by Hadena James
“Those will kill you,” she said as I inhaled the smoke.
“Before the wedding?” I handed it back.
“Probably not.”
“Damn the bad luck.”
“You liked that the dress I was in.”
“Yep, how’d you know?”
“You weren’t grimacing when your mother handed it to you. I may be outside, but I’m not blind. You’ve grimaced at all your mother’s choices. I’m betting you hate them.”
“Yep.”
“My office is only two blocks away, we could run for it. We can use my jet, fly away for a few weeks.”
“They’d just track me down. Do you actually like the bridesmaid dress?”
“Yes, it isn’t bright pink. And the skirt is short enough I can wear it clubbing and it doesn’t have those stupid puffy sleeves that my sister’s had.”
“Green bridesmaids,” I thought for a moment.
“And yellow and blue groomsmen,” Kenzie snickered.
“How the hell did that happen? Nope, don’t answer that, I already know the answer.” The mothers had happened. Melina had picked traditional Russian wedding colors. Telisa had picked traditional Tahitian wedding colors. At least no one was in pink.
“What are you doing out here?” My mother’s voice suddenly came to me.
“Oh, contemplating death,” I told her.
“These arrangements are for you, you could at least pretend to be happy.” The door shut.
“I love my mother, I really do, but sometimes I wish she’d get hit by a bus and be forced to stay at home for a month,” I said to Kenzie, before walking back into the shop.
I spent thirty minutes struggling into the hoop skirted nightmare wedding dress. After it was on, I turned to my mother and Telisa. They both were glowing.
“No, it isn’t happening. Just forget it now. I look like Little Bo Peep and I will have to wear it from now until the wedding because I don’t think I can get back in it a second time.”
“But you look amazing,” Melina cooed.
“I look like I am trying to hide a pregnancy on my wedding day.”
“There is that,” Melina agreed sheepishly.
“Get it off,” I told them.
Natalia began tugging and pulling on the hoop skirt. There was a loud noise. She fell off the pedestal and into a mirror. Melina and Telisa both crossed themselves as it shattered and spilled shards of glass onto the floor.
Alex helped Natalia up. She wasn’t injured which was more than I could say for the dress. The hoop had broken and torn through the fabric. This was now the third wedding dress that was going to be bought and not worn. I sighed, grabbed scissors and finished cutting through the material. It fell into a heap on the floor.
“I’ll take the one Kenzie was wearing.”
“Nadine, we can find one better than that,” Melina gave me her best mother’s glare.
“Nope, I’m done. I have bought three dresses that I will not wear. At least the old fashioned, plain one is easy to get in and out of and covers my shoulder. If you want to wear one of the other monstrosities, feel free to use it in your own wedding,” I huffed at them as Kenzie came back in.
“Fine, have a boring, plain wedding,” Melina answered.
“I will. I do not need a fancy dress to keep my wedding interesting. I’m still not entirely convinced that the church won’t be bombed by terrorists or accidentally set on fire while I’m in there. So a plain dress will mean that everyone can stare at the other disasters that are happening around us.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Telisa scolded me.
I stepped back into the plain dress. It took less than an hour to pin. The painkillers were wearing off. It was almost 7 pm. We had been in the shop for nine hours. I was ready to go home.
“Come on, we’re going to have dinner out tonight,” Telisa ushered us toward the car.
We were standing in the parking lot when someone grabbed my purse and attempted to run off with it. It was still loaded with a gun, a can of mace, the one dollar bills from the club the night before, the panic button, and I had added a stun-gun. The weight of it forced me to carry it on my other shoulder.
The guy jerked my purse. Kenzie and Alex both noticed him. Kenzie tackled him. My purse fell to the ground, with its strap broken and contents emptied onto the pavement. Luckily the ones were rubber-banded together. Alex grabbed the stun gun and hit him with it. Kenzie twitched and fell over.
“Really?” I said to Alex, rushing to help Kenzie. She had wet her pants.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize she had hold of him,” Alex defended herself.
“Great, one of my bridesmaids is now a twitchy mess.”
Melina took the stun gun from Alex. She walked over to the would-be purse snatcher and put her high-heeled shoe on his chest. She rolled her eyes at him before giving him a tongue lashing as only my mother could deliver. Telisa called the police. I watched them in horror. My mother had turned into Dirty Harry and Telisa was now telling the police dispatcher how to do their job.
Alex managed to help Kenzie up. She flopped her butt onto the trunk of Natalia’s car. Her arms and legs were still twitching and jumping at irregular intervals.
Five minutes later, my brother came walking up to us.
“You? Again?” I frowned at him.
“Not a leaf falls,” he gave me a smile and a sigh. “What happened to her?”
“Alex stun-gunned the purse snatcher, Kenzie was still holding onto him,” I told him.
“Is she going to be ok?” Ivan asked.
“Yeah, she’s a tough broad, she’s been stun-gunned before.”
Kenzie gave him a thumbs-up to indicate that she was fine, despite the labored breathing and her head on her chest. Ivan looked at me, then at our mother, then back at me.
“Your shoulder is bleeding,” he finally said.
“I threw up on a wedding dress too.”
“How many did you end up buying today?”
“Today or total?” I asked.
“Today,” he responded.
“Three, I even intend to wear one of them.”
“She looked so beautiful,” Melina said from behind us. I rolled my eyes making sure that she couldn’t see me.
“Can I give my statement now? It is time for a pill and I need to eat.”
“Sure, what’s your statement?”
“He grabbed my purse. Kenzie tackled him. Alex stun-gunned them both. Mother scolded him. Telisa called 9-1-1. You showed up.”
“That is the shortest statement ever.”
“I don’t think I can elaborate on it. That’s what happened.”
“You know there is a pool down at the station about whether you have a disaster at your wedding.”
“I would put money in the ‘yes’ side of the pool.”
“Is it your intent to have a disaster every day leading up to the wedding?”
“How is last night or today my fault?”
“You left your house,” Ivan grinned at me.
“Don’t talk to your sister that way. So she has accidents,” Melina scolded my older brother. “Purse snatchers and robbers happen to everyone.”
I really wanted to correct her, but she was defending me for once, even if it was misinformed. These things rarely happened in the real world. Only in my world were they common events.
“By the way, did you know Aunt Olga managed to castrate the guy last night with her gun?” Ivan whispered.
“I thought that a possibility. Where the hell did she get that gun?”
“Where does anyone in our family get guns?” He raised an eyebrow. The answer was obvious. It was probably illegal.
“I have a gun,” my mother announced proudly. We all turned and looked at her, horrified at the thought of Melina walking around with a gun. Ivan looked around to see if anyone else overheard her proud declaration. No one was looking at us weird, so we took that as a good sign.
“Why do you have a gun, mom?” Iva
n quietly asked.
“Well after the incident with Nadine last year, I decided it would be good to have one in case I needed it,” Melina said in her normal voice. Alex rolled her eyes and made motions at me to quiet her. How do you quiet your mother?
“Disarm her,” I whispered to Ivan.
“You disarm her,” he whispered back. With that, the subject of our mother having a gun was dropped. She could keep it. None of us were brave enough to take it away from her.
“Kenzie, I have extra clothes inside,” Natalia spoke finally. She had been walking out of the shop with us when my purse had been grabbed.
“Thanks,” Kenzie and Natalia disappeared. A uniformed officer appeared with a squad car. Telisa was asked to get off the purse snatcher. She stood and dusted herself off. I looked at Alex. Alex started to play charades. I didn’t get everything she said, but I got that Telisa had sat on the purse snatcher while mom had been discussing her gun with us.
“So what are the odds that this is a coincidence?” Ivan asked, turning his attention back to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I mean, yesterday, Alex has her purse stolen while at the club. Today, someone tries to steal your purse as you leave a dress fitting. What are the odds that the two things are not related.”
“I can’t imagine they would be,” I frowned at him.
“Even for you that seems like a lot of coincidence” Ivan shrugged.
“How are two different purse snatchings related?” I wondered.
“I don’t know, that’s why I asked.”
“How would they be related then? It isn’t like we took out a banner telling everyone we were going to the club yesterday or that we announced to the world that we were redoing my dress today.”
“I see your point, I just have this feeling. Call it a Cop’s Intuition, but something is going on here,” Ivan shook his head, gave me a once over and walked away.
“You lead such an interesting life,” Alex said. “Two purse snatchings in two days, does seem like a hell of a coincidence.”
“I can’t imagine what the purse snatchers want. Have you seen inside my purse? I don’t carry anything. I keep it all in a wallet, in my back pocket. I’m carrying the purse to make mom happy and as we all know, this wedding is completely about mom. The purse is my ‘something blue’.”
“Humph,” Alex got a thoughtful look on her face.
“What?”
“I don’t know, just a thought. They didn’t look through our purses when we entered the bar.”
“A room full of women and male strippers, would you search through purses? This isn’t an event where guns are normal.”
“True. As I said earlier, you lead such an interesting life,” she said as Kenzie and Natalia came back out of the building.
“Well, at least the curb jumper is in jail,” I told her.
Monday
“Come on lazy bones, we are going shoe shopping,” my mother woke us all up.
“Why? The store will burn down or something,” I told her.
“You can’t be depressed at the wedding,” she scolded.
“It’s the Percocet. They depress a lot of people,” Alex told her.
“And I’m sure she is nervous about the wedding,” my mother added as she left the room.
“Why is she staying here?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Kenzie yawned.
“She lives in Lexington. That’s what, 50 minutes in traffic from here?” It sounded whiny even to me.
“She’s your mother, tell her to go home,” Alex rolled over and looked at me. She was wearing the antique nightgown I had gotten at my bridal shower. This was an improvement since she usually slept nude.
“She doesn’t listen to me,” I sighed. “At least I have the honeymoon to look forward to.”
We were honeymooning in Belize. For three blissful weeks, we would be incommunicado. Neither mother would be able to reach us. There was a lot to be said for that.
“Come on, gimpy, let’s get started, so we can get it over,” Kenzie tugged me from bed.
We decided against the bathroom fiasco. All of us dressed without showering. I tossed on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. I put knee-highs under my socks. I would need them today. I finished off with tennis shoes that would slip on and off as I needed.
Melina and Telisa had cooked a full breakfast. The table was piled with sausage, bacon, pancakes, gravy, and biscuits. I scanned the buffet, grabbed a couple of pieces of burnt bacon and a biscuit. I scrounged around the fridge until I found a slice of cheese. I made a breakfast sandwich and sat down at the table.
Everyone else had plates full of food. I was dieting, not because I wanted to, but because my mother was insistent that if I didn’t diet now, I wouldn’t fit in my dress on my wedding day. I thought this was nonsense, but it was another point I wasn’t going to argue with her.
On the counter sat the purse that reminded me of a socialite who carried a small, hairless dog, dayplanner, multiple cellphones, blackberries and doggy treats. There was also room for doggy sweaters, doggy swimming suits and doggy bling. Sometime during the night, my mother had fixed the blue monstrosity. I didn’t know where she had come up with it, but on Friday she had shown up with it, insisting I take the thing and use it all week because of the old rhyme. It was blue on blue to be exact, dark blue material with uglier, lighter blue rhinestones sewn into it. It weighed a ton, even empty.
We finished breakfast and headed back into the city. Again, I slept on the ride in after taking another pain pill. I had enough to last another two days. Unfortunately, they hadn’t given me enough to get me through the wedding.
In retrospect, Zeke would appreciate it. The chances of my vomiting on him at the altar were greatly reduced by removing the Percocet from the equation. Then again, maybe they weren’t reduced that much.
“We’re here,” Telisa said excitedly.
I yawned and climbed from the car. We were standing in front of a high end shoe store. I had never been here before. Shoes were a necessity and I tended to shop at Shoe Carnival when my tennis shoes started to fall apart.
Shoe shopping went well. It only took us two hours to find a pair of flats that were comfortable and that the mothers approved of. I thought about mentioning it might be a record, but decided to keep that thought tucked inside my brain.
To my horror, the next stop was a sex store. Telisa and Melina were the first ones in the store. I was the last. By the time I had gotten inside, the mothers were holding up lingerie and comparing it.
I could see why they hadn’t told me we were stopping here. This was certainly my idea of hell, a sex store by itself could make me blush, a sex store with my mother was enough to cause heart palpitations. Alex and Kenzie were looking at battery operated toys for both men and women. They held packages up to show each other and occasionally made a comment that required them to giggle.
“Nadine,” my mother motioned me over to her.
“What?” I asked as I eyed her suspiciously.
“Instead of doing presents for your bachelorette party, all the women put in to give you some sex education, so we are going to pick out some lingerie for the honeymoon as well as some toys.”
“Tell me you’re kidding,” I frowned at her.
“Not in the least. We know you aren’t very experienced and Zeke,” Telisa shrugged. “Zeke is experienced enough for the both of you, never could keep his pants on as a teenager. I don’t know what happened to that boy. So, we are going to help you get some stuff to make everything more interesting and fun for you.”
A big burly guy rushed into the store. His breathing was labored. He looked around, noticed the five of us plus the clerk and froze. There were a couple of moments when I thought he was there to steal something. Alex and Kenzie must have thought so too, they turned and stared at him.
“Well don’t just stand there with a stupid look on your face, either come in and buy something or get out, this i
s a ‘couples store’,” my mother reprimanded him.
The clerk looked at my mother. The big guy also looked at her. He turned and left. Kenzie and Alex went back to their shopping. The mothers went back to holding up lingerie against my body.
Alex’s phone made a weird noise. She looked at it and frowned.
“Why does Sebastian think I want to get married? Why does he think I sent him a picture of me in a wedding dress?” Alex asked Kenzie.
“Beats me,” Kenzie shrugged.
Alex shrugged in response, put her phone away and made a comment about men. I held my breath to keep from giggling.
Another two hours of my life disappeared inside the shop for “couples”. We checked out with things I didn’t have names for and lingerie I wasn’t sure how to wear and something they assured me was not supposed to go around the neck despite being made of glass pearls.
My mother hit the remote start in the parking lot. The big burly man that had rushed in a while earlier jumped out of the car. He stared at it for a moment, noticed us and ran away.
“You didn’t lock the car?” I asked.
“I forget,” my mother admitted.
“Guess it’s a good thing the remote start scared him off,” Alex giggled.
“Yep, good for him. I would have hated for him to be trapped in a car with us,” I agreed.
“I’ll go check the car,” my mother went to the car. She opened the driver’s door, stuck her head in, let out a shocked yelp. There was a gunshot, she fell out and onto the ground.
We rushed over. A high pitched wail met our ears. Alex stuck her head in the car.
“Mom, are you ok?” I asked. She was fanning her face.
“Fine, fine, that gun packs a punch, I didn’t expect it to be so loud.”
“There’s a guy bleeding in the back hatch area,” Alex yelled.
“There were two men in the car? What were they doing?” I yelled back to her.
“Oh my god,” Telisa put a hand to her mouth. I looked at her.
“I bet they are homeless guys doing the nasty,” Telisa said.
“In my car?” My mother got up quickly, lost her balance and plopped back down onto the ground.