“Please don’t make me throw up my waffle,” Scott mumbled.
Zelda watched the conversations unfold between the four people at the table. The small family of two had been extended to include what looked to be a potential permanent fixture of Pip and one slightly snarky butler slash best friend along with her Scott. Now, to introduce the new family to the old woman from hell.
“Zee, are you okay?” Scott asked.
“Nope. Eat up. My Grandmother is the worst cook on the planet, so this is your last meal before the cookout this evening, unless we stop and get something. We are expecting about twenty people, and Pip and I have prepared most of the side dishes already, but you never know. Chandler,” she said. “Are you planning to invite your friends?”
“I wasn’t aware...I didn’t think...I did not, Madam,” he said finally.
“You are now family as well. I will ask that you limit it to only two because of space,” she said.
“Thank you, Ms. Fitzsimmons, this means a great deal to me that you extended the invitation,” he said.
“I have told you about that Madam and Ms. Fitzsimmons crap. I’m Zelda,” she said.
“Certainly, Madam,” he said.
“Aww hell, this is going to be a long ass day. I may as well let my boss know right now that I am not coming in tomorrow,” Michael added. “Scott, when do you guys head back?”
“If Pip is okay with it, we all can head back on Wednesday,” he said.
“Michael, is Wednesday okay with you?” Pip asked.
“No, Persephone, it’s not, but I will just have to work out when I will get to Cincinnati to see you,” he said.
“Zelda! We need to go to the store right now!” Pip exclaimed, jumping to her feet.
“For what? Did we forget something?”
“No, I need to go buy this man a ring to make sure he knows he belongs to me,” she said.
Scott shook his head. “Pip, are you talking about an engagement ring?”
“Heck no! I’m talking about a dick ring. I am going to put him on lockdown,” Pip said forcing Chandler to choke, Scott to turn beet red, and Michael to grin like he’d just won the lottery. Spirits were high through the morning as the prepared to head out in the afternoon.
The lively mood continued up until one thirty as the cheerful carload made its way across town to Grandma’s house. Michael had mentioned to his Grandma Lula that they would be bringing two additional people for dinner besides Scott. She seemed okay with it at the time until the car door opened and out stepped Chandler, Scott, and a very red-headed Pip. The rest of that Sunday was one for the record books.
“WHY ARE YOU BRINGING these white folks in my house?” Grandma Lula said.
“Grandma, this is Persephone, Scott, and Chandler,” Michael said with a facial expression which warned the old woman to be on her best behavior.
“Well, come on in before dinner gets cold,” she said, turning to Chandler. “So, you think you are ready for marriage to my Granddaughter?”
“A thousand pardons, Madam, but I am not the intended groom. This is Scott Berger,” Chandler said, pressing his lips together as he pushed Scott forward.
Grandma Lula snapped her head around to take a good look at Scott, who smiled his widest smile, showing off the still, very bucked teeth. His short-sleeved polo shirt revealed arms loaded with thick black hair, which also popped out the top of the opening of his shirt.
“Merciful Father in Heaven,” Grandma Lula said, looking around again at Chandler. “And who are you, British Boy?”
“I am Mr. Berger’s...friend,” he said.
Next her eyes went to Pip. “Who are you?”
“I am a friend of both Zelda’s and Scott’s,” Pip said with a bright cheery smile, her eyes darting over to Michael. The sandalwood scent of his shampoo was also faint on Pip’s skin.
Grandma Lula wasn’t buying it. She squinted her eyes, her glasses hanging on the nose which frequently protruded into other’s affairs as she peeped at Pip. Her lips pursed tight in moral judgement.
“You are also fornicating with my Grandson. I smell his shampoo on you,” Grandma Lula said. Pip backed up, almost hiding behind Michael.
“Grandma, you promised to be on your best behavior,” Michael cautioned.
“This is my house. If anyone should be on their best behaviors it should be the five of you. Coming in my house smelling all fornicatious, both you and Zelda,” she said.
“Fornicatious is not a word,” Scott said.
Grandma Lula popped him with the wooden spoon she was holding. “Don’t correct me in my own house! If I say you smell fornicatious, then that is what I smell. You want to tell me what I am smelling as well, Mr. Smarty Pants?”
“Please,” Zelda interrupted. “Can we simply have dinner and we will be out of your house. If you are not comfortable with the way we smell, I have no problem leaving.”
“You aren’t getting off so easy,” Grandma Lula said, looking back at Chandler. “An African guy with a British accent, Hmmph. I noticed you are standing behind him, not beside him as an equal. You are his butler or a servant of some sort. So you aren’t getting off that easy either. Come help me serve up this food, and afterwards you can help Zelda with the dishes.”
“What?” Chandler said in shock.
“You say ‘what;’ you can hear. Ya’ll come on here and eat,” Grandma Lula said, dragging Chandler to the kitchen.
The meal started with a bowl of soup, brought out in a brightly multi-colored tureen. Scott couldn’t take his eyes off the bowl. Pip was more concerned about having a bowl of soup on a day that it was sweltering at 95 degrees.
Leaning over, Scott whispered to Zelda, “Your Granny does know that is a chamber pot and not a soup tureen.”
“I’m old, not deaf, and yes I know what type of bowl it is, but it was too pretty to go to waste, so I use it for my soup. Even if it was a piss pot, it still will be the best thing you ever tasted,” she said. "And don't you ever call me Granny again."
“Let me be the judge of that,” Scott replied, stirring the bowl only to ladle up a chicken foot with an egg noodle dangling from it. No expression covered his face as he looked at Zelda blankly with the veiled expression of ‘Seriously? You expect me to eat this?’’
Pip was more vocal. “That is a chicken foot in that pot! A chicken’s foot, Michael.” she exclaimed.
“Don’t try to be all prim and proper with me, young lady! You are one generation removed from the trailer park. I am certain your Mama had loads of soups made with spare animal parts, but those feet give that rich yellow hue to the soup and that marrow fortifies your bones,” she said. Zelda watched as her Grandmother's guest carefully ladled out egg noodles to nibble upon, trying to remain as calm as possible to not incur Lula's wrath. The food was bad enough.
The remainder of the lunch was a mismatched hodgepodge of foods that didn’t belong together. A teeth-tearing beef roast arrived on a platter drowning in a red sauce which tasted like cherries. The mac and cheese also had a lumpy yellow sauce versus the normal creamy Béchamel roux. The vegetables were in a sauce as well as the green Jell-O fruit mold that Chandler poked at with his fork, watching it jiggle. Inside of the gelatin mold were pitted olives, which looked like two little red eyes peering up through the gelatinous dessert.
Zelda’s eyes remained focused on her grandmother, whose eyes stayed trained on Scott.
“Baby,” she said to Zelda. “You do know your children are going to be hairy and have bucked teeth, don’t you?”
“Ms. Lula, you are aware that I can hear you,” Scott said.
“Of course, you can hear me. I asked loud enough for you to hear,” she said.
“I do have feelings,” he said to her.
“And it would be more hurtful to say it behind your back than to your face. Talking behind your back about you making funny looking babies is unchristian like,” Grandma Lula said.
“Your Grandma is scary,” Pip whispered to Michael.<
br />
“Whispering at my table is not acceptable, young lady," she said turning to Pip. "And what is it that you do for a living?” she asked Pip.
“I am a children’s entertainer,” Pip said with pride.
“A what? You get paid to play with chil'ren?” Grandma Lula asked.
“I am a ventriloquist. I have a touring act with a Pippi Longstocking doll,” Pip with a huge grin.
“You use a doll to talk to and teach chil'ren by throwing your voice to make believe the puppet is talking to the chil'ren?” Grandma Lula asked.
“Yes Ma’am. I have been fortunate enough to travel the world with my act,” she said.
“Traveling the world with your idolatry, making chil'ren believe in talking dolls. It is the work of the Devil,” Grandma Lula said.
“No, you are the work of the Devil, you old teetotaler,” Pip mumbled.
Grandma Lula looked up with fire, brimstone, and desire to beat the crap out of Pip. Michael jumped up. “Wow, look at the time! Zelda, Pip, Chandler, let’s get this table cleared, the dishes washed, and put away so we can get out of my Grandmother’s hair,” he said ushering everyone into the kitchen with the exception of Scott.
“Don’t leave me alone with her!” Scott said, feeling defenseless. “I can dry the dishes, mop the floor...something.”
“You afraid to be alone with me, young man?”
It was now or never. Grandma Lula drew the line in the sand and either he was going to turn tail and run or stand tall and face the matriarch in front of him.
“Ms. Lula, I just returned from a three-week run in Europe. I am tired and jet lagged, but I wanted to be here to meet you. It was, or rather is, important for you to meet the man who is going to marry your granddaughter. What worries me is that I am not myself today,” he told her.
“Well, what I can see is the love you have for her. I do not condone your fornicating with Zelda, but I wish you both happiness,” she told him.
“Thank you. That means a lot to me,” Scott said.
“Yeah, next time to show up on my doorstep, you better have some flowers for me, coming to my house empty handed and eating up all my food,” Grandma Lula said.
“I’m never empty-handed, Ms. Lula,” he said, pulling an envelope from his back pocket. “Flowers are a tricky thing with allergies and all. A bottle of wine was out of the question, even though Jesus partook at every meal, but I figured since you are on a fixed income and I brought two extra mouths to dinner that a gift card would work better. You can use it to buy whatever you need.”
“I like you,” Grandma Lula said. "Did you know that Jesus drunk the wine at his meals because the water was undrinkable then in Jerusalem."
“I like you, too,” Scott said, smiling. "I also learned something new about Jesus today as well."
“You still gonna have funny looking kids, though,” Grandma Lula said to him.
“We will love them no matter if they are green,” he replied to her. “I hope you will love our babies as well.”
She patted his hand, then gave him an eerie smirk. He knew something bad was coming. Scott could feel it all the way down to his bones.
Chapter 12 – What the Hell Did I just Say?
Chandler drove the town car to the Fitzsimmons home with Zelda seated next to him in the front seat and Scott, Pip, and Michael on the rear bench seat. All were quiet with the exception of Chandler, who would randomly break into a smile as he drove along. Zelda didn’t find any humor in the situation.
“Chandler, would you care to share with the group this thing which is causing you to smile intermittently?” she asked him using her professional journalist voice.
“Your Grandmother is a gangster for Christ,” he said and started to laugh.
Michael began to chuckle as well. Speaking to Scott, he said, “That look on her face when you said, ‘No I’m Scott,’ I nearly lost it.”
“She said my Pippi doll was an instrument for Satan,” Pip added with her bottom lip poked out.
Scott had not weighed in one way or another, which truly worried Zelda. She turned in the seat to look and him as he stared out the window,
“Baby, are you okay?”
“No. I am still trying to get the chicken grease off my forehead from that gnarled up little chicken foot she used to make the cross in my skin as she prayed over me, speaking in gibberish,” he said.
“It’s called tongues. She was speaking to you in tongues,” Zelda said, trying to hide her smile at his discomfort.
“That was no tongue I’ve ever heard. Hell, I just left Europe and heard so many different languages and dialects, which I might add, didn’t match anything I heard her saying. I thought she was putting a curse on me,” he said, still staring out the window. His fingers smoothing back and forth over the fabric covering his legs.
“She’s harmless, Scott. Those things she was saying are harmless,” Zelda said, reaching over the seat to touch his hand.
“Harmless, my ass. If I am unable to make you a mother, we will know why. It will be the curse of the greasy chicken foot!” he shouted.
The entire car erupted into laughter as the black car made the turn down the road and pulled into the driveway of the Fitzsimmons home.
“All of that is behind us, guys. We have at least twenty people coming over and we have to get the grill going, margaritas made, and wine uncorked and ready to go in less than two hours,” Zelda said. “It’s party time.”
Upon entering the front door, the group parted ways to change out of their Sunday best into comfortable clothing for the gathering of Zelda and Michael’s friends. To her surprise, almost everyone RSVP’d but she knew at least five people weren’t going to show. She prayed that two of the five would be Margo and Jinny, but Michael insisted she invite the two battleaxes. Lost in her own head, she milled about the room, making a mental checklist of everything which needed to get done in less than an hour.
“Zelda, I have something for you,” Scott said, pulling a small black box from his suitcase.
“What’s that?” she asked, slipping on her pink sneakers.
In his hand, he held an open jewelry box with a single princess cut solitaire. Gently removing it from its black velvet lining, he placed it upon her left ring finger and kissed her cheek gently.
“I know you are going through some things and I am sorry I wasn’t able to be here in person, but you said you needed some space to figure it all out. Just know that when you are ready to talk, I am prepared to listen,” he said.
“You know, that is not what I expected you to say after you slipped this ring on my finger,” she said, looking down at the diamond. “It’s beautiful, thank you.”
“It’s a place holder for now, to let all drones in the hives know you are my queen bee,” he said, kissing her fingers.
“Aren’t you kind of missing the question that goes with the gift?”
“Not yet, Baby. I have a plan, a vision, and it will all come together,” he said, wiping at his forehead. “Is my forehead red? It feels like it is burning.”
“Did you get a chemical peel or something?”
“Yes, I did. How did you know?” The pock marked skin was relatively smooth. The acne scars were almost faded and he looked tanned.
“I have some gentle cleanser on my sink for you to use. Wash your face with that to remove the trans fats from your forehead,” she told him.
She watched him at the sink. Husband. Father. Lover. Am I ready for all of this? Am I ready to be his wife?
“Zelda, we are ready for whatever life will throw at us,” he told her.
“Did I say that out loud?”
“No, I read your face,” he said.
“Scott, I am a hot mess right now. I have so many unanswered questions and giant elephants in rooms leaving big heaps of smelly dung in the floor, and it makes me uncertain,” she confessed.
“Uncertain about us or uncertain about you?”
“If I am uncertain about me, then there truly is n
o us,” she told him.
“Baby, if you need some time and space to sort it all through...” he said as a statement and not as a question.
“Hell no! What I need is you, and as a matter of fact, all I need is you and everything will be just fine in the end. I have to get through Vegas though...,”
“And meeting my folks,” he said.
“Yes, there is that. I hope they like me,” she said.
“I can’t guarantee you that because my family is nuts, but one thing you can be sure of is that no one is going to rub your head with chicken grease using a gnarled up little chicken foot,” he said frowning.
“That whole encounter with my Grandmother is messing with you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that shit is unseating my calm,” he said laughing. “So are you. Let’s get out of this room before one of us ends up naked."
THE GUESTS STARTED arriving early. First through the door was Charlie Black, a nice-looking man who was very self-aware of his own appearance. He was also very aware of Zelda, who had only met the man once when she was Michael’s plus one at the company Christmas party. He’d never forgotten the platonic encounter and took this an opportunity to make some headway with his co-worker’s little sister.
Scott zoomed in on Charlie Black right away. However, what was catching his attention was Pip, who was staying very close to Michael. Lucy Broadmoor, a new associate at the engineering firm with large boobs and an even louder voice made a beeline for Michael, who quickly slipped his arm around Pip as he introduced her to his co-workers.
Zelda, observed Scott closely, his eyes squinted as he took in the closeness of Pip and her new beau. The new union felt wrong to him. He could almost foresee Michael breaking her heart as he dumped her in six months for a woman not as needy as his little Pip. As much of a pain in the ass as she was, Pip didn’t deserve to have her heart broken by such a skilled, worldly man as Michael.
“A penny for your thoughts, big guy,” Zelda said touching his arm.
“She is going to get hurt. He is going to break her heart and she will fall to pieces. Pip isn’t experienced enough for a guy like Michael,” he said.
A Saucy Sunday (The Zelda Diaries Book 4) Page 8
