A Very Merry Superhero Wedding (Adventures of Lewis and Clarke)

by Kitty Bucholtz

  But they’d disappeared.

  Chapter 4

  WITH all of the dress alterations approved, the women piled into their cars and drove to the church. Tori used to think of it as Joe’s church, or Pastor Owen’s, but she had recently started attending with Joe, so she supposed it was her church now, too. Hannah, Joe’s mom, had asked to host the bridal shower there since so many people were expected.

  The “so many people” part kind of freaked Tori out, but she wasn’t allowed much of a voice. Both mothers, her sister, and her best friend had worked together planning the party, and Tori had been told in no uncertain terms that the guest of honor didn’t get a say. In fact, there would be even more people than might otherwise be expected due to family from both sides visiting from out of town for the holidays.

  Tori led the way downstairs to the fellowship hall in the basement. When she came around the corner, her younger sister Sam yelled, “Surprise!” and flung her arms out to show Tori the decorated room. It looked amazing.

  Pale green and white streamers dipped and curled from one end of the ceiling to the other. Twinkling white Christmas lights added a magical feel. Red silk roses decorated the tables in glass vases filled with green beads. The tables were covered with an alternating pattern of red and green Christmas tablecloths, and white tablecloths with silver doves and wedding bells.

  An enormous amount of food covered several tables — pans over burning Sternos for hot dishes, bowls of salads and pastas, a full table of desserts. Tori could see half a dozen women bustling about the church kitchen preparing more food.

  “Wow,” was all she could say.

  “Do you like it?” Sam asked, giving her a hug.

  “Sam headed the decorating committee,” Lexie said, giving their little sister an affectionate squeeze.

  “I love it,” Tori said, still staring around the room. She looked closer at the nearest table — yes, little bowls of red and green M&M’S sat on each table. She grinned. Her sisters knew her well.

  She noticed little Christmas trees on some of the tables, each topped with a pair of tiny white doves.

  “The Christmas trees are from Hayley’s nursery,” Sam told her. “She decorated all of them herself.”

  “Hayley,” Tori exclaimed, giving her best friend a hug, “they’re beautiful.”

  “And they double as game prizes,” Hayley said. “Lex thought people might like them.”

  “What Isaid,” Lexie interrupted, “was that people wouldlove them.”

  Tori let Sam take her coat while people pulled her farther into the room. There were dozens of people there, many of whom Tori was pretty sure she didn’t know.

  Hannah rushed over and hugged everyone, giving Tori a teary-eyed squeeze. “I can hardly believe you’re going to be my new daughter in a few days.” Then she hugged Dixie, took them both by the arm, and promised to introduce them to all of the women on Joe’s side of the family. “Don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz.”

  A few of them, Tori had already met. Joe’s twin sisters, Gwen and Daphne, and his youngest sister Melissa, who was a year younger than Sam, had been at Thanksgiving dinner and had gushed over Joe’s unexpected proposal.

  Then there were Joe’s sisters-in-law, Brenda and Amy, and their young daughters, Katie and Ashley. There were several aunts and a boatload of cousins. Wow, and these were just the female relatives! How many people was Joe related to?

  “These two darlings,” Hannah hugged Katie and Ashley to her sides, “volunteered to play with the children in the Sunday School room after we eat. That way whatever happens in here, stays amongst us adults.” Hannah winked at Tori.

  Before Tori could decide if she should be worried about what exactly was going to happen, what could only be described as a small white whirlwind rushed over from the kitchen. An older woman, who could have been a stand-in for Olympia Dukakis, embraced Tori with exuberance. She stood back, hands gripping Tori’s shoulders, and appraised her from head to toe.

  “This must be my new granddaughter, Victoria!” the woman declared. She gave Tori another bear hug.

  Tori tried to keep a friendly smile on her face, but she’d already been feeling a bit overwhelmed from the onslaught of familial attention. This new attack threatened to push her over the edge. In her own family, she was the quiet one. People were generally friendly, but mostly they thought she and Lexie were a bit odd, so they didn’t engage them in long conversations.

  Or long hugs. The white-haired woman appeared to be coming at her again.

  “Millie, stop.” Hannah laughed. “You’re scaring the poor girl. Tori, Dixie, I’d like to introduce Millie Clarke, Owen’s mom and Joe’s grandmother. And the most fun mother-in-law in the world.”

  Millie grabbed Dixie for a quick hug, eliciting an “Oh! Hello!” from Dixie, then she turned back to Tori. “You can call me Nana,” she said firmly. “All the grandkids do. I think it’s destiny that Jonas is marrying a girl named for victory.” She leaned in closer and continued in a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Since he’s—”

  “You’re favorite,” Hannah interrupted with a laugh. “Yes, yes, we know.”

  Millie glanced up at Hannah and Tori saw something pass between them. “Yes, my favorite.” She turned back to Tori. “I know I shouldn’t pick favorites, but…” She shrugged.

  “Is everything ready?” Hannah asked.

  The whirlwind rushed around the room, Lexie was given a microphone and she and Hayley welcomed everyone, then people lined up to eat lunch before the games began.

  Tori was pulled to the front of the line. She looked for someone safe to grab onto. Her friends Liz and Gabrielle stood nearby. “Liz! Gabe!” she gushed as she hugged them hello. “I’m so glad you came.” In an undertone, she said, “Stand with me. I’m freaking out at all the attention.”

  They laughed and the three of them grabbed plates, oohing and ahhing over the delicious-smelling dishes.

  Liz leaned close and said in a low, excited voice, “So tell us, what’s the fuss with the rushed wedding? Are we planning a baby shower soon, too?” She giggled.

  Gabe spoke up before Tori could reply. “I saw the pictures you posted on Facebook last night. Dang, girl, he’shot. No one would be blaming you for saying yes to that.”

  Tori felt herself blush. It was one thing to be teased by your friends, but another thing entirely when family might be listening. “No! I’m not — I haven’t — we’re getting married because wewant to.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t want to marry that hunk,” Liz said, putting a couple of hot wings on her plate. “But you just met him, didn’t you?”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Gabe. “Unless you have been secretly dating him for months and didn’t want anyone to know. That would be so romantic.” She sighed theatrically.

  Tori laughed, and moved to the desserts table, out of earshot of family. “No, no secrets.” Well, not the kind they were talking about anyway. She hadn’t told Joe about the shrink and the meds and the years of being thought of as a bit of a freak. But she had put all that behind her, so there was no reason to tell him. Not until they were old and gray and he was so far beyond in love with her that it wouldn’t matter.

  She took a big breath. She wanted to tell someone and have them understand. Her family wasn’t really listening. “You know those stories about love at first sight?” She looked at both of her romance-minded friends, willing them to believe her and understand and be happy for her. “It was kind of like that, but it took a few hours rather than a few moments.” She giggled. “It was love at first date, I guess, since we eventually ate dinner together.”

  Gabe got a mushy look on her face. “Aww. That’s so adorable.”

  “It is adorable,” agreed Liz. She looked over her shoulder. “So why do I feel like it’s a secret?”

  “You know my family. They’re very practical and…” She searched for a word. “Careful. Mom says if I’m so sure I’m in love with him, I’ll still be in love with him next summer an
d I should get married then.” She worked hard not to let any bitterness creep into her voice.

  “Parents.” Liz shook her head. “They seriously need to relax.”

  “And remember what it was like to be young and in love,” Gabe added. “They must’ve been young and in love once.”

  The girls giggled together and started to sit down to eat. But Hayley came over and apologized and said the bride had to sit at the middle table where everyone could see her.

  Tori looked out over the crowded room.

  Hayley squeezed her shoulder and picked up her plate. “You’ll be fine,” she said, understanding. “I’m sitting on one side of you and Lexie will be on the other. Come on.”

  “This is why we’re having a small wedding,” she said. “So I don’t have to stand up in front of crowds of people.”

  “Well, you still aren’t,” Gabe said, chuckling. “You’ll be sitting. Not so bad. We’ll cheer you on from here.”

  Tori smiled at her friends and let Hayley pull her away. She began to relax a little as everyone sat down to eat and talk amongst themselves. “You all really outdid yourselves,” she said to her sisters, both mothers, and Hayley, all seated with her. “Thank you so much.”

  Sam giggled. “Just wait until the games begin.” She had an impish look Tori hadn’t seen in awhile. Sam’s first semester at college had brought out old insecurities and anxiety. It was good to see her laughing.

  The games were the fairly typical ones for bridal showers. Timed lists, word searches, purse raid. It was more fun than Tori thought it would be. And she was getting to know her in-laws-to-be as well as seeing her own cousins and aunts in a new light. Even the relatives she thought of as the conservative ones had relaxed in the spirit of the games.

  When the purse raid game finished, Sam rose and set up an easel, then pulled a covered board from behind a table. Tori watched her suspiciously, a half smile on her face, because Sam kept glancing at her and giggling.

  Lexie retrieved something from a bag next to her and stood up. “Okay, everyone, this next game is the most important one so it has thebiggest prize.” She held up a huge box of condoms for everyone to see. The crowd laughed.

  Tori gasped and covered her mouth, choking on a laugh. She looked over at her mom and Hannah. Both women laughed easily, not looking embarrassed. If they weren’t, she’d try not to be either.

  “To play,” Lexie continued, “we have this box of condoms, this blindfold—”

  People laughed and hooted. A few whistles and boisterous yells pierced the air.

  Tori shook her head and covered her eyes. Oh my gosh. She could feel her cheeks getting hotter.

  “This box of colored pushpins,” said Sam from in front of the easel, “and…” She pulled the cover off the board with a flourish.

  A huge poster of The Avengers taped to foam core generated more laughter.

  Tori noticed Joe’s family laughing harder than anyone else. Maybe they’d played this game before.

  Hayley elbowed Tori and nodded to the poster with a big grin. “You’ll never win at this,” she whispered. “You don’t know what to do, right?”

  Tori stuck her tongue out. Hayley laughed and hugged her shoulders.

  “What you’ll do,” said Lexie to the room, “is open a condom, unroll it,” she did so as she walked over to where Sam stood, “put a push-pin in the top here, spin around three times, and pin it on the poster as close to the correct piece of anatomy as possible. Blind-folded.”

  “Oh. My. Gosh.” Tori looked at Hayley and shook her head. “What were you two drinking?”

  Hayley laughed, but before she could say anything, Dixie leaned over and patted Tori’s hand.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart, you’ll get the hang of it after a while.”

  “Mom!” Tori gasped and laughed and covered her mouth. She was sure she’d never in her life heard her mother say something like that. It was both disturbing and hysterical.

  “She’s right, Tori,” Hayley whispered in her ear. “Getting it on is the hard part. Getting it off is easy.”

  “Hayley Addison! I’m never going to be able to get that out of my head,” Tori whispered back, wiping the tears from her eyes as she laughed.

  “Okay, everybody,” Lexie called to the room. “Come on up. The bride will go last. She’ll have to beat all the other — um,scores — on the board.”

  The next few minutes were side-splitting fun. The condoms were attached to the most unusual places on The Avengers poster. Some people got so disoriented after being spun around three times that they walked off to the side of the poster, blindly flailing their arms around to the vast amusement of the onlookers. Lexie would give them a little nudge in the right direction, and the condom would land someplace ridiculous. One was currently hanging off the end of The Hulk’s nose.

  A little old woman stood next in line. She handed her cane to Lexie and snapped her fingers for a condom. Joe’s relatives grinned and called out encouragement.

  “That’s Millie’s mom, Esther,” Hannah said to Tori and their table. “Owen’s grandma, Joe’s great-grandma.”

  At the easel, Lexie gently tied the blindfold over Grandma Esther’s eyes but didn’t spin her around. Grandma Esther took her cane firmly in one hand, stood quietly for a moment, then shuffled up to the poster with her other arm outstretched. As soon as her hand hit the poster, she pushed the pin in.

  Everyone laughed. The condom was pinned directly to the appropriate part of Thor.

  “What? Didn’t I do it right?” Grandma Esther asked, trying to get the blindfold off.

  Lexie helped her, laughing. “No, you were great. Look, you’ve done the best so far!”

  Grandma Esther moved forward to take a closer look. Then she turned to the room and said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Well, I do have the most experience.”

  The entire room exploded. All the women were holding their sides and wiping their eyes, they laughed so hard.

  Tori couldn’t talk, she could hardly breathe. But she wanted to say, this is the most fun party I’ve ever had!

  “Tori! Get Tori!” someone called.

  “It’s the bride’s turn!”

  “Bring down the bride!”

  Tori got up and stood next to Lexie and Sam. “I don’t think I can follow that,” she said to Joe’s great-grandma. She leaned down and gave her a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “I can show you if you want,” Grandma Esther said in a voice loud enough to carry.

  Everyone laughed and Tori blushed some more. “No, thank you, I’ll manage.”

  Lexie turned her to face the room, then tied the blindfold around her eyes. “Wait, you have to give me a condom first,” she told her sister.

  “Oh no,” Lexie replied. “You need to learn to do this in the dark.”

  More laughter.

  Tori opened the condom wrapper, but when she pulled the condom out, it slipped through her fingers onto the floor. Oh boy, was this an embarrassing game. She started to bend her knees, but Lexie pulled her arm, giggling.

  “Here, just take a new one.”

  This time, Tori was careful not to drop it. She laughed as people called out directions on how to unroll it. When she finally got it to its full length, she played along with the crowd, holding it up and asking, “Is it long enough now?”

  “You’ll find out in four days!” someone called out.

  Tori felt Sam’s hand on hers, and she put a pushpin in the top of the latex. Then she felt both sisters spinning her around. When they stopped, Tori put her arm out, but Lexie must’ve been gesturing to the crowd because everyone laughed again.

  “Nope, not yet,” Sam giggled.

  Then they spun her around the other way. Tori nearly fell over, she was so dizzy. Her sisters let go of her and when she took a step forward, they took turns saying “warm” and “cold” and “warmer” until Tori could reach out and feel the poster.

  She started to push the pin in, then moved her hand t
o another area. Someone called out “Ice cold!” and Tori moved her hand again. More people called out advice, some of it quite risqué, until Tori finally pushed the pin into the foam core.

  By the time she was done, the room echoed with hilarity.

  Tori pulled off her blindfold. Her condom was pinned to Captain America’s shield. “Well, it’s sort of close to the right part of Iron Man,” she said with a grin.

  “Close, but not close enough,” Lexie said. “The winner of Pin the Condom on the Avengers Poster is Grandma Esther!”

  Sam pulled out a big basket wrapped in cellophane. Tori saw it was filled with scented products from Bath & Body Works. Sam handed it to Tori, and Tori walked it over to Grandma Esther.

  “Why, thank you, lovey,” said her about-to-be-great-grandma. She reached up for Tori to hug her. “Don’t worry,” she whispered in Tori’s ear, “his powers are nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be fine.”

  Tori was so glad no one else heard that. How embarrassing! His “powers”? Was that how people used to talk about sex? She pulled away before Grandma Esther gave her a lecture on the birds and the bees.

  When she walked back to her sisters, face burning, she was so relieved to find the games were over. Hayley motioned her over to the gifts table. Okay, good, that would be easier on her nerves.

  Lexie handed her presents, Hayley wrote down who they were from in a little white book, and Sam took all the ribbons, doing something with them out of Tori’s view.

  The gifts overwhelmed Tori with the generosity and creativity of the givers. There were kitchen items, including a Crock-Pot and matching cookbook, silver picture frames, baskets of soaps and bath salts and lotions, and pre-made “date night” packages with gift cards for restaurants and the local movie theater chain.

  While Lexie took a moment to figure out which gift went with a card, Tori leaned over and whispered to her mother. “This is wonderful, but it seems like too much. I’m stunned and…” She shook her head a little.

  Dixie hugged Tori’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I know you don’t like to be the center of attention, but this is yourone day, sweetheart. Relax and enjoy it.” She smiled warmly. “It’s only going to happen one more time in your life, and then it won’t be about you as much as it’ll be about your unborn baby. Today, all these people are here to congratulate you and welcome you into their family. They need to believe you’re enjoying this. It’s your gift back to them.”