Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  “That’s okay, dear,” Marie says with sympathy, patting her arm. “We never thought you could manage anyway, so I had the seamstress add some gussets for the inevitable.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I have not spent twenty-six years as your mother to not realize that you have the self control of Agnes at a yoga class for male underwear models.”

  My mom clears her throat and asks, blushing, “You offer yoga classes for male underwear models?”

  “No, but isn’t that a great idea?”

  My mom nods. “I’d exercise more if that were an option.”

  Marie just beams.

  “I am going to stand in front of a thousand people in two days and look like a big, white whale next to a god in a kilt!” Shannon sobs. I’m impressed. She’s taking this acting thing way too far, but it seems to be fooling Marie.

  “A billionaire god,” Amy adds.

  “That’s not helpful!” Shannon snaps. She scrapes the bottom of her ice cream pint and pokes furiously with a spoon, as if viciously stabbing Ben and Jerry.

  “Don’t be silly,” Marie soothes. “The photographer is an expert in Photoshop. You won’t look like a whale. I promise.”

  “I don’t want to have my wedding photographs doctored!”

  “Not doctored. More like....finessed.”

  “That’s fakery!”

  “That’s reality, Shannon,” Marie argues. “Fake is the new black.”

  “What is that supposed to mean? That makes no sense!”

  “Just eat your ice cream and wait for the pills to kick in, dear.” Marie and my mother sling their purses over their shoulders and start to walk out the door.

  “Where are you going?” Carol asks.

  “To Shannon’s bachelorette party.”

  “There is no party.”

  Marie and my mom share an uneasy look. Marie taps one fingernail against her front teeth as she screws up some courage.

  “Spit it out, Mom,” Carol says with a resigned sigh. “Whatever this is, it’s gonna be good.”

  “Well, just because you all have uncooperative uteri doesn’t mean Pam and I need to miss out on all the fun!”

  “Uncooperative Uteri sounds like the name of a garage band at Smith College,” Amy groans.

  “You’re going to,” Shannon says slowly, her eyes still closed, head slung up against the back of the couch, “have my bachelorette party without me?”

  “If you insist, sweetie!” Marie chirps. She and my mom hightail it for the door. “We’ll do a blow job in your honor!”

  “A what?”

  “It’s a drink. A shot. Don’t worry. She’s not really...they’re not really, you know....” My mother sputters more than a lawn mower warming up.

  “Although Pam isn’t married. She can whore it up all she wants.”

  The words whore and my mother should never, ever be in the same sentence.

  My mom just winks at me. Winks!

  And with that, they’re off, Spritzy as their mascot. Mom has a letter from her doctor that sort of certifies Spritzy as a service dog. Not really, but the letterhead shuts people up fairly quickly. Mom’s anxiety over her pain from the fibromyalgia means having Spritzy helps.

  Not sure how having Spritzy at a bachelorette party is going to work, but...

  Carol’s phone buzzes with a text. She reads it and makes a sound of disbelief.

  “Everything okay with Jeffrey and Tyler?” Shannon asks, her brow creased with concern.

  “What? That? Oh, yeah. Dad’s keeping them overnight. Taking them out to their favorite restaurant and spoiling them rotten.”

  “You gave poor Jason earplugs for Chuck E. Cheese, right?” I ask.

  Carol smiles and looks just like Marie. “We gave him a twelve-pack for Christmas this year.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Josh just sent me a text asking where the party is.”

  “Josh? Why would Josh think he’s been invited to my bachelorette party?” Shannon asks.

  “Let me find out.” Carol taps her screen a few times and we wait.

  And wait.

  Bzzzzz.

  She reads the text aloud:

  “Your mother invited me.”

  Jaws drop in disbelief.

  “He has a penis! He can’t come to my party!”

  “He likes the same eye candy.”

  “Besides, I’m pretty sure Andrew invited him to Declan’s bachelor party.”

  “And there will be plenty of penises at your bachelorette party,” Carol groans.

  “Not Josh’s penis! Stripper penii!”

  “Tell him where Mom and Pam are,” Shannon says with a gleam in her eye. She looks at Carol and adds a mopey sigh.

  Carol taps on her screen. “Done. Josh says he’ll save some stripper belly lint for us to keep as a memento.”

  “Ewww,” I say, recoiling.

  Amy has been standing by the front door, looking outside. She turns around, slowly pulling her long, auburn curls out of the crooked ponytail she made.

  “They’re gone. It’s safe.”

  “Whew!” Shannon exclaims. “I thought I was going to have to eat the entire pint and get sick before they left.”

  “That whole ‘I’m going to look like a whale in my dress’ act was great! You really sold it, Shannon,” I tell her.

  “I wasn’t joking,” Shannon says weakly.

  Carol looks at us in confusion as Amy starts finger-combing her hair and Shannon grabs a small gym bag and heads for the bathroom.

  “What are you doing?”

  The three of us stop our bustling around. Amy gets an uneasy look, her eyes floating to me. Clearly, I’m the one who is going to have to explain what just happened.

  “We, um...there actually is a bachelorette party.”

  “I know! Mom booked it behind your and Shannon’s back and now...oh....” She’s looking at us critically, as if she’s processing nanosecond by nanosecond what we’re up to.

  We’re silent as I struggle to figure out how to say this.

  “We faked Mom out,” Amy says bluntly. “We all pretended to get our periods and cancel the bachelorette party because we knew Mom would crash it.”

  The brownie in Carol’s hand breaks in half. Chuckles is in her lap and it falls on his head. He sniffs it like it’s a live hand grenade, then scurries off.

  “You what?”

  “It was easy for Amanda to pretend she was in pain,” Amy says, coming over to me and rubbing my back compassionately. “She’s in break-up mode. That’s worse than period mode.”

  I nod.

  Shannon comes back into the room wearing a glittery outfit clearly designed for pub-crawling fun. It’s a pale purple, with a shiny silver sheen, and a cowl neckline. Retro ’70s.

  “That just means Amanda can drink alcohol out of a man’s navel and not worry about remembering his name when she wakes up next to him in the morning,” she says with a wink.

  “But he won’t know to get me a breve latte,” I joke, mortified to find that real tears are threatening my eyelids as I say the words.

  “Wait. Hold on. Back up,” Carol insists. “This is all...you were just pretending you all got your periods to get Mom to go off on a snipe hunt? Isn’t that really cruel?”

  “A half-naked-male-stripper snipe hunt,” Amy adds.

  Carol wavers. “That’s not so bad, I guess.”

  “Amy probably has something you can borrow to wear,” Shannon says to her older sister. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you so you could prepare,” Shannon adds nervously, her words coming out like air from a tire pump. “But you’re the worst liar, Carol, and—”

  “Hey! I am not! I’m a very good liar. You try eloping with Todd and being married to that jackass and not learn how to lie.”

  “But you can’t lie to Daddy. And he can’t lie to Mom. We had to limit the circle of knowledge.” Shannon fluffs her hair with Amy’s hair pick, but because Shannon has hair with the consistency of East
er basket grass and the waviness of a straight edge, she just looks like she’s picking through brown corn silk.

  “The circle of knowledge? And hold on. You mean you all don’t have your periods right now?”

  We three shake our heads.

  “Damn it! I do!” she cries out, clasping the heating pad hard to her belly.

  “Oh, man,” Amy mumbles in sympathy.

  “And I’m the only one in here who can’t get pregnant!” Carol grouses. “But I still get my stupid periods. I’m between you three and Mom and Pam. I’m stuck in the middle.” I’m assuming that’s an allusion to having her tubes tied after she had her youngest son.

  No one is listening to her as we change clothes and fluff and primp and get ready for a night on the town.

  Carol jumps up, sighs, and pops some ibuprofen.

  “All right. What can I squeeze into from Amy’s closet? Dad’s got Jeffrey and Tyler for the night.” She sets down a half-eaten pint of ice cream, licking the spoon clean and shoving it in the treat. “Might as well have some fun that doesn’t involve using my mouth.”

  We all practically crack our necks looking at her.

  She grins back.

  And looks just like her mom.

  A long time ago, Shannon informed me she wanted a private room at a huge piano bar for sing-alongs and strippers. Hiring male strippers who can sing was surprisingly easy.

  As we walk into the private room, a familiar Billy Joel tune carries through the air from twin baby grand pianos that face each other. A row of tables sits in front of them, with layers radiating out from the center formed by the two pianos.

  There is no bar tonight. It’s all an open bar with table service, and all bankrolled by Anterdec. The only stipulation James McCormick placed on me when I made the bachelorette party arrangements was that I invite enough Anterdec employees, contractors, and subsidiary-company workers to make it a legitimate business deduction.

  That was easy.

  Half of the male performers from O are here. I invited Declan’s assistant, Grace, and Andrew’s assistant. Shannon invited a gaggle of women she works with in Marketing at Anterdec, so we’re pretty much covered there.

  As we settle in at the table of honor, one of the cocktail servers plunks a bottle of chilled Champagne and a bucket of chilled wine coolers on the table.

  Actually, that’s not a bucket.

  That’s a trough. It takes two servers to lift the ice-and-bottle-filled bucket onto the table in front of us.

  “Now that’s what I call table service!” shouts a familiar voice.

  Shannon gives me a look, as if Satan himself were whispering our names from the depths of Hell.

  Right behind us.

  We turn around slowly to find a very pleased with herself Marie, holding an open bottle of Champagne, standing next to my mother, who appears to be as drunk as I have ever seen her.

  And Josh is behind them, giving us a sour look.

  Mom and Marie do a surprisingly good imitation of Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous.

  “Uh....” Shannon and I say in twin voices that sound like a boat propeller revving down.

  “Thought you could outsmart us, huh?” Marie crows, nudging my mother, who falls against Josh, who knocks into a six-foot-tall stripper wearing less around his waist than Josh has on his balding head.

  They’re a game of human drunk dominoes.

  The stripper holds Josh up with big, thick hands and winks. “Most people slip a five-dollar bill in there after touching me like that.”

  “I—uh—um,” Josh flounders, reaching in his back pocket for his wallet.

  “It’s okay. I give one free grab per cutie,” the stripper says, walking off with a gait that shows off every butt muscle.

  Josh grabs the Champagne from Marie and guzzles half the bottle.

  “We, uh....” I look wildly around the room for Amy and Carol, who appear to be hiding. “We weren’t ditching you.”

  Busted.

  Shannon rolls her eyes and stands, giving Marie a grudging hug. “You win, Mom. You figured it out.”

  “See?” Marie says, then hiccups, slinging her arm around my mom. “Told you they tried to exclude us old birds.”

  “Actually, I figured it out,” my mom protests.

  Seventy-something Grace picks that moment to appear, a Corona in hand. “Marie! Good to see you. Shannon’s got one hell of a party here, huh? I could use a different kind of eye candy myself, but a woman can admire the fine lines of a man without wanting to sleep with him, right?” She turns to Josh and clicks her beer bottle against his Champagne.

  Josh and Marie share a horrified look.

  “I don’t understand what she just said,” Josh whispers.

  “Me either,” Marie says.

  Josh takes the bottle and drains it.

  I leave Marie to do the introductions. I pull Shannon aside, but before we can escape, Marie is huffing with indignity, hissing in our faces. She’s abandoned Josh and Mom. I hope someone, somewhere, introduces them all to each other.

  “You invited Grace and tried to ditch me and Pam?”

  “Grace isn’t my mother,” Shannon says with a grrrr. Literally. Like a dog. She makes noises like I imagine Mr. Wiffles sounds when upset.

  “She could be your grandmother!” Marie snaps back.

  “She works for Anterdec! She’s Declan’s longtime assistant and like a mother to him.”

  “I am like a mother to him! If you’re going to include Grace, you should have included me!”

  “MOM!” Shannon bellows. Her eyes are rimmed with red rage and she looks like she is about to pop. “You have taken my entire wedding and turned it into a giant clusterfuck!”

  Marie gasps in horror, because Shannon rarely curses.

  “I never wanted the Scottish-themed wedding. Didn’t care about Farmington,” Shannon screeches. The piano players vacillate between playing louder to cover up the argument, and softer to listen in. A small crowd of Shannon’s coworkers and friends is forming around the two women.

  “I have put up with the tartan thongs. With having a cat as a flower girl. With the spun sugar, life-size likeness of me and Declan next to the wedding cake. And the ice sculpture. And the ninety-minute video that takes our lives and turns it all into a time capsule. The live streaming video thing was way over the top, but did I complain? NO!”

  The crowd tightens.

  “All I wanted was one night. One tradition. One ritual that was mine. Just mine, exactly the way I wanted it, with a bunch of women I could let loose with and party. But no. You had to crash it. You had to ruin this for me. I’m not going to worry about your feelings of hurt because I didn’t invite you, when you show no concern for my feelings!”

  Marie blinks, then sniffs, then blinks again.

  Shannon is panting, her top glimmering in the dark lights of the club, her breasts turning into shiny waves.

  “Are you done?” Marie asks in a patient voice.

  “Yes.”

  Marie reaches out and pats Shannon on the cheek. “It’s okay, dear,” she whispers. “I can tell you’re really having your period and this is just the hormones talking.”

  And with that, Marie walks over to a stripper who is on his back on a long table, his body covered with little green vodka jigglers, and slurps one up with more tongue than Chuckles licking a bowl of cream.

  I resist the urge to shove Shannon’s eyeballs back in her head.

  “HOW DOES SHE DO THAT?” Shannon screeches.

  My own mother comes over and gives Shannon a sympathetic pat on the back, then stumbles slightly.

  “’sokay Shannon, honey,” Mom says. “Did you know that nine percent of all brides don’t even have a bachelorette party?”

  We look at her.

  “Wedding insurance project,” she adds, giving us a big smile. It lifts twenty years off her face, and I see myself in her. I look more like my dad, so this is a revelation.

  “And,” she says, p
ulling Shannon closer, whispering in her ear, “between twenty-five and fifty percent of brides and grooms don’t even have sex on their wedding night.”

  Oh, now I know my mother is drunk.

  She’s talking about sex.

  “Don’ be one of those, Shannon. Have sex with Declan. It’s okay to lose your virginity on your wedding night.”

  “I already lost my—”

  I grab Shannon and leave my mom to stagger over to Marie, where I don’t want to know what happens next. I hear her say to Marie, “You know, I haven’t had sex in seven years...” and that is when my circuits overload.

  Hold on.

  Mom doesn’t date.

  Ever. And dad left twenty-two years ago.

  So, who did she—?

  Not my business. Not my business. Not my business.

  Tonight, I am determined not to drink. At all. I’ve had too much over the past few months. I’m normally a two-to-three drink a month person. Shannon and Marie have overindulged, too, and while a bachelorette party is the place to let loose and go wild, for some reason I’m living life backwards, anyway, so I might as well stay sober tonight.

  Someone has to keep an eye on everyone anyhow.

  And I’m the fixer.

  Over the course of the next few hours we sing Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, Snow Lion, a hair-raising version of “Macarena,” and we learn that both Marie and my mother know all the words to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”

  Even the baseball announcer’s part.

  After that last song ends, there’s a short break. The room is so quiet my ears ring. Shannon is laughing it up with Grace and some other women from Anterdec. My mom and Marie are giggling in a booth over something they’re watching on Marie’s phone. Carol is flirting with a stripper who has more tattoos than he has skin. Amy is dancing to nothing. Just by herself, glass held high above her auburn hair, dancing to silence.

  “HEY!” booms a loud, man’s voice. It is, to my surprise, Josh.

  Josh, who is shirtless and stretched across a long bar table on his back, with his navel filled with liquor.

  And Spritzy is on his abs, happily licking from the little pool.

  Henry the stripper walks by, taps me on the head, and says, “I’ve seen some kinky shit before, but...”