by Julia Kent
Amanda mouths, I’m so sorry.
My nostrils are flared and my teeth are gritted, so I all I can do is bare my fangs like a dog with rabies. Am I frothing? If not, I should be. In fact, I wish I had rabies. Then they’d have to take me to the emergency room and give me shots to the stomach with super-long needles, which is sounding like Disney World compared to what’s coming.
“Let’s go get smooth!” Mom crows, linking her arm through mine like we’re Dorothy and the Tin Man and off to see the Wizard.
The wonderful wizard of chin hairs.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.” I dig in my heels, physically refusing to let my mom get me out into the hallway. “You are not tricking me into a full Brazilian again.”
She looks abashed. “That was never a trick! A miscommunication, but not a trick.” Right after our first Christmas together, Declan got me, Mom, Carol and Amy a day at one of the Anterdec hotel spas in Boston. Through a series of unmentionable events (involving my unmentionable bits), Mom was in charge of telling my waxer what I wanted, and I was given a Brazilian. You don’t get over a “miscommunication” like that quickly.
“I couldn’t pee straight for weeks, Mom.” I wasn’t waxed.
I was deforested.
“We have to suffer for our beauty. Pain builds character. And the right waxing reduces that whole Sasquatch thing you’ve got going down there. I see your father’s Polish ancestry coming out in you.” She winks at Declan, who just scowls. He wasn’t a fan of the all-bald look, but mostly didn’t like the fact that I was in so much pain we didn’t have sex for a week.
Declan catches my eye over Mom’s head. “I already warned Lüq. No worries.”
Mom gives him an impressed look. “Lüq? He sounds very sophisticated.” Leave it to Mom to confer status on someone based solely on how their name sounds.
“Hu is,” Declan answers.
“Who?” Mom asks.
“Lüq.”
“You already said that.”
“I know, but you asked.”
“I just asked who he is.”
“Hu.”
“What are you talking about?” Mom screeches.
“Lüq is gender nonconforming,” Declan says with a sigh he reserves for my mother, and only my mother. “We don’t use gender-specific pronouns when talking about hu.”
“H-u, Marie,” Amanda says gently. “It’s a way of saying he or she.”
“Why not say it? Or they?” Mom asks.
“Try that,” Declan says coldly, “and Lüq will give you a makeover that reminds you of those 1990s photos from Glamour Shots.”
Mom’s eyes light up. “Promise?”
Amanda drags her away before both Declan and I shove her in the minibar fridge and tape it shut.
“Go,” he says. “Get whatever you need. But don’t let your mother alienate Lüq.”
“Can I get Mom a Brazilian where they wax her tongue out of her mouth? ’Cause that’s probably the only way she won’t offend him—er, hu.”
He pretends to consider it. “We could sell that as a popular service to an awful lot of disenchanted sons-in-law. But seriously, Shannon. Go to the spa. That’s what it’s there for.” He shudders. “Not the drug store. Drug stores are good for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Period errands.”
We laugh. It feels good. And he’s right.
“What about condoms?” I ask.
“What about condoms?” Declan’s demeanor changes, one eyebrow lifting. The topic of sex makes everything lighten up.
“Drug stores are good for those, too.”
“I am so glad we don’t need them anymore.” I’m on the pill now.
“And soon,” he adds softly, “we won’t need the pill, either.”
“Excuse me?”
“Eventually, I mean.” We’re sharing one of those looks that make you understand why you’re in a committed relationship. “Someday.”
“Someday,” I agree, my voice faint.
“Right now, though, you’re banned from drug stores.”
“That means you’re running all my period errands, then.”
He sighs. “Don’t I already?”
I cringe, because yeah. He does. Or his chauffeurs, Gerald and Lance, do.
“Just go to the spa,” he orders.
“Fine. But only because you designed it. And I’m coming back with hair.”
“I hope so. I don’t want you out of commission for a week.”
“If I am, it’s your fault.”
I shut the door on his contemplative face and follow Amanda and Mom down the long hallway. They’d better have good food down in the spa, because as I walk slowly, this is starting to feel like a Star Trek episode where they beam down to a new planet, and I’m wearing a red crew shirt. I need a good final meal.
The hotel is designed intentionally so that you have no choice but to walk through the casino to get to any given point. Architects must have a kind of chaotic evil in their hearts when they design casino-hotels like this. Need to pee? CASINO. Need a latte? CASINO. Need a toothbrush from the twenty-four-hour store? CASINO!
We walk past an awful lot of desperate cowboys who are bellied-up to the roulette tables, slot machines, blackjack tables and scantily-clad women.
Through the botanical gardens, past the world’s largest tequila fountain, and bam!—we’re in front of a set of greenhouse doors that reek of lavender and verbena.
Which is the universal scent of pampered women.
Steeling myself, I accept my clenched stomach and sweaty palms as trade-offs. By the time I walk out of here, not a stray eyebrow hair will be found, my skin will glow from the inside out, my hair will be layered and powdered and perfectly coiffed, and I’ll have smooth, silky legs I can use to run away from my mother.
See? Trade-offs.
Mom walks in there like a boss. A crazy Momzilla menopausal boss who has been at the center of manufactured drama for so long she thinks she’s the Maypole and the rest of us are ribbons whose sole purpose in life is to wrap around her.
I’m supposed to be avoiding her for these precious hours before our big dinner tonight. Declan shrewdly conjured up these shenanigans, and now I have to use every tool in my toolbox not to talk to her.
“Hello!” she tootles, smiling brightly. Her purse is new, a buttery beige leather contraption with brass circles in a chain along the front, the handles made of peach macramé that matches her sandals and her eye shadow. “Marie Jacoby here. I’m Mr. McCormick’s mother-in-law. Is Mr. Lüq here?”
The cute little pixie wearing six-inch lilac high heels and less cloth than a car shammy looks at Mom in horror. “Mister Lüq? Non non non.” The French accent makes me realize we’ve made a grave mistake.
“Oui, oui, oui!” Mom says back, pleased with herself. “Je m’appelle Marie! Monsieur Lüq, s’il vous plaît.”
Mom knows about as much French as she needs to cross the border into Quebec and find herself on the road to Montreal for her rare yoga conventions there. She can say “Downward facing dog,” “My IT band is too tight and causing pain in that position,” and “Please excuse me for passing gas,” in French, but that’s it.
The spa pixie crinkles her nose like Mom just farted and lit it on fire.
A string of angry French comes back. I hear an intense focus on the word monsieur. The pixie looks at Amanda, her eyes going wide.
Pointing a shaking finger, she says, “Le Faucon!”
Scrambling for her smartphone, which she must store inside her anus, because there is no way that outfit has pockets, she approaches Amanda with a deferential authority that has Mom’s nose out of joint.
“Le sauveur, mademoiselle. You are the animal rescuer! Evangi, come here! It is her! The woman who saved the petit dog from the hawk! Oh, Lüq will be so happy to meet you!”
And with that, they usher Amanda into a back room that requires the pixie to receive a retina scan, leaving me and Mom in the reception
area, a giant bottle of cucumber water burbling in a fountain, a light display sending geysers every minute.
It is a replica of one of the fountains outside.
I hate Las Vegas.
Two minutes pass. I pretend to answer work emails on my phone, but really play a game called Hearthstone. Jeffrey is killing me. The app keeps shouting, “My magic will tear you apart” and it’s right. I switch to something easier, staring at red jelly beans and green-striped candy on my screen.
Five. Eight. By nine minutes, Mom looks like she’s going to fidget herself off the edge of the world.
“This is outrageous! We need to complain.”
I look up from my Candy Crush app. “Huh?” I am in no rush to get any of this spa stuff going. Give me five blue balls in a row and I’m happy.
“This Mr. Lüq can’t be allowed to treat you like this, Shannon. You’re about to be a billionaire’s wife! You need to learn to be a bitch!”
“A what?”
“A bitch! Cultivate your inner bitchiness.” Mom’s hands are waving all around her front space. I see the Italian. Her maiden name is Scarlotta, after all. She looks like Wolverine conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
I stiffen and bite my lips to hold back the stream of profanity that threatens to overflow like a volcanic eruption.
“You and Dad spent my entire childhood and adolescence telling me I needed to be nice,” I finally manage. “And kind. That kindness and being pleasant was the best moral choice.” I hold my palm out. Talk to the hand. You want me to be bitchier? How about I start practicing right now?
With you, Mom.
“Pfft. Boy, were we wrong!” she backpedals, her eyes rolling. “Those values are great when that kind of social glue is what you need to fit in, but around here it’s the opposite. Wealthy people take niceness to be a sign of weakness.”
She’s blathering on, but there’s a kernel of truth in there.
Damn it.
The private spa door flies open, slamming against the wall. A blast of scented air, bamboo and lemongrass and humidity fills the reception area.
“You may see Lüq now,” the pixie says. I look at her name tag.
Gagai.
Right.
Mom pretends she’s trying to decide whether to go through that open door. “I’m not sure we really should see him,” she sniffs. Gagai’s eyes go wide, one pupil dilating before my eyes. A thin chain appears to be caught in her long, fake eyelashes.
I can’t stop staring, because I’m wrong. It’s not a chain caught in her eyelashes.
It’s a chain hanging off her eye.
“Eeeee!” I squeak, shuddering in horror. “Your eye! We need to get you to a hospital. You’ve torn...something.”
Gagai gives me a look filled with more contempt than Chuckles. “It is the latest fashion.”
“Shredding your cornea with metal shavings is fashionable?”
“It is eye art. The eye is the mirror of the soul.”
“Your eye looks like a welding project, honey.”
Mom looks closely, pulling out a set of reading glasses she bought at Target for $9.99.
Excuse me. Tar-jey.
Once they’re on her head, she peers, then fishes in her purse and pulls out a second pair, which she puts over the first pair. A satisfied look covers her face as Gagai takes in the entire production.
“Is this a new look?” she asks me. “Two pairs of glasses?”
“Yes,” I lie. “In Boston, where we are from.”
“My God,” Mom hisses. “She’s wearing contact lens jewelry.” Without pausing, Mom reaches up and tugs on the end of the tiny, whisper-light chain dangling from Gagai’s eye.
A string of angry French pours out of the pixie, her heels poking at Mom’s shins. Mom looks at me, aghast.
And then sprints through the open spa door to find Lüq.
Chapter Thirteen
The actual spa is a rainforest.
No. Really.
Someone has taken great care to create a miniature version of the botanical gardens outside. It looks like those pictures of Thailand or Indonesian beaches, with the quaint open-air hut by the green waters, only bamboo rules the day inside this little spa haven. They must pipe in the scent of ocean air.
“A shot?” A different pixie, this one as blonde as the other is dark, offers us little two-ounce glasses filled with green juice, a sprig of lemon and mint on the edge. Her name tag says Elle.
“Thank you,” we say in unison. We tip back our drinks and while it’s not the best wheatgrass juice I’ve ever tasted, it will do.
“Urg!” Mom gags, drinking half of hers and setting it down emphatically in a thatch of greenery and dirt. “What the hell was that?”
“Wheatgrass juice,” I explain. “It’s healthy. Good for your gut.”
“I don’t give a crap about my gut in Vegas, Shannon. The next one of those better have some vodka in it,” she mutters. “Who offers you a shot in Vegas that doesn’t have alcohol in it? That should be illegal. Now, where is this mysterious Mr. Lüq?”
“Here,” says a sonorous voice from behind a thick, wide palm frond. “We are evaluating the stunning Ms. Amanda Warrick.” A familiar giggle bubbles up into the air, floating to the skylight.
I look around the giant green leaf to find Amanda in a small, steaming pool, naked except for bikini bottoms, and floating on her back. A thin piece of silk covers her breasts and she has a purple eye mask covering her lids.
Mom starts undressing, peeling off her shoes and socks, reaching up under her skirt to shove her hands, palms in, down her panties.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting out of my Spanx! Look at that natural spring! I hear it’s made up of amniotic fluid gathered from untouched populations in places where toxic chemicals aren’t found in the breast milk of mothers. Yet.”
“Amniotic what?”
“Yes,” little Elle says. “We only collect the amniotic fluid that the spirit gives naturally, and only from those mothers who give permission during their surges as the spirit bridges from the Motherworld to the Otherworld.”
I am never, ever getting pregnant.
“How?” I ask. “Do you use a vacuum cleaner, or a turkey baster?” Mom’s hanging on to my arm, balanced on one foot, her shaping underwear like an unbreaded calamari ring around her navel.
“The spirit’s rhythms decide when the sacrifice of the sacred wombworld is ready to be—” Elle takes a cleansing yoga breath—“left behind for the sake of the mother’s fulfillment.”
I look at the spa services menu. Wombwater Restorative Massage: $500 for fifty minutes.
“Do you pay the mothers for their amniotic fluid?”
“No, no. Of course not.” She seems scandalized by the idea and on the verge of tears. I feel as if I’ve hurt the feelings of a tiny child in a Pixar film. “It is technically the spirit-child’s possession. But we do pay for breast milk and placentas.”
What the hell is a spirit child? I’m about to ask, when Mom cuts in.
“What do you do in a spa with breast milk?” Mom clutches her bosom as if Elle and Lüq are planning to kidnap her and turn her into a human cow, even though she hasn’t lactated since TLC was chasing waterfalls.
Waterfalls not made of amniotic fluid.
Elle’s smile is so sweet. Her words, not so much.
“First, the chef takes the—”
“Marie? Shannon?” Amanda’s voice is soft and happy. Float in enough womb juice and drink some breast milk smoothies and maybe it infuses you with joy.
“Are they disturbing you, dear?” The same sonorous voice. “We can have them removed.” A bolt of gauzy fabric floats along my peripheral vision. A shaved head. Thin, long-fingered hands, the nails painted meticulously with Tibetan mandalas. Eyes with thick eyeliner on the top lid, curling up at the ends.
It’s like the Dalai Lama and Adele had a middle-aged hu.
This must be Lüq.
Mom free
zes. “Is that a resort employee threatening to have you removed?” She purses her mouth and gives me a recriminating look. “See what I mean? You need to assert yourself here, Shannon. You are about to become the queen bee.”
“What?” Did she seriously just refer to her anaphylactic, highly-allergic daughter as a bee?
“You’re the First Lady of this resort.”
“You are making no sense.”
“These people work for your man’s company. That means, by extension, they work for you.”
“I’m a marketing director at that company!”
“Even better. Make them bow before you.”
“This isn’t a monarchy, Mom.”
“Monarchy is underrated,” she sniffs.
“I am Lüq,” the low, sing-songy voice informs us. “Welcome.”
“Amanda?” Pam appears from behind the bamboo forest, dressed in a black and white outfit that makes her look just enough like a panda bear to make me giggle nervously. Spritzy is nowhere to be seen.
A long, deflating sigh comes from Lüq, who gives Elle a sympathetic look and says, “Le schedule is fecked.”
That’s some Irish-French accent hu has going on there. I peer at hu. Hu’s lips twitch.
“Mom?” Amanda calls out to Pam. “You have to try this amniotic-ocean bath. I feel like I’m transported back to another lifetime. Lüq read my lives and says that I was a dog at court in King Louie XIII of France’s time, when he attached his little dogs to miniature carriages and had them act like horses.”
“What the hell are they putting in that water? Peyote?” Mom whispers to me. Pam’s head is cocked to one side as she tries to catch everything Amanda says, while Lüq rushes to Pam, arms outstretched, a beatific smile on hu’s face.
“Amanda’s mother! So wonderful to meet you,” hu says, kissing both of Pam’s cheeks with a flourish. When Lüq smiles, it’s as if all the suns in the universe have been power-washed, shining brighter than before.
I want Lüq to smile like that at me. Just once.
My new purpose in life is to be the focus of hu’s attention. Sometimes in life, you meet a person who has an inner radiance that is so compelling, just being in their presence—not talking, not moving, not doing anything but being—is so fulfilling that you’ll do anything to spend more time with them.