by Julia Kent
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.
Seventysomething 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, pulling 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...”
“Get your dog off me!” Josh screeches as my mom grabs Spritzy off his belly and stuffs her in her purse.
“DoggieDate indeed,” mumbles Carol as Henry tosses Josh a bar towel and he cleans himself, muttering about wasted tequila.
I briefly wonder if tequila is okay for Spritzy but figure if it’s a problem, Mom would panic, and given her current state of chill, I’m guessing the crisis has been averted.
The bar sound system starts up with—yep.
The song “The Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine. Henry looks at me from the stereo and winks.
Amy’s dancing takes on a distinct beat and soon, the crowd is lost in the relentless pounding of the tune, clapping and stomping in time.
Staying dry while everyone around you drinks is its own little world. I am an island.
And then I am on my knees doing a blow job.
Hold on—it’s a drink.
Fine, fine. One won’t hurt anybody.
Every woman is being asked by the strippers to do a blow job as a way of honoring the bride, and who
am I to dishonor my bestie?
You might even say I’m required to do this blow job.
Might.
The splash of liquor and mocha against the back of my throat reminds me of “breakfast in bed” with Andrew, of antics under the sheets and the morning breve that followed. Funny how viscerally we embed memories via physical events. A scent. A sound. A texture. An image. Our senses store memories in our physical bodies as much as our minds are computer banks filled with the recall.
And as I swallow, on my knees and bent down to the floor to bite the shot glass between my teeth and tip its contents back, mind and body work together to make me recall what I’ve lost.
Who I’ve lost.
When Henry offers me a second blow job, I don’t say no.
And this time, his navel is the shot glass.
“A-MAN-DA! A-MAN-DA!” the crowd chants. They start banging shot glasses against the scarred wood tables, the sound like that popular Queen song, the one people sang at football games back when I was a cheerleader.
That’s what this reminds me of. The spotlight. The fun. Being the center of attention for highly-structured entertainment that delivers exactly according to audience expectations.
I deliver.
Six blow jobs later and boy, does my jaw ache. Marie and my mom are sitting next to one of the piano players, stuffing bills into a pint glass and begging them to play “Freebird”.
Other women are stuffing even more money in the tip jar to stop the “Freebird” madness.
“C’mon,” my mom pleads. “If you won’t do ‘Freebird’, then how about ‘Dog and Butterfly’?”
“Pammy! I love that song!” Marie squeals, stuffing what looks like a free coupon for a Starbucks latte into the tip jar.
“I hate being called Pammy,” my mom mutters.
“You’re my new best friend, Pammy!”
Meanwhile, the piano player just watches with a languid amusement.
I get the distinct impression he’s been through this more than once.
“I am the bride, so I pick the last song!” Shannon slurs. I look at the big clock behind the bar, shocked it’s nearly one a.m. already. I lost track of time slurping off the navel of a man.
Sue me.
“‘Imagine’!” Shannon cries out.
The entire room groans in unison.
“We’ll all start crying if you play that!” I argue. “How about something happier?”
“’The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’!” my mom suggests.
“Not happier, Mom.”
Mom gives me a petulant look.
“I know!” I whisper it in Shannon’s ear and she nods vigorously. She goes to the pianos players, and within seconds the opening lines of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” start playing.
And we dance, Shannon’s brown eyes wild and full of unfettered joy as she spends her second-to-last night as a single woman surrounded by women who love her.
Plus Josh, who is happily pouring shots into some guy’s belly button. Except I’m not sure he’s a stripper....
We dance until they kick us out.
And then we puke.
Okay, so technically, my mom is the only one who pukes. There’s always one in every crowd when you go clubbing, and tonight it’s the woman who gave birth to me.
“I’ll hold your hair, Pammy! ‘Cause tha’s what bess frienns do.” Marie proceeds to grab my mom’s purse from her.
“That’s not her hair.”
“What?” Marie looks at mom’s purse cross-eyed.
I sigh and reach for mom’s hair.
The retching definitely puts a damper on the night. Luckily, I am not a sympathy gagger. Poor Mom has a system clearly not cut out for alcohol, and I’m actually surprised she drank at all tonight. We don’t keep alcohol in the house. I’ve never seen her even tipsy.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she says, trying to compose herself. “I think I drank more tonight than in the past twenty years combined. I also touched more man skin tonight than in the past two decades.”
“Go Pammy!” Marie says, high-fiving my mom. She misses and goes flat on the ground, purse clutched in her other hand.
Growing up means realizing your parents are flawed human beings who are just twenty-five-year-older versions of your friends. Does that mean there’s no such thing as actual adults? We’re all just pretending?
“Pammy, you need to learn to hold your liquor.” Marie pulls herself up and brushes grass off her knees.
“Something old, something new, something borrowed, something spew,” Mom says in a sing-songy voice that immediately turns into a snore as I drag her to the open limo and tuck her into a spot.
“That’s not how it goes,” Marie protests. She follows Mom and doesn’t seem to realize she’s passed out.
And then she climbs inside and crashes on the seat, right in Mom’s lap.
Shannon walks up from behind. Carol’s already in the limo, and Amy is—oh, God, is she crouched around a corner, peeing in public? I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.
“Is that going to be us in a few decades?” Shannon ponders, her arm on my shoulder.
Marie’s hand cups my mom’s boob just as Amy walks over, adjusting her skirt.
“Oh, that needs to be captured on camera,” she says, reaching into her cleavage and pulling out a camera.
Click.
“Nothing on social media!” Shannon cautions.
Amy gets an uneasy look on her face. I instinctively reach for her hair and pull it back.
“What are you doing?” she says, recoiling.
“You looked queasy.”
“I was trying to decide whether to say something or not.”
“About what?”
“About social media.”
Shannon’s eyes narrow like a hawk’s. “Spill.”
Amy sighs. “Jessica Coffin was here.”
“WHAT?”
“Yeah. We had the bouncers kick her out, but we don’t know how much she saw.”
“I didn’t notice her,” I say.
Josh’s voice pops up behind me. “That’s because every single one of your senses was engaged in a piece of man beast named Zeke.”
“Who?”
“Your blow job man.”
We all nod as if this is a normal conversation.
“You guys see Jessica earlier?” Josh asks. When he drinks he gets chipper. “She heard a rumor Andrew and Amanda were dating.”
Ouch.
Were.
“If she took pictures, I’ll kill her,” Shannon warns.
“You want me to hack her again?” Josh asks, then slaps his hand over his mouth. “Er, I mean...someone should hack her Twitter account again.”
A light snore floats out from the limo. Then it’s in harmony and melody as both Mom and Marie make beautiful music together. I peer in to see Amy and Carol on either side of them. Josh is sitting across the way now, staring at the inside of the limo like it’s the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
To my surprise, Shannon walks over to the driver’s side, says something to a chauffeur I’ve never met, and closes the back doors, thumping the hood like a pro.
The limo takes off.
“What are you doing?” I ask, watching the tail lights narrow to red, glowing pupils as the car disappears into the night down the city street.
“Gerald will arrive in ten minutes with another car.” Her sigh tells me everything and nothing. “I just needed to, you know...breathe.”
“Need me to hold your hair?”
“Hah. No. Poor Pam.”
“I think my mom got twenty years of teetotaling karma in one night.”
“No one can keep up with my mom when it comes to alcohol, I guess.” Shannon’s voice is wistful. A cool breeze cuts the night and I shiver, all gooseflesh and gobsmacked. The alcohol is wearing off and I feel myself spiraling down, gently, like an autumn leaf. The maudlin mood feels fine, given the night we’ve had.
“I t
hink my mom was last in a club in 1991 or something,” I marvel. “I mean, asking the piano player for some song called ‘Walk the Dinosaur’? What the hell?”
We snort and snicker until another gust of wind makes us wrap our arms around ourselves as we wait.
“You okay?” she asks, giving me a look that says I need to tell the truth or she’ll just pull it out of me anyhow.
“No.”
“You miss Andrew.”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Yeah. I wish I could storm into his office and line all the McCormick men up as my puppets and make him see reason like a certain someone I know did for me two years ago.”
“You didn’t, um, do that by any chance, did you?” I ask in panic. “Because this isn’t the same as you and Declan.”
“No, no office storming. That’s your deal. But I did talk to him.”
Lightbulb.
That’s why she sent everyone off in the limo.
“And?” My gooseflesh now has nothing to do with the weather.
Trouble seeps into her expression. “Andrew’s terrified. He would never admit it, but he is the son who does whatever James wants. Dec says before their mom died, Terry was the rebel and Andrew was the cocky, carefree player. He did well in sports and that was it. Mouthed off to James because James let him. He was headed for pro sports and the wasp sting ended that.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“Have you ever talked to Andrew about what happened when he woke up?”
Our conversation from the last time we made love hits me.
“Yes.”
“How James couldn’t stop being so angry with Declan for the choice he made?”
“Yes.” My own anger rises so fast.
“And how it makes Andrew feel like he’s here only because Declan made a choice James might not have chosen himself, in the moment.”
My heart stops. No, really. We can’t survive without the push of blood through the sixty thousand miles of blood vessels within us, delivering oxygen and nutrients, but Shannon’s words deprive me of one beat.
Just one.
“Andrew doesn’t really think his father would prefer he’d died?”
“It’s so complicated,” Shannon groans, starting to pace. “No. Of course not. He loves Andrew. But Dec has described how he just shut down because of his own trauma from the event, and how James put Andrew into boarding school and he had to change sports, and how Andrew told him once—and he told me this, too—that he feels like when their mom chose him to survive, she didn’t realize that the family would be destroyed.”