Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) (8 page)

Lavonne sighed
and cocked her head to the side as she examined the new me. “Now she looks like
she’s busting out of the wedding gown, and we certainly do not want that.”

“Well, I have to
admit maybe that doesn’t look as good,” my mother said. “Betsy, are you gaining
weight? It seems like maybe you’ve put on a couple of pounds even since I’ve
come into town. Nothing to be concerned about. All brides put on a few pounds,
what with the rushed eating and crazy schedules. Not to mention … other
situations.”

“Charlotte!”
Maggie said. I knew just what she was implying, and there was no “other”
situation.

“Sorry.” She
stepped back a few feet, pretending to look at the gown, but I knew she was
really getting herself out of Maggie’s reach.

“So what do you
think, Betsy? Should we take the dress in just a little bit in the bust?”
Lavonne asked.

“I think …” I
looked at the bodice as Lavonne clenched and unclenched the seams at the side.
My eyes caught Maggie’s, and she seemed happy with the fit. “I think I like it
just the way it is.” I glanced over at Charlotte, who raised her eyebrows as if
to say, oh well, it’s your mistake to make.

I had always
wondered what it would be like to have a mother around to help me make
important life decisions. After a few days of this wonderful bonding
experience, I wasn’t so sure. It was difficult having another opinion to
contend with all the time. Did I need to pay the same amount of respect for an
absent parent?

“I’m glad you
think that Betsy,” Lavonne said, “because this dress just looks gorgeous on
you. You’re going to be a beautiful bride.”

“Thank you,
Lavonne.”

“So I’ll bet you
are as busy as a little bee taking care of all the wedding details.”

“Yes we are,” I
said. “We’ve already rejected a photographer and Lenny Stokes’s place for
flowers. We’re now going to try to use Baskets of Bluebonnets.”

“Advice of Mr.
Andre,” Maggie said.

Lavonne’s eyes
shifted to the side. “Lenny Stokes? You know, I’ve been living down the road
from the Stokeses for the last ten years, and if I could afford to, I’d move.
That man has been nothing but trouble,” she said. “Do you know he threatened to
take me to court over property boundaries? We have a stream that separates our
two properties, and Lenny claimed the stream is his, but according to my plat
map the spring belongs on our property. We had to send over a lawyer with the
proper documentation to shut him up. Even though we did all of that he still is
crossing over onto our land and using that stream to siphon off water for his
wildflowers. He thinks he knows everything about flowers, but let me tell you,
I’m pretty good at growing irises, and he’s so lazy he never even cuts back
half of the dead leaves on his. No wonder new leaves can’t form. If I wasn’t a
seamstress, I could put that man out of business. I wish I could put him out of
my misery.”

“I’ve always
liked Lenny’s flowers,” I said. “Lenny might be hard to get along with, but
Martha is so sweet.”

“I’d have to
politely disagree on that one,” countered Lavonne.

“I think she’s
nice, Lavonne,” said Maggie. “Martha is always doing things for others with her
church, but Lenny is another matter altogether.”

“Well, having
Lenny on board, all I can say is the last thing you need at a wedding is one
more diva,” said Lavonne.

“Yeah, we
already have Mr. Andre,” Maggie added.

“I’m just
saying, it’s important to follow your instincts and use people you know when
you’re doing something like putting on a wedding.” Lavonne patted me on the
back. “I’ll stitch up the hem and then you’re ready. When can I expect your
bridesmaid, Elena, to do her final fitting?”

“She hasn’t been
in here yet?” I said. We had planned to come in together weeks ago, but she’d
had to cancel because of work.

Charlotte’s brow
furrowed. “Just how trustworthy is this Elena girl?”

“She is very
trustworthy,” I said. “She works with dad, and well, sometimes they get busy.”

“She works with
your father? Will she be wearing a gun on her hip at the wedding?”

“Not unless I
have Lavonne here sew up a white silk holster. Elena doesn’t really like
wearing a lot of dresses. She’s probably stalling.”

“Oh, I get it,”
Charlotte said.

“No, you don’t
get it. She’s dating the district attorney, although it wouldn’t matter to me
if she didn’t have a boyfriend. She just doesn’t like dresses, that’s all. If
I’d have come up with a pantsuit for her to wear instead of a red velvet
bridesmaid dress, she would have been a much happier person.”

“I can do that
you know,” Lavonne chimed in.

“I’ll get her in
here, Lavonne. I promise.”

“What kind of
woman hates to wear dresses?” Charlotte said.

The door jingled
behind us and Prissy and Nancy Olin stepped inside. Prissy looked up at me and
then gave her mother a frustrated look.

Nancy Olin
patted her daughter’s arm and said in a hushed tone, “Don’t worry, sweetums,
you will look beautiful on your day, too.”

Lavonne patted
me on the back. “Okay, Betsy, you can go ahead and change. My next customer is
here.”

Maggie was
closing up Mr. Andre’s binder when Nancy Olin came over to her. “I see you’re
using Mr. Andre. We’ve already hired and fired that man.”

“Why?” Maggie
asked.

“Why?” Prissy
repeated, inviting herself into the conversation. “He was simply unreasonable.
You would think he was the one hiring us. Not acceptable. He also said we were
difficult to work with.”

“That’s hard to
believe,” Maggie said under her breath.

“We decided we
can do a better job ourselves,” said Nancy with a strained smile.

“Mama? Do these
pants make me look fat?”

“Well, you could
use a bigger size,” Lavonne started to say. Nancy clamped a hand down on
Lavonne’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough to stop Lavonne in mid-sentence.

“You’re
beautiful, baby,” she said between clenched teeth. She pulled Lavonne over to
the side. “Prissy has these little outbursts, and with the wedding coming up
she is having some pretty heavy panic attacks. We will do anything, I mean
anything not trigger one. Get me?”

Lavonne’s raised
eyebrows and look of shock were enough to answer Nancy Olin, mother of the
monster bride.

Somehow this
little exchange gave me confidence in Mr. Andre. Now I knew he was strong
enough to handle anything, even wriggling out of the clutches of the satin
nightmare of Prissy Olin.

That night I
dropped my newly found mother off at Wilhelm’s Bed and Breakfast. She had been
staying there for several days, and for that I was relieved. Having her as a
houseguest would be a lot for me to take on right now.

I knew I needed
to try to make sure that everything was all right with Aunt Maggie. We had
spent the day together, but every time I tried to get her alone to see how she
was feeling about Charlotte being in the picture, Charlotte intervened. With
Charlotte gone all those years, Aunt Maggie had acted as my surrogate mother.
With the wedding, I worried she was thinking I had replaced her. I had always
dreamed of meeting my mother, and somehow it didn’t involve her stirring up and
upsetting every person in my life.

It was like a
fantasy for me. We would see each other across the room. She’d be in one of
those filmy-looking shawl things, and upon seeing me, she’d have a tear in her
eye. She was so sorry she’d given me up. Her life had been nothing but misery
since she last left me. We would meet, and because we were so genetically
connected, we would be able to talk about anything instantly, as if the years
had never passed between us. We would talk as if we were old friends and laugh
before the other person even finished her joke. What a wonderful dream.

As I pulled into
Maggie’s driveway, Zach, who had joined us after school, now sat up in his
seat. “Mom, why are we here? We need to get home in time for me to see how
those filled donuts are made on TV. I’ve been waiting for this show all week.”

“I know, Zach.
But I need to talk to Aunt Maggie.”

“Tonight? Danny
will be watching High School Hijinks again. That’s all he ever watches,” Zach
whined. “I thought you spent the day with her, anyway.”

“I just need to
talk to Aunt Maggie for ten minutes.”

“You never talk
for ten minutes. Ten hours, maybe, but not ten minutes.”

“I’ll try, okay,
bud?”

He snorted his
reply.

I got out of the
car and walked up the stairs to my aunt’s red brick house. I could smell beef
stew on the stove inside. I opened the front door.

“Anybody home?”
I called out.

“In here.”

My Aunt Maggie
was carefully placing silverware on a blue linen tablecloth. She was a
diminutive person, barely reaching five feet. Danny was now about the same
height with fifty more pounds on his frame. After many years of caring for
Danny with my Uncle Jeeter, she now took care of their son on her own. Some
days could be difficult as she dealt with Danny’s stubborn streak or the
confusion that would strike him whenever he was in pain, but she got herself through
it all. Aunt Maggie had been the only mother I had ever known, and today she
was going through another difficult day, this time with me.

“We need to
talk,” I began.

“Aunt Maggie,
can I eat too?” Zach interrupted.

“Certainly.” She
turned from the table and went into the kitchen, bringing out two more plates.
She clunked them down on the table.

“No, we’re
imposing,” I said. “I just needed to talk to you about Charlotte.”

“Nothing to talk
about.” She re-entered the kitchen and came out with a tureen full of stew.

“I think there
is.”

“No, there
isn’t. You are now reunited with your mother, and it’s as it should be. I had
no right to assume I would be the only one involved in your wedding planning.”

It felt like the
walls were closing in on me. “Really?” I was amazed at her lack of resolve. One
thing about my aunt – she was small, but mighty. I had seen her fight Danny’s
battles for years, but tonight it seemed all of the fight had gone out of her.
I had always thought of her as the queen of Plan B. If one way didn’t work,
she’d find another. When my mother left, she had stepped in to mother me. When
my husband left, she stepped in to be my shoulder to lean on and had encouraged
me to start a new life as a writer.

She was a genius
at adapting, but tonight that part of her seemed to be gone. Tonight she was
out of imagination, out of crazy Lucy-and-Ethel ideas and resigned to the
intrusion of Charlotte.

“Maggie, you had
every right to think you would be a big part of planning my wedding,” I
protested. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You have been …”

My phone rang in
my pocket. I had given Charlotte my cell number, and she had made good use of
it in the last few days.

“Yes?” I
answered.

“You’ve got to
get back over here,” Charlotte said. “They are having some sort of German thing
downstairs, and the smell of the bratwurst is making me ill.”

“Charlotte,
you’ve been there for days now. The brat smell is just now getting to you?”

“That and the
never-ending polka music.”

“So what do you
want me to do? Try to find you another hotel?”

“Wilhelm said I
had the last room in town.”

“How does he
know that?”

“There’s some
big cowboy poetry convention meeting out at the Loper Ranch. I thought that old
guy was dead. Heaven knows his movies haven’t been shown for fifty years.”

“He is dead.
That’s his daughter’s place.”

“I hate to
impose, but could I stay with you until I can get a room?”

I drew in a
tired breath and looked over at Maggie, watching with a look of disgust on her
face. “I guess so.”

“Thank you,
dear. I’ll have my bags packed and be sitting at the curb when you arrive.” The
line clicked dead.

“That’s the
thing about Charlotte,” said Maggie. “She seems so nice at first, but once you
get to know her, you figure out she’s the one who’s running the show. She sure
put my brother through it.” With that she turned her back on me and headed to
the kitchen and came back with a small plastic container full of stew for Zach.

“I’m sorry about
this,” I said. “Zach, we need to go.”

“Already?
Great!” He ran back into the dining room.

“I really am
sorry,” I said again.

“I know.” She
turned from me and pushed back through her kitchen door.

“You’re sure I’m
not inconveniencing you or anything?” said Charlotte.

“No, it’s fine,”
I said as I punched at a couch pillow, trying to make it resemble something
that would support my head without causing a nagging pain in my neck. Charlotte
walked back into my bedroom. I had intended to put her on the couch, but she
needed a firm bed for her bad back. Having only two usable beds in the house, I
was now relegated to sleeping in the den.

How did I ever
get myself into this position? A week ago I had been happily planning my own
wedding. Now I was being led around by a mother I barely knew. It just didn’t
seem right.

I set the alarm
function on my phone and placed it on the coffee table. Somehow I had to get
enough sleep for whatever tomorrow would bring. I closed my eyes and started
drifting off, then a flash of light hit me.

“Oh sorry,
Betsy. I was looking for the TV remote for the bedroom.” Charlotte again.
“Would you know where that is? I just can’t fall asleep without the TV on. A
bad habit, I know, but I’ve been doing it for years.”