Getting Married (17 page)

I
had hoped that Will’s mother would join us at our place for Christmas. I’d been looking forward to her coming to see Will’s new home and to meet my family. But she says she’s not ready to do holidays with other people—she’s still getting over the death of her husband. I can understand that getting over the death of someone you were married to for forty years would take some time, but there’s this part of me that worries she’s not coming to meet my family or see what kind of life Will is making with me because there is a part of her that hopes my relationship with Will is temporary. I fear that she’s hoping Will and I will break up and he’ll find a woman who wants kids.

The day before we’re supposed to pick up Mark and Sienna from the airport, I get my Annual Christmas Cyst on my forehead. It’s one of those unpoppable zits that grow to the size of a grape beneath the skin, managing to be both hideously unattractive and incredibly painful at once. A holiday bonus of added stress. I try to ice it to get the swelling down, but it’s there when I pick up Sienna and Mark and it’s still there in all its throbbing glory the next day when I’m supposed to pick up Mom and Frank from the airport. I can’t bear to see my beautiful mother for the first time in a year with a giant tumorlike growth on my face, so I poke at it, turning my Annual Christmas Cyst into a bloody, scabby lesion protruding in a pulsating, enormous mass on my forehead. Charming.

Will and I pick them up from the airport together. As always, my mother looks drop-dead gorgeous. Her skin has a youthfulness that makes her look considerably younger than she really is.

After we hug enthusiastically, the four of us pile into the car. I turn from the passenger seat to face Mom, who’s sitting in the back with Frank. “Mom, you look great. How do you keep your skin looking so good?”

“I moisturize. A lot.”

I moisturize, too, and I still have more wrinkles than she does. I give her an incredulous look. There has to be something more to her routine.

“Oh, and I bought this product called the Facializer. You put it on your face like this.” Mom inverts her fingers in two upside down A-Okay signs, encircling her thumb and index fingers around her eyes. “And then you do your Facializer exercises.” She demonstrates by raising her eyebrows up and down, like someone suddenly terrified and then not terrified. Terrified, not terrified.

I watch the odd look Will is making as he watches her performance in the rearview mirror.

“Mom? Mom?” I say. Terrified, not terrified. Terrified, not terrified. “Mom? You’ve only known Will for three minutes. Let’s not make him believe he’s marrying into a family of lunatics right off the bat, okay?”

“Marrying into the family!” she gushes. “A wedding! It’s all so wonderful. I’m so excited for you two. Welcome to the family, Will. Oh, Eva, I saw my psychic the other day, and he assured me that you’re going to get pregnant this year. I know you’ve thought you didn’t want children, but really, you do. It’s going to be a boy.”

“Mom, every psychic you’ve seen in the last four years has been telling you that I’m going to get pregnant right away. Do you know why? Because that’s what you want to hear.”

“No. Do you know what it is? It’s that when you’re close to people, their energy mixes with your energy. Sometimes the psychic reads the other person’s energy off you accidentally. So for the last few years, my psychic was inadvertently forecasting the birth of my girlfriends’ grandkids. But this is my year to become a grandmother. I know it.”

I watch Will stifle a laugh. “Mom,” I say, “you do realize that any crap psychic could use that excuse about other people’s aura rubbing off on you as the reason they’re completely wrong about all their predictions.”

“Oh,” she says, ignoring me, “and I visited a pet astrologer a few weeks back to see why Schroeder is so aloof.” Schroeder is the cat that Mom and Frank got from a pet shelter about six months ago. “She told me that Schroeder’s astrology sign isn’t a good match with mine, so that’s why he’s so withdrawn.”

“Mom, Schroeder is aloof because Schroeder is a
cat
.”

But, of course, there is no talking sense to my mother. She goes off on a new conversational tangent, pretending like she didn’t hear me.

We’ve covered the Facializer, psychic readings, and pet astrology all within the first ten minutes of my mother meeting my betrothed. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s going to be a long, long week.

T
he few days before Christmas are a whirlwind. Mark and Sienna shuttle back and forth from my family to his family’s. Mom and Sienna have to buy last-minute gifts, because they didn’t want to have to ship everything or drag it on the plane with them. I’m torn between wanting to work and wanting to spend time with them. I opt to spend time with them, but as I walk around the mall while they shop, all I can think about is how this is a waste of time and how I should be working.

Having three extra people staying at my place makes me feel overwhelmed. Mark stays at his family’s house most nights, but Sienna sleeps on the couch, while Mom and Frank have taken over the guestroom. With all of their luggage and all the gifts they’ve brought, there simply isn’t enough room for all of us, and it makes me feel claustrophobic. Plus, I simply can’t believe how many dishes five people can use up in a day. I feel like all I do are dishes, even though Sienna, Mom, Frank, and Will all help out. I have no idea how families with kids manage the endless dishes, but I’m really not used to it.

On Christmas Eve, Frank and Will stay home wrapping gifts while Mom, Sienna, and I battle mobs of people at the grocery store buying food for Christmas breakfast and dinner. Over the course of the last month, the three of us have been emailing each other back and forth, trying to plan the meals. I enlisted their help as I did not want to be responsible for making dinner an inedible fiasco.

It’s not easy to be around my mother because my mother and I are so much alike. We are two strong women who like to have things our way. The problem arises when her way is different from my way. Sienna is much more go-with-the-flow. She always wants to make everyone else happy, even if it means she gets the shaft. It’s why Sienna wanted to become a comedian. She wants everyone to like her. Neither Mom nor I give a shit as long as we get our way.

Mom and I bicker about what to make for Christmas dinner. Mom is voting for steak now, even though we originally talked about Cornish game hens, since I’m not a fan of red meat. Mom ultimately gets her way, and I’m secretly triumphant when it costs her forty-five bucks for a steak for each of us and she blanches at the cost.

When we get home from doing the shopping, Will and Frank have taken over the kitchen. Tape, wrapping paper, and ribbons are everywhere. I’ve got heavy bags full of groceries cutting off the circulation in my fingers, and Frank is shouting at us that we have to get out of there or else we’ll see our unwrapped gifts. One of the bags I’m holding breaks and the cider vinegar, which is in a glass bottle, slips out and breaks on the kitchen floor. My anxiety level goes into the stratosphere, and it gets worse when I reach down to pick up the shards of glass and cut my hand. I’m bleeding all over the place, while Frank is still shouting at us to get out of the kitchen. Mom starts talking about some decoration she brought me and is insisting that I come look at it
right now
, and meanwhile I’m trying to do my best not to bleed over the entire house.

“Just a minute!” I shout to Mom. “Will, can you please get me a Band-Aid?”

“Sure, babe.”

Will gets me a bandage, helps me clean my wound, and fixes me up. As he takes care of me, I calm down. Thank God I have him.

“I just cannot bear to battle the mobs at the grocery store again to replace the vinegar,” I say.

“You need it for some recipe?”

I nod.

“I’ll go to the store and pick some up.”

“Really? I would be forever grateful. Thank you.”

Sienna and Mark spend Christmas Eve night with Mark’s family while Mom, Frank, Will, and I go out for a fancy, quiet dinner, just the four of us. After a couple of glasses of wine between us, Mom and I start snickering about the funny memories we have from her wedding. To wit: Mom had her wedding ceremony in the early evening, followed by the reception. The wedding was outdoors, and to get outside, the wedding party came down a spiral staircase from the second floor of the reception hall. As the bride and bridesmaids and groomsmen waited until it was time to descend the staircase, we enjoyed a few glasses of wine. Unfortunately, Mom’s matron of honor, Helen, had one or five too many glasses on an empty stomach.

Mom had bought all of her bridesmaids dressy purses that matched our dresses—so all five of us had the exact same small clutch purse.

The wedding processional music began and we all walked down the stairs onto the patio where the veranda was. When we lined up, groomsmen on one side, bridesmaids on the other, Helen realized that she’d left the groom’s ring in her purse, which was back upstairs. This little newsflash was whispered down the row of bridesmaids until it got to me. I covertly snuck out of line and tiptoed to where guests were watching and entreated Anne, one of Mom’s friends, to miss some of the ceremony, sprint upstairs, grab the purses, and retrieve the ring. Anne did as she was asked, bringing all five clutch purses down from upstairs with her. As the ring-exchange portion of the ceremony grew ever closer, Anne went through one purse after the other, shifting through lipsticks and tampons and coming up empty-handed until at last she found Helen’s purse, which contained nothing else besides three packages of cigarettes (Three! For a four-hour wedding!) and the all-important ring. Anne handed the ring to me, I handed it to Sienna, who handed it to Mom’s sister, who handed it to Helen just as the preacher was asking them to exchange rings and repeat after her that this ring was a symbol of their enduring love.

Later, after the dinner, everyone at the bridal table took a turn passing the microphone down and recollecting fond memories of Mom and Frank and offering their good wishes. When Helen, who was still trashed, got the microphone in her hand, she wished Mom and Frank, “Rainbows and rainbows and rainbows. Rainbows and rainbows and rainbows.” We all began clapping hysterically to shut her up and have her pass the microphone on, but she wouldn’t give it up. “Rainbows and rainbows and rainbows and rainbows and rainbows…” Ultimately somebody had to tackle her to wrest the microphone free from her iron grip. Now, the phrase “rainbows and rainbows and rainbows” could have Mom, Sienna, and me on the floor in convulsions of hysteria in about ten seconds flat. There were, of course, the usual Funniest Home Video moments at Mom’s wedding—the guy slipping and falling on his ass on the dance floor, that sort of thing. Mom and I have a riot reliving it all and wondering what debacles lie in store for my wedding. This is what family is. One moment your mother can make you so insane you’re gritting your teeth so hard your jaw hurts and you’re worried that the veins in your forehead are going to explode in a stressed-out fury, and the next minute you are hooting with laughter together at the memories of the life you’ve shared.

C
hristmas Day we have a nice breakfast and open gifts, then we watch a couple of videos. All day Mom complains about how cold it is. She’s wearing just a thin blouse, while the rest of us have the good sense to wear sweaters, since we are in Colorado in the middle of winter.

“It’s so cold here,” she gripes.

“Mom, this isn’t Los Angeles. This is Colorado in December. Do you want to borrow a sweater?”

I get her a sweater, and she puts in on, but only for a little while, because as we slave over the hot stove, we get warmer. I get hot and peel off my sweater, too. Me, Mom, and Sienna buzz around the kitchen all afternoon making appetizers and getting dinner ready. I tell them my trials and tribulations of trying to learn how to cook, and they share recipes and their cooking war stories as well.

By the time dinner is ready, I’m melting. I’m sweating as if I’ve been detoxing in a sauna. We get dinner on the table, pour the wine, and I actually have to rub my napkin covertly across my forehead to wipe away the sweat.

After dinner, we retreat to the living room to watch a video of one of Sienna’s recent performances that she brought with her from New York. As we sit on the couch, I literally feel so hot I’m faint. I’m having hot flashes at the age of thirty-one. I crack open the window, feeling blessed by the breeze.

When my mother asks Sienna to pause the video so she can go to the kitchen to get another glass of wine, I get up to look at the thermostat to make sure nothing has gone haywire.

And that’s when I learn that my mother has changed the temperature from the moderate 72 degrees I keep my home at to a tropical 82 degrees. My home.
My home
. Would she go into anyone else’s house and render their residence the temperature of molten lava? I think not.

It is at this time that I decide I’m ready for my mother to leave my home and return to California.

“Such audacity! I can’t believe the nerve!” I mutter angrily under my breath as I turn the thermostat back down to where it’s supposed to be.

My nerves are fried completely. I run up to my bedroom and call Sandy. “Sandy, hi. Merry Christmas.”

“Who is this?”

“Oh, sorry, this is Eva, Rachel’s friend?”

“What’s up?”

“Um—” I sigh. It’s one thing to have used what she gave me. It’s another to call her up and ask for more. The stuff definitely made me awake, which is a plus. But what Sandy didn’t mention is that it also leaves you with an incredible sense of well-being, a feeling I have in short supply in the best of times, and am craving desperately right now.

“Did you want some more?”

“Well, if you have some handy. It’s just the holidays, you know. Family get-togethers…”

“Meet me in front of Rachel’s store in half an hour.”

“Half an hour?” I’m elated. That’s no time at all. I don’t have to wait. Thank God. “That sounds perfect. I’ll see you then.”