Mother of the Bride

by Lynn Michaels

  “Stop, Bebe.” Cydney gripped her shoulders. “Louella was concerned about you, not Gwen’s tacky comment. It’s over and you have to calm down. The ladies will be here this morning to bake the wedding cake. Your mother can’t keep them away. Gus won’t let her.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Bebe rocked back on her heels, sniffling, but trying to smile. “What a cool wedding cake this is gonna be. All the different layers and different icings. Can I help?”

  “You bet. Let’s go grab some chow before they get here.”

  Cydney expected to find Georgette in the throes of making breakfast, but the kitchen was empty. She’d left a note:

  Every man for himself this morning. Fresh fruit, juice and bagels in the fridge. Herbert is taking Fletch and the French bimbo and Gwen and her Prince and me to Springfield for breakfast and a little shopping. Don’t worry about dinner. We’ll bring it. Luck with the cake.

  —G

  “Hmmm,” Cydney said. “This is very strange.”

  “Exceedingly,” Bebe said. “Gramma never does a little shopping.”

  “All six of them stuffed into Herb’s Cadillac,” Gus said behind them. “Oh to be a sardine in somebody’s pocket.”

  Cydney laughed and glanced at him over her shoulder, swinging onto a stool at the island with a grin on his face, and Aldo, looking like a shorn but very handsome sheep, beside him.

  “Why, Aldo, you cut your hair. It looks great. Very becoming.”

  He swiped a hand at his bangs and flushed. “Thanks, Uncle Cyd.”

  Louella and Mamie and Sarah and Cloris and her sisters arrived in time for bagels and coffee. Hesitantly, when Gus greeted them at the door, then with sighs of relief when he said Gwen wasn’t there.

  “Kicked her out on ‘er fancy butt, eh, Gussie?” Mamie grinned, then frowned when he said she was only gone for the day.

  While Mamie and Cloris and her sisters took charge of the cake, Louella and Sarah drafted Gus and Aldo to help clean house.

  “I just paid a fortune to have this place cleaned,” Gus argued, until Louella wiped a finger across one of the living room tables and it came up gray with dust. “How’d that get so dirty so quick?”

  “Clean is a magnet for dirt,” Louella said. “No one knows how or why. It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe, Gus.”

  “Okay.” He held up his hands. “Point me to a broom.”

  Louella pointed him to the vacuum cleaner and the carpeted staircases, the runner in the gallery hall and Aunt Phoebe’s rug in the dining room. Most of the pizza stain was gone. What remained, Mamie said, would never be noticed from the back of a galloping horse.

  Aldo mopped and waxed floors. Louella and Sarah tackled the bedrooms, changed sheets and towels, shook rugs and wiped floors. When Bebe went to help, Gus clutched his chest and faked a stagger. Cydney frowned, but her eyes twinkled.

  By two o’clock, Tall Pines was spotless. Fresh beds and gleaming bathrooms upstairs. Sparkling glass, polished furniture and shiny waxed floors downstairs. They cleaned the R&R room, and made a final sweep of the great room, which Gus hadn’t seen.

  “Lovely,” he said to Bebe, making good on his vow to be nice to her. Liking her would take a while. “If it makes you feel any better, I like it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Munroe. So do Aldo and I. The great room stays exactly the way it is.” She pulled the pocket doors shut with a firm click and Scotch-taped a sign to them that said: “To Whom It May Concern: Touch one thing in this room and die. Love—The Bride and Groom.”

  By three all the cake layers, a combination of yellow, white and chocolate, were baked and cool and ready to go into the freezer overnight. The butter-cream frosting roses and leaves and the tubs of different icings Cloris and her sisters made went in the fridge.

  “We’re clearin’ out now, Gussie.” Mamie offered him her cheek to kiss. “Before the witch that starts with a b shows up.”

  “Now, Mamie,” Louella chided. “We’ll come after lunch tomorrow, Cydney, put the cake together and do up the hors d’oeuvres.”

  “Thank you so much.” Cydney hugged each one of them. “We couldn’t have done all this without your help. You are wonderful.”

  “It’s our joy to help,” Cloris said in her chirpy little voice. “Weddings are so beautiful and special and—oh, just so happy.”

  She and her sisters dabbed their tiny noses with hankies. Louella and Cydney and Sarah sighed. Mamie dragged a sleeve over her eyes.

  “If you’re all so damn happy, why are you crying?” Gus asked, bewildered. “I don’t get this.”

  “You’re a man, Gussie, is why you don’t get it,” Mamie said.

  “What does being a man have to do with it?” he asked Cydney, after he’d seen the ladies out to their cars and gone back into the kitchen.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged and wiped cake crumbs and icing drips off the island with a sponge. “You tell me.”

  I can’t, damn it, Gus thought, not till your loony family clears out of here. He didn’t like the look on her face. She seemed distracted.

  “What’s bothering you, Uncle Cyd?”

  She shook her head, dumped the crumbs in her cupped hand in the sink and rinsed the sponge. “Nothing really. I just feel jumpy.”

  Gus went to her and slid his arms around her. She leaned the back of her head against his chest. He kissed her temple and she sighed.

  “Will you drive me into Branson tomorrow? In the morning, since we’ll be busy after lunch? I have to rent a car so I can get home.”

  “You don’t have to leave on my account.”

  “I have to leave on my account.” She turned and looped her arms around his waist. “I have clients, and a book to write, and so do you.”

  Don’t leave. Stay. Marry me. All those things popped into Gus’ head, but her nutball family could come through the door any second, so he didn’t say them, just kissed a dab of icing off her nose.

  “I could come see you sometime,” he said. “Would you like that?”

  “I’d love that.” She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. He could hear it in her voice, see it in the shadow in her eyes.

  She didn’t realize his heart was in it. That was the problem.

  “If you think you can find Tall Pines on your own, you can come see me, you know.”

  “Signs!” She smacked her forehead and wheeled away from him. “I have got to make those signs!”

  “What signs?” Gus followed her through the swinging door.

  “Road signs—Bebe!” she hollered as she passed by the bar.

  “Yes, Aunt Cydney?” Bebe and Aldo popped out of the R&R room.

  “Where’s the poster board and pens you found in Aldo’s room?”

  “Still there. I’ll get ‘em,” Aldo said. “What are we doing?”

  “Making road signs so the wedding guests can find Tall Pines,” she said, and turned to face Gus. “If we make them now, you and I can stake them along the road on our way to Branson tomorrow.”

  So they made signs, in the R&R room on the Ping-Pong table. Most of them legit, but the funny ones Cydney came up with, “Leave a Trail of Bread Crumbs,” and “Ignore the Buzzards Circling Overhead,” had Gus and Aldo and Bebe laughing. He went to the garage for flat, plywood tomato stakes and a staple gun and put the signs together as Cydney lettered them and drew hearts and flowers, nosegays and little brides and grooms and a couple of vultures in the corners. Bebe and Aldo tied them with ribbons. Gus had just punched the last staple into the last sign when they heard the front door sweep open.

  “Hey, Bebe-cakes!” Gwen called. “Where are you, sweetie?”

  “Drowning myself in the lake,” Bebe muttered.

  “C’mon, Beebs.” Aldo smacked a kiss on her mouth. “It’ll be okay.”

  He took her hand and all but dragged her into the living room.

  Gwen didn’t so much as glance at Cydney when she stepped into the living room with Gus. She stood in front of the couch by the gallery stairs,
her I’m-a-star-and-you’re-not smile on her face, a long, blue silk bag with a zipper down the front thrown over the back of the sofa.

  Cydney caught her mother’s eye across the living room. She sat on the edge of the hearth between Herb and her father, an unhappy frown on her face. Cydney glanced at the dais, where Domino and the Prince stood with their heads together, murmuring in French, then back at her mother. Georgette shook her head no.

  “I bought you a present.” Gwen said to Bebe, sweeping her arm toward the blue silk bag. “Want to see?”

  “That looks like a dress bag, Mother. What did you do?”

  Gwen blinked. Thrown off stride, Cydney guessed, by the new, direct and perceptive Bebe. “I bought you a wedding gown.”

  “I already have my dress. Gramma bought it and I love it.”

  “I’m offering you a compromise, Bebe. I’m willing to let you keep your country cutesy theme if you’ll wear this gown.”

  Gwen unzipped the bag and swept a long, ivory column of shimmering silk over her arm. Pointed over the wrist sleeves, high neckline, plunging back. Gorgeous, but it wasn’t Bebe.

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “I’m not wearing it.”

  “Yes you will.” Gwen flung the gown on the sofa. “You’ll wear it long enough for me to take the photographs for Vogue.”

  “You aren’t taking any photos, Mother. I asked Aunt Cydney to take my wedding pictures and she said she would. There won’t be any pictures in Vogue, either. Not of my wedding.”

  “I made a commitment, Bebe.”

  “With Vogue, Mother, not with me. Never with me. You’ve always been too busy. You remember me now and then and call or send presents. That’s not what I call being a mother. C’mon, Aldo. We’re going for a walk.”

  Bebe held her hand out to Aldo. He slipped his fingers into hers and they walked away, up the steps toward the front door. Gwen spun after them, hands on her hips. Almost, but not quite, stamping her foot.

  “Come back here, Beatrice. This is not settled!”

  “Yes it is.” Bebe turned around in the foyer. She had tears in her eyes and her mouth trembled, but she kept it together. “It was settled when you left me in Kansas City with Gramma George and Aunt Cydney. I didn’t realize it until you swept in here and laughed at me. And Aldo and everyone else and everything we’ve done. Go be famous. I have two mothers. Gramma George and Aunt Cydney. I don’t need you.”

  Aldo caught her in a hug as she spun away. Then he opened the door and escorted her through it like she was a queen.

  Gwen just stood there, white-faced and staring at the foyer. The Prince and Domino looked at each other and crept away behind her, up the gallery stairs. Her father laid a hand on her mother’s arm and gave Herb the high sign. He nodded and followed Fletch into the R&R room.

  “Yell if you need me,” Gus murmured in Cydney’s ear. He caught her fingers from behind and gave them a squeeze.

  When the R&R room doors slid shut, Gwen sat down on the oak and glass coffee table, bent her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. Cydney looked at Georgette. She had tears in her eyes. Cydney hadn’t seen her cry since Fletch left.

  “Bebe’s hurt, dear,” Georgette said. “I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

  “Stop it, Mother. You can’t put a lovely spin on everything.” Gwen’s chin shot up and she glared at Georgette. “She meant every word.”

  “No she didn’t,” Cydney said. “She’s just hurt and angry.”

  “That was very well done.” Gwen swung toward her, her eyes glazed with tears. “Even better than a pizza in the face.”

  “Now, you wait just a damn second—”

  “I’m sorry.” Gwen raised her hands. “As much as I’d like to accuse you of stealing my child, I can’t. I gave her to you.”

  “Yes, you did. And by the way—thank you.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime.” Gwen slapped her hands on her knees and stood up. “I guess I’ll go pack.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere.” Cydney pointed a finger at her sister. “At four o’clock Saturday afternoon you’re going to be sitting in the mother of the bride’s chair with a big bright smile on your face. If I have to tie you in the damn chair, you’re going to be there.”

  “Bebe has two mothers.” She sighed. “She doesn’t need three.”

  “Bebe has one mother, Gwen, and you are not bailing out on her. Not this time. I won’t let you.”

  “Nor will I.” Georgette rose from the hearth, a take-no-prisoners glint in her eyes. “Neither Cydney or I ever tried to take your place, and we refuse to now. The mother of the bride’s chair is yours and you will be in it on Saturday, Gwen, come hell or high water.”

  Gwen sat down on the table again and raked her fingers through her hair. Of course it fell back into place perfectly— lousy, stinking, flawless hair—when she glanced up at her mother and Cydney.

  “I had no idea I’d screwed this up so badly. The thought of trying to fix it just—paralyzes me. I don’t know where to start, what to do.”

  “Do you honestly want to mend things with Bebe?” Cydney asked.

  “Yes. I had no idea how much until she said she didn’t need me.”

  “Need is one thing, Gwen.” Cydney sat next to her and slung an arm around her. “But want is a whole ‘nother ball game.”

  “What’s this?” She raised an eyebrow at Cydney’s arm on her shoulders. “Are you offering to help me win my daughter back?”

  “Yes, I am. If you’ll let me.”

  “Absolutely I’ll let you. So long as you understand one thing.” Gwen slid her a narrow-eyed smile and looped an arm around her. “If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll get even with you for that pizza.”

  chapter

  twenty-eight

  “Did Gwen say ‘piece’?” Herb cupped his ear against the right-hand R&R room door. “Piece of what?”

  “She said ‘pizza.’” Fletch pressed his ear and the glass he’d grabbed from behind the bar against the door. If you’re gonna snoop, he’d said, do it right or don’t bother. “If you’d shut up we could probably hear.”

  “She said ‘piece.’ There’s nothing wrong with my ears.” Herb glared at Fletch. “Or my eyes, Parrish, and I don’t like what I saw today between you and my fiancee.”

  Gus sat at the bar, grinning. This was really getting fun now.

  “Don’t get your shorts in a twist, Herb. George and I were married for eighteen years. We’re old friends.”

  “Old friends don’t suck each other’s tonsils in J.C. Penney’s shoe department when they think no one else is looking.”

  “A friendly little buss, Herb. Shut the hell up, will you?”

  Herb opened his mouth just as Cydney shrieked. Gus bolted off the stool and knocked Herb and Fletch out of his way like bowling pins. She shrieked again as he flung open the pocket doors.

  With laughter, Gus realized, when he saw her head stuck in the crook of her sister’s arm and Gwen giving her a noogie, her knuckles scrubbing the top of Cydney’s head like she was trying to start a fire. They were both laughing—Cydney struggling to free herself and Gwen to hang on to her. Georgette was laughing, too. Teary-eyed, but laughing.

  “Ow!” Cydney wrenched herself out of Gwen’s headlock and rubbed her head. “You would have to wreck my hair.”

  “Your hair’s always a wreck.” Gwen rumpled a hand in Cydney’s curls. “I keep telling you to straighten it.”

  Over my dead body, Gus thought. He loved Cydney’s hair. He loved Cydney. So much he could hardly wait to tell her.

  “Let’s have supper,” Georgette said, heading for the dining room. “Vile, greasy and disgusting take-out chicken.”

  “Hubba-hubba.” Fletch rubbed his hands together and followed her, his head cocked to one side to watch her walk into the dining room. “Nothing like a plump thigh and a well-turned ankle.”

  Georgette laughed at him over her shoulder. “Stop it, Fletch.”

  “D
amn right, Fletch. Stop it,” Herb growled, and stalked after them into the dining room.

  “What in the hell was that?” Gwen said incredulously to Cydney.

  “That was Dad flirting with Mother,” she replied unhappily. “And Herb getting ready to punch him in the nose if he doesn’t knock it off.”

  “This is wonderful!” Gwen gave a throaty laugh. “Maybe we won’t end up being from a broken home after all.”

  “Bite your tongue, Gwen.”

  “Oh stop, Cyd. I think it’s delightful. And way past time. You haven’t been to Cannes. I have. I found a picture of Mother in Dad’s office. I think he looks at it when he’s in there writing. There’s a suspiciously clean spot in the dust on his desk to suggest it.”

  “Dad is married to Domino, Gwen.”

  “So? I’m married to Misha.” Cydney gaped, and Gwen laughed. “Marrying an American is still the easiest way to get out of Russia. We made up the engagement story for the papers here. In a year I’ll divorce him. Dad will divorce Domino and she and Misha will move to Paris.”

  “The four of you cooked this up and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I couldn’t. The Russians still get cranky about this sort of thing.”

  “There’s a book in this somewhere,” Gus said with a grin.

  “Dad’s already writing the fictionalized version. I’ve got dibs on the real story and the cover of Time,” Gwen told him. “Where’s Misha?”

  “He and Domino slipped upstairs.”

  “I told them to be discreet. If Mother finds out about this it’ll be on Dan Rather and then I’ll have to kill her. Grab me a couple of wings, Cyd.”

  When she disappeared up the gallery steps and down the hall, Cydney plunked down on the table. “Nobody tells me anything.”

  She looked so waifish and woebegone Gus smiled. He sat down beside her, put an arm around her and a kiss between her eyebrows.

  “Buck up, old poop. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Really?” Her almond-brown eyes brightened. “What?”

  “Meet me on the back stairs at midnight. I’ll tell you then.”

  “Ooh, a secret.” Cydney rubbed her hands. “Hove secrets.”