by Beth Labonte
To be honest, Mom actually has some rhythm. If she didn’t have a giant, white-haired parasite attached to her back, I might even enjoy watching her go.
That’s when I notice Barbara, Roger’s date, out on the dance floor too. She’s coming quickly through the crowd, sneaking up from behind and carrying a glass of red wine. I’ve seen a few episodes of Dynasty in my day—I know what’s about to happen, but there’s nothing I can do.
Besides, what’s the harm?
Barbara taps Roger on the shoulder, waits for him to turn around, and then flings the wine into his face. Then she slaps him. Nobody in the vicinity looks anything more than mildly interested. I get the feeling that this is a common occurrence at Sunset Havens.
Unfortunately for Mom, once she’s no longer under the guiding hands of Roger, she completely loses her rhythm and is swept up by the unforgiving crowd of octogenarians. She tries to recover, but it’s too late. She takes a bony elbow to the chest, and an arm whirl with a snap to the forehead.
And then, she’s down.
“Mom!” I rush over to help.
“Joan!” shouts Roger, kneeling down beside her. “My darling! Speak to me!”
“Are you okay?” I ask, pushing Roger out of the way. “Watch where you’re going!” I shout the words into the crowd of surrounding feet. Nobody has even stopped dancing, they’re just Electric Sliding right around us. I narrowly avoid being kicked by a pair of pink Crocs.
“I was assaulted,” says Mom, weakly.
“You weren’t assaulted,” I say. “Unless you mean by this guy.” I tilt my head toward Roger.
Roger cuts in front of me and slides an arm under Mom’s shoulders, red wine dripping out of his hair and onto her face.
“Let me help you up,” he says. With one arm under her shoulders, he slides his other arm under Mom’s legs and attempts to lift her, like Superman. Only, he’s far from being Superman, and also, he doesn’t lift with his knees. Something cracks loudly from the vicinity of his spinal column, and Roger collapses onto the floor. Now the both of them are lying there next to each other, staring up at the ceiling. At least with two people down, the crowd is finally starting to thin.
“Joan?” yells Dad, pushing through the crowd and kneeling down beside Mom. “Oh my God! She’s been shot!”
Somebody in the crowd screams and the house lights come up. The music stops.
“It’s just red wine!’ I say. “She’s fine! Mom, tell Dad you’re fine!”
“I was trampled,” moans Mom.
Good enough. At the sound of her voice, Dad’s face floods with relief.
“It’s all my fault,” says Roger, speaking to the ceiling. “I let go of her when I got slapped.”
“It’s my fault, too,” I say. “I saw that he was about to get slapped and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”
“No,” says Babette. “It’s my fault. I thought she was ready. And she would have been, if not for that awful Margo Wiederman and her husband! That’s who got her. Those two would step right over the Pope if he fell down on the sidewalk!”
“They were like maniacs,” whispers Mom. “Raving maniacs.”
“They’re just old people dancing,” points out Eric.
“Not the right time, man,” says Graham, shaking his head. Then he turns around and starts speaking to the crowd. “Let’s back it up a few feet. Give them some space. Emergency personnel are coming through.”
He’s right. Security guards, plus four EMT’s, are making their way through the crowd with stretchers. I look at Graham in disbelief. I knew Mom and Dad’s first night at Sunset Havens couldn’t possibly go well. I just never imagined it ending like this. That’ll teach me.
“Roger?” asks one of the EMT’s. “Is that you down there?”
“Hey, Brian,” says Roger. “Long time no see.”
“You must be off the V?”
Roger points to his popped blue collar. “Back on it tonight. Good thing you guys picked me up.”
Roger, noticing the look of confusion on my face, gives me a wink. “I call them whenever I have an erection lasting more than four hours.”
And on that note, Mom and Roger are wheeled out of Rosa Lee’s. Dad rides in the back of the ambulance, while Graham, Eric, and I follow behind in the Escalade. Tanya goes home with Graham’s parents. As we follow the ambulance in its blaze of red and blue lights, I remind myself to ask John if he considers an ambulance ride to be part of the full Havens experience.
8
So, one might say that things did not get off to the greatest start.
The six of us are seated around the kitchen table the next morning, awkwardly chewing on McDonald’s breakfast. Babette had planned on making us a healthy breakfast of turkey bacon, egg whites, and kale, but she felt so bad about last night that she wanted to do something extra special for Mom. In her mind, that was sending John out to surprise everyone with a boatload of greasy fast food. Apparently she can relate to my parents more than I thought.
Paper bags full of hash browns, Egg McMuffins, McGriddles, and several thousand ketchup packets, are scattered around the table. John didn’t know what everybody wanted, so he just ordered a little of everything.
“Great meal, Babette,” says Dad, as if she had cooked it herself. “Really. McDonald’s in Florida is almost as good as McDonald’s back home.”
“It is good, isn’t it?” says Babette, polishing off her second hash brown. “I’ve been trying to eat healthier since we moved here, but sometimes it’s nice to indulge.”
“What’s unhealthy about this?” asks Mom.
“You just ate a sandwich made out of pancakes,” I say, pointing to her McGriddles wrapper. “And they’ve been injected with syrup.”
Graham picks up a bag of hash browns and shows Mom the grease stain slowly making its way across the bottom.
She shrugs. “It’s not like we eat this way all the time.”
“Only on the weekends,” says Dad. “And every morning after I get the newspaper.”
Babette chokes a bit on her coffee, but doesn’t push the issue.
The men are leaving shortly to play golf—Dad included—while the rest of us head out to meet with the wedding planner. After a good night’s sleep, Mom appears to be back to her normal self. Well, aside from the large bruise smack in the center of her forehead. After two hours in the emergency room, the doctor said she was fine and that the bruise should be a few shades lighter by the time we take our wedding photos.
If not, we can always Photoshop her out.
Just kidding.
Eric arrives at the house soon after we finish breakfast. He drops off Tanya and jumps into the passenger side of Graham’s golf cart. I’m always surprised at just how subdued Graham’s golf cart actually is. I mean, it’s purple and has a horn that plays the Beverly Hills Cop theme. But that’s the extent of it. He bought it last year, and his parents keep it for him in their garage.
Dad is riding with John, whose golf cart is, for lack of a better word, totally pimped out. Graham had it custom built for his dad’s birthday and it cost a fortune. It looks like a yellow hot rod with red and orange flames painted on the front. Dad looks absolutely stunning in it, wearing his bright blue Hawaiian shirt and orange tennis visor that Mom, for reasons unknown, thought would make him blend in with the other golfers.
I lean in to kiss Graham goodbye. He’s wearing red and white houndstooth golf pants that he purchased online, and a red polo shirt. Graham will never blend in, even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t.
“Have fun,” I say. “And keep an eye on my father. He may need to be rescued at some point.”
“It’s kind of hard not to keep an eye on him,” says Graham.
“Like you should talk,” I laugh. “I’m serious though. Your dad doesn’t always remember how to relate to outsiders.”
“Don’t worry,” says Graham. “I’m on it.”
“What about me?” asks Eric. “You don’t trust me to take care of my
own father?”
I look at the way that he’s lounging back in his seat—one foot up on the dashboard, sunglasses upside down on the back of his neck—and I slowly shake my head. Eric sticks out his tongue and makes a rude gesture as they pull away from the curb.
“Have fun, Dad!” I call out. John beeps the horn and Dad grabs onto the front roof support.
Once they’re out of sight, I walk back into the house to find Babette, Mom, and Tanya standing in a semi-circle around my wedding dress. They’ve taken it out from wherever Mom has been hiding it, and hung it from a hanger on the back of the hall closet. I smile at the sight of it. It looks just like I remembered.
Sort of.
As my eyes pan from the bottom of the dress to the top, I notice that there’s something a bit off. I squint. Yes, there’s definitely something off. Like, the sleeves.
Panic starts rising in my stomach. Did I just say sleeves? Oh my God. Why does my wedding dress contain sleeves? Where did sleeves come from?
I step forward, pushing everybody out of the way, and inspect the dress more closely. I swallow down the bile that has risen in my throat. Somebody has sewn sheer white sleeves onto my dress. Not only that, they’ve sewn an entire panel of sheer white fabric from what used to be a strapless neckline, all the way up to my throat, and then cinched it all together with a giant satin bow.
There is a bow around the neck of my wedding dress. It’s like that horror story about the mysterious woman who always wears a bow around her neck until one day her husband unties it and her head falls off.
I can’t breathe.
“Mom!” I scream. “What have you done to my dress!?”
“What?” she says. “It had so little coverage before. You’ll be much more comfortable this way.” She takes the dress down from the closet and holds it up in front of me, nodding with satisfaction.
She does all of this so earnestly that I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that she’s playing a huge practical joke. It’s like when she told me my dress was inside The Duffle, right? Haha. Nice gag. Mom made a funny. Time to take the real dress out now.
Except, she doesn’t. She just looks at me, and I look back and forth between her and the dress, and no other dress is being produced from anywhere.
“You’re...serious?” I ask. “You seriously thought it was okay to add sleeves and a bow and a...a...a dickey to my wedding dress?”
“It is not a dickey. And really, you don’t have to get an attitude about it,” says Mom.
“An attitude?” How is she possibly making me into the bad guy? “Mom, I liked the dress the way it was. And, oh yeah, my wedding is in Florida! I don’t want sleeves!”
“But they’re sheer! You’ll get a nice breeze right through them.” She makes breeze-through-your-sleeves motions with her hands, which makes me even angrier than I already was.
“But I don’t want a breeze through my sleeves!”
“Okay, fine.” Mom rolls her eyes. “But the dress was strapless! How was it going to stay up?”
“What do you mean how was it going to stay up? Thousands of brides wear strapless gowns every day! Do you think they’re all just dropping to the floor in the middle of the ceremony? No! They stay up!”
“Well, of course they do,” says Mom. “Those girls have bosoms to hold them up with. They’re not like you.”
I gasp.
“I think Summer can hold her own in the bosom department,” says Babette, coming to my defense. Tanya laughs. I feel my face turning red as I pray that nobody ever speaks of my bosom again. For once I wish Mom would just use the word boobs, like everybody else. Bosom. Who am I, Madam Bovary?
“Look, Mom. The dress fit fine. It fit, and it wasn’t going to fall down, and now you’ve ruined it!”
“I’m having a nervous breakdown,” says Mom, throwing her hands into the air and sinking down onto the couch.
“Why are you having a nervous breakdown?” I yell. “If anyone should be having one it’s me! The one who’s going to her wedding dressed like Little Miss Muffet!”
And on that note, I turn and stomp into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
My parents have been here less than a day and I’m already hiding in my bedroom and slamming doors. I sit down on the bed and stare at the wall, chewing on my bottom lip. After a few minutes, there’s a quiet knock at the door.
“Summer?”
It’s Tanya. I open the door.
“Hey,” she says, slipping in through the crack. “I thought maybe you’d jumped out the window.”
“No. Just contemplating how nice it must be to be Graham, out there golfing in his loud pants, nobody sewing anything into his tuxedo or talking about his bosom. Life is so unfair.”
“True. But then again, he’s golfing right now, in ninety-degree Florida sun. That sucks.”
I laugh. “Graham loves it here, whatever the temperature. The sun gives him energy. He’s like a solar panel.”
Tanya smiles and sits down on the edge of the bed.
“Look, I know you’re upset about the dress,” she says. “But Babette’s going to call her seamstress and see if she can fit you in this afternoon, after we meet with the wedding planner.”
“Oh, thank God,” I say, flopping back against the pillows. “I can’t believe my mother’s only been here a day and she’s already ruining my wedding.”
Tanya frowns at me. “Go easy on her, Sum. I think she was just trying to be involved.”
She puts quite a bit of emphasis on that word, involved.
“It’s not my fault I won a free wedding,” I say, defensively.
“Oh, please,” she says. “Your fiancé is loaded. He would have been more than happy to pay for the wedding. You, missy, had some ulterior motive as to why you jumped at the chance to have your wedding at a retirement community. And I believe I know you well enough to say that you simply didn’t want to plan a wedding with your mother.”
I roll my eyes. Ulterior motive? I mean, obviously I took advantage of the free wedding in order to avoid planning a wedding with my mother. Anybody that has met my mother would agree that that was the only logical course of action. But it’s not like I went out of my way to make it happen. It just kind of fell into my lap. Besides, Mom said she was totally fine with it.
“Look, maybe that was an added benefit of having the wedding here,” I say. “But even if it was the main reason, why should I feel bad about it? Look what happened when my mother tried to get involved, Tanya. She sewed sleeves into my wedding dress. And a bow. Have you seen the bow?”
“True,” says Tanya. “But she’s still your mom. And you’re her only daughter. Besides, who’s the genius that left her wedding dress unsupervised at her parents’ house? The same parents who, if I remember correctly, once sewed bicycle shorts into your prom dress? You really should have seen this one coming.”
I sigh and sink back into the pillows. She’s right, of course. But I don’t exactly have an excellent track record of seeing things coming.
9
The four of us are driving two golf carts over to The Lakeview to meet with Nadine, the wedding planner. The Blendermans do own a car that we could use instead, but it wouldn’t be the full Havens experience if we didn’t spend an extra forty minutes getting there by golf cart.
The carts are two-seaters, so Babette will be driving Tanya, and I’ve volunteered to drive Mom. The Lakeview is at Duke’s Landing, which is a four mile drive by cart path with lots of turns and tunnels. Whenever Graham and I go out there, I make him drive while I enjoy the scenery. So, to be honest, I don’t exactly know the route by heart. But I’m going to follow Babette, so it will be fine.
Easy peasy.
“Um, Mom?” I’m already in the driver’s seat, but Mom is still standing in the garage staring at the cart like I’ve asked her to board Mars One.
“That’s what we’re driving?” she asks.
“Yep. This is a golf cart, and we are in a golf cart community.” I
firmly pat the seat next to me. “Welcome to retirement.”
Mom climbs in gingerly, hanging the garment bag containing my wedding dress from the roof behind us.
“Will that be okay there?” she asks.
I shrug. “Should be. We’re not going very fast.” Part of me almost hopes that it falls off, sleeves and all.
Mom fastens her seatbelt and stares stoically ahead as we back out of the driveway. I follow Babette to the end of our street, and then into the golf cart lane on the main road.
“What are you doing?” yells Mom.
I jump. “What?” God, a second ago she was like a statue.
“Why are we in the road? With the cars!”
“Oh. Well, sometimes there’s no cart path so we have to go on the regular road.” I glance over. Mom has gone completely white. “It’s just for a short time though. I promise.”
After what feels like forever, we turn off the main road and onto a cart path. Mom relaxes a bit as we drive along in silence, enjoying the warm breeze and the sunshine. It really is lovely down here. The weather is amazing, everybody is smiling and relaxed, and when I compare the lifestyle of John and Babette Blenderman, with the neurotic lifestyle of Richard and Joan Hartwell, I can’t help but think that Sunset Havens is where all retirees should strive to spend their golden years.
“So, Mom,” I say, glancing over at her. “What was up with that guy Roger last night?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he was coming on a bit strong, don’t you think? Especially in front of Dad. It was a little rude.”
“He was a perfect gentleman in the ambulance,” says Mom, defensively. “His back was in so much pain, but he still insisted on holding my hand the entire time. He even said that if he ended up paralyzed, he hoped it was from the waist up.”
“He said that with Dad there?”
“What?”
“Duh, Mom. What exactly do you think he meant by that?”
“He meant that he wanted to be able to dance with me again!” says Mom.
I roll my eyes. “I’m sure that’s one of the names he has for it.”