “That’s a shame,” Steve said.

  “Nah,” Junior said. “Who needs a hellcat like me for a father? Let ‘em have a nice suburban daddy who’ll take ‘em out in the back yard for a game of catch after supper. Better all around.” He let go of the wall and wiped his hands on his pants.

  Steve had the feeling that your own father, warts and all, was always better than anyone else. Even with Harold out on the picket line, closing down the place where Steve worked, he knew he wouldn’t trade him.

  After Junior left, he headed for the back of the site. Mary was sitting in front of the tent, and Tunisia was playing nearby. “We’ve been working our way through that nature book you bought us,” Mary said. “We even found a whole bunch of those lizards they closed the site down for.”

  “You’ve been out front?” Steve asked.

  Mary laughed. “I can barely get around here,” she said. “No, we found those lizards just back that way.” She waved her hand behind her.

  “Can you show me?” Steve asked.

  “If you can give me a hand up.” Steve helped Mary stand up. “This baby’s coming any time,” she said. “I can feel it.”

  Mary took Tunisia’s hand and they all walked through the woods to a wet, mucky clearing. “Right around here,” Mary said. “See? There’s one.”

  Steve didn’t want to touch it, but he took a deep breath and grabbed the lizard by its midsection. It puffed its throat up to a bright shade of pink. Steve had seen enough lizards by then to know that this was the real article. “This is great!” He forgot his squeamishness and held onto the lizard. “If we can prove that the lizards live back here we can set this area aside as the preserve!”

  He looked around for Mary. She was leaning against a tree, her face pale and damp. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s the baby,” she said. “I’ve been feeling the pains for a while, but they’re getting closer. I think it’s time to go to the hospital.”

  “Oh, my God,” Steve said. “What do I do?”

  “Find John,” Mary said. “Tunisia and me, we’ll walk out to the road. He can pick us up there.” She took the little girl’s hand, then stopped and grimaced with pain. It passed in a minute. “Come on, honey, you help Momma.”

  Steve took off at a run. He found John and sent him for the car, and then ran back to Mary and Tunisia. He put his arm around Mary’s waist and led her through the swamp, stopping periodically until they reached the road, where he helped her into the car. “Do you want me to follow you?”

  John shook his head. “We’ll be all right.”

  “Thanks, Steve,” Mary said. She waved at Steve as John took off in a plume of dust. Tunisia turned around on the back seat and she waved, too.

  Steve felt a warm glow. The Florida Club problem was solved, and Mary was on her way to the hospital. He was even willing to feel good about the Blatnicks. Sheryl’s wedding might turn out to be fun, and Sheldon’s trial might be interesting.

  He walked toward his car in the sunshine and the hot, damp air. High above him, a hawk chased a sparrow and a puffy cumulus cloud moved in front of the sun.

  31 – Runaway Bride

  The next morning, Steve called the hospital. “Another little girl,” Mary said. “Seven pounds, four ounces. She came in late last night.”

  “Congratulations. What’s her name?”

  “Australia. You know, it’s a whole continent. I like that. I want my little girl to grow up to be just like a continent.”

  Dolores had the morning free, so she accompanied Steve out to a big outlet mall in western Fort Lauderdale, where he bought himself a complete new wardrobe, under her close supervision. There was even a sale at the Tommy Bahama outlet. “You’re going to look like a real Floridian,” Dolores said. She had an appointment that afternoon to do Sheryl’s hair for the wedding rehearsal.

  “You’re coming to the dinner, right?” he asked, as he dropped her at the salon.

  “You kidding? I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Steve worried about that comment all the way back to the hotel. Did Dolores still carry a torch for Morty? Would she do something to disrupt the dinner, or the ceremony? He imagined the rabbi asking if anyone had any objections to the marriage, and Dolores standing up, having an argument with Sheryl over orgasms.

  Though the wedding was going to be outside, they held the rehearsal in one of the hotel’s meeting
rooms, this one decorated like an Alpine chalet. The cuckoo clock by the door chimed during the rabbi’s introduction, chiming, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” Steve thought at least the clock had it right.

  Sheryl stumbled once going down the aisle, and Morty forgot his line. “Say I do,” Sheryl said, poking him. Steve was waiting for the clock to chime in, but it didn’t.

  That night, Rita organized a rehearsal dinner in one of the smaller banquet rooms at the hotel. Steve ran down to Dolores’s to pick her up and was surprised at how beautiful, and how demure, she was. She wore a tightly tailored light blue suit that accentuated every one of her curves, with a matching pillbox hat. She looked like Jackie Kennedy might have if she’d been born in Havana. Her black patent leather belt matched her heels, which so high she was almost as tall as Steve. He looked forward to kissing her later.

  Everyone sat at a pair of long tables in the hotel’s oceanfront dining room. Some Blatnick cousins had flown in from New Jersey, and some old friends of Rita and Jerry’s had driven down from Boca Raton. Dusty and Sheldon held court at one table, and Steve made sure that he, his parents and Dolores sat at the other.

  He introduced Dolores to his parents. “Enchanted,” Dolores said, extending her hand. Harold grasped it and brought it to his lips as Steve and Rita watched.

  “You are a vision of loveliness, my dear,” he said. “But have you considered having your vision checked?”

  “I see where Steve gets his sense of humor,” Dolores said.

  “I didn’t catch your last name, dear,” Rita said.

  “Birnbaum.” Dolores smiled as Harold held her chair out.

  “But that’s a Jewish name,” Rita said.

  Dolores raised her eyebrows. “Yes, it is. Do you know, if Steve and I had gone to Hebrew school together we would have been seated next to each other—Berman and Birnbaum?”

  Rita was having trouble processing. “You went to Hebrew school?”

  “Rabbi Ben Ezra said it was a condition for having a bat mitzvah,” Dolores said. “He spoke Hebrew with a terrible Spanish accent, but then everyone in Miami seems to.”

  Steve enjoyed seeing his mother speechless, though he was jealous of the fawning attention his father paid to Dolores throughout the meal. By the time they had finished their salad, Rita had recovered her composure and was grilling Dolores about growing up in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Miami. Dolores handled it all with aplomb, and every time she touched her napkin to her lips Steve thought about kissing her again.

  Despite a matzoh ball that went flying out of Sheldon’s soup, and a glass that smashed when Dusty whacked it too strongly as he was trying to get Sheryl and Morty to kiss, the dinner went off smoothly.

  The waiter offered to put the tab for the dinner on someone’s hotel bill, but Mrs. Blatnick insisted on paying in cash, for some obscure tax reason that Steve was sure was not valid.

  She opened her purse to give Dusty the money, and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. “What’ve you got in there, Ma?” Dusty asked. “Every week, I bring you fresh new bills, and within five minutes they look like you left them inside clothes you were washing.”

  “Eh, money isn’t like it was in the old days,” Mrs. Blatnick said. She looked like she wanted to spit.

  Steve got his chance to kiss Dolores later that night, though because of everything that had to happen the next morning he couldn’t stay the night with her.

  The next morning Steve helped Morty move some things into the honeymoon suite at the Neuschwanstein, which was decorated in blue and gold and filled with military memorabilia. Then he went down to Mrs. Blatnick’s suite, wedding command central. All the rooms were filled with half-dressed people sewing, ironing, blow-drying or posing in front of one of the full-length mirrors. Steve hung around in case anybody needed him to run down to the lobby for extra hairpins or white shoe polish.

  Sheryl sat in the center of the living room as Dolores worked on her hair. “Stop fidgeting, Sheryl, or I’m going to get this frosting all wrong,” Dolores said. She wore a pale blue smock over jeans and a t-shirt, and her dress, emerald green with a scoop neck and a slit up the side, hung from a hanger on the door to Sheryl’s room.

  Mimi walked past with her hair still in curlers and stopped to kiss Sheryl on the cheek. “You look gorgeous, sweetheart!” She turned to the room at large. “It’s my little girl’s wedding day. I think I’m going to cry.”

  “Just don’t drip mascara on the dress, OK, Mom?” Sheryl said.

  After Sheryl was finished, Dolores did Mimi’s hair, Wilma’s, and then Mrs. Blatnick’s. “You do a very nice job, Dolores,” Mrs. Blatnick said. “You ought to have your own salon.”

  “That’s my dream,” Dolores said. “Ever since I was a little girl in Puerto Rico, doing the hair for all my dolls, I dreamed of having my own salon, very classy. I know exactly how it’s going to look. I’m going to call it Casa Dolores: Hair Creations, with the colon in the middle to make it look official.”

  “It’s nice that you know what you want,” Mrs. Blatnick said. “My girls never knew what they wanted, and look at them now.”

  “We’re both very happy today,” Mimi called from the corner, where she was sitting close to Jerry and whispering to him. “You have nothing to complain about.”

  By eleven thirty they were almost ready. Dolores had finished everyone’s hair and had done her own in a French braid, which Steve found very sexy. She stepped into Sheryl’s bedroom to put on the green dress.

  A few minutes later, she returned to the living room and turned her back to Steve, who sat on the couch in his tuxedo, with his bow tie hanging around his neck. “Zip this up for me, cara mia?” she asked. “Then I’ll tie your tie for you.”

  Mimi came in from her mother’s bedroom. “Has anyone seen Sheryl?” she asked.

  Dolores said, “She went in the bathroom.”

  “No, she’s not there,” Mimi said. “I looked.”

  Dolores began skillfully twisting the ends of Steve’s bow tie. Over her fingers Steve said, “Maybe she gave up and went back to New Jersey.”

  “Don’t you dare say such a thing!” Mimi said. “Everyone has to look for her.”

  Dusty said, “Maybe she went for a walk. I’ll check the lobby. Richie, go look around the pool. Jerry, you and Wilma take the beach.” He tossed his car keys to Steve, who caught them just as Dolores finished his bow tie. “You’re dressed, Steve,” Dusty said. “Take the Caddy and run up and down Collins. Dolores, why don’t you go with him?”

  Steve felt great, driving slowly down Collins Avenue in Dusty’s Cadillac convertible with the top down. It was a glorious day, full of sunshine and promise, and he was looking for a runaway bride.

  “There she is!” Dolores said. “Up ahead on the right.”

  “How are we going to get her to go back?” Steve asked.

  “Leave it to me,” Dolores said, as Steve pulled the car up next to Sheryl and stopped.

  It was the first time Steve noticed that Sheryl’s pregnancy was beginning to show. By his calculations, she was about four and a half months along. “Hey, Sheryl, in case you forgot, you’re getting married today,” he said.

  “I changed my mind,” Sheryl said. “He’s all yours, Dolores.”

  Dolores opened the car door. “Come on, Sheryl, get in. We’ll talk about it.”

  Sheryl shook her head. “My mind’s made up.”

  “Well, at least tell me what made you change your mind,” Dolores said. “After all, I’m your friend. You wouldn’t want me to get stuck the same way.”

  Steve looked at Dolores. Was it possible she’d take Morty back over him?

  Sheryl shrugged and said, “All right.” Dolores leaned her seat forward and Sheryl climbed in back. Dolores twisted around to talk as Steve began driving slowly down Collins again.

  “So spill it,” Dolores said. “What gives?”

  “Well, I just started listing all the things I didn’t like about Morty, and then I said, geez, if there were so man
y things wrong with him then what was I doing marrying him?”

  Dolores nodded. “The bad list was longer than the good one?”

  “Oh, I never made a good list. I just started with the bad and then got depressed.”

  Dolores frowned. “You didn’t count that he dresses so nice?”

  “No. But he does,” Sheryl said.

  “And he’s a great kisser. You’ve got to admit that.”

  Sheryl nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “What about me?” Steve asked.

  “Can I concentrate on one member of your family at a time?” Dolores said. She turned back to Sheryl. “Tell you what. Let’s go back to the hotel and I’ll help you with your list. If it still comes out negative, I’ll back you up.”

  “All right,” Sheryl said. “If you promise.”

  Dolores held her palm up. “Swear to God.” She turned back to the front and said, “Hit it, Steve.” He did an abrupt U-turn on Collins and headed toward the hotel fast.

  They delivered Sheryl to her mother. Dolores asked, “Still want to make that list?”

  Sheryl looked at herself in the mirror in her bridal gown. “Nah, I’ll pass on the list. I’ve got the dress on already. I might as well go through with it.”

  The Blatnicks commandeered one of the tiki huts on the beach to serve as a huppah, the ritual canopy over the bride and groom. Steve went downstairs with Dusty, Harold, Richie and Sheldon to make sure everything was in order.

  Four rows of folding chairs had been set up, broken in the middle by an aisle of sand that led to the tiki hut, where organ music was playing from a large portable radio on the floor.

  Within a half hour the guests began to arrive. Steve had been pressed into escorting women down the aisle to their seats. He was astonished at how many women wore high-heeled shoes to a wedding held on sand. Even Wilma had dug up white high heels to go with her outfit, which did not seem to vary even for formal occasions. She teetered unsteadily, digging her feet into the sand as Steve tried to help her keep her balance.

  As Steve walked back up the aisle, a young woman in a bikini approached him. “What time does the bar open?” she asked.