Our plates full, my sisters and I returned to our positions in the living room. As Maddie savored a jumbo-sized icing rose, Marty said, “Are you going to talk to C’ndee, Mace?”
“You bet I am. If she ever makes it out of the ‘little girls’ room.’ What in the world is taking her so long in there, I wonder?”
Maddie shuddered. “Maybe she got some bad seafood over there on the coast.”
My older sister had once eaten some bad raw clams in Vero Beach. She’d been convinced ever since that the only good seafood was frozen, deep-fried, and served with a side of hush puppies.
Knowing Maddie’s taste for retelling the Revenge of the Clam story, in detail, Marty changed the subject. “I called the park today, Mace. Rhonda said you’d left with Carlos.” Her eyes sparkled with curiosity.
I ignored Maddie’s tongue clucking. “He asked me to go with him to question that lowlife, Darryl. We took a boat from the fish camp, but we never made it to Osprey Bay Island.”
“That’s because they took a little detour.” Maddie was wearing her know-it-all look.
“Well, we started taking on water. Carlos went overboard, and nearly drowned. And we barely escaped being eaten by a giant gator. So, I guess you could say we were detoured.”
“What!??” My sisters gasped.
Mama walked up with Sal, hands entwined like teenagers. “Did I miss something?” she asked.
As they sat, I launched into the tale of the Missing Drain Plug and How I Saved the Day. I was savoring the contrite look on Maddie’s face, when a hubbub arose and interrupted me.
“Get your hands off me, you hick!” The voice was loud, angry, and pure Joisey.
“Don’t call me a hick, you hussy!” That one was rural and shrill. Alice.
The voices were coming from the hallway, near the powder room. We all looked at one another. Then we leaped off the purple couch, plates of cake forgotten. We heard a loud thump, like a body getting shoved into the wall. Then slap, the sound of an open hand hitting skin. Just as we rounded the corner into the dining room, Alice and C’ndee came staggering out of the hallway. Each had a handful of the other’s hair.
“Let go!” Alice screeched.
“You first!” C’ndee countered.
Betty started clearing her souvenir shot glasses and Princess Diana plates off an accent table. Sal roared, “C’ndee! Stop it right now.” The two women circled, round and round.
“She started it.” C’ndee landed a kick with her red stiletto on Alice’s shin. “Bitch!”
Alice hopped on one foot. “Whore!” she yelled, connecting with a solid punch to C’ndee’s left breast.
“Ouch!” C’ndee cried, as everyone but Sal cringed.
He bulled his way through the moving mass of shower guests turned fight fans. He almost made it to the battering duo, even had one beefy arm stretched out to separate them, when C’ndee gave Alice a mighty shove. Alice grabbed at her opponent’s left shoulder and held on as she fell backward.
The two of them toppled together onto the dining room table. The punch bowl tipped, spilling a juice mixture of cranberry and pineapple, with lemon-lime soda. A fruity smell rose in the room. Globs of lime sherbet dotted Betty’s carpet, like green islands in a lilac sea. Then the cake slid from the table, splat onto the wet carpet. The two women went next, coming off the table only to lose their footing in frosting, sherbet, and bridal shower punch.
Mama clutched her hand to her throat. “Make them stop, Sal!” she wailed. “They’re ruining my shower.”
As I watched Alice and C’ndee tumbling across the floor in white frosting and pink punch, I had to disagree with Mama. This was the best bridal fete ever.
Mama aimed a disposable camera at me and clicked. Little red dots from the flash danced in front of my eyes.
“My stars and garters, Mace. You look like the governor just signed your death warrant. Would it kill you to crack a smile? You’re supposed to be playing a beaming bride.”
I hadn’t been able to escape the shower games. I slapped down my “bouquet,” a paper plate adorned with ribbons from the shower gifts, on Betty’s coffee table.
“I’m wearing a veil made out of toilet paper, and y’all have me wrapped like a mummy with at least three rolls. I look more like an explosion in an outhouse than I do a bride, Mama.”
The excitement had died down. Betty brought out store-bought cookies to replace the ruined cake. My cousin Henry had arrived. And with Mama and him fixing the votes, guess who got roped into portraying Himmarshee’s next bride?
Sal had finally managed to pull apart C’ndee and Alice. D’Vora took the widow Hodges into Betty’s bedroom to help her clean up. C’ndee, cursing, stormed out the front door with Sal right behind her. I started to make my exit right behind them, but Marty and Mama stopped me.
“We’ve got to stay and help Betty,” Marty said.
“My shower is a disaster.” Mama’s lower lip quivered.
Maddie clapped her hands like the teacher she’d once been. “Why don’t all of us pitch in to help Betty pick up, and then we’ll all play the wedding gown game?”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Marty immediately chimed in.
I wasn’t the only one to roll my eyes and start for the door. But Maddie shot the dissenters her principal glare, and we all fell into line.
Now, I was the make-believe bride, and Mama was snapping pictures, probably figuring a TP wedding dress might be the only kind I’d ever get. Meanwhile, Henry was taking advantage of the fact I’d been toilet-papered into paralysis to steal a cookie off my plate.
“I saw that! It’s not my problem you got here late and missed both the catfight and the cake, Henry.”
“Mace, please,” Mama said. “A bride is supposed to be gracious and giving, not surly and snide.”
“You must not have ever watched that Bridezilla show on TV,” I told her.
Henry gulped down the stolen cookie and then reached for the last one on my plate. “Aunt Rosalee, you can’t expect Mace to play along. She’s extremely literal. She was never blessed with a good imagination. Mace sees only toilet tissue where we might see a lovely white gown.”
“That must be the problem. It’s a white gown!” Dab’s stage whisper was followed by a burst of laughter.
Henry popped my cookie into his mouth.
“Thanks for the analysis, you overeducated weasel. I forgot about your legendary imagination: Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Henry Bauer, Himmarshee’s Courtroom King of the Slip-and-Fall.”
Henry and I might have gone a round if Betty’s doorbell hadn’t rung just then. Our exhausted hostess yelled from her reclining chair, “It’s open.”
A few moments later, Sal trudged into the living room. Head hanging, shoulders slumped, C’ndee limped in his wake.
“C’ndee has something she wants to say.” He nudged her to center stage.
The room was so quiet, I could hear the remainder of my punch gliding down Henry’s gullet.
“Start tawking,” Sal said.
“I’m sorry, Rosalee, to have acted the way I did at what should have been a happy day for you.” C’ndee looked down as she twisted her hands. “And, Betty, I’ll pay for the cake, and whatever we broke. I’ll also take care of getting your carpet cleaned.”